Discerning Open Doors

This is what the Lord showed me in prayer today-

Acts 16:25-32:
About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted, “Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!”
The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved —you and your household.” Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house.

Paul and Silas were in jail. They had been doing the work of the Lord, and they ended up in jail because of it. Seemingly unjust, yet while there, they kept praying and kept praising the Lord. They didn't let their circumstances stop their joy. They didn't take their eyes off the Lord. Then suddenly, at the midnight hour, the darkest part of the night, the Lord shook the very foundation of that jail and threw every door open in that place. If it were me, my first reaction would have probably been, "WooHoo...the Lord has heard my prayer and I am FREE!!"...I may have seen those doors fly open and my chains fall and took it as a sign from God that it was my time to run! But the Lord showed me this morning that not every door is a door I am called to walk through. Not every opportunity that presents itself to me is mine to take. What if Paul and Silas and all the other prisoners had run off? There would have been no one there to stop the guard from killing himself. There would have been no voice of truth to bring real life to that Philippian jailer's despair. Sometimes the Lord has us in a specific place for reasons we do not know. Sometimes injustice causes us to find ourselves in situations we would never wish on our worst enemy. But what if our present situation is just a means to bring eternal life to someone else? What if the trials we are going through are part of a bigger picture? Then it will have all been worth it! Had it not been for the fact that although freedom presented itself face to face to Paul and Silas, but they obeyed the Lord and stayed to be a light in a dark place, that jailor would never have heard the message of the gospel that changed his life and ultimately his whole household forever.
So in the midst of your trial, in the middle of your pain and frustrations, keep a prayer on your lips and a song in your heart, because that which you are experiencing today might be the key to someone else's salvation tomorrow.

Why Are We Here?

Oh, how great are God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways! For who can know the Lord’s thoughts? Who knows enough to give him advice? And who has given him so much that he needs to pay it back? For everything comes from him and exists by his power and is intended for his glory. All glory to him forever! Amen. Romans 11:33-36

This passage from the Bible really flooded my mind with perspective this morning. How easy it is for us to get so caught up in our own life, our own desires, even our own frustrations and to lose sight of the fact that we are simply here to bring glory to God. I had a powerful realignment of my thinking just now. We are such "ME" humans. I think that is one of our biggest challenges-to move beyond the physical, temporal view of our lives and realize that we were created to bring God glory and fulfill a plan that is His. "For who can know the Lord's thoughts? Who knows enough to give him advice?" None of us. So often we arrogantly place our feet in the Lord's shoes and say, "Step aside, I've got this!", but really, those shoes look ridiculous on our feet. They were not meant for us to wear. I will make no progress as long as I think that the author and creator of my life is me. "Who has given him so much that he has to pay it back?" None of us. We approach God with our accomplishments saying, "Lord we have been kind to others" and "Lord we did this and that in your name" trying to stack the deck in our favor so that we can feel justified to do whatever it is that we want to do. The purpose of the gift of free will in our lives was not so we could make decisions on our own and do whatever made us happy (although the very fact that it is free will, that is an option!) Instead, free will was a test to see if, given the opportunity to choose, will we still choose to place ourselves under the authority of God or will we be so arrogant to ignore Him altogether and think we don't need him at all? The irony of submitting to God in all things is that it is the only avenue that brings true freedom. It is the only path that leads us to true riches without sorrow (Proverbs 10:22). By choosing to make ourselves a slave to God and his will, for His glory, we are actually breaking the chains that would forever entangle us otherwise. God is a pro-choice God. He has given us the ability to choose our own way. He knows that some will take that power of choice and wreak havoc on their own lives, on the lives of those around them, and then and have to face the consequences of every choice made. The power of choice. A gift given for a divine purpose, but not forced to be used in the manner it was designed. My free will allows me to murder, slander, destroy, curse, tear down, and it also allows me to build up, bless, create, encourage and bring life. The gift of choice is from God. The way I put that gift to use is in my control. That explains why horrible things can happen to good people. It's not the case of an unloving God just letting babies be murdered, women to be raped, etc. It is the law of free will set in motion, and God will never break His own laws, even when the consequences of our choices bring Him great pain. On the flip side, when we take that free will and lay it at the feet of the Lord and say, "Guide me. Lead me. I want my life to bring you glory", it is then that the Lord delights in our lives and works through us to accomplish His purpose for His glory. Love that is demanded is no love at all. God wants our love and devotion to be something we choose to give to Him.

