forty years of wandering
forty years of bickering
forty years complaining
forty years
forty year
it took forty
years...
Better go back to Egypt
a slave but food to eat
better sleep
less bug bites...
who told God to bring us out -
we did?
Don't talk out loud
He may remember we cried
and He delivered.
Manna taste good -
but for forty years?
Not good enough
same everyday
no variety...
But,
no more fear
and lacking
but why not a savannah
to journey through?
Yet we get water
but the one back there
in the good ol' days
seem more familiar.
But,
we are not gong back
we must look ahead
so we go...
memories fade
no longer slaves
and all that remains is now
now I am free
now I can see
from the light
that goes before me
now I can smell
the greenness so near
now I am near
the Savior's touch
now I can say
this is enough
Salvation gained
walking through the parted sea
now I can feel
what I was meant to be
now I can touch the promise
given in the valley
forty years after eleven...
Tag: Faith
It Will Be Okay.
Imagine if you lost. Everything you thought you could never live without.
That is a terrifying thought for many of us, but what if we did? What would we do?
It’s easy to look at someone who is not okay and give them advice on what they need to do. Then we think or talk out of their hearing: “Man, that is hard, but thank God it’s not me!”
Now, my issue with such a sentiment is this: does God allow good things to happen to some and bad things to others? Sometimes when we say the above, it seems as if we are somehow exempt from going through certain trials, but we are not.
I spoke recently to a colleague who is undergoing cancer treatment. I had not seen her at work for some time, and then I saw her back out at work. Though she had lost some weight, she seemed so calm and was laughing and smiling, which made me pause and think about how I overreact to some simple things at times. After all she has been through lately, where did she find the courage to get up and live each day as it comes?
As she pointed out to me, it is not easy, but she does it because the alternative is death.
I am realising that the problems I see as insurmountable or really not impossible to overcome. I am in the process of reconstructing my mindset regarding the outlook I have on every situation I face. If I can be devastated at the thought of someone else’s diagnosis and surprised by her ability to get up every day and smile and be pleasant, then maybe I need to change how I view my own problems. Are they really that serious or require the reaction I sometimes have?
Would I be okay if I lost all the things I fear losing, that have nothing to do with the life I have been given by God?
I remember a point, as I got older, that I feared losing my grandmother, and so I used to pray every year that she would live one more year and that God would make it ten or twenty years-or forever if he could. It has been 15 years since my grandmother died, and I still have not forgotten how important she was in my life. Since then, I have made some terrible decisions and some good ones, but the most important thing is that I have been able to continue to live.
An article I recently read, entitled, In Haiti, the Art of Resilience, comes to mind. The article was written in 2010 by Bill Brubaker, after the earthquake which devastated the country and killed 230,000 and displaced approximately 1.5 million others. The writer highlighted a series of stories concerning the impact of the earthquake on the Art community. One that stood out to me was about 87-year-old Haitian artist Préfète Duffaut, who lost family members, friends, his home, and most of his artwork. What was so inspiring about his interview was the hope that Brubaker noted was “shining from his eyes”. The hope is to build from the rubble something new and vital. There were other stories of gallery owners, whose galleries had not escaped the devastation, who provided money and art supplies to artists who had lost everything. Duffaut, at 87, having experienced crisis after crisis in Haiti, along with his countrymen and women, was able to affirm this particular event: “My future paintings will be inspired by this tragedy”. How many of us would be able to create something meaningful and inspiring from the rubble of our own tragedies?
We all have the potential to take ourselves out of the dark abyss that life places us in. All we need to cultivate is a vision of possibilities in the face of adversities.
Though it may be hard for us to keep the faith when things go wrong fast, it will be okay. Just keep telling yourself this until you believe it.
Like many Haitians, let us adopt their attitude when faced with difficulties: ‘Let’s get on with it! Tomorrow is another day.’
Barak
Get ready Barak!
the Lord is near
He marches ahead
with ten thousand strong!
So he took his stance
out of his tent
the wind riding his back.
Kishon valley of death
the trap layed.
Swift and keen
the evil one may be,
today he shall be nailed
pegged to the spot.
To rule you must submit
you must believe
beyond your dreams
beyond all you can see
beyond your cloak of pride.
Know you do not know,
submit!
Or watch the crown
slide to an unkown
braver than your military might.
Will you submit
brave heart,
answer the call?
