When you are not the One who fills me, I am soon filled with endless thoughts and concerns that divide me and tear me away from You. Only You can set my heart at rest, only You can let me dwell in Your presence.                                                            -Henri Nouwen

What thoughts and concerns are tearing you away from God today? Let’s not give general answers. Nope. This time drill down and name them outright.

                        Conflicts at work

                        Demands of small children

                        Loneliness

                        Injustices

Psalm 62:5-8 takes a noble stab at answering the original question. See if it lends insight to you:

“Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken. My salvation and my honor depend on God; he is my mighty rock, my refuge. Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.”

How is God described? My rock (twice), my salvation, my fortress, and my refuge (twice). What picture does that form in your mind? For me, it is one of protection; I am not going my journey alone, and he will be my fortification when all manner of troubles are knocking at the door of my life. This leaves me at rest in my soul even if circumstances are not vastly different. Here we learn AGAIN that we need to be people of the word. God’s word is our plumb line in a world upside down. If we don’t know it, we cannot claim it. Commit to spending time daily in his word—try it for a month and let me know how your rest quotient changes!

What does Psalm 62 ask of us? Find our rest and our hope in GOD ALONE—not in our jobs, our health, people’s expectations, etc. I am told to TRUST HIM—not an easy task when the biting difficulties of life seek to gobble my soul. So how do we trust him? “Pour out your hearts to him.” Pray. Pray honestly, openly, consistently. I cannot tell you how this very verse has changed the course of my life.

Have you ever asked Him what He likes to hear? Love unexpressed grows cold, and soon it is not love at all but an arrangement. Do you think that maybe praise is the key to moving from knowing about God to knowing Him intimately and being powerful in Him? -Sylvia Gunter

One of the earliest lessons I learned as a believer was the prominent place praise and thanksgiving must occupy in my life. I only wish I practiced them more. It seems that fear, anxiety, and worries dominate my thinking and thus the way I relate to the Lord. Am I alone in this? When these toxic emotions are allowed to rule my spirit, my prayers are reduced to grocery lists of the things I want the Lord to accomplish, and then I am frustrated when he does not hop to it and get them answered. The Lord has been showing me how to have an ongoing dialogue of thanksgiving in my heart as I walk through each day. It is changing the atmosphere in my soul.

The Bible is full of all kinds of prayers. Of course, requests were made and answered in Bible times; but it seems to me that the prayers were far more focused on expressing love and devotion to God, thanksgiving and praise for who he is and what he has done. When I exercise these spiritual disciplines myself, there is softness in my spirit, humility in my requests, and awe in my heart that serve to calm my fears, anxieties, and worries.

I am so grateful for the way women are portrayed in the Word of God. A hero of mine is Hannah, Samuel’s mother. You’ll find her in 1 Samuel, chapters 1 and 2. Here was a woman with every right to be worried about her closed womb, angry with her husband for taking multiple spouses, and fearful of the other wife’s tirades.  She was shamefully treated by her husband’s second wife, Peninnah, over her inability to have children. Here’s the way the scriptures put it: “Her rival kept provoking her in order to irritate her” (1 Samuel 1:6). I probably would have punched her! But not Hannah—she went to the temple and prayed. She cast her cares on the Lord, and when God gave her the desires of her heart, she spontaneously erupted in a prayer of praise and thanksgiving, found in 1 Samuel 2. You’ll notice not a word was mentioned in the prayer about the long wait for children or about Peninnah. Hannah was caught up by the glorious God who heard and answered her prayers.

I know all of us have our fair share of worries and fears. God wants us to do what Hannah did—pour out our hearts to him (see Philippians 4:6-9 and 1 Peter 5:7). But let’s make a decided effort to spend more time praising and thanking God than we do presenting requests. How do you think this practice will change the atmosphere in your soul?

Be even tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offence. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it. -Colossians 3:13-13 TM

I don’t know about you, but these verses cut me to the quick. Why? Because my forgiving others is directly linked to Christ’s forgiveness of me.

Do you remember the day you came to faith in Jesus? I do. And a major reason I trusted him as Savior was to be forgiven. I had made one poor choice after another all through high school and into college. One bad, embarrassing memory stacked on another. Sometimes I could not get to sleep at night because all the full-colored memories would drown me is a sea of shame and guilt-with no way of escape. I could not go back and change what I had done. I knew I’d be haunted forever.

So, when I heard for the first time in my life who Jesus is and why he came-to forgive and restore me. I was shocked. I came stumbling into my faith-not really sure what I was getting into. But one thing I heard loud and clear: I’d been forgiven by the Master. I have quite simply, never been the same. All I do, all I say is a thank you card to the one who rescued me from the dark pit of sin. What a miracle!

I am heading for Utah this week to lead a weekend-long woman’s conference on the topic of forgiveness from the content of my book Grace and Guts: What It Takes to Forgive. Over one hundred women will gather to tackle this vital issue. It will be my joy to lead them down fresh paths to the hope, peace, and freedom that comes from embracing forgiveness and learning how to extend it to ones who have cut us deeply. It will be a highly interactive gathering. I will lead women through various spiritual exercises to personalize what is being taught. There will be discussion groups, forgiveness journals, and personal prayer times. I am amazed the way the Lord uses the book and these weekends to recalibrate lives.

