Can He?

I love that Nicodemus still questions and leaves room for God to do the impossible all at once.

“How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?” -John 3:4

Even when all sorts of questions come to my mind–which happens often–I want to still leave room for that question at the end of my thoughts. I want to leave room for God to do the impossible and show me His ways rather than be stuck in my ways. I’d rather tag a question on the end than get caught up in logic and my ways. Especially because I have a few situations where I don’t see how they work or will work out yet…so I’m chatting with God and leaving the question so that I can:

“…take [my] stand and see this great thing which the Lord will do before [my] eyes.” -1 Samuel 12:16

My Ways or His Ways?

Sometimes I find that my perception of God needs a bit of alteration.  I find that I am not consistent in my thinking or that I bought into something that shouts that I’m stuck on my ways instead of seeing them as His ways.

Example One: I found a prayer in one of my journals that asked God to protect me from deception.  And at first, I was like, uh….what!? where were you God–why didn’t you step in and intervene and save the day? Except, the kicker here is that I wanted Him to intervene so that things would turn out how I wanted them.  He DID protect me by allowing others to step in and walk with me. Things just looked different.

Example Two: I keep wanting to put lists, rules, and lines in areas of my life.  But, then, I’m reminded…He wants me to fall in love with Him in such a way that life no longer feels like a list of do’s and don’ts but a crazy madly love that permeates all that I do to where each and every moment translates into an all relying on Him adventure both with Him and others!

Example Three: I found myself verbalizing frustration over waiting on God’s timing…yeah, sometimes I get frustrated.  But, see, I kept thinking of Him as almost teasing or just not wanting to give me want I want.  Though, really, no! That’s not it at all. He wants to wait to give me that amazing delicious tasting satisfying falafel instead of letting me settle for some not so tasty cheeseburger…

How about you? Do you need to adjust or alter some areas you translate your ways as God’s ways?

Salty Two Cents of God-Flavors

Mm, I wanna be salty! I started out today reading 3 different posts about salt!  I thought I’d just leave my two cents, but then realized…my two cents really looked a bit too lengthy and sent me on some bunny trails all starting with this verse:

Matthew 5:13 “You are the salt of the earth.  But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor?  Can you make it salty again?  It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless.”

—You are here to be salt seasoning that brings out the GOD-FLAVORS of this earth.

After doing some inquiries into salt here, I found quite a few ponderous nuggets to chew on:

• Salt was required in all the sacrifices (Lev. 2:13)
• If we don’t have salt in ourselves, how can we spread it out to others? (Mark 9:50) We need to be spending time with Him, loving Him, and letting Him fill our cup to overflowing so that everything comes from that and goes back to glorify Him.
• To eat salt with one is to partake of his hospitality, to derive subsistence from him; and hence he who did so was bound to look after his host’s interests (Ezra 4:14).
• The Arabic word for “salt” and for a “compact” or “treaty” is the same.
• Salt is emblematic of loyalty and friendship.
• I wonder also if the salt reference has to do with the gospel we present…are we presenting the gospel in its full “saltiness” or are we only throwing in a pinch because we are fearful or so watered down ourselves?

Lastly, I love the version of the verse in the video…Mmm, I wanna be salty, but even more I want to BRING out the GOD-FLAVORS of this earth. I want to ooze with joy and give the world a taste of this God that loves big…I want to bring out these God-flavors in others. To empower, equip, and enable all those around me to live the ABUNDANT life in Christ.

But, how can we do that if we’re not salty ourselves?

Are you salty? What are you doing to stay salty? Are you spreading your saltiness? What do you think God-flavors are? Thoughts?

ALL things

Here’s a little fun game to play and something to ponder that I found over here at “Path from the Head to the Heart” (oh…and I LOVE that blog title because that’s totally the journey I’m continuing to go on!):

If you had to sum up your life to this point in 6 words, what would they be?

For me….This was hard to come up with! I had so many thoughts, but here’s what I’m thinking for right now:

Working all things out for good.

