I struggle with keeping my eyes where I need to. Paul told us, though, how to run the race of life that is set before us. (By the way, my race is different from yours, and your race is not as mine is; our unique race is custom designed for each one of us by our all-wise, loving Father God!) How, then, do I run my race? How do I hang in there when the going gets so rough? How do I persevere to the end - when there seems to never be an end to the weary struggle, and I wonder if I'm just spinning my wheels? The apostle Paul taught that the method to succeed in this running is by "looking unto Jesus." My eyes - and my thoughts - are naturally drawn to the circumstances around me that are affecting me. This is normal, a tendency built into us all as human beings. But, it's not the way to be able to "run the race" - to live my life as my higher nature desires to. For that, I must go beyond normal and natural, and I must move into the supernatural. And to do that, I need to change my focus. Anything I accomplish in life (or fail to) depends on where I fix my focus.
It was a dark, stormy night on the Sea of Galilee. The disciples of Jesus were in their boat in the middle of the lake, fighting with great difficulty against the winds hindering them from being able to make progress to the other side. They had left Jesus miles back on the other shore, because He had wanted to go up to a mountain to pray and be alone with His Father. It was in that drowsy, hypnotic time of night between three and six in the morning when the exhausted disciples saw what appeared to them to be a ghost walking toward them on the surface of the water. They were stupefied and terrified! But, it was Jesus - doing something they had never seen Him do before! "It is I. Be not afraid," He encouraged them. We remember the story. Peter responded to this amazing revelation by asking Jesus to bid him to walk on the water to Him, and Jesus said, "Come." And sure enough, Peter, too, walked on the water - that is, until he changed his focus. When he looked at the boisterous wind - instead of keeping his gaze on Jesus - Peter began to sink. And so will we.
I have a situation in my family life that continues after many years bringing me much heartache. Things will seem for a little while as though they're going to improve, and then there will arise another crisis, and down into a battle with depression I find myself sinking. But, the gracious Holy Spirit has been working on me, teaching me (often a slow learner). As a child of God, there is provision for me to not have to experience extreme mood swings according to my circumstances; but instead, I can learn to appropriate all the aspects of victory that Jesus provided for me by His death on the cross - so that I can live on an entirely new level of life. In the natural, my mood may be dictated by the way things appear (when things look good, I go to the "heights," but when things look bad, I go to the "depths.") However, if I determinedly fix my eyes (and my trust) on Jesus, my emotions will not be ruled by appearances. "Looking unto Jesus" I will be held steady. Beholding, as it were, His face - seeing the love in His eyes for me, even me, and getting a glimpse, at least, of the flames of fire in those eyes - flames of glorious almightiness and pure holiness, I thereby get "positioned" to where I need to be: into a higher reality than that which is visible around me. Those "heights" and "depths" that have kept me on an emotional roller-coaster way too long are already taken care of, they are dealt with and can be over for me altogether. My faithful teacher, the Holy Spirit, recently quickened to me this freeing truth that God showed Paul: "For I am persuaded that neither life, nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor HEIGHT, nor DEPTH, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39). Neither my "highs" nor my "lows" can separate me from my source of life eternal. Where will I focus - on the waves grown boisterous and threatening, or on Jesus - on Him whom "even the winds and the sea obey" - because this Jesus, by whom all things are created, is Master of all things (Mt. 8:27; Col.1:16)? With God's ever-present help, I will choose to no longer look at "Peter's waves," but instead, to look at Jesus - and walk with Him above those very waves. Maintaining that focus will keep my heart enfolded in His peace "beyond understanding" (Phil. 4:6-7), and I can be anchored in an eternal reality far beyond the mere appearance of things to my natural perspective.
"Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee - because he trusts in Thee" (Isaiah 26:3).
