Tag: #pleasingGod

Taking a Leap!

What is faith?  The dictionary defines is as the complete trust or confidence in someone or something.  Synonyms for faith include, reliance, dependence and belief.

I think all of those words sum up fairly well what God wants, and expects from us when it comes to our faith.  He wants us to rely, or depend upon Him to provide for us, and our needs, even when we don’t fully understand what that is ourselves.  He wants us to have complete trust in Him and His love for us.   He wants us to walk through each day confident that He is by our side, walking each step of our journey with us.

But if faith is the cornerstone of our relationship with God, why is faith is so incredibly difficult to find? And, in our modern world, where we have come to rely on science and technology to give us answers, questions about faith are even harder to answer.  We want proof for our belief, proof before we will believe.

I’ve been reading the book God’s Crime Scene by J. Warner Wallace recently.  And, while I haven’t gotten all the way through it yet, the case for a creator of the universe, as presented by a seasoned detective who solved more than his share of cold cases, is compelling.  I can and would suggest you read it, but here’s the thing… You are only going to be convinced if you want to be convinced.

Haven’t you noticed that about people these days?  Everyone is a debater.  Everyone has an opinion that they are convinced is right, but very few people are actually willing to listen to an alternative viewpoint.  If you are struggling to believe, with your faith, then I would suggest that there is really only one thing you can do.  Make a decision.  Decide to believe.  If you’re wrong, and there is no God, then what have you lost?  You’ve lived a life of love? You’ve found strength and comfort in times of sorrow? You’ve found meaning or a purpose for your existence?  But if there is a God, and you don’t believe…you’ve lost out on the greatest gift possible.  An eternity in heaven, bathed in the overwhelming love of God.  For me, belief is an easy win, win situation.  But an eternity in heaven isn’t the reason I believe.

We are an aimless people without faith.  We were designed by our creator to have a searching soul, to have a place in our hearts that needs to be filled with something.  Some people choose to fill that searching with money, with material possessions, with fame.   And I would be a hypocrite to not acknowledge that God has blessed my family with a comfortable life.  But it’s not the house, or the cars or the big TV’s that fill my heart with joy every morning; that bring me to my knees.  It’s love of God.  It’s being loved by God.

If you are struggling in your belief I would offer you this comfort…you are struggling because there is a part of you that can’t ignore God’s call.  You can try to drown it out with the world around us, but if He is determined to have you as His child, there is no power on earth strong enough to stand in His way.  Take heart, and make a leap and choose faith.  What have you got to lose?  What could you possibly gain?

God bless,

Meredith

Flat On My Face.

Do you sometimes struggles with ways to express your contrition before God?  I didn’t grow up in the Catholic church which has an established system of confession and absolution.  I was brought up in the United Church which has a very staid, conservative, and moderate faith.  As an adult I converted to the Anglican or Episcopalian church because I found that the service gave me the sense of peace and sense of communion with God that I had been missing.  I love everything about Anglicanism; the kneelers, the weekly communion, the confessions and Glorias.  Being in my church, and participating in that service, brings me a feeling of being in the presence of God in a way that I didn’t find in other services.  The great thing about faith is that there are enough different styles of worship to suit everyone.

But as much as there are a variety of different ways to worship God, I think that there is really only one way to come before him as a sinner.  With a penitent heart.  I talked earlier this year about how forgiving myself can sometimes be harder than coming to God for forgiveness.  I also think that it’s can often be at those time that we are riding high in God’s grace that we fall hardest, that we feel most ashamed.  We understand how completely we have separated ourselves, from who, and what God calls us to be, by our actions.

I have had an amazing week with God.  I called Saturday my day of little blessings.  I could see God’s hand in my life everywhere I looked.  I guess it seems appropriate that Sunday would be a day I would fall flat on my face.  A day in which I would lash out and react with anger instead of love.  I woke up this morning knowing that I had done the wrong thing, feeling the weight of it in my heart, and needing a way to become right with God.  I thank him that the first thing he did was to take the anger, and resentment out of my heart, and replace it with an understanding that it doesn’t matter if the world at large would consider my actions justified, if I was in the right.  What matters is how I responded, and I didn’t respond with love.  I needed to atone to that other person for that.  I needed to apologize and ask God’s forgiveness for that.