Battlefield of the Mind

Quotes from the book Battlefield of the Mind by Joyce Meyer I’m currently reading:

“Any time we see what the Word says and refuse to do it, reasoning has somehow gotten involved and deceived us into believing something other than the truth”
and
“James 1:5-8—To me the man of two minds is a picture of confusion as he goes back and forth, back and forth, never deciding on anything. As soon as he thinks he has made a decision here comes wondering, doubt and confusion to get him operating once again in two minds. He is uncertain about everything. ”
and
“Wondering leaves a person in indecision, and indecision causes confusion. Wondering, indecision and confusion prevent an individual from receiving from God, by faith, the answer to his prayer or need.”

My response: “Whoa….this book is totally kicking me and asking me to face some tough love for some big time God transformation in my mind.”

Your response? Have you read the book? Do you see your mind as a battlefield? Anything up above resonate with you? I’d love to know…

Soaking It In

I’ve become a SLOW reader. Why? Because I want to soak up every little bit of literary crafting in order to fully let the words get into my heart and not just my head.  I’ve been plugging my way through Mark Batterson’s new book Primal and needless to say, I’m intrigued.

I so appreciated his reminder that “silence is one of the soul’s love languages” after coming from a place that exudes silence (a farm far from town) and going into a small, but “noisy” city.  I love getting away in the wilderness…

Along with that, I SO needed the following reminder: “But if God is speaking to your heart, don’t let your mind get in the way of what God wants you to do. Sometimes loving God with all your heart simply means listening to your heart instead of your head.” Whoa, so good. When God invades my heart in such a shattering way, I don’t want to get caught up in the silly games my head plays. God completely changed my heart this last year and I’m letting Him come deeper so that my heart can respond with a big “YES” regardless of how it looks to my head.

So, what do you think? Are you looking for a primal faith? Ready to go on a quest for the lost soul of Christianity with Mark? Check out the book here or when I finish my copy, I’ll send it your way!

p.s. Check back tomorrow for another great quote from Primal and some thoughts about what breaks God’s heart…

*This book was provided for review by the WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group.

Friday’s Make My Heart Happy

“You know all my thoughts.  You see through my ways.  And still You come to me.  So I sing a love song to You.  From heaven above, from earth down beneath.  Your love rains down on me.  You know all my thoughts.  You see through my skin.  And still You come to me.  And so I sing a love song to You.  You walk on waves.  You run with clouds. You paint the sky for me to see.  Your majesty, Your majesty is why I sing.  And this is a love song to You.  My life’s a love song to You.“

*Zandile came to Hope House two weeks ago and she’s absolutely lovely.  Praying that God will do BIG things in her life and that she will choose to let her life be a love song to God as well.

Thoughtful Thursday

I’m chewing on this for the day:

“Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything without weakening.” 1 Corinthians 13:7 (Amplified version)

Thoughts, comments, questions from me will come later after our lovely scheduled power outage for the day.  How about you? What do you think?

Still Here Waiting…

My head automatically tries to see everything from all sorts of angles.  For example, a simple decision about whether I should go to the Lion Park turns into a litany of streaming thought: if I go then I won’t have as much time to run, but then I might be missing out on hanging out with people and then again I would have to get up early and maybe I need to just have a day where I can do whatever I want, although, I don’t always get these opportunities to do things off base so maybe I should jump on it, but I like to sleep in and it is a day off and well I don’t know.  I play out all the pros and cons.  Sometimes this can be a great help when really weighing in on decisions, but other times I end up torn between the choices and pondering for a while.

Then on the other hand, I make a decision and that’s that.  There’s no question.  I will follow through and there’s no wavering.  Before I started running yesterday, I decided to run a 10k.  So I did.  I decide to climb a rock.  So I do.  No matter the cost, the time, the sacrifice, I follow through with the decision.

I live in this juxtaposition of knowing exactly what I want and yet seeing all the implications of all the potential choices.  Yet, as I’ve written about before.  I’m in a time of waiting.  I would much rather go find all the choices and play out the scenarios in my head so I can at least be torn over them and then decide.  Instead, I trust, I rest, I ask, I set my eyes, I wait.

A Look Back

For unknown reasons (boredom? curiosity? fun?), I started looking back through my old blogs. Here’s a few that caught my eye:

Good-bye to You

I still love sleeping with my computer

I really want this right now

I miss eating these in the morning

I like some of these thoughts

I still hate being cold