It's me. Again. Standing in the need of prayer.

I know I have written on this theme before and sadly, being the vile soul that I wish I wasn’t, probably will again.  Oh Lord:  when will You deliver me from the body of this death?!

Dramatic much, Stef?

Sigh.  Unfortunately, yes.

Do you ever burrow things up inside of you, choosing not to deal with them at this time, and then a certain circumstance comes along and you see your chance.  Oh no:  not to deal with it.  Heaven forbid (ahem)!  No, you see your chance to take out your frustrations on an inanimate object, one that can’t talk back, or be seen face-to-face.  One that “doesn’t matter” because, realistically, what are the chances of you ever being in this soul’s aurora anyways?  This “inanimate object” can be argued with over the phone, accused to via “Live Chat” (even though faces aren’t shown, only the written words), or through emails.  Funny thing though:  these “inanimate objects” are really people.  People who feel, who have a job to do, and mostly, they are real.  Just because we can’t see them doesn’t lessen our responsibility to treat them with respect and dignity as we would should we truly be face-to-face.

There are three big issues in my life that I am grieved with right now.  Wanna know what they are?  Well you can’t.  No offense, but I don’t need unsolicited advice, fake understanding, nor helpful words of Scripture.  What I need is a good kick in the pants and I doubt any of you out there would be willing to step up and do that, now would you?  What about a good smack upside the head?  Ahh, I’m sure I could get quite a few volunteers for that!  

What about praying for me?  I’m talking about a real heart-to-heart with God, fervent words that let Him know that your pal Stef is really messing up right now and much as you’d like to fix her, you know that God is the only One Who can.  

So, would you seriously petition Him on my behalf?  Can you take a moment--or ten--to bring my name up to God Almighty and ask Him to step in and work this out in me?  For you see, if He doesn’t, if it’s left up to me to deal with, I’m liable to mess up.  Again.

This morning, I did just that.  Oh sure:  I told myself I was perfectly within my rights to be angry.  And I was!  But somehow--because of my Big 3 that I’m dealing with--I forgot neglected the rest of the verse.  You know the one I am talking about?  “Be angry and sin not”  (Ephesians 4:26).  And boy did I sin!  Boy did I let my righteous anger out!  I mean, after all, someone should make this mistake right, right?  It wasn’t my fault the company messed up so why should I have to suffer (choke) for this error and why should I have to be put out and not get my merchandise in the time frame that was promised to me?

Did you just throw up in your mouth a little, suddenly realizing that ol’ Stef surely could use a kick in the butt and a smack on the noggin and you may just be the right one to do it after all?  Sigh.  I certainly don’t blame you.  As noted, I hold myself in contempt.  You should too.

Now there may be a kind soul or two out there that might tell me to not be so hard on myself, to not feel so badly about getting irate over poor customer service, and/or to just apologize and ask God to forgive me and it’ll be okay.  “It happens to all of us sometimes, Stef!”  

But you see, it won’t.  I won’t be okay.  For when I lose control of myself, when I let my feelings take over my sense, and when I get to thinking that I deserve such and such regardless of who has to be put out to make it happen, I hurt Him.  I hurt my testimony which in turn reflects on Christ.  It makes a mockery of all He’s delivered me from and suffered for.  My ministry which I have sought so hard to make be one that honors Him could be lost in a flash, over one stupid item that in the grand scheme of things is...is dung.  Foolish.  Certainly not worth the time, effort, and now the great shame that I feel over it.

Okay, I’ve got some apologizing to do and you have some praying to do.  I mean it.  If this blog affects you in any positive way and you get any encouragement, motivation, or inspiration from it, then you owe it to me to make sure that it stays afloat and doesn’t sink because I took my eyes off of Jesus for a moment.  James 5:16 says:  

Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another,

that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a

righteous man availeth much.

I’m doing my part.  I am confessing to you right now my sin of anger, readers.  Please do your part and now pray fervently for me.  I need to be healed.

Let’s pray now.

Dear Lord, how ashamed at myself I am right now.  I thought of keeping this to myself and keeping it between You, me, and the ones I will soon be writing to, but Lord?  Lord, I need some help.  I need others to hold me accountable for my actions.  I need friends to sharpen me.  I need to stop telling others how to live and focus on living the right way--Your way.  I slip way too easily, Lord, stumbling over little pebbles that get in my pathway.  

I am sorry, Father, for my actions and my lack of control.  I wanted to be mad at something, someone, anything other than dealing with what is really the issue here.  My Big 3, I call them, and You know what they are and how they are really what is bugging me and why I so carelessly took my angst out on others.  As I begin to send out my apology notes, I ask You to use my words this time to be kind instead of hateful.  Temper me and bring me back into fellowship with You, Father, so that I can move forward or so that I can at least know that it’s time to stop, to stop trying to force things to happen that just might not should be going on in the first place.

