"When the stakes are high, bow down low" ~Beth Moore
My religion has really been messed up. God allowed some great big challenges in our lives that left us changed. It wrecked us in a good way; a beautiful way. What tried to kill us physically, saved our souls from some mass confusion. But it has left us unsettled. A little nervous. Discontent even knowing that there is more...different than what we have known. I have thoughts of how did I miss this before and what in the hey am I suppose to do with all of this now?
I often forget that other people outside of my little circle of friends read this blog! (WHAT?!?!) So let me give you a quick little back story. In July of 2013, I was diagnosed with AML and three months later had a bone marrow transplant. It was overwhelming to say the least, but to this day remembering when I said bye to my babies can still bring tears to my eyes. Nothing about this journey has been fast or easy. There are specific moments that are etched in my heart that I just don't forget. Those memories don't make me sad....they make me grateful. SO GRATEFUL.
I have kept journals for as long as I can remember. And for as long as I can remember, I have truly longed to know God. I mean really know God like I read of in the Bible. The God that I have grown up hearing about. The God that I have given my soul to. As I read through old journals, I pick up on the fact that most of my Christian walk has been a little frustrating. I have gone through phases, as the church has. And so much of the time, I grabbed one side of the story and took off running feeling like something just wasn't quite right.
I grew up under the hell-fire and brimstone phase. This teaching left me feeling like I was never saved. I lived in such fear that Jesus was going to appear in the middle of a bad thought and I would be left behind. Really. I truly had very little peace as a young Christian. Instead of peace, I had anxiety with maybe a touch of depression and a huge dose of fear. Doesn't sound like the grace I now know. Is hell real? YES! But so is grace and redemption. So is the cross and the love of our Savior. A God that longs to show compassion to us. A God that gets the bad rap of striking us down with lightening and keeping His fingers crossed that we can make it to heaven, is the God that made the way for us to live eternally with Him. He is WITH us...a very present help.
Then the name it and claim it phase. OH MY WORD!! The stories I could tell with this one! Let me say straight up that I know that our words are powerful. God says that we have the power of life and death in our mouth. He tells us to call those things that are not, as though they are. He says we will 'eat the fruit of our lips'. (Are you still with me?) I believe and am sold out to this power within us. But wow, how quickly we can become greedy and selfish with this truth. I am just not so convinced that this truth is for us to get more and better. Not that God doesn't want us to have great things or that we should feel guilty for saving or buying or believing for "better" or "amazing" things. This is not meant to offend, but I just don't believe Christ died on the cross for us to only gain for ourselves. I believe this power is within us for His Kingdom. For His heart's desires. And His plans. How many of us have had true needs; real needs, and yet we sow seeds for a brand new car? We walk around thanking God for our new car that we haven't gotten yet while our souls are exhausted and tangible needs have gone unmet. The cross is more...much more...than these things. God says that what we see is temporary, but what is unseen is ETERNAL. And that is what I believe the cross is about. Eternity. Our souls. Saving us from that "hell-fire and brimstone".
With those two phases alone, you can see where my faith got a little messed up with some religion! But cancer wrecked my religion; my confused belief system. My faith never wavered. Oh, you bet I had some emotions. I am human and so are you, but deep down I had peace. I had hope. I believed. I truly never asked "why me?" and I have never once thought that God "did this to me". But when things were long and hard, when there were no quick fixes, I tried every religious 'trick' I had up my sleeve! I was told at times to "hold on" then I was told to " let go". I was told I "have not because I asked not". Then I was told "don't ask, just receive." Shew, that's enough to wear anybody out! I wasn't resisting healing or taking the approach of whatever will be, will be. On the contrary, I was desperate for it. And I am sure there is someone out there that just read that statement and thought, "Well, that's the problem. You wanted "it" more than Him". I laid hands on myself, prophesied, and spoke His words. And there were still days of nothing. I went through my list of "sins" that maybe I needed to repent for and still nothing. How many more hoops did this girl need to jump through?
Then came rest. Rest in a God that was bigger than any religion. A God that was not holding my miracle for when I got my grammar all right. He knew my heart and He knows yours. There were times that my prayers were truly me in a ball in the floor, grieving and desperate. I call that my sacrifice of praise; it was prayer because it was me desperate for a God that I KNEW could heal. Even rest felt awkward at times...I mean shouldn't I be up in arms through all of this? Is rest giving up or giving in? Not at all. It's fighting from an angle different than the world.
