Dusting off the Stories of what God has Done

On November 2, 2019November 2, 2020 By happyreignIn Heather1 Comment

God is always the same and what he did once he would do again. God is not a respecter of persons and what he would do for one he would do for any. These two statement encourage the hope and possibility of what God did once for someone else, he would do for me. In saying that, something he did twenty years ago for me, he can do for you now. So I’m walking down the memory lane of life as it is always the front page of who God still is today. Take anything as hope of what can do for you.

I trusted God with my love life and he brought me the most amazing husband any woman could ever dream of. As I’m writing this he is charging my cell phone for me and asking if I have water because he was going to refill it for me as I’m sitting in bed on a Saturday typing this about him.
I’ve never made over $10,000 a year in my entire adult life yet God has financed sending me to 23 different countries over the course of my life. For whatever reason, the way my heart is wired is that I feel most romanced by God when he sends me to travel somewhere. I know I couldn’t, and wouldn’t want to do anything without him sending me.
I’ve screwed up, meaning I’ve failed at something he’s asked me to do, and yet he’s never fired me, punished me, abandoned me or quit being kind to me. Because of this I really realized the grace of God is truly a gift. It is not earned.
God redeemed the ending of my family when we were younger. My parents separated and both happily remarried. My siblings are all risking love in some measure in their life. This sometimes requires the greatest courage. I am proud for the measure they continue to risk being known and loved despite how we’ve seen it can possibly end up.
God has given me peace. In different seasons of life due to different things I have different measures of peace but in all of life I have a strong underlying trust in God that always imparts to me a steadfastness that I feel all the time. Like I’m being held, or embraced, or hugged and I feel safe and sturdy. I love God for imparting this feeling to me on an ongoing basis.
I realized through frequency to get over myself, my understanding, my ways, control, anything I would hold on to for fear or security. From plans to stuff, he really does take care of everything and often, when I let him, way better than I could ever put things together. Like I really am blind and dumb compared to all he sees and knows. It is wisdom to trust him, let him lead, and put everything in his hands.
Unity, relationships, connection, obedience, service, humility, love, faith, truth, these things really are the majors in life and everything else is truly unimportant and meaningless in comparison.
I really feel like my death is in God’s hands as much as my birth was. I didn’t control my birth, God did. In the same way, I don’t think anything is random and he knows all of the days of my life and will work out the plans and dreams he has for sending me here in the first place.
I don’t fear death in any way. Almost daily I feel the fragility of this realm of life and time. It is such a thin veil and my true self is timeless and in an always state. I do not want to miss what he wants to show me and teach me and also truly enjoy the day with him as this is me loving to be alive with him. This is living.
I feel humbled by God’s goodness and love. I definitely don’t deserve any of it, but he shows me that I’m worthy because he says I am. Who am I to disagree?! 😉
I thought I was going to go into tangible stories about specifics God had done for me–
Oh-my father’s transplant was an answer to prayer-he met my husband and is still alive!
And also my grandfather’s life was spared in a time where he was being killed by being given the wrong medication in the hospital but the error was found out and he became himself again to pass in peace at a later time.
Also I was filled with the holy spirit, a tangible experience in my body that overcame me that I still feel today and a way I interact with God directly spirit to spirit rather than just mind to mind, early morning alone in a gymnasium in a Lutheran church!
I received God’s forgiveness and being made right with God through what Jesus Christ suffered on my behalf on the cross, making a way for me to stand blameless and confident before God because he has made me his family and his friend.
I thought I was going to write more specific stories like the ones above, but it appears God is an active living miracle in my life. I am so grateful to have the ability to see and breathe and feel and taste and express myself and sit in peace and have freedom. I am so thankful to share life with my husband and spend the passing of time in his company.

These are a few thoughts that come to mind when thinking about what God has done for me in my life. May it be an encouragement and blessing to you. Oh yeah – don’t waste your time overly concerning yourself with what other people think of you. It is not your responsibility nor does it matter beyond your upright heart before the father. Acceptance or praise of man is not the bread that that gives life but rather the word of God. Blessings!