I ask these things in the name of Jesus.  May His name not suffer for my poor choices is my prayer.  Amen.

Jeremiah Buys A Field

Well, this definitely wasn’t how I thought my Bible studying would go today!  I figured I would come in here to my Pretty Purple Room, read a bit, and then write an uplifting blog about thankfulness and such since this is the month we celebrate things we are grateful for.  However…

As I continued my study of Jeremiah, the title of the chapter was “Jeremiah Buys A Field.”  He was in prison and the Lord spoke again to him, telling Jeremiah he was to purchase some land outside of Jerusalem where the soldiers were residing in as they overtook that great city.  Sounds kind of odd, huh, to buy land that used to be yours (as a citizen) and now the enemy occupied?  But our boy Jeremiah was nothing if not obedient to the commands of our Lord so he did as he was told, even though the doubts assailed him and he wondered if he was being foolish.

Do you remember yesterday how I unabashedly mentioned that sometimes it was as though the Bible was written just for me and that It spoke to me at often inopportune times (such as this one today when I thought I’d be learning more about Jesus and how to adapt my ways to His)?  Well, gulp, God did it again.  Or at least I think it was God.  Because of the pathway this scripture led me down, I am questioning whether God is involved at all.

Of course He’s involved, Stef!  Duh!  He wrote the book.  Remember?

You see, while my mind knows this, my soul was found in a sudden turmoil as I read in verses 31-32 of chapter 32 that “‘For this city has been to Me a provocation of My anger and My fury from the day that they built it, even to this day; so I will remove it from before My face because of all the evil of the children of Israel and the children of Judah, which they have done to provoke Me to anger—they, their kings, their princes, their priests, their prophets, the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.’”

Suddenly my thoughts went back to the land I was cheated out of and the hurt that it caused--and apparently is still causing--in my heart, in my life, and in what was once my family.  Like God, I was provoked to anger as I read these verses, because of the evil that overtook my siblings when my parents died.  Yes, evil is a harsh word and not one that we like to use when discussing affairs of the dead.  In this case, though, evil is what indeed permeated lives, minds, and spirits, leaving a legacy of hate, mistrust, and lies rather than one of love, hope, and a future.

As I battled this war in my heart, deciding I was not going to let my anger turn into sin, I tried to veer my thoughts into my own version of Devil’s Advocate, reasoning within myself things from the viewpoint of those who wronged me.  Again I admitted to the validity of their belief that what they did was “right.”  But just as when it all occurred until now, I guess my struggle is that I still cannot reconcile the evil with what they did to me and my sister’s kids to the people that they profess to be.  And that is just too sad to further contemplate.  Again.

So, without rehashing all of the angst and gadding about in the past, I instead am choosing to look to the future, to the promise of all wrongs being made right, and to the day when God tells Jesus it’s time for Him to go get His children.  God’s going to tell Him to bring His bride home.  Home.  To a land flowing with milk and honey and where Christ Himself is the Light.  There will be no disputes over who owns/deserves/is entitled to any of it for there we will truly be joint-heirs with Christ.  The division will be over!  The anger gone!  The lies we believed about one another will be confronted, settled, and peace will reign.  If you don’t believe me, believe then God Who said:  “‘...I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will assuredly plant them in this land, with all My heart and with all My soul.’”

I’m ready to be planted!  How ’bout you, friends?  Are you ready to put all of this fluff behind and look forward with great anticipation to our Lord’s return?  Even so, come Lord Jesus is my prayer.  Amen!

Day Twenty

Day Twenty

Good afternoon!  It's the first day of summer and already I feel like it's been a long one.  How about you?  Does it seem like it should be closer to 4:00 pm than 1:00 pm?  Yeah, I think so too.

Wonder what it is about time that makes it either go so slowly or too quickly?  I guess that depends upon our attitudes toward upcoming events.  For instance, when it's time to go home, to play, to be with our special ones, the time can't get here soon enough, right?  But when homework, housework, duties, drudgeries, and the like are to be done the time seems to inch by second by long second.

Today's verses are from Micah 7:18-19.  Read them with me?  Thanks!  

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity    and passing over transgression    for the remnant of His inheritance?He does not retain His anger forever,    because He delights in steadfast love.He will again have compassion on us;    He will tread our iniquities underfoot.You will cast all our sins    into the depths of the sea.

Did you notice how Micah begins talking about God to talking to Him?  Sometimes I'm like that; I'll use offhanded remarks when speaking of the Lord and then realize, hey:  He's actually here, beside of me, listening to what I say and what I wish I'd said.  I go from thinking about what He could do versus what He's really doing right now, this moment, as well as what He will do in the future--such as casting my sins in the depths of the sea.  Pretty groovy, huh?

