That Sinking Feeling

Truth is the hand that grabs you and pulls you up.

Last week I went through a battle with self-doubt.  It was intense.  I thought I’d blown it.  I thought the last years of research and writing was for nothing and I should have not immersed myself that way.  That I should have fought to take better care of my home and worked even harder with my business.  Because, at least there, there would be something better to show for it all.  I began to believe what I thought I was called to do really wasn’t, and didn’t matter.  I was mad.  Mad at myself, and more. 

I knew the anger and frustration was Enemy related.  I know that sense of coming down on myself wasn’t what Jesus would have wanted or how He thought of me and so I believed I was in the midst of what Joyce Meyer coined, “The Battlefield of the Mind.” 

I was down.  Big- time doubting.  I even mentioned it to a friend that I felt I had a lost call.

Praying and trying to worship God, I felt distant. It was like I was far away or He was.  I was mad. I was scared and I had lost hope.   

I had to get on the water.  I needed time with God someway, someplace that I felt He was and I’d notice.  I jumped into our boat by myself and started riding down the river.  I asked God to, “Please, show me You!”   “Show me You are with me!”

That’s when it started.  I began to tell Him how mad I was.  How hurt I was that nothing turned out the way I thought it would have.  I told Him that I felt like I wasted all of my time.  When I got it off my chest, I started to feel better.  I saw some beautiful sunrays burst out from behind clouds. 

I began to sing a song out loud, “He Lives,” a fish jumped up right beside me.  An eagle flew over that I initially ignored, until it called out and I looked up.  It circled me a few times as I sang out loud while moving upstream again.  I felt so much better.  There’s something I have always loved when it seems other creatures join in with me and interact, especially in times of praising Jesus.

God was touching my heart and replacing the hurt, loss and anger with peace, pleasure and joy.

That evening, I had some quiet time with the LORD.  In that time He opened my eyes. 

He let me know that the anger, sorrow and loss hope towards Him began when I doubted.  His plan and promise has never changed.  It was me who had.  I had doubted. 

Remembering Peter, as he wanted to join Jesus while walking on the water, he initially could until he looked around himself and he became afraid.  Jesus’ response to Peter as he sank, was a hand that pulled him up as He asked, “Why did you doubt?”

 

Matthew 14:29-31

And He said, "Come!" And Peter got out of the boat, and walked on the water and came toward Jesus. 30 But seeing the wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!" 31 Immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and took hold of him, and said to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

It hit home.  I had called out in truth and Jesus gave me His hand and pulled me back up and showed me my doubt through His perfect truth.

The LORD also opened my eyes to His desire to have me be completely open and honest with Him in the way I am feeling.  That getting it out there in front of Him, even though He already knows it, helps me to acknowledge the truth of my heart.

 When I see it fully, He has full access to free me fully and heal me fully. We are in a whole and functional relationship when I come to Him in fullness of truth.

He did it with the Woman at the Well when she admitted to the truth of her life’s situation to Him.  She received the fullness of knowing Jesus as Messiah and Living Water.  The Woman with the issue of blood confessed her whole truth.  She received peace and healing and encouragement for her faith.

Psalm 43:3  Send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling!

John 8:36  So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed

Going There

 

 

This is going to be about some female issues.  Most male teachers don’t go there, fully. 

Jesus did. 

Men should. 

It’s about all of us.

Isaiah 64:5-9  NIV 

5 You come to the help of those who gladly do right,

who remember your ways.

But when we continued to sin against them,

you were angry.

How then can we be saved?

6 All of us have become like one who is unclean,

and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;

we all shrivel up like a leaf,

and like the wind our sins sweep us away.

7 No one calls on your name

or strives to lay hold of you;

for you have hidden your face from us

and have given us over to our sins.

8 Yet you, Lord, are our Father.

We are the clay, you are the potter;

we are all the work of your hand.

9 Do not be angry beyond measure, Lord;

do not remember our sins forever.

Oh, look on us, we pray,

for we are all your people.

 

This was a cry for help and acknowledgment of their plight.  They became like one who is unclean and that their righteous acts were like filthy rags.

 The word in Hebrew that was used for filthy is עִדִּים 

It is a noun feminine in Strong’s Concordance 5708 and is the root word which is עִדָּה noun feminine meaning: menstruation.

He is saying that their righteousness is like menstruation garments.  This is what is being translated in English as "filthy."

Blood is the life of our earthly existence.  A woman’s menstruation signified that life did not take place and the woman was considered unclean according to Leviticus 15, when she was having the flux of menstruation.  All who touched her, any of her garments or places she had been while she was in this time were considered also unclean and that which/who came in contact with her needed to be washed.

What a pain!  What a sense of humility and heaviness of soul to be called unclean.  Isaiah was writing that their righteous acts, in all their own efforts, were not only worthless, but unclean in the way of the flux of menstruation on garments.

