Difficulty to opportunity, Soul Warning

Soul “Not Enough”

A very popular and effective taunt to our souls is, “You’re not enough.”  Not enough for your own responsibilities, for those you’re responsible for; for your job, for your personal life, for anything.  So much lack, so much need, so much pressure, so many limitations.

 

 

 

I’ve stayed there too long at times.  It’s quite convincing. Because I am so inadequate.

I think that’s the point.  We are in utter need of so many things.

“Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God who has made us adequate…” (!) 2 Cor. 3:4-6

 

Ok so we’re inadequate yet He makes us adequate.  How does that happen and why don’t I feel adequate?

 

I wonder how the little boy who brought his lunch felt when he offered it to feed the thousands of people.  I wonder if he felt adequate.  I doubt it!  It’s ludicrous to think it would make a difference.  How often am I there thinking, “how are you ever going to make a difference in this sea of need?”

 

What good would it do? What I have is nothing or very little in contrast to the need.  That’s exactly what Jesus wants us to bring to him.  The bit that we have.  Our “nothing”! We offer and He multiplies.  When we need to give and we don’t have much, we bring our little lunch, and let Him take it and do something with it.    I don’t have to be adequate but with Him, I’m made adequate. 

It’s quite freeing.

So, although what I bring to a situation, to a conversation, to a crisis, to a job, to a person, is and always will be inadequate, next to Him we’re in it together.  And He’s the focus.  I show up with my “I don’t know if this is anything, but here…”  I offer, I watch, I engage with Him.  I wait. I expect His work.  It may not look at all like I thought, but he receives what we bring and expands it.

 

Actually, the boy may not have had the guts to bring it at all.  The disciples just mention it as almost nothing.  But Jesus received it.

“One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?”  John 6:8, 9

 

So what you have in your hand, the experience, time, talent, skills, trials or goods, may seem like next to nothing.  It may be inadequate for what your day may need.  But we bring it and rely on Him for what He wants to make of it.

 

So my inadequacy is actually a great reminder to me of where to turn to make me adequate!

 

Flip the switch:  When the overwhelming comes your way, telling you you’re inadequate, you can give thanks for the reminder and turn to the All Adequate One.

 

As Saint Benedict put it, “Always we begin again.”

Soul Warning

Shaken Soul

I’m shaken after meditating on Psalm 78.  And it’s interesting that it came up in my reading this most holy of weeks, where our remembrance of the first holy week is full of defeat, blundering and failure.  It is a bit encouraging.  Not that we want to excuse our failures, but encouraging that there’s hope for us.  Sin will never satisfy like obedience does.  It only creates more ravishing pull.

 

Getting a glimpse of what our sin does to God:

God vulnerably shows His heart in Psalm 78

  • :40 His people grieved Him in the desert
  • :41 They limited God (i.e., in their arrogance “allowed” only so much, thinking they knew better) Of course, He can overpower but often waits for an invitation.
  • :41 They pained the Holy One!
  • :42 They didn’t remember His power (after all they’d seen!)
  • :52-55 He guided them, brought them out of slavery and gave them an inheritance yet they
  • :56-58 rebelled, turned back, provoked Him and aroused His jealousy.

 

Who puts up with this?!  Who is this God?

 

So He had to let them go…he had to give them up in order to get them to turn back. In an earlier cycle the same happened:

:34 then they sought Him, returned and searched diligently for God and remembered…

 

there is always redemption when we turn toward Him.

What our sin does to us:

  • :18 they focused on their desires rather than His promises. (Our desires can be good things, but not at the expense of remembering and asking God.)
  • :22 it fostered unbelief
  • :32 in spite of His answers they refused to respond either to miracles or to judgment.
  • :33 they missed what God had for them.
  • :36 they “flattered” him (praised Him with their tongue but their hearts were far from Him)
  • :37 their repentance was shallow, no heart change

 

How lurking sin (like an enemy) tricks us, pulls us, limits us, sets us back, saps us of strength and life.  We take it lightly, not realizing the depth of consequences. Yes, there is grace greater than all our sin!!

Amen! I’m so glad.

But there is also grace before we sin; so we don’t have to sin.  Grace that gives us strength and power to choose otherwise.