"Courage comes from a heart that is convinced that it is loved". (Beth Moore) And love is where I stopped jumping through hoops. Knowing His love for me, gave me the courage to stop fighting in my own strength. It gave me to courage to believe that He is for me and not against me; He is a good God! His love allowed me to rest in knowing that He is faithful to His words. He never leaves me. He works ALL things together for my good and sometimes "my good", means finding Him to be light in the darkness. His love. It gave me the courage to get off the treadmill of thinking it was me...something I was or was not doing. Something I did or did not do. Without knowing His love and His word, some well meaning comments could have made me feel like I wasn't doing enough and that is was all my fault; it all depended on me. But I know that I live in a broken world. I know that God says we WILL have trials. He says it rains on the just and the unjust. So why believe? Because our God is eternal. He is the God of ALL hope. My faith is in the Cross. My faith is in a Savior that knows there is more to the here and now and orchestrates our lives for HIS glory and the salvation of our souls. He longs for us to know Him and to make Him known.
We all try to put things in a box in the attempt for us to understand them. And I am no exception. I have thought that had God healed me all at once with one prayer, I could be dangerous! Boy, I would be throwing those hoops out left and right! "Do this. Don't do that. Do it like this, not like that. People, can't you all just believe?!" But instead my light and momentary afflictions have created in me something far more valuable than this world has to offer....not just freedom here, but a soul that now craves to worship my God just because it's Him. Don't get me wrong. I still get caught up in "stuff" and I don't pray or read the Bible every single day. But when I don't, I am so quick to feel it. To miss it.
Our sweet little girl we sponsor in Africa wrote me this..."I am glad you are my sponsor. I pray for you Shae". A little girl with not much at all, a little girl that sleeps in a hut without a real floor prays for me. She doesn't know about my issues or what I have or don't have. She prays for my soul. My faith. It makes me want to be more like her. She gets our Savior. She doesn't cling to Him for more or better. She clings to Him and believes in Him because she sees her eternal need for saving.
I wrote in my journal not so long ago, "God, why can't you just heal me? All of me?" And this is what I felt down deep in my soul....'Because I wanted to show you more of My heart. I am more than just one thing. I am not only Healer. I am Peace. I am Savior. I am Redemption. I am Friend. I am Love'. Through all of this, I have seen aspects of God that I just don't think I would have seen otherwise. This cancer thing woke my soul up and crazy enough, brought peace out of mass confusion with all of the "rights' and the "wrongs" of faith. It has left me with just knowing Him and that's enough. It has let me read His word and filter it through His love for me; for all of us. I may not know much more about cancer or even Biblical theology and that's okay. It's kind of freeing. Because after all of this, it feels good to just know Him with no strings attached. Just Jesus. Just love. No hoops.
I think what always intrigues me about scripture and what always keeps me wanting more, is that throughout the word, God is the Hero of the story. He always came to the rescue. Now my prayer has been answered. I have experienced the God of the Bible. He has come to my rescue in more ways than one. Was His rescue in the form of instant healing? No. Was His rescue keeping me from something as yuck as cancer? No. His rescue was Peace. It was grace felt not only way down deep in my soul, but also seeing it in my babies, my husband, my family and friends. It was Hope. It was Love. And yes, healing! Some people can look at our battles over the last few years and see a family under attack. I will not argue that, but I see more than that. I see a family that used to be afraid of words that were thrown out in the Bible...words like fire, smoke, raging waters, and death (YIKES!)....finding courage in the God that says none of those things would consume us or overtake us.
I will leave you with words that David Crowder wrote. Words that just won't leave me alone and words that I pray will chase you down to and give you Hope and to know His great love for YOU. Read this:
"Scripture is about innocence lost, it is about displacement, about things not being right and a search for belonging and home and forgiveness and reconciliation, the tension of death and life, what it means to be alive. The story is not about making bad people good, it is about making dead people alive. The story sold is rarely that. What if we really started believing?"
Words of Truth, Words to Rest in:
"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit" ~ Romans 15:13
"For men are not cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love." ~ Lamentations 3:33
"Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer" ~ Romans 12:12
"Simon, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat. BUT I have prayed for you, Simon that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brother" ~ Luke 22::31-32 (Sounds a little like the prayer of a precious girl from Africa!)
