Where are you God?

In several of my past posts I've talked about spiritual troughs, those are the times in your life that God seems to remove the ability from us to be able to feel Him. Recently, Kim and I had the misfortune of going through a spiritual trough. This was really tough for us. Since we both were going through it, we didn't recognize subtle changes that were taking place until last week we knew something wasn't right. Nothing was wrong, we weren't fighting, but something just wasn't right. When Kim pointed out to me that we weren't the same, I knew immediately what was going on. We talked quite a bit about it and we talked about what to do.

During this time of test you will have one of three reactions; 1) Recognize what's going on and continue to seek God, 2) Run from God because you are upset, or 3) You don't recognize it until damage is done. For Kim and me, I think we recognized what was going on and we began to seek God.

During our talks about this, Kim asked how to get out of the funk that we were in. It really felt like we were going through the valley of dry bones. I told Kim the only thing we could do is to continue seeking after God, read our bibles, and pray. That is what we did. Kim and I have an awesome marriage, I don't know another couple that loves each other like we do. I'm not saying that we're perfect because we aren't, but we sure do love each other. So when we recognized that each of us was in a spiritual trough, we prayed for each other. Because our marriage revolves around God, if we aren't growing closer to Him, it feels like we aren't growing closer to each other. God is so good to us and we give Him the glory for everything. We put our marriage and our kids in His hands and He has always been faithful to us. My hope is that we are as faithful to Him.

If you follow my blog then you know that I love music and God ministers to me through music. I heard a song that is a couple of years old today by Thousand Foot Krutch called "Breathe you in". There is a line in the song that says "Through the highs and lows, there's one truth I know and its you". This one statement is what should carry us through any spiritual trough that we go through. Life is easy during the highs. During the low parts of our life, and there will be low points if you're a Christian, if we just remember that the one truth in life is Christ we will be OK. One truth? He is the one thing that we can always count on. He is the one God that will always be faithful to you.

I encourage you to recognize the low points; whether it is a test from God or whether you have just slipped. Recognize them and fight to get back to feeling God.

I love you and God does too!

Have you drifted, Part 2

In church today my Pastor (Brad Bryant) asked a great question and used a great analogy. He asked "has there ever been a time in your life when you were closer to God than you are right now"? So I ask you the same question, has there ever been a time in YOUR life when you have been closer to God than you are right now? If there has been then you have drifted.

The analogy that Brad used was drifting at the beach. Have you ever been playing in the ocean and just get caught up in either having fun or just watching your kids that you didn't realize it but before you know it your beach umbrella is about 1/2 mile up the beach? The ocean's current is a slow pull and as long as you aren't trying to go against it, you don't even notice that it is pulling you away from home. That's the way life is. As long as we just go along with it, we don't notice that it is pulling us away from home, away from our first love. But just like trying to swim against the current, it is hard to go against the flow to get back to God.

Drifting from God happens so easily when you aren't carefull. It's so easy to get caught up in our day to day life and lose sight of what's really important, our relationship with God. For some it's our kids while for others it may be a job. For some it could be your marriage. The best way to get back to your beach umbrella is to get out of the ocean and walk back. The same holds true with God. The best way to get back to Him is to get out of the life that is pulling you from Him, get away from what has pulled you down the beach.

I don't know about you but being married is fun for Kim and me. We have a great relationship and love each other completely. We enjoy each others company so much that, before this year, we had put too much focus on each other and not enough focus on God.

It was this time last year when God called us out on it. He showed us if we put our focus on Him and work on our individual relationships with God then our marriage would be stronger and our relationship with each other would be better. He was so right. We have put God first in our lives and now we are so close to God and each other. Thats how we got out of the ocean to get back to our umbrella, we made a change in our marriage to put God first and spouse second.

When I asked if there was a time in your life that you were closer to God than you are today, how did you answer? Is your relationship with God important enough to you to get out of the ocean and get back to the umbrella, back to Him? I hope so.

God loves you and I do too!

Victim? Help is on the way

Have you ever felt like an eternal victim?  I have known people that felt that way.  Some of them seem to be just looking for attention and then some of them just can't seem to get a break.  Every time they make it through one challenge they walk right into another.  Sometimes, it just seems like everyone they trust lets them down or maybe every decision they make is cursed.  With some it is health, with some it is finances, and with others it may be relationships or something else.  They know they have to play the hand life dealt them but sometimes they would like to call misdeal.

To the second group that really just can't seem to get a break, God wants you to know that He is with you.  I know that we've all read the poem "Footprints in the Sand" that says during the times of life when you only saw one set of footprints God was carrying you.  It sure would be nice to be able see the view during these times from God's shoulders while He is carrying us wouldn't it?  The thing is that we could, if we could only focus on God rather than the challenge or trial that we're going through.

