Tag: I can do all things through

“Who Told You That?”

It’s been a few months since I’ve posted to my blog – nine to be exact. I’ve written a few things but they just didn’t feel right. They didn’t feel worthy of posting, so some wait patiently in a notebook and some quickly found the nearest trash can. Despite the fact that I have known for a long time that God has called me to write, nothing I wrote felt good enough to me.

This week I realized why.

Monday I pulled out my copy of The Quest by Beth Moore. It’s a Bible study I started a few months ago but didn’t finish. I started reading the answers I had written back then in response to some of Beth’s questions, and I realized why my writing “wasn’t good enough” but I didn’t do anything that day to change it.

Then I received a message today from God. Well, the message was actually from Facebook, but God can and will use whatever means He needs to in order to get His children to listen. I heard His message weeks ago when a handful of people asked me in the same week if I was still writing. Then I heard His message through Beth this week. Today’s message from Him sunk in when I received a notification that said, “1,014 people who like Forgiven Faith haven’t heard from you in a while. Write a post.”

Four hours later that number has increased by five. I don’t know where all these likes have come from. I haven’t posted since November of 2017 and the last I checked it was only in the 300s. My writing is not enough to attract 1,000 readers and I don’t promote, so I don’t know how my likes increased that much. I do know God has used that number to convict me.

God told me four years ago to write. I fumbled through writing for about three years. Some of my posts were terrible, but some were pretty good.

Somewhere along the way, I guess a year ago, I made a grievous error. I listened to a newly published author who is not a faith-based writer or even a faith-based person. That counsel was very discouraging and I have been unable to focus my thoughts on writing since that time. I learned the feel of writers block.

The counsel I received from Beth Moore this week is helping to reverse the impact of the false counsel I internalized all those months ago, however. There are two questions she posed that really spoke to me. The first felt like a knife in the chest and the second, a knife in the back.

“Where are you?”

When Adam and Eve first sinned, when they ate that infamous fruit they immediately knew they were wrong to do it and they hid from God in the garden. God knew exactly where they were but He wanted them to come to Him, so in Genesis chapter one verse nine, “the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?'”

God has been asking me that same question in more ways than I can remember and today He sent it to me by Facebook. I was knowingly ignoring His directions and was not writing. I was coming up with every possible excuse to explain why I had not done what He had instructed just like Adam and Eve did. I had thrust that knife into my own chest.

Then God (and Beth) asked, “Who told you that…? (Genesis 1:11)”

Who told me my writing was unworthy of publishing? Who told me I was doing it all wrong? Who told me I was wasting my time writing faith-based blogs and stories? Who did I allow to stick a knife in my back?

It wasn’t God who said any of those things to me; and, since it wasn’t God, why was I listening?

I’m back. Good or bad blog post, I’m back. I pray I don’t disappoint.

Shifting From the Winds to the Eye of the Storm

Have you ever lived in a geographic location where you have to deal with the threat of possible hurricanes?  The weather guy has made his prediction that it’s a category 2 now but may strengthen and make landfall as a category 4 in the next 24 to 48 hours.  Should you run to the store and stock up on bread and bottled water?  Should you go to the nearest gas station and fill your vehicles and multiple gas cans…just in case?  Should you evacuate and hope everything is still standing when the storm is over?  Should you just stay put and not worry about anything because these things usually end up proving to be much less than predicted?

In recent months, I have found that my life has almost always consisted of preparations for the next “hurricane,” but in the last few years I have not been preparing as I should.  It took the most recent hurricane for me to realize just how ill-prepared I really am.  Four weeks ago, I moved out.  I left my husband whom I have been with for the last 25 years, and I am now living with my 22 year old son.  I was not really prepared for this hurricane at all.  At first, I thought the storm would completely blow over and dissipate as real hurricanes often do.  I was wrong.  The hurricane force winds are still blowing all around me as they have done for years, but one thing is very different.  I don’t feel those winds.  I am sitting comfortably in the eye of the storm.  I can see the winds, but they can’t touch me unless I allow myself to shift from the eye of the storm back into the actual storm itself.

Every day I spend out of the winds makes me realize a little more just how hard and how long they have been blowing.  I think I have been trying to stand upright in the strongest of hurricane winds for most of my life.  For years, I have fought to hold my life together using my own strength, but I have always known my own strength would never be enough.  I have always known that God was the only One strong enough to hold anything together, but I have consistently fought giving Him control.  Oh, I say all the right things: “I have given everything in this situation to God and will accept whatever He does to fix it.”  In reality, I may give it to Him, but I keep my grip firmly on one little corner and eventually pull the whole situation, no matter what it is, back on my own shoulders which have proven time and again to be too weak to carry the burden.

I am a fixer by nature.  I fix other peoples’ problems all the time.  I have many people who come to me at the first indication of a problem and ask for my advice and help.  I’ve been told I give good advice.  I help everyone else prepare for whatever hurricane they are living through, but when it comes to my own hurricanes I have consistently found myself ill-prepared.  I know where I need to go for hurricane provisions, but I have avoided gathering those provisions because I was afraid I would not find the answers I wanted mixed in with the bread and bottled water.  I was terrified that I would read Scripture and pray and realize that God never wanted me where I was and definitely wanted me elsewhere.  I have been terrified for a very long time, I think because I have known for a very long time that God did not want me to have ever stepped into the path of these particular winds.  I walked right into these hurricane force winds on my own and begged God to calm the storm.  Of course, He would calm the storm because He does not condone divorce, right?

God did not calm the storm.  He did not stop the winds.  He did not provide any way to survive in the storm.  Instead, He gave me numerous opportunities to walk out of the storm on my own, but I ignored those opportunities.  I was stubborn and stayed just to prove I could and used Scripture in the wrong way in order to excuse my bad decision.  I should have left at year two, at year five and at year twenty, but I didn’t.  I waited until twenty-five years were spent trying to stand in winds that no one can truly stand in.  For now, I will live my life in the eye where the winds cannot touch me.  I will use the hurricane provisions that God has generously supplied and remember, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:13)”