50 Conclusionary Thoughts (from life experience)

On By happyreignIn Heather, Reflections & Musings3 Comments

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  1. Salvation is not earned, it is a gift.
  2. God loves everyone more than we can fathom, not just a small group of religious people who earn special entitlement (still taught in the church today)
  3. The practice of spiritual gifts is not more important than the practice of love.
  4. Operating in power is not necessarily more powerful than operating in faithful love.
  5. Expression (creativity in any form) can be an act of worship and is free from failure because the purpose is in the expression.
  6. God can repair anything that appears unrestorable.
  7. God can carry you through something you can’t carry yourself through.
  8. God can make beauty from ugliness.
  9. Many of the most precious things in life never draw attention to themselves.
  10. Sometimes things that revolve around lots of attention are rooted in brokenness and unhealthiness.
  11. God cares more about our inward peace than our outward performances.
  12. Relationships based on expectation aren’t based on love.
  13. Different seasons of our lives can feel like completely different lifetimes and aren’t always meant to be resurrected once they’ve passed.
  14. God has the ability to keep me better than my ability to keep myself.
  15. God only is ever acting out of love towards me.
  16. I can always trust God completely, including with absolutely everything, right now.
  17. Money has never been a good enough reason to direct the course of my life.
  18. Risk on the side of courage, fearlessness, and failure rather than on the side of safety, self-protection, and the approval of others.
  19. God has never asked us to worry and never will.
  20. God lives extravagantly.
  21. God doesn’t love the church because she’s earned it.
  22. Lack of understanding is not cruel, it is freedom and a fertile land for growing trust.
  23. Remembering our forgiveness really can make any cloudy day bright.
  24. The most selfless people on the planet have the titles “Mom” and “Dad”.
  25. Everyone is worthy of love.  No matter their religion, location, looks, or titles.  No one has earned it.
  26. God really does know the intimate details of our lives.
  27. Some christian movements that have drifted into maintenance of works or divisive theology began with the strong, simple message of God’s love.
  28. Love listens.
  29. You are meant to enjoy being alive.
  30. God can take any negative influence in our life and make it a place of liberty and strength.
  31. Belief in Jesus is coming into the realization of the truth that he loves us.
  32. Being understood feels good but is largely inconsequential in life.
  33. All things are heading towards the unveiling of God’s goodness.
  34. Eliminating the desire and the need to control other’s words, actions, or choices is your first step towards loving them.
  35. The root of control is ultimately fear, not love.
  36. Nothing can replace the experience of God’s love in our lives.
  37. Your value in God’s eyes never had its origins in your perceived productivity in his kingdom.  He has already given you his love for free, not as a reward for works.
  38. God does not love in gradients or degrees, it is who he is.
  39. Feeling bad about something does not earn your forgiveness for it.
  40. God’s gift to humanity is people.  The people in our lives are a gift to us.
  41. Love is not motivated by fear.
  42. Your relationship with your family is more telling than the accolades of strangers.
  43. God created people to fall in love.  With him and with one another.
  44. Let yourself be happy.
  45. Let yourself change.
  46. You are really forgiven, live as such.
  47. Play is one of the secret weapons of living.
  48. God is good company if we let ourselves simply enjoy him.
  49. Yesterday and tomorrow have no right to steal from today.
  50. God helps us become friends with ourselves and helps us stay that way.

 

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Who God is Not

On By happyreignIn Heather, Reflections & MusingsLeave a comment

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God is not a feeling of rejection telling you you don’t measure up and just aren’t good enough

God is not the one who continually brings up your past accompanied by feelings of bitterness, regret or shame

God is not the one telling you you deserve to be treated poorly, with persistent difficulty and grief

God is not the one who has left you, abandoned you, is very close to giving up on you, and disqualifying you

God is not the one telling you you have never been good enough and never will be

God is not the one calling you fat, ugly, stupid, and unwanted

God is not the one causing you to fear and have anxiety and worry unto dread

God is not he one telling you you need to figure it out on your own and fix yourself up already

God is not the one who says everyone else has a right to dream but you shouldn’t waste the energy

God is not the one telling you you are too far gone, hardened, unloving, and dried up

God is not telling you to expect terror, collapse, hatred and violence

Abusers, cowards, and thieves deserve to be called out for what they are and the lies they perpetuate to steal joy, peace, love, and faith.  God gives empowerment, inner-peace, and love inwardly and outwardly.  His reign is indestructible, unmovable, unshakeable and seeks the liberty, freedom, and strength of each one of his children.

You do not have to tolerate any longer negative self-talk, destructive or discouraging ways of thinking, or anything that undermines your worth, your value, and your right to exist and succeed here today.  Liberty is yours my friend and anything less is a sham.

Peace and trust are two things so much more powerful than they are given credit for; they conquer and overcome all doubt, hesitation, uncertainty and whimpering.  They break apart fear, control and manipulation, and illusions of terror.  The word terror itself is the fear of something rather than anything that has substance in and of itself.  Peace is not passive.  Live apart from any enemy tolerated within your midst and TRULY LIVE.

Here and Now

On By happyreignIn Heather, Reflections & MusingsLeave a comment

Here’s the other little tidbit of thought redirection that has been taking place internally of late.  Of course we observe that so much regret involves the past and so much worry involves the future.  Neither of which we are really invited to control much.  Jesus says don’t worry about tomorrow and Paul says put yesterday behind you and look forward.  Another spectrum for me that my thoughts wander to other than time is location.  I’m thinking about what’s happening here or there, or with this person, or with that person and this can all be well and dandy but it can also be nothing to do with Life in my heart.