Breaking the Mold

Being a Mom of three growing, constantly hungry children, I feel like I am always in the grocery store. Today was one of those days. I only had a couple of items to buy, so I decided to take my daughter in her stroller and used the basket on the bottom to hold my items instead of the cart that (lately) she refuses to ride in. That little basket filled up quickly, but everything was packed in neatly and fit perfectly. As I was checking out, I noticed that all my items, that once fit into the small basket so neatly, were never going to fit back into the basket now. My groceries, now all bagged separately, had somehow managed to grow right before my eyes. I grabbed a cart to hold everything. Now I had the stroller and a cart full of groceries, and maneuvering everything to the car was quite a juggling act. Isn't it the same way with us often times? We have all our emotions, dreams, ideas, needs and desires packed so tightly down deep within us. They fit neatly, they don't seem to disturb us and everything is in it's place. Then, when God puts His finger on something deep inside that He wants to pull to the forefront to use, we suddenly realize that after it leaves it's position and He puts His mark on it, it never fits back within us in the same way. Nothing is ever the same after it has been touched by God. We find we need Him to adjust us, enlarge us, to give us a greater capacity to carry that which He wants to use through us. We discover that we must make a shift and grow in Him so that we don't allow those gifts to be left behind due to a lack of capacity on our part. God stretches us and shapes us to be a container of His Spirit, so we can operate in the gifts that He has placed within us. By spending time in His presence, he transforms us to be the vessel He needs us to be. Ironically, one of the ways that God enlarges our capacity is by taking away things that were never really meant to be inside us in the first place. In my basket, I had a few items that were not on my list. Things that I really didn't intend on buying. They were not the purpose of my trip to the store. They took up space that I needed for the actual items on my list. Had I not bought them, I probably would have had enough space to just use the stroller and nothing else. They weren't necessarily bad things, (although those Little Debbie nutty bars are up for debate), but they were just extra things that I wanted to have in the house. When it comes to things in the spirit, we can not afford to waste space or time. We need to be full of the things that are of value in the Kingdom of God. Our vision and mission need to be clear and accurate if we want to be used by God and be effective. We have to be willing to release some things so that we have room to receive other vital things that God wants to be in operation in our lives. We must develop a yielded heart toward the Lord.

For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,  that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man,  that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love,  may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
  Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. Ephesians 3:14-21

Look Up

The bedroom was finally clean. Clothes were in their place. Carpet vacuumed. Admittedly, it had gotten out of control with the busyness of my life. I laid down on the bed to take a little break and enjoy the peace of an ordered room. As I reclined to relax, my eyes caught sight of spider webs that had been built where the walls met the ceiling. It's funny how when the room was dishevelled the spider webs were not in my vision whatsoever. Once I began to order my immediate surroundings-once the area within my grasp was no longer vying for my attention, I was able to fix my gaze at that which was higher then my normal level of sight. As it is in the natural, so it is in the spiritual. When we begin to order our life and tidy those things in our sphere of influence, only then can God lift our vision to the things that His wants to show us. Details that would have remained hidden had we never cleared the clutter of life from in front of our eyes. So many times we desire to look up and see the power and provision of God, but we have neglected to order our life that is right in front of us. The frustration comes when we try to jump over present to reach a hold of the future. The word of God says, "The steps of a righteous man are ordered by God" (Psalms 37:23). That tells me something very important: That our steps have an order! You can't take short cuts. You can't jump over the undesirable ones. In order to stay on the path, every step is vital.