Fearful:Working

Colossians 3:23-24 New International Version (NIV)

²³ Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, ²⁴ since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.

This is part 2 in my Fearful series called Fearful: working.  My prayer is that this will set you free. In whatever work you do that may you be reminded that in all that you do you do it for the service of One.

I have been trapped in a line of thinking that forced me to put my life into boxes.  No one part of my life could touch the other for fear that I would somehow fall short of the expectations I had placed on myself.  I have always strove to be a good person, to do things the right way and to follow the rules.  What I was doing was working out of fear.  I was afraid to not be perfect and fit into the expectations that I perceived everyone had for me.  Because of this I was truly afraid to live my everyday life for God.  I have always been a hard worker and because of my perfectionist tendencies I am very good at what I do, but there has been no life to what I have been doing because I have not been working for the Lord.  Let me clarify, it does not matter what my ‘job’ was, I realize that now, I never allowed that particular platform to be something I was doing for God.  I have been so afraid of what people would think of me that I refused to let Jesus bleed out of me onto everything I touched.
I have a unique job where God has almost been removed from it completely.  This is also the very place that He is so desperately needed but in the world in which we live He is not just uninvited, those who do invite him in are targeted and eliminated as quickly as possible.  For a lot of years I lived with that fear in the back of my mind.  As I have stated in previous blogs, in the past I have not known who I am nor whose I am and that led to there being  times where I was more concerned with holding onto my imagined control in keeping my job than letting Jesus be who I am.  As I have grown in the Lord and begun to let Him remove layers of junk like paint over beautiful wood floors, I have felt and lived out a strength that is not my own. There has grown within me an understanding of who I am and in this growth it has become impossible to not see Him in every little facet of my job.  I have also found a freedom in what I have been doing, I am realizing that this job was never mine to begin with.  Nothing that I do here on this earth is mine at all, it has always been His and it is by His Word and in His strength that any of it is done.The responsibility to keep me in this particular job has never been on my shoulders but always on His.  As I write this to you I am acknowledging that I could have kept this on my own and kept Jesus out of it and in so doing I would have stunted, horribly, my walk with Jesus.  My spiritual life, the part of me that gives life to every other part of me, would have stopped growing!! The very thought of it makes me want to cry because I would be missing out on all the things that Jesus has healed and redeemed and the adventure he offered to me as a result of obediently following Him.

The point is this, once I realized that everything I do can and should be done as though I am standing in a room teaching to an audience of One, The One, I found that I do my job better now than I have ever done in the past.  If I can stand before Him with the honest heart that I am doing what can only be done through Him and for Him and set to His standards, then anyone else who happens to be a recipient to my teaching is getting the very best I have to offer.  When I have that mindset there is no longer any room for fear.  The very essence of freedom is knowing that I don’t have to live up to any standards pushed upon me by the world.  I have already been made righteous by the blood of Jesus and I desire, out of a deep love relationship, to do everything that I do for the glory of the One who paid the ultimate price for me.  No more boxes, no more fear, just freedom!  What used to feel so oppressive to me now has a fresh breath of life to it because the One I serve every day is also the one who gives me the strength to do the very job that I am called to do. I admit that most days I have to get down on my knees and remind myself of this truth because the wave of the world around me tries to drown me under feelings of inadequacy. But when I remember that I will stand before Jesus, and my faith will be my eyes, and He will reward me with a crown that I will promptly lay at His feet I am renewed with the strength it takes to do what I have been called to today.  May you bury this truth deep in your soul as you move forward in your work today and let the Lord be your focus and the hope of the reward that He offers keep breathing new life into you, in Jesus name!

Father I thank you for the work that you have offered to each and every one of Your children. Work that is truly fulfilling when we remember who we work for.  I pray that each of Your children be renewed with a sense of hope and purpose as they do their jobs today.  May the truth that they work for an audience of One renew their weary souls and strengthen their arms for the tasks set before them.  Breathe fresh life into their work and bring a brand new perspective to them In Jesus Name!