Hey, let’s stay connected via: facebook, fan page or subscribe to my blog. Plus, I would love to hear how Grace and Guts has helped your journey toward forgiveness.

 At certain times and places; God will build a mysterious wall around us. He will take away all supports we customarily lean upon, and will remove our ordinary ways of doing things. God will close us off to something divine, completely new and unexpected, and that cannot be understood by examining our previous circumstances. We will be in a place where we do not know what is happening, where God is cutting the cloth of our lives by a new pattern, and thus where He causes us to look to Him.

                                                                        -Author Unknown

God is committed to our growth.

He will choose the God-designed time and place, uniquely created by him, to draw us closer to himself. They typically are uncomfortable and unexpected. It requires a great deal of mental restraint not to push back against his dealings. We will have to make new commitments to practice the ancient disciplines of thanksgiving, praise, and worship, even when our emotions are begging us to do otherwise.

Have you perused the life of the apostle Paul lately? You will find it to be  a stunning reminder of  what spiritual tenacity looks like: his apostleship questioned, shipwrecked, beaten, imprisoned, starved, chased, stoned, maligned, and abandoned by his own men; but the consistent theme: praise, thanksgiving, and surrender comes through load and clear.  Good reminders as we begin a new year of ministry

I pray for the day when we can say with our friend, Paul, the following:

“Because of the extravagance of those revelations, and so I wouldn’t get a big head, I was given the gift of a handicap to keep me in constant touch with my limitations. Satan’s angel did his best to get me down; what he in fact did was push me to my knees. No danger then of walking around high and mighty! At first I didn’t think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that, and then he told me,

            My grace is enough; it’s all you need.

            My strength comes into its own in your weakness.

Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ’s strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer, these limitations that cut me down to size-abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.”

                                                                                    -2 Corinthians 12:7-10 (The Message)  

Take a moment and recall other times of testing. Did you come out the other side loving God more? Did your understanding of his character grow? Did your character grow (Romans 5:1-5)?

We may wait till he explains, because we know that Jesus reigns.

It puzzles me; but, Lord, You understand, and will one day explain this crooked thing.

Meanwhile, I know that it has worked out Your best—it’s very crookedness taught me to cling. You have fenced up my ways, made my paths crooked, to keep my wandering eyes fixed on You; to make me what I was not, humble, patient; to draw my heart from earthly love to You.

So I will thank and praise You for this puzzle, and trust where I cannot understand. Rejoicing, You do hold me worth such testing, I cling the closer to Your guiding hand.

- Mrs. Charles E. Cowman

What “crooked thing” are you facing today? A dying marriage, a wayward child, a pressing physical limitation, or an on-going financial crunch? You make your own list.

Don’t you sometimes just want to scream, “Why are you letting all this happen to me? I thought you took care of your children? I certainly do not feel cared for AT ALL!”

I am thankful for the Psalms because they give us plenty of permission to ask our emotionally charged questions. Have you read Psalm 13 or Psalm 77 lately? Both of them contain a whole list of questions asked of God in the middle of confusing circumstances. Each song resonates with me because of their naked honesty mixed with raw despair.

I am glad God knew I would have days (seasons?) like that and provided actual sentences to sum up my emotions.

But one other observation is needed as we glance at these psalms: after the litany of questions there is a fresh commitment to love and trust God IN the complications of life. Psalm 13:5: “But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation.”

Psalm 77:11: “I will remember the deeds of the Lord; I will meditate on all your works and consider all your mighty deeds.” In both psalms, there was the beautiful balance of being honest with how I am doing while choosing to remember who God is and all he has done.

So I will thank and praise You for this puzzle, and trust where I cannot understand. Rejoicing You do hold me worth such testing, I cling closer to Your guiding hand.

Can you thank him for this crooked place you are in? He loves to hear our voice of trust in troubled times.

What about the life of Christ that beckons you to grow in your capacity to forgive?

For me, it is in Luke 23 when Jesus said, “Father, forgive them [the murderers, mockers, and abusers] for they don’t know what they are doing?”

Are you kidding me? Seems like they knew exactly what they were doing! These very men nailed him to the cross, stuck it in the ground, spit on him, and divided his clothes among themselves.  The atmosphere was thick with hate, spite, and jealousy.

Yet, he forgives them and me and that simply leaves me speechless.

I was not at the foot of the cross that day hurling curses with the masses. But I have my own shameful list of misdeed: stealing, lying, hating, speaking evil about others, pride, rebellion, and unbelief. I lust, deceive, and envy. And left to my own devises, I would still be in bondage to all of these. But I have believed that Jesus died for ME that day and all the misdeeds and sins of my life. His forgiveness has reached even me. That leaves me speechless, too.

I am far from perfect. Very far. But as I seek to know him through his word and and come humbly to him in prayer when I fall into sin…that same love that kept him on the  cross comes to me again, and again, and again.

What kind of love is that? Amazing love.