Let Him Do It

Today I thought I'd set down some recent thoughts I've been grappling with, spawned as much from our daily Bible classes as from what I'm dealing with in my life.

It's a little bit confusing. Or seems so. I know I'm to live in peace and relaxation in the Lord. He has won the victory already, and in Him so have I. His burden is easy, His load is light. I am not called to torture myself with guilt and fear. I'm not supposed to be occupied with my performance, neither how bad it is, nor what to do about it/how to improve it. I'm already holy in His eyes and am to live one day at a time, focused on Him.

But when I get stuck in the writing, as I have been repeatedly of late, instead of waiting patiently for Him to move in me, I get antsy and restless and anxious. As I'm flitting around from thing to thing (reading email, or Drudge, vacuuming, writing in my journal) the anxiety and condemnation mount.

"You have no self discipline! Get to work! Your time is running out! Here's a vision of the disaster that awaits you!"

Now the anxiety swells into panic as I contemplate the vision... This is NOT living in the Royal Family Honor Code. This is sinning. Guilt and panic are not conviction. They are sins, spawned by arrogance. There is now NO condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. Cease striving and know that I am God. He will do all He has assigned me to do. When I am afraid I will trust in Him. Stand still and see the deliverance of the Lord.

Condemnation and panic are how the world motivates. They are how I in my old nature have long motivated myself. They are in fact, my flesh's most powerful and oft-used motivators, so when I hit the lulls when my mind is not actively engaged with production, when I hit the blank spaces, that's when the flesh begins to seek control.

But I think, since God has said He is the one doing the work here, since He knows the whole story and could enable me to write it all at once, any time He wishes, but has not ... I think perhaps it is so I will back off this function of me trying to control my output and really just have to trust Him. Accept fully that I might miss the new deadline and trust Him to handle that.

Stop trying to predict or control what will happen and let His plan unfold and let Him take care of you. He loves you. He is for you. He really could give you the story in one complete download, or step by step with no gaps, no closed door periods. But He's not doing that, and you have to stop trying to blame yourself and trying to get yourself to do something. Stop looking to yourself and some improvement of your performance to solve the problem. You KNOW that's wrong. Relax and let Him parcel it out in HIS timing. Our lessons have repeatedly been about us stepping aside, that it's His work, not ours...

You must concentrate on recalling those concepts and believing them.

~~~

Slamming Every Care On Him

Well, I've been more or less continuing to apply the principle of slamming every little care upon the Lord. But I keep questioning. There's been a lot of little cares, so I keep having to do it, over and over, and the thing that's hard is the not thinking about it part.

The latest was Enclave. Not just what am I going to do in it next, but what am I going to do, period? Should I listen to the part of me that's not wanting to work and do other things? Or should I force myself to do something? If so, what do I force myself to do?

On Sunday morning, I wrote in my journal: "Is it really that you slam every little thing on Him and don't think about it any more?" (Yes, I've been over this and over this. I'm a slow learner. I can't believe, I think, that it could be so easy. That I really DON'T have to figure it all out, come up with a plan and execute it.) As I said, it's the "don't think about it" part I'm struggling with. Though I'm not sure what I think "slam the cares on Him and leave them there" means except don't think about them, since it's the thinking about them that's the worry part...

Anyway, after writing that question, I took a shower, did my morning routine with Quigley then, as I got ready to eat breakfast, I opened one of my little books full of excerpted notes from Bible class. It was completely random, when you just open the book and expect to page through it to the place you're looking for. Only this time the page I opened to said:

God has given us instruction on how to walk and please Him. He has taken care of the trip. He knows where we're going and what we need and He's provided everything we need. DO WE BELIEVE THAT???

We've received advanced doctrines and motivation to continue to spiritual maturity and on into No-Man's Land, and we can excel still more. Going ahead will blow you away. But there'll be times YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE THAT.

That's the whole point: believing more and more just how great God is, despite what eyes say or friends or your body, your bank account, the world. THAT'S ALL HE'S AFTER -- that in spite of all the chaos and nonsense and distraction and silliness, we stick. We continue to believe Him and trust Him.

Anyone who heard the lesson taught in Basics class tonight at Grace Bible Church in Massachusetts will recognize that the same concepts were communicated. I especially liked the part about how, just as God did everything for us concerning salvation while we were still his enemies, much more will He do even more everything for us concerning all that comes after now that we're His children. He has a plan and He's provided everything in it that I'll need to carry it out. And primary in that plan/provision is that I learn to think like He does, which means I learn who He is, more and more, and what His grace -- what His plan for me -- is really about.

Grace upon grace. Living grace upon salvation grace. As we came to Christ, so we are to walk. Not depending on ourselves and our ability to solve our problems or come up with a solution, but believing Him and waiting for Him.

So yesterday I did that. I told Him I was going to trust Him to move me to write, if that's what He wanted me to do. And if not, I would just enjoy my time in Him and not worry about it or guilt myself because of it. And it turns out, He didn't want me to write, because I didn't do a lick of it.

Today however, what was a blank field, an empty room, a solid, featureless wall, turned into a field of possibilities. Chapter 7 has begun to take shape and I did it today. Because I wasn't supposed to do it yesterday.

~~~

More Disciplined

So what, I wonder, does the "more disciplined" I harangued myself with yesterday look like?

Not reading blogs? Not playing with the dog? Not… what? No housecleaning? No writing in the journal? No Bible class? That’s ridiculous.