Timing is everything.  From remembering the past glories of God to the future promises He made for us, His timing is always perfect.  He won't stay mad forever (and yes, friends, He does get angry).  He delights in love, compassion abounds in Him towards us, and those sins, trespasses, iniquities or whatever label we want to put on the things we do wrong?  Those too will be trampled under His feet!  They haven't been yet, for we keep on giving Him things to stomp out.  But one day, one time soon, He will come and get us, redeem us to perfection, and take us home.  I don't know when that time will be, but I'm impatient for it.  Hope you are too!

Let's pray!

Ahh, Lord, the singers of the group Chicago once asked "Does anybody really know what time it is?"  Styx sang of it being "The Best of Times" while Cyndi Lauper crooned about "Time After Time."  Green Day wished for us to have "The time of our lives"  while Michael Bolton crooned of "Time, Love, and Tenderness."  And of course, Lord, good ol' Bing Crosby sings of "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" as he leads us into the Christmas season.  And there's the The Alan Parsons Project that wistfully sing of time flowing like a river, to the sea.  

Father (why did my fingers want to type "Father Time" ??), none of us knows when that "Shouting Time" that The Hoppers sang of will arrive; none but You, that is.  So many of us are waiting, watching, and wondering Lord how much longer that will be.  Grant to us patience, I ask, and help us to make the most of each moment You give to us and then, in due season, come and get us.  We want to see You, Lord God.  We want to revel in Your love and promises as they come to fruition and we see what You have prepared for us, sure, but mostly Father, we want to see You. We want to know so many things that there just isn't time to glean down here on earth but that will be answered once we reach the other side of eternity.

Come quickly, Lord?  May it be so!

It was me!

As we continue our exploration with Mark 11:25--Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions--a couple of things are still standing out to me that I'd like to muddle through.  Got your boots on?  Great!  Join me now as I seek to make things more clear.

The other day, my grandson got very upset with my husband--and he wasn't even around!!  Turns out that the little guy wasn't feeling so great, he got a little whiny, and suddenly remembered that PawPaw had not put up the slide for the pool this summer.  Oh, was he furious!  It didn't matter that the pool had been taken down nearly a month ago, nor that it was explained way back when it was first set up that the slide wouldn't work out this time.  Nope.  My little bundle of emotion was beside himself and he was crushed and mad that the slide was not in the picture this year.

According to his Mama, he pouted, sulked, and even cried for nearly 30 minutes over this incident.  Guess he remembered he had something against his brother, huh--err, excuse me, his PawPaw, that is.  

Do you think this is what Jesus was referring to when He made the statement about forgiveness?  Hmn.  Being mad over a slide seems pretty ridiculous, doesn't it?  But hang on a minute.  When I ponder some of the things that have irked me, maybe they are even more petty than this.  How much time have I spent holding a grudge or refusing to let go of a debt that I felt was "owed to me" when in actuality, the account was never charged to begin with?  Some of this results from simple misunderstandings rather than true crimes committed against me.

Case in point:  this weekend we went away for Labor Day.  Long story short: don't ever be spontaneous and head to the beach when it's this time of the year AND when there is a race going on nearby.  The hotels were all filled for miles around Steve and I wound up driving all the way to Myrtle Beach and then on back to Columbia before we were able to find a place to stay.  There's a lot more to this story as far as insights into our verse but I may save them for another blog.  After our comedy of errors, we finally found a place to stay and then decided to spend the next day around Concord.  Finding a hotel with a business center in it was one of the things I especially wanted and we did.  We found one, checked in, and then quickly found out that they did not use Google Chrome on their systems so we checked back out within minutes.  

While looking at my credit card transactions online yesterday, I noticed we had been charged for three rooms when we only stayed in two.  I could surely recall the last one we stayed in 'cause we had specifically sought it out from staying there in December.  However, from the Saturday night fiasco, I thought the one we checked into and back out of was the one showing on my statement as processed rather than pending.  I gave it a day to see if it'd go away but no, it was still there this morning so I called to get it cleared up.  The lady on duty was quite nice and we chatted about what had gone on.  Long story short, she was going to look into it and call me back when she got the matter settled.  However, the more I pondered it and checked and rechecked again to make sure the mistake wasn't on my part, yeah:  you guessed it.  It was!  

What happened--other than my own goofiness--you might ask?  Well, to begin with, this hotel was the most expensive one we stayed at.  Obviously I wanted it to be the one taken off.  (Hello, Greed, my ol' friend.)  Next, it wasn't the "brand" we usually used so of course they had to have been the one to make the error.  Lastly, if I had really taken time to think about all of this clearly, I would have seen that this hotel was in Columbia not Concord, which is where the continuation of the fiasco of our weekend jaunt took place.