I know that is easier said than done but that's life, it's the hand you've been dealt.  God wants you to know that you aren't alone.  There are people in the bible that have felt this way too.  Job for one couldn't catch a break.  In his worst time his wife told him to curse God and die.  Even his best friends told him that his problems must be his fault.  Joseph was abandoned by his family, put unjustly in prison, then forgotten by his friends and left in prison.  When Nehemiah was rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem he was constantly being challenged.  Jesus was constantly challenged by the Pharisees.  Paul said "every time I do good, evil is always present" (Rom 7:21).

God wants you to know that He loves you so much and He cares about your situation.  In the parable about the lost sheep, Jesus basically said that He will leave the 99 sheep that He has with Him that are protected to retrieve the one sheep that needs His help.  The problem that the one sheep has is that while he/she is lost, he/she has no idea that Jesus is looking for him/her.  Please know that sometimes in your trial help is on the way.  You may not know Jesus is coming to help or you may not know that He is already carrying you on His shoulders.  But just because you can't feel it doesn't mean it isn't happening.

The message I have for you is to hold on during the storm.  Matt 7:24-27 talks about the house that is built on the rock standing strong during the storm.  This scripture does NOT promise that the storms of life won't come.  And it also doesn't say that all houses will face the same amount of storms.  It is a very personal message to you that if you will live your life in the house that is built on His rock, you will be able to weather the storm because of His protection. 

God loves you so much (John 3:16) and He cares if you are hurting.  I do too.  If you need prayer, please post a comment to this post and I, as well as the others that read your comment, will pray for you....YOU ARE NOT ALONE!

God loves you and I do too!

The Angels Are Coming

You may not know but Kim and I really enjoy the preaching of TD Jakes.  We watch him on TV and have bought several of his sermons on DVD.  In my opinion, he is one of the best preachers I've ever heard.  My thoughts tonight come from a sermon that I watched tonight.

Are any of you going through tough situations, tough battles that you are doing the best you can to do what is right and hold on to Jesus but you just don't know how you're going to finish?  You may feel emotionally drained, spiritually used up, and physically just plain tired.  I don't know if this applies to you but if you are in this situation now, you should know that Jesus was there too.  Mark 1:9-13 briefly tells how Jesus experiences the pinnacle of his ministry where he went from being Jesus to being Jesus Christ.  He was just baptized and God proclaims Jesus as His son and then the Holy Spirit descended on him as a dove.  So in this moment the three members of the God-head were together.

In an instant, the Holy Spirit that had just came to Jesus like a gentle dove was now driving Him to the wilderness to fast for 40 days.  Matthew 4:2 tells us that when the 40 days were up, Satan came to Jesus and tempted Him.  So Jesus has just put Himself through nothing less than 40 days of torture preparing Himself for temptation and building discipline for when the devil comes to tempt Him.

Where was God during this time?  The bible doesn't speak of God ministering to his Son during these 40 days.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, there are times in our Christian walk when God will remove Himself from us.

Have you ever felt like you were at the greatest moment of your Christian walk just to find yourself smack-dab in the middle of the biggest test of your life?  God does not temp us but he will test us.  How can we grow if we are never tested?  What good is a weeks worth of football practice if there isn't a game on Friday?  Why go to basketball camps and play AAU if there isn't a game to be played?  Most of our time is or should be spent preparing for these tests.  But what happens when the test is over?

When Jesus' test was over He was tired, exhausted, malnourished, and a physical and emotional wreck.  Do you think Jesus went without food for 40 days and wasn't hungry?  Do you think He went 40 days without food and didn't waste away to nothing?  Jesus was a human just like us.  At the end of those 40 days, He was beat down.  But then what happened?  Matthew 4:11 happened; "Then the devil left Him and angels came and attended Him". 

When Jesus was spent, when he went through the test and came out on top and had nothing left to give, God sent angels to attend to Him.  God will do the same for you if you hold on through the test.

Today, I encourage you to hold on and don't give up.  You keep fighting and when you don't have anything left just hold on because the angels are coming!

God loves you and I do too!

The "Christian Family", Part 1

On November 29^th I promised you “More on this later” in reference to the “Christian Family” attitude.  Maybe I should have referenced it as a lifestyle instead.  If you read this, you may get your toes stepped on and you may think I’m crazy.  You may say to yourself “no family is like this” or “I bet his family isn’t like this”.  One thing is for certain, I think I’ll have you at least thinking about your Christian Family and if so, then I’ve succeeded today.

The typical Christian family attitude or lifestyle, what is it? 