The amazing thing about God is that he already knows what I’m going to need and he provides me with the solution.  I didn’t do my bible reading yesterday.  It literally didn’t even cross my mind to do it.  Because God knew that I would need yesterday’s reading today.  Psalm 51.  This morning I read that Psalm, and then I wrote it out, and then I prayed the verses I have highlighted here as a meditation.  God spoke to my heart, and because I came to him with an open and penitent heart, he not only gave me forgiveness, he also gave me the means to forgive myself.  I guess sometimes you have to fall flat on your face in order to learn to let God to pick you up.  It hurts my heart to know how kind and loving our Lord is toward us, even when we don’t deserve it.  He really is the ultimate Father.  I don’t know what my future has in store, but I know that if God already has the answer before I even ask the question, if he’s always going to be there to pick me up when I fall down, then He’s who I want to have walking beside me every step of the way.

God bless,

Meredith

For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba. (NIV Study Bible)

1 Have mercy on me, O God,
    according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
    blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash away all my iniquity
    and cleanse me from my sin.

3 For I know my transgressions,
    and my sin is always before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned
    and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
    and justified when you judge.
5 Surely I was sinful at birth,
    sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
6 Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb;
    you taught me wisdom in that secret place.

7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
    wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
    let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins
    and blot out all my iniquity.

10 Create in me a pure heart, O God,
    and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me from your presence
    or take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation
    and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
    so that sinners will turn back to you.
14 Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,
    you who are God my Savior,
    and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.
15 Open my lips, Lord,
    and my mouth will declare your praise.
16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
    you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
17 My sacrifice, O God, is[b] a broken spirit;
    a broken and contrite heart
    you, God, will not despise.

18 May it please you to prosper Zion,
    to build up the walls of Jerusalem.
19 Then you will delight in the sacrifices of the righteous,
    in burnt offerings offered whole;
    then bulls will be offered on your altar.

The Conflict of a Spiritual Life.

Today my Lenten reading was Galatians 5:16-26.  For any of you not immediately familiar with that passage (and don’t worry, I wouldn’t have been either) it is a letter from the apostle Paul to the people of Galatia addressing what it means to “Live by the Spirit”.

I’m sure that there are many people who go straight to this passage when they tell you what a good Christian does and does not do.  Paul’s list includes sexual immorality, drunkeness, and witchraft, but it also includes jealousy, discord, selfish ambition, fits of rage and envy.  I can maybe claim to steer clear of the first three, but I would be lying to you, and to myself, if I didn’t admit to feeling jealousy, anger and envy at times.  So then the question I had to ask myself and I can imagine many other ask is “How can I possibly be a good Christian?”  Paul says that these behaviors are the result of our sinful nature, and that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.  If that’s the case I might as well give up now.  How can I possibly live up to such a standard?

Likewise when reading the fruits of the Spirit, they include patience, goodness and self-control…all things I know that I struggle with.  So where does that leave me?

I think that there are many people out there who read passages like this in the bible and feel defeated.  Perhaps you are one of them.  I know that, upon first reading this, before I looked deeper into it, I certainly was.  So then what is Paul trying to tell us, or what is the meaning behind this reading?

Robert L Deffinbaugh writes that God is gracious, and unlike a bureaucrat, He deals with you on the basis of your heart.  He’s not as wrapped up in the details of your life as much as He is concerned about your attitude toward Him and your desire for Him.  Deffinbaugh says that the results of the spiritual life are more evident than the reasons. The Spirit evident by his fruits, rather than by His actual visible presence, and “walking in the Spirit” is simply dependence upon God.