Hallelujah!

Grace to walk in newness of life, to “not let sin reign in our bodies to obey its lusts” Rom. 6:12

 

“Don’t receive the grace of God is vain.” 2 Cor. 6:1

As Beth Moore says:

I say this with tremendous empathy to those of you in my former estate. I earned the right to my defeat. If you knew the details of my past, few of you would wonder why I couldn’t escape the cycle of sin-cry-repent-repeat. But if Jesus had just left me there, I’d be dead by now.

 

Who puts up with this?!  Who is this God?

 

He is the One who let our sin put Him on the cruel cross to bring us hope.

 

Hallelujah!

What small choice will you make today applying His grace so you don’t give in to sin?

“Flee…and pursue…” 1 Tim. 6:11

OR

What drastic measure do you need to take to keep you from the pull of sin?

“…throw it away…” Matt. 18:9

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soul Growth

Soul Dispossession

Dispossess  –  dɪspəˈzɛs/   verb

deprive (someone) of land, property, or other possessions.  syn.- divest, strip, rob

 

 Feeling slighted by something taken from you?

 

Reading in Numbers 20-24, how the Israelites “camped… journeyed…set out…and dispossessed…” peoples of their lands by God’s hand, is disturbing and seemingly cruel.  There they were, the new kids on the block, barging in on someone else’s territory. What right did they have?

 

Well there’s a bigger story going on that stretches back centuries before, when God put His hand on Abraham, from a godless nation and called him out, dispossessed him so that he could eventually possess (centuries later through his descendants).

 

It is God who is doing the dispossessing.  His inalienable laws had been defiantly ignored and spurned.   Child sacrifices, unutterable abuses and atrocities reigned.  So He was on the move to reclaim His ways and show the right way to be human.  And He chose humans to represent Him.  That was a huge risk because it didn’t always go the way He desired. It put His name to shame, yet He patiently worked His plan.

 

Though the battle is the Lord’s, we still have to step into the land and use our swords with skill.  That’s what the wilderness training is all about.  Choosing the right battles; the battle to believe with courage and not shrink back because of difficulties. To dispossess the enemy of what is ours; rather than focusing only on trying circumstances like God’s people in the time of Hosea:

 

“Although I trained and strengthened their arms, yet they devise evil against Me.” Hosea 7:15

 

We’re ushered into this world that is ruled by forces that work at taking our identity, our hope, our freedom and our creativity.  So we are called on to go into the lands of our souls to dispossess and repossess God’s territory.  Just as the Israelites had to go into battle together with God, so we go in to take back what has been stolen, killed and destroyed (John 10:10).

 

God calls us out, to call us in.  He calls us to dispossession (taking what the enemy has stolen), to call us into possession of real life.

For me, self-doubt can get in the way of walking in courageous faith.  I am joining Him in dispossessing the enemy of his pull in this area. And finding this is a mercy to keep me depending on Him.

 

  • What area in your soul needs to be dispossessed (or taken back)? Dignity, value, belonging, joy, freedom from fear or bitterness, faith?
  • What are you demanding that God hasn’t given, keeping you from contentment?  Could that demand be taking the place of what He wants to give?
  • What might you need to repossess by the power and authority of your Creator and Redeemer?

 

“Abundant life in not abundance of blessing, it is abundance of power to live and love [in our messy world]; to put God on display in our difficulties.” Larry Crabb

 

Soul direction

Clued-in Soul

When finally realizing lies in our lives that we have lived by and their affect on us, we realize how deceived we can become.  This song is a powerful declaration of coming out of that shadow into truth:

http://music.theohhellos.com/track/dear-wormwood

I love CS Lewis’s portrayal and exposure of our enemy in Screwtape Letters.  I especially liked these words in the song:

 

But now I understand you and I will not be part of your designs

I know who I am now

and all that you’ve made of me

I know who you are now

I named you my enemy

I know who I am now

I know who I want to be

I want to be whole again

 

“…we are not unaware of his schemes…” 

2 Cor. 2:11

 

How subtly our enemy comes and infiltrates our thinking.  That’s why we need to be aware of his schemes, alert to what’s going on in our souls so we can stand against the lies and face what we’re reacting to and why.   I’m amazed how he still tries so hard to bring us down…and amazed at how easily at times I’m caught off guard.