So, I called with shame on my face and tried to get the woman I had spoken with to tell her of my blunder. Well, wouldn't you know that the devil is not happy when we try to acknowledge our mistakes so he let me speak to a different gal and then had the absolute gall to have the phone cut off!  Grrrr.  But--instead of it making me mad--I called right back, wound up talking to the original lady who promised to apologize profusely to the other woman, and we took care of my boo boo.  We were laughing when it was all said and done and my head will keep this hotel chain in mind the next time Steve and I decide to be adventurous.

Do you see it, friends?  We mess up.  In our haste, we often make assumptions because we want to justify that we spent that much money.  We want to deny that we would make such a foolish choice when our defenses are down, and we just wanted a place to rest our weary heads and bodies.  Ahem.  I'm not just talking to the choir right now, am I?  Being tired, weary, frustrated, and feeling the need to just...to just...to just be "taken care of" --even though it may only be for one night--is no excuse to let our battle gear slide.  Do you not know by now that when we expose ourselves to temptation that that is when the devil is the craftiest, the most wily, and the most seductive?

Okay, let's wind this up.  Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions.  Sometimes it's so much easier to look for someone else to blame for our mess ups than it is to face the fact that we invited them into our lives.  We cry that we were taken advantage of, that we were cheated, that we were wronged when the truth is right there in front of us.  It was me that initiated the fight, the quarrel, the misunderstanding.  Oh no, not always but sometimes, sometimes, girlfriends, we are just as much to blame.  Maybe even more.  So then, when we stand in front of God with our prayers and our pleas for absolution, we are confronted with our own guilt and if we are to have peace with God (and don't we all want that?) we must confess to Him that we too need to be forgiven.  The good thing?  He said He would!  He said He'd forgive us.  How about that?!  

In closing, we saw the movie "War Room" last night.  The premise of the story is that we need to talk more to God and let Him handle our battles.  The main character went from spending little pieces of time with God to spending hours in her prayer closet.  When she got real with Him, He did marvelous things in her--in her.  Yeah, He answered some great prayers on her behalf but the key point is that she was the one most in need.  Before she could finger point, she had to deal with her own life.  Like me, she found out there was plenty there to keep her in communication with God like never before.  Let's do that now, friends, as we humble ourselves and ask Him to cleanse us and heal our wounds.

Dear Lord God, how I am convicted once again that it's me who makes for most of the troubles in my life.  My lack of attention to details, my haste to get things done, and my forgetfulness of keeping my battle gear on often make up the majority of my anger issues.  I cannot count the number of times I have blamed others for things, gotten mad when they responded in hurtful ways, and then acted to You as though I was the wronged party.  Oh Lord:  how do You put up with me?

Sigh.

Lord?  Right now as I pray to You, many things vie for me to ask You but I cannot do this until I confess.  I am the one in need of prayer this moment, Lord. My hotheadedness, my impatience, my poor planning have all led me to make choices that have had repercussions and/or consequences that often I felt were unjust.  But I cannot in all honesty blame others for things that would have turned out so much differently had I first done my part.  First.  So, once again:  it's me, it's me, it's me Oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer.  Thank You for also standing, ready to help, to heal, and to forgive me.  Teach me the way of Jesus is my plea now and I ask these things in His precious name, Father.  Amen.

Don't Let The Sun Go Down Upon Your Wrath

May 27, 2015

Dear Lord, I'm mad. Oh no: not at You. Hardly!

I'm mad because the devil is attacking my friends, their loved ones, their kids. He's stealing their joy and trying to take away their peace. He's wreaking havoc on their bodies, their minds, and their relationships so I'm coming to You for some help.

As I told one of my friends, she must be doing something right to have this viciousness sent her way. Her walk with You, Lord, must be heading in the right direction otherwise why all of these stones suddenly being put in her pathway? She's being hit particularly hard, Father, so I ask for extra strength to be sent her way as she relies on You once again to get her through this.

Sickness. Cancer. Death. Desperation. Separation. Loneliness. Financial issues. These are nothing new to Your children, Lord. What I ask for today is a newness in responses to these trials. May we all put on our armor and put our complete and fervent trust in You? May we not be foolish enough to think we can handle it on our own but instead, Father, may we cry out to You to rescue us, to keep us standing, and if that's it Lord, then to just stand? Not falter. Not barely hang on. Stand. Firm in the faith. Firm in You.

Thank You. I know You've got this, Lord. Our hearts are turned to You, our ears are listening for Your voice. Direct us and guide us is my prayer this afternoon. In Jesus' name I ask: amen.