Reclamation Day

Today I am reclaiming my health. I got very sick over the winter. A regular cold was compounded by tipping into severe anemia. This gave me secondary infections that lead to my eardrum bursting. My energy level was in the basement, and so I gained weight that has hung on. 

Today, I am getting more active, logging what I eat and drinking more water. "MOVE MORE, EAT LESS, DRINK WATER."  This is my mantra. To help, I've logged into MyFitnessPal, to keep track of calories.  I am tracking my steps and activity with my Garmin Vivofit 2.  But best of all, my husband and daughter are getting up and working out with me on the track, in the pool and on our bikes. Having company and accountability will help more than all the rest combined. 

I was on a slide going downhill. At my age it is harder to get the weight off even when trying.

Send me positive thoughts?  *grin*

Also, I am participating with my daughter in the May 31 day photography challenge through Facebook. It is a good day to change ones point of view, and decide what is important to focus on!

All In

Matthew 13:44
For the kingdom of God is like treasure hidden in a field.  When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.

One thing that stands out about this scripture to me is that the person who found this treasure sold everything and went All In.  All his eggs went I to one basket.

How often do we hedge our bets in life? Aside from maybe marriage when do we give up everything else for this one thing?

Maybe that is one of the reasons why he created marriage in the first place, to teach us to let go of ourselves and reach out in hope for a future thing that we don't have now. Rather, we build it with the choices and decisions that we make along the way.

Either way, are we all in? Have we put all we have on the line for this future in heaven? Or have we hedged our bets?

Do Not Give Up Meeting Together

Malachi 3:16-18 

16Then those who feared the Lord talked with each other, and the Lord listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the Lord and honored his name.17“On the day when I act,” says the Lord Almighty, “they will be my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as a father has compassion and spares his son who serves him.18And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.  

Hebrews 10:23-25

 23Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. 24And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds,25not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

It's been a while since I've written a post here. The summer time trips and events are heavy on me and we've suspended our small groups until fall. So as a result this passage hit me a little differently than it has in the past. It hit me fresh the reasons why meeting together and sharing what the Lord is teaching us is so important.

I'm so glad to have a father who desires my company and values the time I spend with others talking about Him. I live in a world that is judged by performance and works. It's impossible to keep all the rules and please everyone. When the end comes for me will people look at all I've accomplished for myself or will they understand that I've invested myself in them; in building relationships with the one who really matters? 

I am more and more convinced that as the enemy distracts us with the busy, and isolates us with critical judgement of one another we miss out on the power and solace that comes from having two or more gathered in the fellowship of shared love for someone who covers our sins and calls us his own. 

While we are distracted with the "busy" and criticizing one another into fear-tied isolation we forget that The Day is approaching.

Well, this is where my mind wandered this morning in my quiet time. Thanks for walking along with me.

One Flesh: Notes on Ephesians 5:29-33

After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church - for we are members of his body.  "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."  This is a profound mystery but I am talking about the church.  However, each one of you must also love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.Ephesians 5:29-33

It's fascinating to me how God uses everything he created to point back to His Design and the reason He did it that way in the first place.

He created the heavens and the earth and the animals on it out of nothing. He makes a point of describing man as coming from dust or clay with His breath infusing him to give him life... and then He makes woman from the core of man, from his own flesh.

He could have just made us all from nothing just like he did everything else. But the fact that he didn't means he was trying to make a point about relationships and intimacy. Paul picks up the conversation and shows us how the fractal pattern of his design fits into all the bigger relationships.

Follow this: God is not alone but lives in community within the triad of the trinity. They are all equally God, but there is also a design of order within them, where Jesus submits to to the Father.

Then He creates man from his own breath... the echo of Spirit from His own Body and contained in his lungs (near the rib?) where presumably the wind of heaven (Holy Spirit) resides.

When he makes woman he takes a rib from Adam pointing back to his own creation telling the man that in the same way I have shared and care for you so you should care and love her.

Paul puts the pattern in the next larger context of community saying that collectively WE are the body of God since through creation, marriage and family - then in community as the body of Christ we are intimately HIS.

Even through those intimate relationships (the Godhead, man and woman, and then in the body of Christ)  there is mutual submission with a clear sense of order.

I don't pretend to understand all the complexities contained within this structure of intimacy, but rather, I am like the child who sees the kaleidoscope fractal patterns and says, "ohhh pretty!  What does it mean?"

He Who Separates Himself Seeks His Own Desire

He who separates himself seeks his own desire, He quarrels against all sound wisdom.A fool does not delight in understanding, But only in revealing his own mind.
PROVERBS 18:1-2 NASB

This is how pride takes over and self delusion and self destruction begins. The word says that the enemy prowls around like a hungry lion. Lions hunt herd animals by singling them out of the crowd; targeting those who are weak, hungry, lonely, tired... alone. If we are isolated it's easier to wear us down, feed us lies, and convince us that no one else understands what we are going through.

It's why we are commanded to live our life in community, so that we can admonish and correct and love and support one another. It's why we are supposed to confess our sins to one another, so that we can live in the truth with one another instead of the complicated justifications we make to avoid our own sin and culpability.

I grieve for those who have withdrawn from fellowship with believers and now follow what is right in their own eyes. The reasons and the stories vary but ultimately, they don't want to be told that the thing they are doing, that is meeting their core needs, is wrong. They don't want to give up this thing that God calls sin ...and they call precious.

The enemy encourages this by telling them they are smart, enlightened, empowered. And by this time, many have burnt relational bridges behind them and used scorched-earth tactics to avoid the guilt and shame of their behavior.

I know and care about many who have fallen away some pick fights with me because they fear that I will preach at them or judge them. I guess it's true, I judge that they have made some terrible choices. Those decisions have consequences. I will and I do preach the good news. I have to. In my mind right now I am listing them by name, I do this every time I pray for them. They are in my prayer list, and there are enough of them that they are their own line item for prayer, all grouped together and mentioned by name every time I pray for them. I haven't given up.

Why?

*Because their lack of belief doesn't make God un-true.
*Because HE knows them by name.
*Because HE loves them even more than me and he is faithful and just.
*Because I take refuge in His judgments instead of my own, I must keep praying for them like one does CPR. I cannot write them off and out of my life until death.
*Because He is the great physician, and they aren't dead until they are dead, I will continue to pray until He notes the time in His book of life.

What I haven't done is written them off. I grieve for them. Pray for me to have the right words to draw them back!

What about you? If you have stuck with me on this journey I am on, I will assume that you too have a list of people that used to believe and now do not. Let me encourage you to write their names down. Pray for them regularly and often. The bible says that there is no where we can go that He cannot reach. The Prodigal Son found his way into a pig pen, at rock bottom and penniless . King David committed murder by proxy to keep another woman through adultery. Where are your friends and family that have fallen away? Their story isn't finished yet. HIStory, is still being written and there is still time. Because God can reach them even where they are.

I pray also for you, that you do not give up doing good. Hold the hope for them for a while if they have lost their own. Hope is a powerful thing, and one of the three that remain (1Cor. 13:13). My prayer for you, dear friend, is that the Holy Spirit stoke your hope. May the breath of God breathe new life into your hope and make it burn bright.

I pray it light the way home for those lost in the dark and alone.

Amen.

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