 

A counselor friend of ours says, “Life gets steeper”.  I was kind of hoping for some slackening on the road into the later years, some ease and maybe a ride up the hill :).

But as we face our own limits, difficult conversations, messiness in our world, I think that keeping ourselves engaged in the basics of caring for our souls is what will help keep us from giving up or crashing and burning.

Reading the account of the 12 spies bringing back news of the land to the Israelites brought this despairing feeling they must have had after realizing they just bought 40 more years in the wilderness because of a scheme against them that they fell for.  If they had only seen the crafty poison they were being infected with, keeping them from what they really wanted, they would have saved a lot of time and regret.  They were duped by the unfavorable circumstances that God often orchestrates so He can show Himself strong as we move forward with Him. They chose to go back to the familiar, to ignore all that they had seen of extraordinary care and power, and to reject where God was taking them.

 

How the enemy wants to escort us off the narrow road by his enticements to a better life elsewhere, an easier way, an answer to a demand.

 

How refreshing is Caleb’s voice saying, ‘No, let’s go into this land, we are able to overcome it! It is a good land.  The Lord will bring us in…’ (Numbers 13:30; 14:7) But unfortunately the crowd overtook and made the decision.  Such a sad scene, when they were all so ready to settle after being in the wilderness for about 2 years.

 

How can you clue in to the schemes against you?

 

What appeal is trying to lure you away from courage?

 “These things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction.” 

1 Cor. 10:11

Soul Growth

Ice pack on my Soul

(written Nov 2014)

I’m thinking out loud as I sit here with an icepack on my shoulder.  :-/

I feel quite wimpish to say that I have ended up crying during physical therapy sessions on my shoulder several times this week.  The poor gal wasn’t sure what to do with me…and my partially “frozen” shoulder isn’t a bad case but it kills, what she does to me.  And now I have to do the exercises at home…ugh.

I’m very determined, though it feels like torture innoculation or something…I’ve almost cried doing it to myself, but I want my shoulder back!  So I inflict pain upon myself because I believe it’s going to make a difference.  I do have my doubts!

 

I have to wonder if this physical principle can carry over to when God seemingly inflicts pain on us.  He’s after strong joints and better strength & flexibility and freedom of movement…in our lives.

 

Some possible parallels:

 

Shoulder:                                                                   Soul:

 

Physical trauma/gradual debilitation                      Emotional trauma/gradual debilitation

 

Unknowing neglect of joint/muscle                        Denial, neglect of soul

 

Physical Pain                                                        Psychological pain/spiritual pain

 

Limited motion                                                     Limited caring/giving/awareness

 

Annoyance w/exercises                                         Annoyance facing self

 

Decreased strength                                               Decreased resilience

 

Physical Therapy = a choice to cooperate, to embrace temporary pain to work toward increased motion (slowly).

It is “annoyance with a purpose”! 🙂 It leads to increased strength and the ice afterwards helps the pain and inflammation go down.

 

Where do I need to apply PT principles to my soul?

 

Perhaps there’s been a trauma big or small…that you have not revisited.  It’s not going to just go away.  The Dr. told me about my shoulder, “the sooner the better; the longer you wait the harder it is.”  It will cause pain and that’s so that you know it’s there and it needs attention.

 

If you notice limited ability, capacity or joy, could that point to a need in your soul?  What about the annoyance of taking a look at it and asking God what he’s drawing attention to?

It’s annoying because it takes us where it hurts, where we don’t want to look, but it also begins the path toward increased movement, freedom and strength in our inner lives…leading to the ability to love freely and give of ourselves…

 

I noticed improvement after 2 weeks of PT on my shoulder…I think we can apply the same process to our souls if we pay attention to the pain.

Try this soul therapy exercise:

 

  • Stop, sit, deep breath, in and out, close eyes, wait…
  • Then notice what is the first anxiety that comes, don’t push it away, let it sit with you and tell you something about your soul.
  • Listen, breathe, accept, open your eyes.