First, it starts with Mom and Dad.  What kind of Christians are they?  As most of us know, many of us are “Sunday Christians”.  On Sunday, they are at church.  As a matter of fact, they never miss a service.  Their Christianity revolves around the church service and their walk with God is measured by how much they got out of the service.  The problem begins when they take their bible back into the house.  It generally will sit, unmoved, until the next Wednesday or Sunday.  A “Sunday Christian” doesn’t think to read their bible because they are just too busy during the week.  They want to read but they just can’t find the time.  Every Sunday they look forward to getting to church so they can finally read their bible when they follow along with the pastor as he reads.

Second, this lifestyle continues with Mom and Dad.  They lack a real prayer life.  Oh they pray before every meal.  They will even sneak in a prayer before bed.  But what they lack is that real time with God.  They fail to pray without ceasing (1 Thes 5:17), they don’t have an attitude of prayer.  Praying is something that they do when they need something from God.  A Sunday Christian knows that every good and perfect gift comes from God (James 1:17) but so often, they fail to thank God for them.  Their children have never heard them behind closed doors interceding for them.

Next, the kids…no wait, still mom and dad.  The typical Christian Family lifestyle continues with a lack of relationships at home.  Relationships at home tend to be superficial.  Mom and Dad are obviously tolerating each other most of the time.  The children rarely hear true, heartfelt conversations between mom and dad.  Their conversations may be matter-of-fact and revolve mostly around past or upcoming events like what’s for dinner.  There is very little discussion of how much each parent means to the other and there is certainly very little discussion about how much God has blessed them no matter what’s going on in their lives.

Now the kids?  Nope.  In a typical Christian Family cliché home, there is very little “action” concerning God.  In other words, children don’t see mom and dad actively doing something for God.  Fortunately, even in the worst of these homes, charity still exists so the children at least get to see compassion for those less fortunate.  But past that, there probably aren’t many good deeds being done in God’s name.  When was the last time this families children saw their dad witness to a waiter or when was the last time that mom asked the waitress if she knew Jesus?

As you’ve probably gathered, the kids play no part in this.  The Proverbs 22:6 says “train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it”.  The responsibility rests squarely on the shoulders of the parents.  Now, by now, you are probably asking “ok, how should a real Christian family live”?  Well I’m glad that you’ve asked.  Unfortunately, time has not been my friend today so I will devote my next post to that topic.

Until the next time, God loves you and I do too!

John Knight was dead...

While Kim and I were on our way back from Nashville today I had a nice moment with God that I wanted to share with you.  Kim was busy cooking up shirt orders with her vendor so I was just listening to the radio when "Alive Again" by Matt Maher came on.  As Kim talked on the phone, I just drove and cried because of what God had done in me.  This happens to me frequently while driving so I know other drivers think I must look pretty silly praising God and singing like I'm getting paid to do it.  But I don't care. 

Last Tuesday I wrote about the ups and the downs that we Christians experience.  But what happens if we stay too long in the down period?  Or worse, what if we turn our backs on God when we're in the down period?   Before January of this year, I had allowed myself to reach an all new spiritual low.  I had turned my back on God.  I had turned so slowly, like the hands on a clock, that no one could see me turning.  I had kept God in my rear-view mirror so that I could keep an eye on him to make myself feel better but I had definitely turned my back on Him.   I was more or less spiritually dead and no one knew it.

In January of this year, Kim and I went away for a weekend (after a really big fight) to try to figure out what we were going to do.  After a lot of soul searching and brutal honesty with each other I had to come to grip with the fact that the marriage problems we were having were because I wasn't where I needed to be with God.  That weekend, God "shattered my darkness and washed away my blindness" so that now, I'm alive again. 

I got so emotional today for two reasons.  First, I was soooo happy that God "called and shouted and broke through my deafness" so that I'm alive again.  Second, I was soooo sad that I let God down but more than that, that it took me so long to let Him make me alive again.  I wasted so much time while taking so long to allow God to wake me up.  This song is very dear to me because I can relate so well to being alive again and it always reminds me to "do what ever I have to to break through" to get into God's presence.

Have you ever had an experience like I had today?  Where are you with God today, this very second?  Can you go to bed every night knowing that everything you did during the day was witnessed by Jesus Himself and you have nothing to be ashamed of.  If you did have something to be ashamed of, are you repenting?  I hope so.  If you haven't heard this song, you can visit the link above to listen.

 
God loves you and I do too!