Fearful: Eating

Luke 12:23

Life is more than food and the body is more than clothing.

One of the unique things about this season of my life is the freedom that I am experiencing.  God has been chipping away at my biggest hindrance, which happens to be fear.  Many areas of my life have had the light of His love shone on them and I have seen a pervasive theme, they have all been ruled by fear.  This little series God has built in me is designed to shed a light on the areas that have been fear-ruled and to reveal what He has taught me about letting go of fear and choosing to be faith filled instead.  Freedom is found where fear is extinguished and faith is ignited!

Body image has been one of my struggles and one of the areas of greatest freedom in recent times.   I, like many, have a moment seared in my brain when my body and what it looked like became a forerunner in how my little mind worked.  I don’t remember exactly how old I was but I was sitting in with my pediatrician (I do know I was a little girl and I did like my Dr.) and he told my mom that I had a lot of muscle and that as I grew I would have to watch myself because fat is attracted to muscle. Now, I know as an adult that his intention was not to scare me but to give me information about how to be cognizant of my body type but still today that moment is in almost vividly perfect detail.  As a small girl I had no idea what that information meant but as I grew that very sentence began to be a staple to my struggle with food and how my body looked. I began to make food either my enemy or my comfort and didn’t allow God to help me put food in proper perspective. I have made the mistake that many of us have made and I have allowed fear to dictate how I would live out this area of my life.  Food and clothing are made for a purpose, and for our enjoyment, but I have always vacillated between two extremes.  All or none. And it has always left me in a bind.  I tend to over control the situation out of fear of losing control of my flesh. I have denied myself all things, out of fear, or I have overindulged.  When, out of fear, I have over controlled my eating I would find that I would win for a short time but since it was based on fear that victory was always short term.  The thing is I live in a flesh body and because of that it is always at war with what my spirit says.  My spirit is united with what God says, and he tells me not to worry or fear, while my flesh is united with what the world says and so the battle rages on.  This battle will not end until I shed this flesh and step into the body prepared for me in heaven, but God has not left me without what I need to be victorious here and now.

 

This all goes back to who God says I am and what tools are available to me to bring victory in these battles.  When I choose to lean on His strength and what He says about me and speak His truth over myself I find that my flesh is much easier to subdue than when I try to fight it on my own strength.  Fear based fighting is always on my strength and has always left me wiped out.  When I choose to use God’s Word the burden to win is taken off of my shoulders and placed squarely on God’s. It’s like when my mom watches my kids and they ask to do something she knows we have said no to, she has the authority to say no to them because it is backed up by us, the parents.  No longer are my kids going to fight grandma for something that she has made clear she does not hold the power to grant them.  I have authority over my flesh because of the blood of Jesus but the power it takes to bring this authority some weight is not coming from me, it comes from God.  No longer does fear have to dictate how I respond to my flesh. I have authority that is backed up by the power of the Word, so when I speak, with my mouth, the Words given to me by Jesus, my flesh is not looking at me, it is looking at the One who gives power to my authority. My flesh has no choice but to obey.  When this delicate balance begins to wobble a bit it is always because I have relented my control and authority over my flesh and I have given in in a way that gives my flesh a majority vote.  My body is a temple of the Most High God and it is made just for me, uniquely mine.  But how I treat this flesh is a direct correlation to how I view it in light of the One who resides in me.  I am not here to judge anyone but to come alongside you and say that I have walked this path as well and I know how difficult it can be but we are not alone.  When I feel overburdened or stressed it is because I have removed God from His throne, I have taken my eyes off of Him and onto myself and I begin to give in to fear.  This is a nasty circle that the leads me to lean on my own strength for a time. Honestly, one of the biggest cop outs I give myself is rooted in this fear.  I have often given into lies like ‘If I don’t eat this I may never get to eat it again,’ or ‘I can’t waste food’ or ‘Just one little piece won’t hurt me.’  The thing about fear-based eating is that there is no end to the fear.  I can spend every day of my life engaged in this mindset and I will always lose.  Fear-based eating does not budget for enjoyment, it gorges out of fear.