0 Comments We Can't Live Without Oxygen 1/2/2015
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Keeping Hope Alive
How can we keep hope alive in such a world as we live in? God wants his people able to "abound in hope," to be buoyant and triumphant. But we are often surrounded in life by awful and merciless forces that seem they may overwhelm us at any moment. Although we try to remain hopeful, our hope may be undermined by depression stemming from disappointed plans or dreams, poverty or failing health, betrayal in relationships or cruel ingratitude, slighted love or deep loneliness. These, and innumerable more circumstances, flood over us like a hurricane that threatens to sweep us away and drown us.
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0 Comments Would We Shutter the Windows of our Souls? 9/8/2014
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Trying to walk down a wilderness path in the night's darkness is quite different from walking it with a lamp in our hand. God Himself is our light, and as we live in daily, hourly communion with Him it is in that very proportion that we are enabled to walk in the light, in ways of safety. Our steps will be treading the crystal pathway of light if we are living in a manner such that His name is ever precious in our hearts, frequently on our lips, and always spoken when temptation is near. We will not hide any secret sin, but rather habitually will seek cleansing from anything that would separate us from our Father: "If we walk in the light, as He Himself is in the light, ... the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin" (I John 1:7).
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0 Comments Five Times Never 6/2/2014
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We sometimes may feel that God has forgotten us. We think that He has left us to bear our trials on our own. Perhaps at first, when we face a difficulty, we rally like good soldiers, and we resolve to march out against the distressing situation under the banner of trusting in our God, because we have believed His word that He will fight for us. We feel certain that with the right attitude and earnest faith, defeat of our "enemy" is imminent.
But time passes. And then more time passes. And fight as we might, nothing seems to change. The days wear on, and we grow weary. We begin to lose our nerve, and our stamina. We are now threatened, even more perhaps than by the trial's severity, by its longevity. Questions stab into our hearts like fiery darts: "Why would God let me suffer so long?"...."Has He forgotten me?"..."Has my seeking to live for Him been in vain, after all?"
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0 Comments Letter to a Loved One Choosing a Sinful Lifestyle 3/12/2014
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Dear Jamie,
I've been doing a lot of thinking regarding how to respond to the news in your last e-mail. Overarching all my thoughts are the words that were among the last I was able to share with my mother on the day of her death: "I have loved you with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you (have continued My faithfulness to you)" (Jeremiah 31:3). I believe that it is God's love for us that is the most basic claim for a response from us to Him. In His love for us, He created every single one of us for a love relationship with Him. That's why within us all there is a "God-shaped vacuum."
I believe that we started off back in the garden of Eden able to fill that inner space within us with fellowship with our Maker. But the human race is no longer in that state of being able to be what we were originally created to be. Since we by our own choices to be independent of our Creator, and to reject Him as our "boss," have decided to "go it on our own" without Him, there have been consequences. And so we try to meet that innate, inner yearning with all kinds of things, perhaps seemingly good things, that will never be able to take the place of the only thing that "fits" there. Independence turns out to not be what it's touted to be. The reality is that independence from our very life-source is not a wise move!
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0 Comments Standing Above the Maze 2/5/2014
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A story is told of a telephone operator who received a call every day from the same man, asking for the time of day. After a few weeks of this, she asked him why he was asking the time of her. "To set my watch," he said, "because I have to blow the whistle at my factory every day at exactly noon." To his surprise, the woman replied, "Oh, my! I set my watch every day by that whistle signal!" Can you imagine the bafflement of them both as they realized the lack of certainty of what they each had presumed was a sure standard?
This could be a picture of our world today. More and more, people are realizing they have built a sense of security on false foundations. What theories and views of life that seemed to have worked in the past now leave us feeling bankrupt. The ideas and answers other men have offered us have deviated from a safe standard, just as the whistle signal deviated from the true time. And we are left with an undercurrent of discontentment running rampant beneath the surface of our lives. Many of us may have even lost confidence that there is any such thing for the human race as a future.
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0 Comments Tiny Flies 12/23/2013
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A man once said, "God is great in great things, but very great in little things." Many people think that God is interested only in big things, and will not want to be bothered with our small concerns. Actually, all we have to do is observe a father and his child, and we will learn otherwise - especially as we realize that a good man's "father-heart" is a reflection of our heavenly Father's heart.