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So the phrase that I’ve been prompted to through song and just grace is “Here and Now.”  Are your thoughts engaged with here, meaning his presence with me and the people around me and the opportunities around me HERE??  And are my thoughts engaged with NOW, such as not things that already happened or things that could happen in the future that I don’t need to worry about, but are my thoughts on today NOW??

If my thoughts aren’t in one of those two place either here or now, they better be accompanied by feelings of excitement and joy otherwise my mind doesn’t have any business bringing my heart there again.

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Jesus and his presence and his goodness are with me HERE and with me NOW and will be with me wherever and whenever I get to those future times and places, even if they involve hard conversations dealing with things that have happened in the past.  He has my heart and those moments in his hands and is leading and living with me in kindness, strength and joy.  He really does want to experience the life and joy within the moments surrounding me and I accept his invitation to let go of control or fear or regret in exchange for trust and thanksgiving setting me up to engage with him HERE and NOW.

Peace where are you??

On By happyreignIn Heather, Reflections & Musings3 Comments

I found myself not feeling the same effect of my relationship with God for a season of my life.  I had experienced great change, experienced some intense relational and work stress and found myself making efforts to control my surroundings in order to manage my peace and somehow restore the inner stillness in my mind I had lost.

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It didn’t work.  Stress continued, unsettled sleep, and a general underlying presence of anxiety persisted.  Even though I prayed, even though I worshiped, even though I studied the Word, even though I was hearing truth.  I was attempting to self-medicate my spirit.

I was reading the writings of another saint and was reminded of how far my spirit was from the exchange she was sharing with God in her soul.  I missed that.  One morning I asked God how to return and I heard, “Preach forgiveness to yourself.”  I love preaching even though I rarely get to do it, and over here in the Middle East I rarely here others do it either.  He asked me, “When’s the last time you’ve heard forgiveness preached?”  And he wasn’t referring to that I needed to forgive someone else.  He meant between him and myself, and the always by-product of that is between me and myself.

I thought about it and it has maybe been over a year since I heard someone speak about what God did for me on the cross and what it accomplished on my behalf without any effort of my own required.

Now let me clarify something.  I’m strongly a minded-person.  And what I mean by that is normally in order for something to have an effect on my heart, I need to have a linear pattern of thought that makes sense to my mind in order for an impact to be felt emotionally within me.  This, however, has also been a weakness in my experience as I will get so caught up in trains of thought that will have nothing to do with life or freedom.   Whether they could be categorized as anger-based, or fear-based, or relationship-based, I tend to reason things out in my mind or have conversations in my mind.  Again this–I have not observed usually ends up in anything life-giving.

So the question is where has my peace gone?  And God’s answer was, why don’t you preach the gospel to yourself this morning.  And so I did.  I looked up the word forgiveness in the back of my bible, hunted out all the verses and at least one more that came to mind and wrote them down.  Now realize, heaven is not a formula.  Just because someone reads the verses below doesn’t mean, they will receive the peace I did through the process of looking them up, but I share them with you because of some of you who will believe them when you read them and it will settle things within your spirit and peace and calm will be experienced in an increased measure again.  Here we go.

  • There is forgiveness of sin for all who repent
  • Through this man Jesus there is forgiveness of your sins and everyone who believes in him is declared right with God
  • Even greater than sin and death is God’s wonderful grace and his gift of forgiveness to many through this man Jesus Christ
  • Forgetting the past, I look forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of this race through Christ
  • He has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his dear son who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins
  • For God was pleased to live in Christ and reconcile everything to himself.  He made peace with everything through Christ’s blood on the cross.
  • You must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it
  • Don’t drift away from the assurance you received when you heard this good news
  • Now he has reconciled you to himself through Jesus Christ
  • He has brought you into his own presence and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault

My conclusion in all of this was that if Christ is at peace with me through Christ’s blood, I can be at peace with myself through Christ’s blood.  I received a surge of confidence again in what Christ has accomplished and done entirely apart from my performance or abilities or competence, which freed me from any condition-ality in my relationship with God.  There remains no room for my failure within his love and accomplished work on the cross.

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It felt so nice to be in the presence of a savior again.  Previous negative experiences I’ve had had brought in a level of distrust between myself and God.  Why was that so hard, why did that have to be that why, why is this still that way, etc.  I grew in mistrust of him because I lot perspective of his heart through my experiences.  All I could see was the past and present of what went wrong or what I was doing wrong now and I could no longer see what he had done for me or who he really was with me now.  I lost sight of his goodness in all the muck.  Now don’t get me wrong, my mind didn’t lose the knowledge of his goodness, it was my heart that lost belief through my negative experiences.

And so through reading the writings I read, I had regained hope of being restored not factually but emotionally with God and my heart flittering again with confidence in his goodness and his love for me where I could feel it when my thoughts drifted within me.  He has returned this precious gift to me.  It was once something I could remember feeling, but now again my heart is alight with a tenderness within.  It is a gift that I have not been able to conjure up within myself for sometime.  And I am grateful.  His forgiveness is like nothing else that still the mind and soul; that he has made all things well and that treats me with kindness and tenderheartedness.

I will write another piece about returning a stillness to my mind soon.