There is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

Am I condemning myself here? Or is this the Holy Spirit? I think it’s my sin nature because there’s fear and urgency connected to it:

You’ve GOT to get more work done! That deadline is approaching and you’re nowhere near done. You have been undisciplined and bad and you need to work harder and stop being so distracted. This all depends on you. Yeah, fine to trust God, but you have to set your behind down in the chair and write.

Do I? This all sounds more like the legalistic, old sin nature-taskmaster than the grace and mercy of God. The Holy Spirit convicts rather than condemns. When He’s done, you feel good, you know what you’ve done wrong clearly and what to do about it. Condemnation from the sin nature just leaves you feeling rotten.

And what about that dead, blank-headed time when the creative part is working behind the scenes?

What about God revealing the story in His timing and not mine? What about me waiting on Him? Being patient. Not striving, just confident that He will move me as I need moving. Sometimes reading blogs and such sparks an idea… so it’s not always bad.

Striving, self-condemnation, anxiety, getting all afroth with impatience and worry… It doesn’t look by sight that I will ever finish on time, that this will ever work out… But that’s just the kind of situation God likes to put His children in, because we’re not supposed to be walking by sight but by faith. I think this must be a really hard lesson for me to get, because I keep going back over and over it.

It really is diametrically opposed to the world’s way and to the sin nature’s way -- to just relax and rest and trust God to move me at the appropriate time and in the appropriate ways to get the work done He wants done. His plan, not mine. His work, not mine.

There’s always time to do the Will of God.

Grace,
Karne

Peace and contentment

Continuation of the early March journal entry I posted in Constantly Vigilant, this part written at the end of the same day:

Quigley had another great day. I just decided to stop trying to figure out all the timing and arrange everything around him, and just put him in the crate when I needed to go somewhere. If he howled, oh well. So I went to the store and to the Y. And it was fine...

Bible class was great -- echoes and refinements of my conclusions this morning (see Constantly Vigilant below). Pastor is teaching on Abram and how he had to go "to a land which I will show you." He was given a general direction, but no specifics, and especially no specifics of blessing. "There are many commands we must obey without God telling us what type of blessings we'll receive if we do."

We desire happiness, peace and contentment. We think success (or marriage or a nice house or good kids or a well-behaved dog or...?) will provide it. So we want success (or the other things). We pray for it, strive for it. But success doesn't give happiness, peace and contentment. Nor do any of those other things. They're all time-oriented and therefore transitory. None are things we can control, but things God gives or takes.

Success can be taken. (Shaken?) So by definition, it cannot give peace and contentment because at the back of your mind will always be the sense that you could lose it. And if circumstances come where it appears you will lose it, goodbye peace.

Peace and contementment have to come from something stable and eternal and unchanging. Like God. Like His word. Like the fact that He is for me, not because of me, but because I received His perfect righteousness at salvation and will never lose it. When He looks at me, that's what He sees. He will never leave me or forsake me. He will provide my needs, because He has promised and He cannot lie. He loves me. He blessed me in eternity past. I can't begin to imagine the blessings that he has for me. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. He's omnipotent, wise, cannot make a mistake, never wavers, never wanders, never for a moment loses control of the situation. All my problems have perfect solutions.

Let me say that again: ALL my problems have PERFECT solutions. In Him. I am nothing. I can do nothing. But so what? He does it all.

Grace,
Karen

Constantly Vigilant

From an early March journal entry:

10:30 am Today, so far, I've been constantly upset by things not going as I'd like them to go. Then I stop and think... but it's God's will and God's plan that matters. I serve Him, not myself. I'm here to bring glory to Him, not achieve my goals.

I think of Autumn Lightning (The Education of an American Samurai" by Dave Lowry), which I read some years ago. The samurai student had to constantly be on the alert, never knowing when the master would attack or set someone upon him -- in bed, walking down the hall, even on the toilet. No place was out of bounds. This is how you must be when at war, when you are a man-at-arms. You're trained to use your weapon for defense, thus you must always be ready to use it.

How like the Christian Way of Life, where we are soldiers in a war, too. (2 Ti 2:4) The weapon, of course, is God's word. And the attacks come at the master's behest for our benefit, to train us and make us stronger, quicker and more solid in our use of our weapon. They mostly are the small things in life. Things not going your way. The dog steals a sock when you're hanging out the laundry, then rips it in the ensuing tug of war as you try to get it back. People change schedule without notice and now all the things you'd planned to do, you can't. Distractions pile up until the morning's gone and you didn't get a lick of writing done...

But it's always your plan that's being thwarted, never God's. And this stuff isn't even suffering for His sake (Phil 1:29). It's just things not going your way. The kingdom of darkness will set up situations to get you out of fellowship. To get you to worry, to feel condemned and guilty and now, in my case... to get me mad and frustrated. For so long it's been fear and approbation lust I've had to deal with. Now we're moving into power lust as God probes ever deeper, challenging and grinding and stripping away the layers of arrogance.

So again, the thing to focus on is that it's God's plan, not mine. His plan moves on. My plan is nothing. My goals for the day don't matter at all in comparison to me staying in fellowship. And His goals for my day are unknown when I start out. I don't know what His plan is until I see it unfold. Because of that, I must trust Him continually, moment by moment, always getting my thoughts off myself and my situation and bringing them back to Him.

Which is exactly where He wants them.

Grace,
Karen