Tag: problems

Use Your GPS

We love being on the trails on our quad. It’s a two-person Outlander and perfect for the trails in Michigan. We go trail riding every chance we get; but, with our busy lives, that is only two or three times a month at the most. Every trip is a blast.

Yesterday started off at the South Branch trail head. We saw several more riders than we normally do, but the trails were still quiet and peaceful. For most of the day, we were all alone without another soul in sight. It was perfect.

The Michigan trail system is pretty well organized. Most trails are numbered and marked to let you know what trail you are on and who is allowed to be on that trail – quad, side-by-side, dirt bike or snowmobile. We always have a printed trail map with us and recently started using a GPS app on our phone with trail maps downloaded. Both of these mapping resources have kept us from getting lost which would be easy to do with so many trails and back roads intersecting in the “middle of nowhere.”

Yesterday, while I was enjoying the scenery and relaxing on the back of our quad, I realized just how important our maps are – both the GPS app and the paper map. We usually check the GPS when we come to an intersection, but yesterday we basically did a mental coin flip and just decided “let’s try this way.” When we got to the next intersection a couple miles away, we noticed that the trail we had taken without checking the map was actually not for quads. We weren’t supposed to be there even though there was no sign stating this fact. It was missing. We immediately checked the map to make sure we chose a legal trail at the next intersection. We got back on track before we got in trouble.

How many times does this happen to all of us in life? We think we have enough experience to choose the right path without checking the map God has given us, and we realize later that we are somewhere that we are not supposed to be. This has happened to me so many times over the years that I couldn’t even begin to list them all.

All I had to do to avoid these wrong-turns was to listen to God’s word but I didn’t. Oh, I may have told myself I was listening to God when I took the road; but, if I later found myself on the wrong path, it meant I wasn’t really listening to Him. I was wrapping His word around my will instead of my will around His word.

In Psalm 119 verse 105 David says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.”

Genesis through Revelations is the GPS God has given us. Some of it can seem a bit confusing at times, but that doesn’t mean the answers aren’t there for you. Use that GPS to keep your life on the path God wants you traveling. If you stay on the wrong path for too long, it could mean circumstances far worse than the ticket we could have received yesterday for being on the wrong trail on our quad.

“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.

Worry

Worry…I think this one word describes my worst problem, my biggest failure.  I worry about everyone and everything. I worry about my children, my husband, my extended family, my friends, my coworkers, my neighbors, my marriage, my faith, my job, my finances, my church, my Bible study group, my education, my community, my nation, my blog… I even worry about the fact that I worry too much.  I guess you could say worrying has become an addiction in my life.  I truly never realized until I typed that last sentence that I had an addiction to worry.

Jesus was very clear in Matthew 6:25-27 when He instructed us not to worry.  “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.  Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?  Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they?  Who among you by worrying can add a single day to his life (Matthew 6:25-27 NIV).”  Jesus didn’t give a complicated sermon.  He didn’t weave it into a parable.  He didn’t hesitate or stutter. He gave His message clearly when He instructed us not to worry because it won’t do any good.  No matter how much time and energy you devote to worrying, you will never gain any advantage in whatever situation you are worrying about.  You will simply waste time…time you never get back, time that could have been used productively, time you may have enjoyed, time forever sacrificed on an alter of the great deceiver, that serpent who told the first lie that triggered the first worry.

Worry does two basic things.  It tears down and it builds up.  It tears down the realities of your present and the possibilities of your future.  It tears down your relationships.  It tears down your potential accomplishments.  It tears down your self esteem, your self worth.  It tears down your immune system and destroys your health.  It tears down much that should have been and forever robs your future of those should-have-beens that now may never be.

Worry tears down everything you allow it to, but it must have at least some measure of your permission for worry to be this devastatingly powerful.  You must hand your authority over your own life to worry in order for it to be able to tear down anything.  You made a decision, consciously or unconsciously, to allow your mind to be controlled by worry.  Worry doesn’t have a mind of its own.  It must hijack yours before it can do anything.  How much it tears down is up to you.

The second thing worry does is build up.  It builds walls between you and those around you.  It builds walls between you and God.  It builds walls as tall and as strong as you allow it to build.  If allowed, worry will build walls so tall and so strong that you will feel encased in an impenetrable room with no doors or windows.  You can hear the activity on the other side of the walls but never be able to live life beyond your worry-built walls.

In his letters to the Philippians the Apostle Paul instructed them, “Be anxious (worried) for nothing but in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Philipians 4:6-7 NIV).” Paul knew what he was talking about.  He suffered persecution and imprisonment for his faith.  When I think of all Paul faced and persevered through because of his faith and service to God, I feel guilty for all the worrying I do.  The guilty feelings don’t automatically erase my natural tendency to worry, but they do remind me that I need to pray my way through my worries and make a conscious and consistent effort to refocus my mind and heart on God’s grace and mercies and put my faith in Him.

I leave you with a quote by George Muller, a preacher from a another generation.  “The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith.  The beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety.”