My family members have taken to a new type of lifestyle diet and I cheer them on whole heartedly.  But I have always felt that this journey with our flesh does not have to come at such a restrictive nature that I no longer enjoy the ride.  Food is designed to feed my flesh and clothes to cover it and my Jesus promised me a life more abundant. So as I navigate this path I have been asking Him to show me how to let go of my fear and walk in freedom that leads to victory.  I don’t have the perfect answer but I do know that he keeps reminding me that this is all centered on Him. Do I believe that I am who He says I am?  Do I trust Him? Am I willing to let go of the reigns and follow His lead?  Do I believe that He loves me and truly wants the best for me?  Man these are hard questions to ask myself but I am convinced that the key to victory lies in them.  Freedom is found at the end of myself and the beginning of God.  Though I still fight this battle from time to time I believe that freedom and victory are mine and I am going to walk through this, in spite of my fears, with the Word in my mouth and the Word spoken over my situations.  When I begin to use the Word, though I may still have some fear, I find that my belief in what God has said is greater than the fear that still lingers. There is power in the Word of God and in the name of Jesus and it has been given to me and I intend to use it.

 

Heavenly Father, thank you for how much you love us.  That you never leave us to fend for ourselves but always provide the necessary tools for victory.  May we choose to not fight out of fear and our own strength but instead choose to lean only on You and trust what You say about us.  Food is a gift, but our life is more than food.  May we choose to see through your eyes and remember that we serve an audience of One.  May we be strengthened by the food we eat and find enjoyment in it as well but never be a slave to it, In Jesus Name.

What’s In A Name

Genesis 17:5

No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you a father of many nations.

If you spend any time around people, any age group of people and you sit back and you just watch and listen, the pervasive theme that rises from their lives is their identity.  We all are struggling to figure out just who we are.  I don’t believe there is one section of humanity that does not wrestle with identity.  The world tells us that we are self-identified, to go out and figure out for yourself who you are, don’t let anyone or any group tell you who you are. The truth is that the world is constantly feeding you information about morals, right and wrong, how to live, what choices to make but they want us to do it without admitting that there are any absolute truths.  And you and I have a choice.  Are we going to accept what the world tells us about who we are or are we going to believe what Jesus says? Will we accept God’s Word as absolute truth and adopt what He says about us, about who we are in Christ Jesus? The world wants us to think that in having the ability to choose that there is freedom in having ourselves defined outside of the truth of God’s Word.  This is dangerous because this path offers a false life. If you and I don’t make a concerted effort to fill ourselves with the truth from the Word then we will, by default be filled with the lies of the world.  Life apart from who God says we are leaves us emptier than we were before and with an aching void inside of us.  

I have such a unique seat in the crowd of life right now with the arena in which I spend most of my days.  I am around young people who are regularly asked the question of who they are and what they are going to do with their lives.  I watch them struggle to define themselves because they have no solid rock on which to stand.  They have no idea the promises spoken over them in the Word of God and they have no idea that there is a God who loves them deeply and completely.  The danger they face is that they can totally lose themselves in their flesh and the fire inside of them that says there is something more can be doused.  For a couple of years now God has been ministering to me about this issue of identity.  I have struggled with this because I have sought to identify myself by the things that I belong to.  I am a teacher and a wife and a mother and I was a coach for a while. But none of those things have brought me peace or hope, as a matter of fact they have left me feeling empty and incomplete. It wasn’t until I let God begin to show me that I can be identified by nothing less than Him and who He says I am that I began to find my true identity.