Have you drifted but don't know it?

http://sharemygod.blogspot.com/p/christians-prayer-when-you-dont-feel.html


God has been so amazing to Kim and me our entire marriage but this year has been so different. We have grown closer to God than we ever have.  I have been in church all of my life and I've seen a lot of things.  One thing that I've always observed is how good Christian families live.  This "Christian family" cliche is one of the things, I believe that is destroying Christians all over America.  This attitude was keeping my family from growing in God until this year.  More on this later....


We have been trained that as long as we say a prayer before ever meal, say our bed-time prayers, and go to church every Sunday then we are good Christians.  We believe we are pleasing God.  I personally believe that that this attitude is the attitude that the devil is using to break up families.  We have heard preachers all of our lives saying "if we aren't growing closer to God then we are growing apart from God" and this is true.  Now the devil will use scripture against us (like he did with Christ).  He will tell you this is nonsense and remind you that nothing can separate us from God's love (Romans 8:38,39) and he is right.  However, he is taking the scripture out of context.  


I believe that God turned his back on Christ while he was on the cross because in that moment on the cross, Christ became sin for us (2 Cor 5:21) and God can not be in the presence of sin.  Nothing can separate us from His love but sin can separate us from Him.  Our families, yours and mine, have let the attitude of complaisance and stagnation creep in and kept us from growing.  I'm not saying our families aren't saved and going to heaven, what I am saying is that this attitude has kept us from abundant living (John 10:10).  


God has shown Kim and me the error of our ways and we have committed our family and ourselves to Him the best way we know how.  


That brings me to the real topic of this post.  In our Christian walk we have up's and down's.  We seem to have seasons of victory and seasons of struggle.  C.S. Lewis called the down's and the seasons of struggle "troughs".  During these troughs, the devil tries to steal our victory.  I believe, as does C.S. Lewis, that God will withdraw that "feeling" we get when we are with him to see if we will continue to serve Him.  Nine days ago, Kim and I were both on the mountain.  God gave me a word of warning for Kim that soon, He would withdraw Himself from her and He wanted her to be ready.  By Saturday, Kim was in the valley.  She wasn't sinning, she was still praying and praising God but just couldn't feel Him.  Sunday afternoon after church, she decided that she was going to spend some time alone and seek God.  When she broke through He gave her a prayer to pray that was AMAZING!  When she read it to me I was certain she was reading from one of the Psalms.  God is SOOOO good to us, He reminds us to never stop seeking him.  


I am attaching a link to Kim's prayer that God gave her.  Please take five minutes and read it.  If you are struggling, read it out loud to God as your own prayer.  See if God will do for you what he did for Kim.  She isn't a poet, God gave her this prayer as fast as she could write it with no time spent thinking about it.   I am so proud of Kim for listening to God's voice.


http://sharemygod.blogspot.com/p/christians-prayer-when-you-dont-feel.html

God Loves you and I do too.

Hell isn't the only thing paved with good intentions

Hell isn’t the only thing that is paved with good intentions.  Has anyone ever started the day, nice and early after a good night sleep, thinking “this is going to be an awesome day” and then the next thing you know, the day went just as planned except something wasn’t quite right.   

Yesterday started the time of year that I absolutely love.  If there are two people that love Thanksgiving and Christmas more than me and Kim then I haven’t met them.  It’s also the time of year that pulls our attentions in so many directions that we have to be careful not to leave our first love (if you are a Christian).  For instance, I had a great day today.  I started the morning off just me and Kelsi, and then I dropped her off at mom’s house and ate a quick breakfast.  I had to take some shirts by HHS so I caught a couple of basketball games and then back to mom’s to get Kalli and Kelsi.  I was pleasantly surprised when Kassi and Kim showed up there from a day of shopping that started quite early this morning.  We all came back home to finish the day.  I had a very good day.  The only problem was that I was so busy, I hadn’t spent enough time with God.  The only significant prayer I had prayed today was when #12 for MHS girls went down with a knee injury, my heart broke for that little girl when I heard her crying.

I realized all of this around 8:30 tonight when, for no good reason, I got a little testy with Kim.  She was right about something and I knew it but for some reason, it angered me.  I knew right then this behavior was directly because I hadn’t spent enough time with God today.  I got up and left the room and told God that I was sorry and it was amazing how easy it was to have a good attitude after that.

The point I’m trying to make is that we must always keep God first.  You don’t have to be “sinning” to put you in a place where you really don’t want to be.  We should always be praying (1 Thessalonians 5:17) and keeping God in the front of our mind.  I know the WWJD phrase is so overused but it really is the question that should always be on the top of our mind when any decision is made.  And by the way, any reaction you have is caused by a decision to have it.  There is a good topic of discussion on that point that I’d be happy to address in the future if any of you would like me to.

I hope your Thanksgiving has been as blessed as mine.

I love you and God does too.