Covenant

On January 1, 2017January 13, 2018 By happyreignIn Heather, Kingdom ConceptsLeave a comment

Introduction

We serve a god not of contract but a god of covenant. The idea of covenant is largely lost on the modern western world. Nothing is forever. There is always a loophole, fine print, an agreement that’s been arranged, an appeal. Prenuptial marriage arrangements, abortions, and a world of child support regulations, etc.,we swim in a world prepared for escape, a way out, an exit.

What if that wasn’t the way things weren’t meant to be. What if there was glory in taking responsibility for our choices. What if there was honor in being faithful, in following through, even when everything’s gone to shit. Even when convenience is lost and it seems as if all hope is gone. Welcome to covenant. The essence of covenant is something unbreakable.

Covenant = Freedom

That’s where the idea of blood came into covenant. As long as my blood is coursing through my veins, as long as there is life in me, our agreement between one another stands and is alive too. Covenant is an irrevocable thing. This can seem a suffocating concept, but when its in your favor, covenant is the one thing that causes the breathe of relief and the removal of all fear. This thing is unchangeable and isn’t going anywhere.

I could’ve researched covenant but I don’t think one understands it until they’ve experienced it. I am in covenant relationship with some people. No matter my mistakes, no matter my failure, no matter my performance, love and connection is still the standard of the relationship. Understanding is something enjoyed as life experience is shared within covenant.

Good always overcomes evil. My experience of covenant in this life was the recipe for the uprooting of rejection within me. Someone’s commitment over the period of years was the only thing that eventually quieted that voice in my mind that whispered, “You better perform right, or relationship will end.” The fear that would haunt, “If you fail too much, you will be abandoned and justifiably so. Rejection will be what you’ve earned and deserve.”

When people won’t be distanced, won’t be pushed away, won’t believe the worst of you, the barriers for the needed self-protection of independence dissolve. Covenant between people in regards to union is the antithesis of abandonment and rejection.

Covenant Anyone?

In Jewish culture, marriage is a covenant. The terms of covenant would be laid out in a dinner with both families present. The groom-to-be would lay what conditions he would fulfill if the covenant was received. After finishing stating his end of the deal he would offer a glass of wine to the bride-to-be. If she drank, the covenant terms were accepted and the covenant locked in place but not consummated yet. It was a the beginning of a covenant that was soon to come.

At the last supper, Jesus was proposing to humanity as a lover right before their eyes. He said the terms of this covenant was the laying down of his life – his very blood – in exchange for redemption of all loss, union, and fulfillment of design. He offers us still the cup of his blood and the brokenness of his body in the vulnerable offer of our inclusion in himself and righteousness unto peace that is a free gift. He says drink of me. You must drink my blood and eat my flesh he said.

It was his invitation of union. God doesn’t half ass anything. He’s an all-in kinda guy. This is the indestructible union of spirit with no fine print clauses underlying our relationship with him. Covenant is the only way he presents himself to us. I will never leave you or forsake you, he says. Nothing can separate you from the love of Christ. All this extreme and dramatic language starts to taste like candy when it leaves no room for a draft of rejection to seep through, no room for the whispers of the coldness of a contract relationship to rear its head.

Conclusion

God is not into contract relationships, and his relationship towards you was set in blood, his blood and nothing in heaven or hell can legally undermine this spiritually, and eternally binding contract that God has made with humanity—with you. Nothing. Breathe. The nature of your relationship with God is indestructible and unthwartable by any force. This is the environment of safety meant to provide any child of God with the limitless freedom his secure love provides. This covenant is the foundation of joy.

Character Covenant Creativity

Family Freedom Gift Giver

Joy Judgement Kindness Trust

Love Praise Prayer Self-love

Happy Grazing

On May 8, 2014May 8, 2014 By happyreignIn Heather

I have desire to throw consecutive notes out there for free range spiritual grazing. This first one is real chipper and is about death…or actually its end. 🙂

Romans 5:28 Sin reigned in death. Picture sin sitting on the throne in glum sneakiness. As far as the kingdom of sin touches, so too the reaches of death touch. The sign of this kingdom being at hand is death. Hmmmmmm sounds awesome (dry sarcasm – for those of you who have never met me. I’m not really impressed).

