>Strong Enough

>So have you ever had one of those segments in time of life where you felt completely overwhelmed but really just could not figure out why…

I am there…

It’s a weird place.

I heard this song coming home today:

I am in a time right now where I feel like I am never going to “catch up”. It’s the never ending running behind syndrome… not being able to relax because you know you have to be forgetting to do something… but for the life of you, you can’t think of what it is…

I heard the words to this song “You must, You must think I’m strong, to give me what I’m going through… ”

No temptation has overtaken you
but such as is common to man;
and God is faithful,
who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able,
but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also,
so that you will be able to endure it. 
2 Corinthians 10:13
 
The truth is I am not going through anything right now in comparison to what many are going through… but right now I am in a place of internal struggles, internal turmoil, my mind can’t settle… the “to do” list has not even helped… ugh it’s frustrating. I feel detached if that makes any sense… kind of on the outside looking in sorta thing. I can feel the walls of self protection trying to go up…
 
Yep, it’s a weird place
 
But I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength… even sort out this crazy brain of mine.
 
While this song was playing my youngest said “Momma, you know you really didn’t give me life… Jesus did.” 
I then said, “Yes, He just let me give birth to you and then trusted me with you to raise.”
Then she said “Momma, you can’t do all things in Christ here on earth.”
I just looked at her with a question.
She then said, “You can’t fly in Christ when you’re here. You have to learn to walk before you can fly…”  
 
Oh me… I guess I am still learning to walk… but oh how I long to fly.
There’s just nothing like having God speak to you through your seven year old child 🙂

Train Up A Child Day 15

Oh no… not my child!
Never my child… they would never…
They know better… 
I have taught them better.
Surely I can trust them… 

Let me ask you… how well can you trust your own heart?

Train Up A Child Day Fifteen

15.  Train them.  remembering continually the power of sin.
   
I name this shortly, in order to guard you against unscriptural expectations.  You must not expect to find your children’s minds a sheet of pure white paper, and to have no trouble if you only use right means.  I warn you plainly you will find no such thing. 

It is painful to see how much corruption and evil there is in a young child’s heart, and how soon it begins to bear fruit.  Violent tempers, self- will, pride, envy, sullenness, passion, idleness, selfishness, deceit, cunning, falsehood, hypocrisy, a terrible aptness to learn what is bad, a painful slowness to learn what is good, a readiness to pretend anything in order to gain their own ends, — all these things, or some of them, you must be prepared to see, even in your own flesh and blood. In little ways they will creep out at a very early age; it is almost startling to observe how naturally they seem to spring up. 

Children require no schooling to learn to sin.
   
But you must not be discouraged and cast down by what you see. You must not think it a strange and unusual thing, that little hearts can be so full of sin.  It is the only portion which our father Adam left us; it is that fallen nature with which we come into the world; it is that inheritance which belongs to us all.

Let it rather make you more diligent in using every means which seem most likely, by God’s blessing, to counteract the mischief.  Let it make you more and more careful, so far as in you lies, to keep your children out of the way of temptation.
   
Never listen to those who tell you your children are good, and well brought up, and can be trusted.  Think rather that their hearts are always inflammable as tinder.  At their very best, they only want a spark to set their corruptions alight.  Parents are seldom too cautious.  Remember the natural depravity of your children, and take care.

********************************************************
My parents will tell you this day that the worst thing they ever did was trust us girls.
And it’s true.
You see I was raised right.
In a wonderful loving home.
However I found trouble… then I went looking for it.
My parents were fairly strict compared to the parents of many of my friends. I thought they were ridiculously strict. So strict that I would lie and twist and omit information in order to get to do what I wanted. I was able to do this because my parents trusted me. You see I had learned to use their trust in me against them.
I can honestly tell you today that I wish my parents had not trusted me so much. I would rather have the stricter, less trusting parents, than the regrets I carry today. It wasn’t that I was a “bad person” I simply just did not understand the power of my sinful heart. I had not the knowledge or spiritual maturity to discern good and evil. I didn’t understand the evil until I was neck deep in the consequences.
What I have come to learn is that it’s not about whether or not I trust my children… it’s about being always fully aware of the pull of their sin nature and being fully aware that their hearts will lie to them just as quickly as my heart will lie to me.
I do not put myself in certain situations for the simple reason of guarding my heart, my mind, and my integrity… I have to teach my children to do that by my own example first and then while doing it for them until they understand how to do it themselves.
When I was first wholly surrendered I really thought that if I poured enough Scripture into them and then if I surrounded them with all the right friends, all would be great and wonderful… but here’s what I learned… I can’t trust the hearts of their friends either.
Having worked in the youth ministry… I heart-wrenchingly have come to learn that things are not always as they appear. I learned that the same church kids that gossiped and ridiculed me about my sin and yet never invited me to know Christ nor even invited me to church… were still alive and well in the church today.
I learned that the kids who had strong believing parents and were leaders in their youth group on Sunday’s and Wednesday’s were also still the leaders on Friday and Saturday night’s parties and the ones having sex outside of wedlock… even though I had myself poured my own brokenness from these actions into their ears.
I had an eye opening experience that I could not control them nor my own children through controlling their environment and by using the “just say no” campaign.
I thought that keeping my children in church would be enough… but I learned that it’s not. Because it’s not about today’s idea of ‘church’… it’s about their hearts. I have to teach my children to recognize the power of their sin nature and I have to teach my children that their hearts will deceive them. I have to teach them how to recognize the liar, the deceiver, the murderer of their souls. I have to teach them how to walk through the valley of the shadow of death… not live trying to keep them away from that valley… because I can’t. I have to teach my children not from the “if” but from the “when”.
So it shall be when all of these things have come upon you…
Deuteronomy 30:1
I can’t just put a set a blinders on them and say keep to the path.
I can’t just place them in a shark cage and say now you will not be attacked.
I can’t just strap on a safety harness and say now you will never fall.
I have to prepare them for what to do when the blinders come off and they stray to the left or the right and get lost in this life. I have to teach them the tools they will need to get back on the path. When the cage breaks and the sharks attack, I have to teach them how to defend themselves and how and where to go to find new shelter. I have to teach them how to get up when that safety harness malfunctions and they fall. If they are broken… they must know that forgiveness and healing is available.
I solemnly charge you
in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus,
who is to judge the living and the dead,
and by His appearing
and His kingdom: 
preach the word;
be ready in season and out of season;
reprove, rebuke, exhort,
with great patience and instruction
For the time will come
when they will not endure sound doctrine;
but wanting to have their ears tickled,
they will accumulate for themselves
teachers in accordance to their own desires,
2 Timothy 4:1-3
The time will come in most of our children’s lives that they will not endure your teaching any longer. They will seek out friends that tell them what they want to hear and will desire to go that way and not the way they have been taught… be ready.
For we do not want you to be unaware,
brethren, of our affliction
which came to us in Asia,
that we were burdened excessively,
beyond our strength,
so that we despaired even of life;
2 Corinthians 1:8
Be ready in season, when they hang on your every word and trust you completely, teach them truth.
Be ready out of season, when they think you are the most stupid people on the face of the earth who have no clue about their life or the world of today, teach them truth… “reprove, rebuke, exhort“… and do it with “great patience and instruction”. Yet do not yield to their sinful desires out of fear of losing them forever… obey God and trust Him with your children… remembering always that He loves them even more than you do.