About two years ago I was in a meeting with a young girl, and a group of ‘professionals’ are trying to determine the best course of action for her.  The meeting began with flowery words and hopefully helpful names to attach to her but as we got to the main course, the verbage changed, as the true reason we were there surfaced.  The words they used to describe her were like a lead weight that was strung across her shoulders.  With each new label I watched her shoulders sink lower and lower until eventually the weight was overpowering and she laid her head down on her arm on the table.  I knew in that moment she would never believe in the few flowery words that were spoken about her in the beginning because the enemy would forever bring to her mind the words that tore her down.  Not long after this she quit coming to school and I have not seen her since.  As a believer we have such a beautiful treasure box of names that our Lord and Savior has given to us.  And these are not just flowery terms thrown in the air hoping they stick, these Words hold power, because these Words are Truth.  These names are names that bring life and foundation and they root themselves deep into our souls. These are the truths that make us invaluable in this lost and dying world.  I love this passage in Genesis 17 where Abrahams name is about to be changed.  This man of God who had been hanging on to a promise of fatherhood for almost 25 years was about to get the boost he needed to persevere in faith.  He was beginning to really acknowledge the reality that his body was old and so was Sarah’s.  He was faithful to walk with God but I believe the constant wave of looks from the world around him were beginning to wear on him.  And then at just the right moment God intervenes and changes his name.  No longer will you be called Abram but now you will be called Abraham, for I have made you the Father of many nations.  Abraham had a choice in that moment, he could have said, “Well thanks God, but I’m not going to let anyone call me that yet. And I’m not going to refer to myself that way yet, I mean I don’t have a child by Sarah and it just doesn’t feel right.  Maybe when the child of the promise is born I will let myself be called by that name.”  You know I have a feeling that he may never have seen the child of the promise had he taken that road.  Instead he chose to adopt the name God had given him and now every time his name was spoken the promise of God was there right before his eyes and in his ears.  Every time he spoke his wife’s new name he was reminded of the promise, she is the mother of many nations.  At first I can only imagine that it felt a little weird to be called by this new name, the name that didn’t quite fit the situation.  But something, something inside of Abraham gained strength and the rightness of this new name struck a chord deep within him.  The more he hears his new name the more sure he is that this is who he is meant to be.  He is being transformed into the man that God has already spoken into existence.  He is strengthened by the truth that the Lord has whispered over his entire being, bringing life to that promise that he was almost ready to lay to rest.  It ignited a flame of expectant faith in Abraham that the God who had brought him this far would deliver on the far greater things he had been promised.

This reminds me of a movie I like called Tangled, in it is a princess stolen at birth and called by very different names than the ones given to her as a child. She is held captive in a tower by nothing more than her mother’s words.   This girl, this woman, stays in this tower by the power of the names her mother has given her. She tells her she could never make it on her own, she is not strong enough, the world is too mean and so on.  Not until the end of the movie when she discovers who she really is and what power and authority that brings, does she stand up for herself and fight for freedom.  If you and I don’t know the Word and the truth, the authority and privilege that has been bought and given freely to us by the blood of Jesus we will be no different than the princess in the tower wishing for freedom but never realizing it is already ours.  I challenge you, dear believers, to seek out and memorize, bury deep what your identity is in Christ.  Make it a point to speak those truths over yourself every day.  Persevere through those moments when those names just don’t seem to fit, because our God is the God of transformations and He has already spoken those things, which don’t seem real right now, into existence. May you become rooted and grounded in Christ so that as the waves of this dizzying world come up against the walls of your home you can stand firm knowing who you are and who you belong to!

“No longer shall your name be called” is a promise also given to you by the blood of Jesus, grab hold of that and replace the lie with God’s truth!

Heavenly Father, you are so precious and your Word brings us such freedom.  We have been so blind Lord and we repent of that.  From this day forward we believe what you have said, no longer shall we be called.  May you, by the power of your Word, replace those lies that we have believed with the truth and life giving names you have spoken over us.  May your people adopt the names you have given them and then rise up as warriors in your army.  Lights to this dark world can only continue to be lights if they are constantly filled with oil.  May we go back to Your Word and be renewed and refreshed and transformed and filled with Your Holy oil lest our lights begin to flicker. In Jesus name!