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0 Comments Two Messages 11/7/2013
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All of us yearn to be accepted, to be loved. This is a core need, part of our deepest being.
It doesn't take very long, as we walk along our life journey from day one, before something happens that results in the opposite experience for us: rejection. And we are wounded. For some of us, the wounds are very, very deep. For all of us, not being accepted in one way or another distorts how we feel about ourselves. We get the message that we are not worth being accepted. And a shadow begins to fall over our life.
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ur unique race is custom designed for each one of us by our all-wise, loving Father God!) How, then, do I run my race? How do I hang in there when the going gets so rough? How do I persevere to the end - when there seems to never be an end to the weary struggle, and I wonder if I'm just spinning my wheels? The apostle Paul taught that the method to succeed in this running is by "looking unto Jesus." My eyes - and my thoughts - are naturally drawn to the circumstances around me that are affecting me. This is normal, a tendency built into us all as human beings. But, it's not the way to be able to "run the race" - to live my life as my higher nature desires to. For that, I must go beyond normal and natural, and I must move into the supernatural. And to do that, I need to change my focus. Anything I accomplish in life (or fail to) depends on where I fix my focus.
It was a dark, stormy night on the Sea of Galilee. The disciples of Jesus were in their boat in the middle of the lake, fighting with great difficulty against the winds hindering them from being able to make progress to the other side. They had left Jesus miles back on the other shore, because He had wanted to go up to a mountain to pray and be alone with His Father. It was in that drowsy, hypnotic time of night between three and six in the morning when the exhausted disciples saw what appeared to them to be a ghost walking toward them on the surface of the water. They were stupefied and terrified! But, it was Jesus - doing something they had never seen Him do before! "It is I. Be not afraid," He encouraged them. We remember the story. Peter responded to this amazing revelation by asking Jesus to bid him to walk on the water to Him, and Jesus said, "Come." And sure enough, Peter, too, walked on the water - that is, until he changed his focus. When he looked at the boisterous wind - instead of keeping his gaze on Jesus - Peter began to sink. And so will we.
I have a situation in my family life that continues after many years bringing me much heartache. Things will seem for a little while as though they're going to improve, and then there will arise another crisis, and down into a battle with depression I find myself sinking. But, the gracious Holy Spirit has been working on me, teaching me (often a slow learner). As a child of God, there is provision for me to not have to experience extreme mood swings according to my circumstances; but instead, I can learn to appropriate all the aspects of victory that Jesus provided for me by His death on the cross - so that I can live on an entirely new level of life. In the natural, my mood may be dictated by the way things appear (when things look good, I go to the "heights," but when things look bad, I go to the "depths.") However, if I determinedly fix my eyes (and my trust) on Jesus, my emotions will not be ruled by appearances. "Looking unto Jesus" I will be held steady. Beholding, as it were, His face - seeing the love in His eyes for me, even me, and getting a glimpse, at least, of the flames of fire in those eyes - flames of glorious almightiness and pure holiness, I thereby get "positioned" to where I need to be: into a higher reality than that which is visible around me. Those "heights" and "depths" that have kept me on an emotional roller-coaster way too long are already taken care of, they are dealt with and can be over for me altogether. My faithful teacher, the Holy Spirit, recently quickened to me this freeing truth that God showed Paul: "For I am persuaded that neither life, nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor HEIGHT, nor DEPTH, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39). Neither my "highs" nor my "lows" can separate me from my source of life eternal. Where will I focus - on the waves grown boisterous and threatening, or on Jesus - on Him whom "even the winds and the sea obey" - because this Jesus, by whom all things are created, is Master of all things (Mt. 8:27; Col.1:16)? With God's ever-present help, I will choose to no longer look at "Peter's waves," but instead, to look at Jesus - and walk with Him above those very waves. Maintaining that focus will keep my heart enfolded in His peace "beyond understanding" (Phil. 4:6-7), and I can be anchored in an eternal reality far beyond the mere appearance of things to my natural perspective.
"Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee - because he trusts in Thee" (Isaiah 26:3).