 

What did you learn?  It may be painful.  That’s a start.

 

And what could the “ice pack” be?  Something that soothes and numbs after a hard workout to chase away inflammatory thoughts…?

Maybe ice cream! 🙂  Definitely soothes the soul.

 

Better would be soothing music of God’s all encompassing love for you or a talk with a friend about what you noticed or a moment of casting a care upon the One who cares.  (1 Peter 5:7)

 

Soul Searching

Soul Bent

 

 

Our souls bend toward a negative downward pull;

 

that feeling when you get up in the morning that you’re not quite cutting it, you’re missing important pieces, you’re just not what you should be.  If we don’t shake ourselves and wake ourselves, we will continue bending

and descending into that way of thinking and welcoming “a thousand other shards of the curse…” as Russell Moore put it.

When the enemy of our souls catches us in those moments of self-disdain, we often, like Adam & Eve, submit to his taunts and give in to his rule when we are supposed to be ruling him; listening to

truth, stepping away from the accuser and toward the Creator.

 

The accuser convinces us we don’t deserve the gift of life, or love or joy.  We refuse God’s grace, thinking we need to feel worthy or earn it. We fall prey to the accuser’s schemes when he doesn’t have a leg to stand on (that’s why he’s a serpent).

There are at least 2 ditches we can fall into here with regard to this incredible grace:

2 ways our soul likes to bend.  (Ideas from Tim Keller’s book Prayer)

 

Ditch 1 = “Forgiveness can’t be free.”  ->I have to earn God’s grace and mercy through how bad I feel about my sin or how good I can make myself.  He can’t love me because of my sin.  I have to change myself. (Wallowing in self, Unbelief, No heart change)

 

Ditch 2 = “O it doesn’t matter if I sin, God will forgive me.” ->Flippancy toward the infinite payment for my sin, prayers are trivial and not life changing, repentance is really self-pity. I justify, minimize my sin or blame. (No change of false beliefs or inordinate desires).

 

Think of a father giving a disobedient child that has been forgiven, a beautiful coveted gift, but the child refuses because he feels so bad about what he’d done.  He doesn’t accept or believe his father’s forgiveness. (ditch 1)

 

Or think of the disobedient child knowing his father won’t disown him, acts entitled and does nothing of what the father asks, is self-serving and feels justified. (ditch 2)

 

How distressful for the father.

 

For those of us who lean toward ditch 1 – like Peter when he said to Jesus, “No, you won’t wash my feet” (I can’t let You see or touch my dirt) and Jesus says back “Then you have no part with Me…” John 13:8.  Then Peter begs him to wash the rest of him too.

 

For those of us who lean toward ditch 2 – like the Corinthians who were still living only for this world and didn’t see the point of living a different life. 1 Cor. 3:1

 

“Do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?” Romans 2:4

 

He leads us there to the place of being able to face ourself and let go of the thing that’s holding us back so we can receive from Him and be free.  That’s cause for joy!

*

“…we also urge you not to receive the grace of God in vain…but in everything commending ourselves as servants of God, in much endurance, in afflictions, in hardships…”   2 Cor. 6:1,4

 

So, we receive His grace not because we tidied ourselves up nor so that we can just live however we want.  It’s a gift so we can walk in newness of life.  Free to love and give and go through difficulties with purpose.

 

What have we not yet received or opened that the Father so painstakingly paid a high price for, because we don’t feel we deserve it? (ditch 1) or because we really want something else, like our own way? (ditch 2)

 

What do you need to do to get out of the ditch?

Soul direction

Soul Grit

 

Elizabeth, Mother of John – Forerunner of Jesus

 

The angel said to Mary, “…behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son.”  Luke 1:36

 

Living under Roman oppression in her own land, being called, pegged as “barren”, Elizabeth stuck to the truth she knew, fulfilling the God given requirements of the time. After centuries of her people not hearing much from God, she still believed the ancient holy prophets’ words and carried on with worship, despite major disappointment in her life. I’d call that soul grit.