Women know the inconvenience, the frequent pain associated, the tiredness, the ruined clothes, and the times of embarrassment.  My husband brought himself to purchase supplies for me for the first time at 28 years of marriage. It was embarrassing for him, too, but he did it out of love and compassion for me.

In walks Jesus. 

A woman, having an issue of blood for twelve years, hears that Jesus is in town. She’s heard about Him and the things He has done: raising the dead, healing the sick, freeing people of demons.

 She’s been considered unclean for 12 years. 

Years of embarrassment, feeling sick, tired, and chronic blood loss; she was desperate. She would have had to live mostly isolated.  She had sought help from physicians and in Mark 5:26 says, “and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse.”

One can scarcely comprehend what kinds of atrocities they were in those days that were done to her when it says she had suffered much under the attempts of many physicians. Her complete desperation brought her to Jesus.

Mark 5:26-27 She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. 28For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.”

If she touched just his clothes, His garments, she knew she would be made well.  In her unclean status, while wearing her unclean garments, she knew and believed the power of Jesus by touching just His garments.  She would strive to lay hold of Him.

Mark 5:29 And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 30 And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?” 31 And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’” 32 And he looked around to see who had done it. 33 But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth.

She confessed all of it.  All of what she had, in its embarrassment, and all of what she did.  Beyond the healing, she had touched Him in her “unclean” state.  She touched Jesus, who is pure and Holy, a Jew that fulfilled the Law, and in His power and purity she was healed by just His garments.  By His robe, she was made clean and healed.  He did not condemn her being unclean, or for touching Him and taking His power, but He responded toward her faith.

34 “And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

“Go in peace,” He says to her.  No condemnation, no fear for what she had done, no more disease.  Jesus poured out His grace on top of His healing power.  He does this for us all.  Male and female.  He did not go and cleanse Himself, but immediately went to raise a dead child to life. 

Just as Isaiah wrote in that time that, “all of our righteous deeds are like filthy rags,”

 Jesus displays His time of grace in faith, revealing that our filthy rags are not held against us, but it is about Who He is and who we are to Him.

 Isaiah pleads in prayer in Isaiah 64:9

Do not be angry beyond measure, Lord;

do not remember our sins forever.

Oh, look on us, we pray,

for we are all your people.

As Jesus looked on the woman, He was not angry. He thought nothing of what she had done in her unclean state to touch His garments and receive His power. 

He wanted to know “Who.”

She received. She was healed. She was told to, “go in peace,” because of His grace.  Because of her faith, she received His healing power.

 Who she was, mattered to Him.

 

 



Three Things God Doesn't Like About My Serving

Ponder. God ponders. God ponders us. We don’t realize it because we aren’t seeing Him yet.

The definitions of ponder from the Merriam Dictionary is 1. To weigh in the mind. 2. To think about: reflect on. 3. To think and consider quietly, soberly, deeply.

Here is a verse where God ponders.

Proverbs 5:21 KJV

For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and he pondereth all his goings.

God called me out because He was pondering my heart.

I hadn’t thought about how He ponders my heart in the way that I serve.  Serving is good, right?

Here’s three ways He told me that He does not like in my heart of service.  What?!

1.    You serve in fear.

He nailed it!  I have served out of fear of not doing what I believed He wanted from me.  I have served in fear to keep from His disapproval if I didn’t serve. 

 

2.    You serve in hopes of pleasure and praise.

 I have and do.  I hope that I will feel so good about myself for serving!  And I hope He will say, “Way to go, you’re the best!”  And I’ve hoped others may say it, too.

 

3.    You serve in frequent abuse of expectations and wills.

Yes, I have.  I have been pushed into serving because others believe I should be doing it and said so, or said I’d be missing out.  I have tried to meet expectations of people that have made me feel less if I didn’t serve. Fearing heavy sighs of disapproval. Abuse.

And for anyone that I have ever pushed and made to feel like they should serve or volunteer or help in times of “recruiting” that wasn’t out of love, but expectation, I am so sorry.

Here is what God then told me how to be. 

“Daughter, be free in Me being your all, and your all in being.

Just be, Daughter. 

Enjoy Me.

Serving is good, but worship is best. 

Be in worship, in peace, and in promise.  I make the remainder to happen.

Delight in Me. Read My ways and see Miracles in Me.”

I see now that anything I do in service is to be from a heart of worship.  Of “being” and that it is up to Him to lead me into places that may bless others because He is the One I am thinking of, not out of fear, or for my own praise or others’ expectations. 

But, by adoring Him! Delighting in Him!

Being… in His peace.

In His freedom. 

His promise.

We are free to be by seeing Him, admiring Him and delighting in Him.  It’s highest on His list.

 Service is good, but worship is best.