Monthly Archives: December 2012

Proven Path Ministries

Cleaning Up Vomit

 

Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, 

by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 

Let all bitterness and wrath

and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you,

along with all malice. 

Be kind to one another, tender-hearted,

forgiving each other, 

just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.

Ephesians 4:30-32

I’ve been watching Kay Arthur in the mornings… I have been sick for over a week and it usually takes me a good thirty minutes to get enough snot blowed out of my head to be able to think straight… so the past couple of weeks I have chosen to come down the stairs and grab my coffee and my Bible and pile back up on the couch under a blanket and be spoon fed the Word.

Now over a week into this routine… I think God allowed this sickness so that I could be fed for a while.

For the first time in a long while I feel almost refreshed… renewed… revived… yes, renewed and revived.

I realized today that I had been going a while in my own strength and grit. I had poured out almost all that I had and the gas hand was at the warning light… but just like in my car… I ignored it and figured I could get just a little farther on… but God said nope, honey, sickness is visiting to put you down where I can talk to you and you listen. You can’t pour into others what you don’t have… and if you are pouring something that is of you and not of Me then you are not helping anyone nor are you serving Me.

So I am in a time of renewal… and I am thankful.

I am thankful for my God and I am thankful for His grace and I am thankful for His teachers and I am thankful for His Word.

As I watched Kay this morning she took me into the book of Ephesians… I love Ephesians.

I suppose its the fact that the stomach flu has been running rampant through our church or the fact that I am sick myself or just because it was such an accurate picture… but what Kay shared with me this morning really struck a cord in my desire to learn to respond rather than react.

As we dug into Ephesians 4 Kay broke down the Greek translations of bitterness, wrath, and anger and she spoke of clamor and slander and malice… all hitting cords with me as she spoke and I realized how many times I have gotten sucked into reacting to the emotional turmoil of another person instead of responding to God in obedience to His Spirit within me.

As she moved on to talk about what it means to be tender-hearted she spoke of it in response to the anger of another… I had never really considered it in this way. She shared how when someone comes at us or just speaks with us in anger, slander, clamor, or with bitterness or if we are the one’s speaking with it, it’s like vomiting.

When we spew out our anger all over someone we are vomiting up our ickness on them…

I have cleaned up a lot of vomit in my day… When my children or any one else’s children have been sick and have vomited all over themselves or all in the floor… I have grabbed them up and tended to their need, cleaned them up, and then gotten down on the floor and cleaned up their mess. I have done it with tenderness and with concern for the health of the one who was vomiting… I did not respond to their vomit with vomit of my own… because well, if I did it would have just left me to clean up my own vomit along with theirs… or it would have caused another person to be a part of the whole mess.

God commands us in Ephesians to be tender-hearted.

This is the way we are to respond when someone vomits up their anger… it’s like a heart flu.

Bitterness, wrath, anger, slander, clamor, and malice are like a nasty virus that gets inside of us and the only thing we can do is kill it with medicine or spew it out or it will only grow worse within us… and if we are not careful we will spread them to others who come in contact with us… they are terribly contagious.

If we recognize the symptoms quick enough we can kill it with the Balm of Gilead from the Great Physician… but if we ignore the symptoms eventually we will spew them out on someone… the lady blocking the isle at Wal-Mart, the guy who pulled out in front of you at the Red Light, your husband who said the wrong thing, your kids that left their shoes in the floor and you tripped over them, etc. When you vomit your heart flu germs all over them… sadly many times, they in turn vomit all over someone else…

Yes, this heart flu is indeed nasty stuff.

I want to be better about recognizing the symptoms of this mess so that I can head straight to the One who can administer healing to me immediately so that I am not a part of the spreading of this heart flu. And I want to get better about how I respond when someone else vomits up their bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, or malice up on me. I want to choose to put on my Jesus and His armor of grace and clean it up for them instead of taking a big wiff of their mess and then vomiting myself. I want to reach down deep, take a deep breath of mercy, pray for God’s strength, and lay myself on the altar of obedience. I want to be tender-hearted.