 

“And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly…”

Luke 1:6

 

And seeming a bit late, a beam of Son came, rebelling against what the world around was telling her, and re-named her. Like a cloud-covered dusk sneaking in light in the nick of time, Elizabeth’s womb awakens to its Maker’s curious bidding all but too late. Weary-of-hoping, settling-for-being-less in other’s eyes, she herself is startled to the reality of something new in her. Past her time and beyond any relevance of her day, she receives a joyful honor that only a few understood.

 

“your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord.”  Luke1:13,-15

 

God seems to like to do things like that in our later years: surprise us with newness. I’m seeing it especially in those who take notice of His stirrings, who resist the pull from truth and the lure to complacency. I see it in those who risk indulging in faith. He infuses with a wink things in us we’d given up dreaming about, when we feel used up and irrelevant, like Moses after near fatal failure and a lot of years. God’s timing seems so off.  

Mary was too young;

Elizabeth was too old. Moses was way out of date. But God who is beyond time bestows on time a gravity that deeply effects eternity. What will I do with my later years?

 

I’m noticing some newness going on in me and working on resisting the pull to complacency. And wait, I think I see a burning bush!

 

How are you attuning to receive the new He wants to conceive in you?

 

Soul training

Soul Thanks

I was utterly moved by Ann Voskamp’s post yesterday

 

http://annvoskamp.com/2017/11/how-to-live-through-anything-these-holidays-when-youre-finding-it-hard-to-even-breathe/

 

describing despairing and crumbling people she’s met who have been transformed by a change of understanding through giving thanks.   When we think we’re being slighted or missing out, or reeling with shame or we can’t figure out why a certain thing is happening to us or to a loved one, we’ve got to wake up.

 

How painful and piercing are God’s words to His people in Malachi 1:2

 

“I have loved you,” says the LORD.”

 

And imagine the insolence and smugness when they answer:

 

“How have you loved us?” 

 

I’m afraid I can get into that mode. But we don’t have to stay there.

 

Take in these quotes from her post:

 

“What you think you can’t handle — might actually be God handing you a gift.”

“…giving thanks isn’t a pollyanna game — but a powerhouse game-changer”

“God asks us to give thanks in everything — because this is the way you live through anything.”

 

“Giving thanks is life giving.”                              “…barren places can break with bloom.”

 

Isn’t that so comforting? I’m thankful God shows me what’s really going on in my heart. How I can saunter in an entitled attitudinal haze. I’m thankful that he can change my heart to be thankful!

 

Thankfulness is a great weapon against small mindedness.  “Give thanks in all things…” 1 Thes. 5:18

 

How could you practice thankfulness today?

Soul direction

Soul Shame Room

Jesus scorned shame. He hated it.

Because it hinders, muffles, binds, squeezes and keeps from truth and growth. It tried to take him but he didn’t let it.

 

“…Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:2

 

It’s like that annoying parasitic weed I often found in my little garden trying to subtly make it’s choking way

around my plants. Shame bids us away from community, away from acceptance, forgiveness and joy to bow under its power of self-disdain and regret. The path in my soul to the shame room was pretty well worn, visited too many times…though I noticed a few weeks ago as I was making my way there again, that the path had some foliage growing on it; parts of it were becoming overgrown, especially the second part heading into the door. I’m spending less and less time there.

See, I’m learning to catch myself on the way there and make a U turn! I was heading there after I didn’t get a response I thought I should and feeling the inward pull to withdraw into the lies of “I don’t matter” and “They don’t want you” and instead I said, “No, that’s actually not true. I do matter. I’m not going there today.” Shame was wooing me and I called its bluff! Wow. I felt myself do a 180 toward truth

 

and get right back in the conversation, letting go of the inner pull…and with joy at that! We have power over the imposter of shame. We don’t have to go to the shame room. We can scorn it, just like Jesus did!

 

Now that’s freeing.

 

Dr. Thompson in Soul of Shame says “To be human is to be infected with this phenomenon we call shame. …many of us carry shame less publicly often outside the view of even some of our closest friends…common scenarios carry the burden of shame in ways that we work hard to cover up. And our coping strategies have become so automatic that we may be completely unaware of its presence and activity.”

Do you find yourself at times on your way to the shame room?

What keeps you there?

Have you tried a U turn lately?