"For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." ~ 2 Corinthians 4:17-18
Our God is " a God that gives endurance and encouragement" ~ Romans 15:5
My religion has really been messed up. God allowed some great big challenges in our lives that left us changed. It wrecked us in a good way; a beautiful way. What tried to kill us physically, saved our souls from some mass confusion. But it has left us unsettled. A little nervous. Discontent even knowing that there is more...different than what we have known. I have thoughts of how did I miss this before and what in the hey am I suppose to do with all of this now?
I often forget that other people outside of my little circle of friends read this blog! (WHAT?!?!) So let me give you a quick little back story. In July of 2013, I was diagnosed with AML and three months later had a bone marrow transplant. It was overwhelming to say the least, but to this day remembering when I said bye to my babies can still bring tears to my eyes. Nothing about this journey has been fast or easy. There are specific moments that are etched in my heart that I just don't forget. Those memories don't make me sad....they make me grateful. SO GRATEFUL.
I have kept journals for as long as I can remember. And for as long as I can remember, I have truly longed to know God. I mean really know God like I read of in the Bible. The God that I have grown up hearing about. The God that I have given my soul to. As I read through old journals, I pick up on the fact that most of my Christian walk has been a little frustrating. I have gone through phases, as the church has. And so much of the time, I grabbed one side of the story and took off running feeling like something just wasn't quite right.
I grew up under the hell-fire and brimstone phase. This teaching left me feeling like I was never saved. I lived in such fear that Jesus was going to appear in the middle of a bad thought and I would be left behind. Really. I truly had very little peace as a young Christian. Instead of peace, I had anxiety with maybe a touch of depression and a huge dose of fear. Doesn't sound like the grace I now know. Is hell real? YES! But so is grace and redemption. So is the cross and the love of our Savior. A God that longs to show compassion to us. A God that gets the bad rap of striking us down with lightening and keeping His fingers crossed that we can make it to heaven, is the God that made the way for us to live eternally with Him. He is WITH us...a very present help.
Then the name it and claim it phase. OH MY WORD!! The stories I could tell with this one! Let me say straight up that I know that our words are powerful. God says that we have the power of life and death in our mouth. He tells us to call those things that are not, as though they are. He says we will 'eat the fruit of our lips'. (Are you still with me?) I believe and am sold out to this power within us. But wow, how quickly we can become greedy and selfish with this truth. I am just not so convinced that this truth is for us to get more and better. Not that God doesn't want us to have great things or that we should feel guilty for saving or buying or believing for "better" or "amazing" things. This is not meant to offend, but I just don't believe Christ died on the cross for us to only gain for ourselves. I believe this power is within us for His Kingdom. For His heart's desires. And His plans. How many of us have had true needs; real needs, and yet we sow seeds for a brand new car? We walk around thanking God for our new car that we haven't gotten yet while our souls are exhausted and tangible needs have gone unmet. The cross is more...much more...than these things. God says that what we see is temporary, but what is unseen is ETERNAL. And that is what I believe the cross is about. Eternity. Our souls. Saving us from that "hell-fire and brimstone".
With those two phases alone, you can see where my faith got a little messed up with some religion! But cancer wrecked my religion; my confused belief system. My faith never wavered. Oh, you bet I had some emotions. I am human and so are you, but deep down I had peace. I had hope. I believed. I truly never asked "why me?" and I have never once thought that God "did this to me". But when things were long and hard, when there were no quick fixes, I tried every religious 'trick' I had up my sleeve! I was told at times to "hold on" then I was told to " let go". I was told I "have not because I asked not". Then I was told "don't ask, just receive." Shew, that's enough to wear anybody out! I wasn't resisting healing or taking the approach of whatever will be, will be. On the contrary, I was desperate for it. And I am sure there is someone out there that just read that statement and thought, "Well, that's the problem. You wanted "it" more than Him". I laid hands on myself, prophesied, and spoke His words. And there were still days of nothing. I went through my list of "sins" that maybe I needed to repent for and still nothing. How many more hoops did this girl need to jump through?
Then came rest. Rest in a God that was bigger than any religion. A God that was not holding my miracle for when I got my grammar all right. He knew my heart and He knows yours. There were times that my prayers were truly me in a ball in the floor, grieving and desperate. I call that my sacrifice of praise; it was prayer because it was me desperate for a God that I KNEW could heal. Even rest felt awkward at times...I mean shouldn't I be up in arms through all of this? Is rest giving up or giving in? Not at all. It's fighting from an angle different than the world.
