4:43 p.m. Today's project was to leave our house at 4:15 a.m. to take our youngest son Steven to John Wayne Airport in Irvine. He has now happily arrived in Oklahoma, eager to visit with his girlfriend Angela at Fort Sill, where the recruits will be celebrating their graduation from Boot Camp tomorrow. Steven will be staying with Angela's grandmother for the next few days. I'm looking forward to the pictures and Steven's tales of adventure.
Thanks to the Lord, the low traffic and plenty of coffee, Steve and I arrived back in Riverside before 6 a.m., and promptly slept for the next two hours! By 8:15, I felt energized enough to grab a few bites and to ride with my friend Cindy to Women's Bible study. This week in our Breaking Free study, we had dealt with positive and negative family influences through the generations preceding us, and it was very emotional for the vast majority of us, because, as we were reminded, even the lineage of Jesus includes murderers, adulterers and prostitutes. So looking at the past, though painful, is a necessary part of allowing the Lord to put it behind us, in the power of the Holy Spirit, so that we can be made free!
Knowing that the Lord has the very hairs of our head numbered (Matthew 10:30) and that He longs to be the central part of our lives, makes it so much easier to walk away from embarassment, shame, past hurts and humiliations, or even scenes of violence we may have been privy to. Asking Jesus into your life makes all the difference in whether you will remain bitterly single and distrustful of the opposite sex, for instance, or have a long, healthy, and successful marriage. Two siblings can have utterly different life outcomes from the same set of parents. Jesus is all the world to one sibling, and He is allowed to heal and move them past the damage done to--or by--them; but the other sibling holds onto bitterness and refuses to forgive, ruining their life in the process, as well as harming their children.
Jesus said in John 10:10b, and He meant it, "I have come that they might have life, and that they may have it more abundantly." God longs to love us into the abundant life--let Him!
One reason I was quite compelled to make it to study was that, as a member of the Prayer and Share team that stands up front at the end of each session to pray with or even just hug women who come forward, I knew that we would all have ladies to comfort today. And in true Romans 12:15 fashion, I did weep very much with a single mom who has a week to get her household goods packed up and out of her foreclosed home, with very little help. If there is such a thing as a "prayer of devastation," this was it. Yet, I assured her that God has a place for her family, and to stick close to Him as He leads her beside the still waters of peace and provision.
For practical help, I took her upstairs to the church office to speak with Pastor Mike. He took her number, and will have a crew there to help her soon. Praise the Lord!! That is the Body of Christ in action. As a single mother myself decades ago, I know full well that God is the father of the fatherless (Psalm 68:5) and He relieves the fatherless and the widow (Psalm 146:9). Sadly, in today's culture, divorce has caused the ranks of the fatherless to swell, as well as those in widow-like circumstances. But our heavenly Father does not overlook the poor, and never will!
Most of us come from pasts that had some measure of painful circumstances. Dreadful, harsh and uncaring words and actions have affected our human outlook, rarely for the better. "In me, that is, in my flesh dwells no good thing," Romans 7:18 says. But when touched by the Holy Spirit, through being born again, my pain can become compassion, my fears can be faced, and I can go forward to replace anger with forgiveness and love, destructiveness with focused purpose, and make my life a living sacrifice, as God has ordained it to be!
No comments:
Post a Comment