Romans 8:2 The law of the Spirit of life has set you free from the law of sin and death. The wages of sin is death; death entered the world through sin. Christ, the lamb of God is the one who takes away the sin of the world. Sin and its power was crucified on the cross. We are (cheaky pun on Paul’s behalf) DEAD to sin. Therefore we are DEAD to sin’s wages–death…let me continue…

Hebrews 2:14 ….For only as a human being could he [Jesus] die [one king entering into the reign of sin to overthrow its kingdom], and only by dying [entering deaths kingdom] could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. Good News flash: the power of death has been broken (-cue celebration and smiling…lots of smiling). This brings up the great and awesome question of ‘What has Jesus already done for us?’ Again…

2 Timothy 1:10 And now he has made all of this plain to us by the appearing of Christ Jesus, our Savior. He broke the power of death and illuminated [showed us] the way to life and immortality through the Good News.

I have some really great friends and I can hear some of their wisdom as I write this, “It’s not really about right or wrong anymore, its about life or death.” Does your choice, your lifestyle, your habits, result in life to you or death. When sin bears fruit it gives life to death. That doesn’t mean its referring to ‘all that stuff that looks bad’ i.e cigarettes, stealing, tattoos, drinking beer, or rather things that don’t appear ‘godly’ to the ‘christian kingdom’ rather than having anything to do with Christ’s kingdom. Selling yourself out in religious circles to gain the desiring gaze of people wanting you or wanting to be you, sexual relations happening within church leadership across lines of wedlock, people controlling other people’s relationship with God and acting as the Holy Spirit, are all things who’s fruit is not life obviously. Does quitting your day job and doing things that you’ve always wanted to do result in life to you? Does helping the person behind you in line in the grocery story result in life for you? Does finishing that college degree through lots of studying result in life for you? The behavior isn’t the qualifier, the heart is.

The earth’s sin, that results in death (Jn 16:9), is unbelief in Christ.

THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT SIN AND ALL OF ITS INFLUENCES HAVE BEEN FOREVER OVERTHROWN FOR THE SAKE OF HUMANITY’S FREEDOM.

Galations 5:1 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. My husband was sharing what somebody told him the other day, “It’s what we do with the freedom that we’ve been given that matters.”

Romans 8:10 If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11 But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, …

The spirit that overcame death is WHERE?!? Living inside of you right now. All of death has been overcome; all it’s influences, shades, and effects. Death in realtionships–gone. Death in your relationship with yourself inside your head–gone. Death in your outlets for the way you’ve been created to live, your gifts, talents, desires, expression–gone. Death from bad experiences in your past that don’t have ANY power over you anymore–gone. Death in your choices–gone. And here’s where it gets real crazy in a good way. All those family members that you loved that are no longer with you right now, that you can’t hug, can’t talk to, can’t reconcile with?? I tell you the truth, your seperation from them was crucified on the cross and all of us, with our very own eyes will see the reign of death, and all its influences on humanity for all time, be cast into fire. And we will stand with no influences of death remaining standing.

1 Corinthians 15:25 For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. 26The last enemy that will be abolished is death.

Jesus is life; all life, anywhere, in any form. All of life is contained in Jesus; through him all things live (and move and have their being). His life is reality. This is the tree from which humanity was meant to eat. Any opposing force has been revealed as powerless against it. He swallowed up death for all people.

2 Corinthians 5:14 …One having died for all, His death was their death.

The wages of sin have been eradicated from your life. You will not die, but live, and the fullness of that life is why Christ came, so that you may have life more abundantly. This is where you live. It’s your place of origin, this kingdom of life. It’s the power that resides inside you. You are alive and it is a wonderful thing. You have breath that is a gift right now inside of you that has been passed down through humanity from the one who first breathed life into Adam’s lungs.

There is no place for death, or any grade or shade of it in your thoughts, communication, decisions, hopes, relationships, health, provision, it’s not our family’s culture, it’s just not who we are, it’s not your place of origin, it’s not normal for us. You are an ambassador of life that overcomes every shade of the influence of sin and death. The increase of his government of life and peace is without end. Life wins and your life. Life wins in your heart. Life wins in your home and in your influence on the people around you. The Spirit that lives inside you is the one that has overcome death. Christ in you the hope of glory.

Oh, by the way, you didn’t earn this, it’s a free gift. It’s your effortless state of existence. It’s who you already are, and what you’ve already been given. Do you know who you are? Do you know how powerful you are? Do you know how free to be loved by God you are? You are not a victim in this life, even to death. Christ’s form and life that wins has been revealed through humanity.