Invictus
The story of Pentecost is a story of a new world, a new way of being, and a victory over death confirmed and sanctified by the gift of the Holy Spirit. This realisation led me to reflect on the importance of resilience. I have read that Pentecost is about the expected and the unexpected, and in many ways, we can reflect on what this means for us. It is easy to read someone else’s story and be encouraged by it – “maybe that will never happen to me, but I felt so good to know that out of their pain, they found victory” – yes it’s nice to hear or read those feel-good stories. Then our turn comes and we are a mess, a bag of nerves surviving on our distress – “Why Lord, why is this happening to me!” Yes, we become a certified mess. We wake and smile with Despair, wave hello through our day and come to him again in a bed of fevered sweat, praying for this nightmare to end.
It is hard to see ourselves in those moments as anything but defeated. However, if we are not to be buried under the strain of our many battles in life, if we are to win the war, we must first see ourselves as unconquerable and unbeatable we have to be unyielding in believing we can do all things through Christ who strengthen us. We may say we are more than conquerors but may not believe that, but we have to think that to survive the storms. We have to know this is our truth. This is our constant hope, our defence when buffeted. This year I am learning about resilience. The word resilient comes from the Latin resilire, which means to jump back or recoil. To be resilient therefore means to be able to cope and bounce back from the adversities we face in life, it means to bend rather than break when every fibre of your being wants to seize up and become dry bones.
Today the sermon was about Ezekiel 37. In this chapter, God, through a vision, takes Ezekiel to the valley with dry bones and instructs him to prophesy that these bones will be resurrected:
Son of man can these bones live? (Ezekiel 37:3a)
That struck me. Can the bones in your life live once more when they are dry and so dusty that they seem on the verge of blowing away in the wind. But Ezekiel trusted and was completely submitted to the will of God and believed that if it were the will of God then these bones could live once more. All God wanted to hear was the manifestation of Ezekiel’s faith through his word and his words, “Oh Lord God, You know (3b)” which led to God partnering with Ezekiel. God told Ezekiel to prophesy and he did exactly as God had told him and those bones became supply flesh once more. But God was not done with him yet, because though the bones now had flesh there was no breath:
Also He said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live. (9)
Again Ezekiel obeyed and those dried bones not only had flesh but they came alive with the breath of life. God can do anything and there is no other who can. So, on the day of Pentecost, tongues of fire rained and violent winds blew. The change had come, maybe not in the way the Believers expected but certainly how God intended. There was an event that witnessed the resurrection of Jesus Christ, one that led to something new for the faithful followers of Christ!
Now, we come back to resilience. Life can be so difficult that it is hard to know how to bounce back and so we stew in indecision and our uncomfortableness, our guilt and self-recriminations. So while we contemplate what it means and how it is to partner with God, I want to leave you with a poem that speaks against our shaking faith and paralysis when we allow fear to become a monster in our lives. we have the inner strength to rise, we have the Spirit of God living, breathing and speaking to and for us to rise.
Invictus
BY WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
Faith is a Knowing
So this year, my word is faith. I planned to develop my faith in God because I KNEW it was lacking in many ways. Now, I could not imagine that when I said, “God I want to grow in faith, my trust in You”, He would take the assignment so seriously! So in response, He said, “Say less” and ever since I have had so much whiplash that I could say nothing. My year of faith so far has shown God to be the master teacher He is!
Faith as Small as a Mustard Seed
I am realising how little faith I had in God and how much faith I placed in my own ability and in the support of others. I really was saying I trust God but I really did not. Therefore, I have to accept that I really was not faithful to God because I did not trust Him with everything. I have learned so far, that I was doing a lot without accomplishing a lot and so I have to do less, say less and be less. This is really hard because you are expected to do more, say more and be more to succeed. Or at least that is how I felt. I have tried my way and my way led me into a wall. But I thought that I could devise a plan to get over the wall and then tell everyone it was God when He really was never a part of the plan. I did not have the seed. I was planting on rocking ground with bad seeds. Seeds that were corrupted by many past traumas and disappointments. My seeds were tainted by distrust. Therefore, my faith in God was struggling and did not realise how much. The word is the seed.
What is faith?
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)
I thought I knew Hebrews 11:1 but I did not. Because it was so familiar I could not see the truth that I did not know how to recognise confidence or trust as choices. I know God loves me but I was neither confident of this nor did I trust in this. There were too many wrongs done on my part, why would He love me unconditionally? Why didn’t I have to prove, at all times, that I deserve His love? I did not know the word at all. Reading the bible multiple times means nothing if the Bible is read like any other book. I heard that I had to meditate on the word of God but I was not doing that really. So my year of faith has taught me to read my bible, not as a checklist but as a guide to identifying a purpose-driven life. A life that knows God.