>No Holds Barred

>

Then Jacob was left alone.
Genesis 32:24
 
Jacob was first a man of the flesh—he was Jacob the deceiver. He is now a man fighting and struggling within himself, and he sends everyone across the stream and is left alone. Soon he will encounter God in a way he never has before.
 
Jacob had encountered God at Bethel. At this encounter, Jacob responded to God by giving him a test: “If God will be with me and will keep me on this journey that I take, and will give me food to eat and garments to wear, and I return to my father’s house in safety, then the Lord will be my God” (Genesis 28:20–21).
 
Jacob then encountered God at Mahanaim in Genesis 32:1–12, and he called on Him to get him out of the mess he was in with Esau.
 
Now Jacob will encounter God again, and this time Jacob will encounter God with his heart. I believe God has been waiting for Jacob’s heart to finally call upon Him.
 
We all are first born of the flesh. We are all also born with God evident within us and around us (Romans 1:19). God blesses us all with encounters of His truth and with the reality of His presence (Psalm 19:1). We all have struggled in some way, wrestling with the idea of God.
 
Jacob now is alone with God. Here across the ford of Jabbok he goes toe to toe with a man, a man that I believe to be an angel, possibly even the pre-incarnate Christ. He wrestles with this angel. The angel allows Jacob to keep struggling with him, but he reaches out and dislocates Jacob’s thigh with just a touch of his hand. I believe he did this just to remind Jacob that he was in control the whole time.
 
Jacob did not let go after the touch. He held on tight. Jacob had finally come to realize that he needed God. He now understood that he could go no farther without God. He knew that he did not just want what God had to offer him; he did not just want God to get him out of trouble. He just wanted God.
 
Know, precious one, that if you are wrestling with God, He wrestles you as a lifeguard wrestles someone drowning in the water. Oftentimes when a person is drowning, he fights the one who is trying to save him as much as he fights the water that he is drowning in.
 
A lifeguard is trained to knock out a drowning victim if he continues to fight him so that he may safely bring him out of the water. God wrestles with us to bring us life and save us from this body of death. Sometimes God has to knock us out to save us. Sometimes He has to dislocate our thigh so that we remember that He is in control.
 
Ultimately we have to choose to either submit to Him and honor Him as God, or to keep fighting and become harder in heart and die without Him, eternally separated.
 
There comes a time in every person’s life when he or she is left alone, alone with God. The time will come in all our lives when the wrestling match will go toe-to-toe, no holds barred.
 
Have you been in the wrestling match?
Are you struggling with the reality of God?
Are you struggling with understanding that God desires all of you?
Are you fighting and struggling within yourself?
Have you realized that you agree with the law of God in your inner man but see that the members of your body do not want to obey His law?
Do you see that evil is present within you?
Is there a wrestling match going on between the law of your mind that knows what is right and this body of flesh that wants to do wrong?
 
Oh, precious one, have you cried out as Paul cried out, “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death” (Romans 7:24)?
Have you cried out as Jacob did, “I will not let you go unless you bless me” (Genesis 32:26)?
 
This war, this wrestling match, does not end at salvation. While we remain here in this body of flesh, we will wage war. When we submit and hold on to God just as Jacob did, we too will become men and women obedient to the faith (Romans 16:25–27).
 
Have you been toe-to-toe with God?
 
Remember this, my friend: “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ has set you free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2).

Remember that “in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).

 
Don’t let go, my friend.
Hold on to God; cling to Him; He will bless you.
 
Oh Father,
 
How I love You. You are my God. Oh Father, thank You that Your relationship with me is intimate and personal. Oh, thank You for Your Word, so that I may speak to You face-to-face. I can go toe-to-toe with You through Your Word. Then I must choose to either submit to You and Your Word and order my life accordingly or suffer the consequences of disobedience and unbelief. Oh Father, when times come that I wrestle with You, help me to tap out quickly. Oh Father, I believe in You and I trust in Your every word. Continue to transform me into the image of You from glory to glory
(2 Corinthians 3:18).
 
My Jesus, it is in Your name I pray,
Amen.