I love that interpretation because it allows for, and acknowledges our human weaknesses.  I talked yesterday about Lenten aspirations and I think that is what Paul is doing here…he’s giving the Galatians, and us a set of standards to aspire to.  And those standards are based upon that greatest of Christ’s teaches…”love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:31).  When we love someone, we don’t envy their successes, we celebrate them.  When we love someone we want to lift them up, to see them do and be better and it has no reflection on where we are ourselves.

I think that a life by the Spirit can only happen when we “abide in Christ”.  When we fully give ourselves, and our lives, up to God. When we come to know, and understand Him we find peace, and joy, and happiness, knowing that he judges us by our heart, and and our intentions.  He knows that we will fail.  He knows we will sin.  That is why He  provided us with His son, Jesus Christ; the perfect sacrifice and atonement for those sins.  So instead of reading Galatians and feeling like a failure, see this as something to aspire to.  Something that can only be achieved by trusting in, and walking with God.  Aspire to make God a part of your daily walk and you may find yourself surprised to find how easy and attainable a life lived by the Spirit really is.

God bless.

Meredith

My Lenten Journey – Pleasing God

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday and our priest’s brief message for the Lenten season was about aspirations.  As you go about your own Lenten journey what are your aspirations for your faith and relationship with God?  I know one of my own aspirations is to finally succeed in self-denial over this period of 40 days.  Every year I say that I am going to give up something and every year I am faced with trials and stressors that test me.  Sadly, I can always find a reason to justify indulging myself.

I am determined that this year is going to be different because I have a new plan.  I am not going to rely on the power of my will.  I have clearly proven year after year that will-power alone will not be enough to get me through this journey.  What I need to do, is use this period of time to really and truly turn to God when I am struggling.  I need to find a mantra, or a small prayer, that I can say when I am feeling weak, or being tempted and allow God’s strength, not my own, to get me through this season.

But I want to aspire to something as well.  I’m not sure yet, but perhaps it will be that God is calling me to be more active here on this blog.  I’ve already missed posting on Ash Wednesday, but then I thought about my reading today.  It was from Romans 8:1-17.  In this reading Paul is talking about “God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering”  and it goes on to talk about those of us who “live according to the Spirit”  versus those “who live according to the sinful nature”.  But there was one line in this reading that really stood out for me, and made me think that missing one day might be okay.  I am almost always acutely aware of my own sinful, prideful, selfish and impatient nature.  I try, but I fail hard, and often.  But despite my shortcomings God continues to make his presence known to me in my life.  Why?

This passage really summed it up for me.  “Those controlled by the sinful nature cannnot please God.” (Romans 8:8)  So then if God is present and active in my life, and makes me feel that he is pleased with me, I must be doing something right even though I continue to sin.  I think that there are two key reasons why, and I could be wrong, I’m not a priest but I can share the truths I feel God has shared with me.  The first reason is I try.  I know I’m going to fail, God knows I’m going to fail, but I keep on trying.  I keep asking for forgiveness, picking myself up and trying again (note: something to keep in mind for Lent), but even people who don’t believe in God try, so what is the reason I arrogantly presume to have pleased God?

Paul says in this letter to the Romans “And so He condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully men in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature, but according to the Spirit.”  (Romans: 8:4) “You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you.”  (Romans 8:9)  So what does that mean for me?  It means that because I have invited the Spirit of God into my life, because I have chosen to make God part of my life, part of my daily life, because I turn to him in times of blessing and pain he is pleased with me.  It doesn’t matter how many times I fall flat on my face.  I have recognized him as my loving parent, and like any parent, he is pleased to be a part of my life.

God is our Father.  He wants to be a part of our lives, just as much as we want to be a part of the lives of our own children, or as much as our parents want to be a part of our lives.  Maybe your aspiration for your Lenten journey this year is just to touch base with your heaven Father on a daily basis.  Thank him, cry to him, laugh with him.  A relationship with God is like a relationship with anyone else, you have to actually talk to Him.  And once you start talking, you might be surprised at how often He answers you back.

God bless,

Meredith