This is my resolution… my own desire.

One person’s vomit is nasty enough… but when it sets off a chain reaction… ugh… yeh… let us not go there.

*Here’s one of Kay’s lessons from Ephesians 4…

Walk in Love, Even as Christ Walked in Love

Confessions of a Christian Wife, Proven Path Ministries

He Did It

As for me, I shall behold Your face in righteousness;
I will be satisfied with Your likeness when I awake.

Psalm 17:15

I am currently reading a book by Charles Stanley, Handle With Prayer. It has been an amazing teaching tool. I don’t think we can ever stop growing in the area of prayer. I know that I am always needing growth in that area. I can easily get lazy here and just choose to “rest in God’s sovereignty” in an “I know I could work but it’s so much easier to do nothing and let the government send me a check” kinda way.

Sometimes its easier to just pray, “LORD let Your will be done. In Jesus’ name. Amen” And then just accept that whatever happened was His will to begin with and that was that… but what if that was not that? Yes, I believe in God’s sovereignty. Yes, I believe His will is always accomplished. Yes, I believe no thing and no one can stop His purpose, but what if I just blew an opportunity to be a part of it?

I must confess… my prayer life has felt a bit empty here lately… which I know now is one of the reasons I have felt so defeated and tired and scattered and lost and so spinning in circles-ish and chasing my tale-ish.

He humbled you and let you be hungry,

and fed you with manna which you did not know,

nor did your fathers know,

that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone,

but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD.

Deuteronomy 8:3

Yes, He did it.

One of the quotes in the book by Charles Stanley was, “Instead of complaining, we need to ask God why we are defeated; then we should be quiet and listen” 

I have been guilty of doing a lot of complaining to God about why I feel this weight on me… but I have not stopped to find out why He has allowed it. I have read Scriptures and promises that have held me up during it. I have searched Scriptures to help me rebuke it. I have searched out my heart for sin and confessed it… but I have yet to ask why God has allowed it.

Even defeat has a purpose.

I know there is something that God is teaching me, that God is asking of me, but I can’t put my finger on it quite yet. I don’t know if the burden I carry is mine, or if it is for someone else…

When they led Him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene,

coming in from the country,

and placed on him the cross to carry behind Jesus.

Luke 23:26

I just know that some burdens are an honor to carry…

And some burdens were never meant to be carried by us at all…

Say, therefore, to the sons of Israel,

‘ I am the LORD,

and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians,

and I will deliver you from their bondage.

I will also redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments.

Exodus 6:6

As I type this out now… I seek His face. One of the things also quoted by Stanley in this book, is that if something keeps coming up over and over in your mind… that it is from God… even if it is from your past.

So many times when our past comes up to haunt us we automatically rebuke it as condemnation from Satan… but maybe, just maybe, we need to ask ourselves, we need to ask God… why this thing?

Why can Satan still use this against me?

How can this still be used by him to bring me condemnation?

There are things that Satan tries to throw up at me… and well it doesn’t hurt. It only causes me to praise and thank my Jesus… but there are others that well… still hurt.

Maybe they hurt because God is not through with that in me. Maybe I need to do something about that area… I may be forgiven, but have I forgiven?

Charles Stanley shares in his book that even though we are forgiven… many times there is restitution still to be made. If something keeps coming up over and over and over… it is indeed from God. If it from God then it is time to stop. Be still. And listen. It is time to find out why and what God wants you to do about it. Because He does indeed want you to do something… but you have to let Him tell you and then you have to obey Him.

One thing that has been coming up over and over again with me is whether or not I should keep my Proven Path Ministries FB page. It keeps coming up. So today I am taking action. This will be my last post on this FB page. I am deleting it. All those who have “liked” it are welcome to subscribe to my personal FB page… but this page I will be deleting in obedience to my God.