50 Conclusionary Thoughts (from life experience)

On September 10, 2016December 10, 2016 By happyreignIn Heather, Reflections & Musings3 Comments

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

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Peace where are you??

On July 25, 2016December 10, 2016 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.

Servant King

On July 10, 2016December 10, 2016 By happyreignIn Heather, Reflections & MusingsLeave a comment

Christians in Pakistan

I remember one day in my early twenties sweeping a floor in a soup kitchen for the umpteenth time and using their hand brush while on my knees to get EVERYTHING off the floor and into the wastebasket when I thought I would eventually graduate from service. Ya know, helping people and serving them. Like the cleaning toilets and taking out the trash kind of stuff.

I remember having lofty thoughts of leading something or speaking somewhere or doing something IMPORTANT. Something that would impact the world and make a mark. One day. One day I would graduate from service.

I can tell you now, a decade later — I will never graduate from service. If I will one day lead others, I will lead them into service. If I speak, I will speak about loving God, themselves, and others well. There has been a change but the change has been within me; I no longer hold a desire to move on to something else.

I still sweep floors, clean toilets, and take out the trash. I still wash others dishes, underwear, and throw away their leftovers. I still wipe that rag along baseboard so dust doesn’t make a home, and I scrub tiles in the kitchen so residue doesn’t stay for long.

Jesus never graduated from service, rather he graduated his disciples into service. His last night with them was spent on his knees getting his hands in their dirt and washing their feet. He didn’t have to. It wasn’t because they were worthy of the act. He did it because it revealed the likeness and nature of his father.

He may not have specifically been inviting them into the life of Cinderella, but in part, he was. Every day some of the people I am most impressed with in the world are not on television shows or the radio; they are people cleaning up the bathroom mistake of their elderly father or mother who didn’t quite make it in their feebleness to the toilet. They are the mothers and fathers who faithfully love an adolescent who hates them back and is being self-destructive. They are the beautiful families that serve siblings or spouses who are handicapped and will never live independently from their care or even have the mind or ability enough to say “Thank you.”

Not only does God serve the needy and take care of the poor, he invites us to something even harder. Welcome to not necessarily graduation from service, but maybe the next lesson within it: “27 “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. […] 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you. 32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. […] 35 But love your enemies, do good to them, […] Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” Lk 6

God never graduated from service. While he was on his knees in front of his friends he was king of the Jews with an unseen crown representing all authority on his head. Jesus was himself called a servant of God, executing his father’s will as his own. His admonishment for greatness was in fact this very thing. “Jesus called the twelve and said, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.” Mk 9:35

My challenge is to not resent the tasks at hand before you; the tasks for which you don’t get paid, the tasks for which no one notices, the tasks for which you won’t get any online attention. And we can all be leaders, but the manner in which we lead says more than our words do. After all, its ultimately him we can do these things and live this life for. It’s him we say thank you to as we exhale our breath, or gaze upon a loved one. It’s him who sees.

A Life Worth Living

On November 21, 2015November 21, 2015 By happyreignIn JoelLeave a comment

It has been almost six months since we decided to move to the Middle East. Many have asked of how we ended up living and being involved in one of the most “difficult” and “hardest” regions on the planet. The simple answer is that it was all His idea. Both my wife and I have felt that our lives haven’t been our own for a long time. When you have this deep conviction it is easier saying yes. Our no has been Crucified with Him. We get people praising us for living what seems like selfless lives. The honest reality is that we are doing what makes us come alive. He has orchestrated our steps and has led us down the road of Love.

We have had the privilege of working with His persecuted Body. Our days and nights consist of hearing people’s journey of Faith. They have had loved ones killed and everything they have worked for destroyed all because of their unbreakable conviction of not bending their knees to fear. I honestly can say that I complain a lot less since I have been here. In the face of so much loss and pain what can I complain about??? Our brothers and sisters have lost everything but the ability to love. The way they have welcomed us to their homes and families is truly humbling.

If your asking yourself what can you do to help or how can I make a difference I say to you is that you CAN love. You can love fearlessly and fully. Start with those around you. Do not let yourself be filled or swayed with fear by the Media and ask your God what He thinks about the Refugees. Ask Him how He sees them and go from there. -Joel