Without Faith, it is Impossible to Please God
So, I was not seeking God. I lacked faith, and could not please Him by being confident and trusting Him. I was confusing self-reliance with being a soldier for Christ. “Faith without works is dead,” so I worked hard, told God what I wanted and got into action. When things went south I asked God for help. See the problem? I asked God for help when things did not work out. I did not surrender my plans to Him and by extension my day, my dreams, my relationships, nothing. Did Jesus really suffer and die for me to be lukewarm in my faith? Of course not. I thought I was pleasing God but I was more intuned with pleasing people than God and that led me further from a true relationship with God. I was not honest. Now, I have to diligently seek him
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him (Hebrews 11:6)
So now I seek God because the reward is a true knowledge of God and a relationship with Him. It is also a place of peace.
God’s Plans and Peace
My bible verse for the year is Jeremiah 29:11
For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
I need to learn and believe every facet of this verse. I do not yet. I know it, have known it from I had the sense to know the bible was the bible. However, I never believed it. I want to believe it now. For me, this verse is a love note from God. No matter who it was meant for at the time ti was spoken, I have decided that He had me in mind when He said it also. I need this love note to calm my fears and as a salve for my wounds. It will cure my fractured heart. It will remind me of hose I am when I do not recognise myself.
God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect. (Hebrews 11:40)
So God has a plan. Right now I do not and it is an uncomfortable place to be because it is unfamiliar. However, it is the best place to be because it is where I need to be. “God had planned something better”, there is no plan better than God’s plan. Saying that and knowing this is faith. There is peace in His words, “Be still and know that I am God…” (Psalm 46:10). So, I am learning that a part of Faith is being still.
Sleepwalking
wakeup!
wakeup!
stop daydreaming.
can't you feel it?
Can't you see it?
Get out of your head
stand up now
see what's around you
see what's true
distractions are your enemy
they defeat you
stop you
from moving
sleepwalking backwards
into fantasy
unreal
not true
he will distract you
cast shadows
to defeat you
lett you sleep there
camp there
defeating you.
I see you
drowning
falling
deep
in discontent
to maladaptive
malware
shortcircuiting your truth
rocking the cradle
disturbing our peace.
Rest
yes -
but watch!
Freedom from maladaptive daydreaming
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that
Courage is the power of the mind to overcome fear
Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase
Martin Luther King Jr.
Maladaptive daydreaming is straying from God. The more we get caught up in our imagined make-believe world the less time we have to know God. I know I have been willing to spend hours creating a world of mine to the exclusion of God. The door was not opened in this world, and even if there was a knock, I was too distracted to hear and answer. I was the architect in my world and determined how far I could go. At that point, it felt like freedom, but the truth is I was trapped in my head.
The trick is to focus on God, the things of God, the people of God and less on the self. Focus less on what makes you anxious and what drives your fear, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 6-7, NKJV). Don’t daydream your life away, give everything to God, get out and live, not in your head but in the real world. There is nothing worse than deciding you and not God knows what’s best for you. That’s not true: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11).
Once you break free you realise that daydreaming solves nothing and is just another prison. The word of God is clear: “For freedom, Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). There is no easy cure, however, the best remedy is spending time with God and the word of God. This for me is a work in progress, cause I am still and forever will be under construction. So, instead of seeking after the high of a make-believe world, one should, “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” Matthew 6:33-34).
Think about this, maladaptive daydreaming can lead you to become paranoid. You think things that are not true, everyone is your enemy and everything is against you. This is a nightmare, not a dream. The only way to overcome this is to focus on the word of God because as it says in Philippians 4: 8: Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” What is true does not necessarily come from our imagination. Instead, we should do as instructed in 2 Corinthians 10:5: We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ.”
Your traumas do not define you unless you let them. You cannot drive out darkness by allowing darkness to drive or motivate you. Being a maladaptive daydreamer gives you a foggy memory – sounds familiar – you waste so much time and so you cannot get to your purpose and do the work God has called you to do and so it seems that you are moving cyclically instead on the straight path of progress, you may feel confused, have suicidal or lustful thoughts that really do not align with God or your purpose, you hate your reality and so to escape you start having suicidal thoughts. Does this have anything to do with God? If God is worthy how can we spend so much time on everything else except Him? Madness that we see as normal. Do not be lost in your thoughts as it may entangle you and trap you there for the rest of your life.
Nothing in life is easy and it seems there are a million things to trip you up. However, we have a God who is more than able to allow us to overcome them all. So, we need to trust him more and our imaginations less. Well, that’s all for now.
ramblrWrites.com 