"Courage comes from a heart that is convinced that it is loved". (Beth Moore) And love is where I stopped jumping through hoops. Knowing His love for me, gave me the courage to stop fighting in my own strength. It gave me to courage to believe that He is for me and not against me; He is a good God! His love allowed me to rest in knowing that He is faithful to His words. He never leaves me. He works ALL things together for my good and sometimes "my good", means finding Him to be light in the darkness. His love. It gave me the courage to get off the treadmill of thinking it was me...something I was or was not doing. Something I did or did not do. Without knowing His love and His word, some well meaning comments could have made me feel like I wasn't doing enough and that is was all my fault; it all depended on me. But I know that I live in a broken world. I know that God says we WILL have trials. He says it rains on the just and the unjust. So why believe? Because our God is eternal. He is the God of ALL hope. My faith is in the Cross. My faith is in a Savior that knows there is more to the here and now and orchestrates our lives for HIS glory and the salvation of our souls. He longs for us to know Him and to make Him known.
We all try to put things in a box in the attempt for us to understand them. And I am no exception. I have thought that had God healed me all at once with one prayer, I could be dangerous! Boy, I would be throwing those hoops out left and right! "Do this. Don't do that. Do it like this, not like that. People, can't you all just believe?!" But instead my light and momentary afflictions have created in me something far more valuable than this world has to offer....not just freedom here, but a soul that now craves to worship my God just because it's Him. Don't get me wrong. I still get caught up in "stuff" and I don't pray or read the Bible every single day. But when I don't, I am so quick to feel it. To miss it.
Our sweet little girl we sponsor in Africa wrote me this..."I am glad you are my sponsor. I pray for you Shae". A little girl with not much at all, a little girl that sleeps in a hut without a real floor prays for me. She doesn't know about my issues or what I have or don't have. She prays for my soul. My faith. It makes me want to be more like her. She gets our Savior. She doesn't cling to Him for more or better. She clings to Him and believes in Him because she sees her eternal need for saving.
I wrote in my journal not so long ago, "God, why can't you just heal me? All of me?" And this is what I felt down deep in my soul....'Because I wanted to show you more of My heart. I am more than just one thing. I am not only Healer. I am Peace. I am Savior. I am Redemption. I am Friend. I am Love'. Through all of this, I have seen aspects of God that I just don't think I would have seen otherwise. This cancer thing woke my soul up and crazy enough, brought peace out of mass confusion with all of the "rights' and the "wrongs" of faith. It has left me with just knowing Him and that's enough. It has let me read His word and filter it through His love for me; for all of us. I may not know much more about cancer or even Biblical theology and that's okay. It's kind of freeing. Because after all of this, it feels good to just know Him with no strings attached. Just Jesus. Just love. No hoops.
I think what always intrigues me about scripture and what always keeps me wanting more, is that throughout the word, God is the Hero of the story. He always came to the rescue. Now my prayer has been answered. I have experienced the God of the Bible. He has come to my rescue in more ways than one. Was His rescue in the form of instant healing? No. Was His rescue keeping me from something as yuck as cancer? No. His rescue was Peace. It was grace felt not only way down deep in my soul, but also seeing it in my babies, my husband, my family and friends. It was Hope. It was Love. And yes, healing! Some people can look at our battles over the last few years and see a family under attack. I will not argue that, but I see more than that. I see a family that used to be afraid of words that were thrown out in the Bible...words like fire, smoke, raging waters, and death (YIKES!)....finding courage in the God that says none of those things would consume us or overtake us.
I will leave you with words that David Crowder wrote. Words that just won't leave me alone and words that I pray will chase you down to and give you Hope and to know His great love for YOU. Read this:
"Scripture is about innocence lost, it is about displacement, about things not being right and a search for belonging and home and forgiveness and reconciliation, the tension of death and life, what it means to be alive. The story is not about making bad people good, it is about making dead people alive. The story sold is rarely that. What if we really started believing?"
Words of Truth, Words to Rest in:
"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit" ~ Romans 15:13
"For men are not cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love." ~ Lamentations 3:33
"Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer" ~ Romans 12:12
"Simon, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat. BUT I have prayed for you, Simon that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brother" ~ Luke 22::31-32 (Sounds a little like the prayer of a precious girl from Africa!)
"For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." ~ 2 Corinthians 4:17-18
Our God is " a God that gives endurance and encouragement" ~ Romans 15:5
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