Posts Tagged ‘change’

Change Your Mind, Spiritual living, Today...

April 3, 2010

Change Your Mind

Tags: change, communion, God, healing, Holy Spirit, Jesus, prophecy, spiritual life, transformation

Years ago my husband and I were having dinner with a man he worked with and his wife. The men had been talking about God and spiritual at things at work and Greg had been sharing with him many miracles and powerful things that had been happening in our life. After our guest ordered and finished three martinis in about 20 minutes she leaned across the table, looked Greg right in the eyes (more or less), and asked him with slightly slurred speech, “What do you have that we don’t have?” One miraculous healing at their house that night and we were delighted to see them come alive in Christ.

All power can effect change. Spiritual power effects eternal change.

Today in the church we are seeing a lot of emphasis and and attention to our political/legislative process. One of the outcomes of this emphasis is a great polarizing in our nation, including between Christians.

It is important to remember that our battle isn’t Conservative versus Liberal. It is the battle of light versus darkness. The conflict is between living a spiritual life in communion with God, or opting for the seemingly more popular humanism/materialism path. These are not compatible theologies.

When Lucifer fell, it was because he wanted to set his throne above God’s, and that is the battle that rages on the earth to this day. The battle for political, economic and social control is the world’s battle and we will not beat the enemy with his own game. We will only prevail, ultimately, by spiritual means.

We think we must work to have the law of land reflect our beliefs. Perhaps we should consider the sad possibility, that is exactly what is happening. The laws of the land may indeed reflect the overall beliefs of us as a nation. It may be that our beliefs are what we need to address first.

Never has our country become more godly than in the times of great revival. Prohibition, no matter what its good intent, lasted thirteen years and created more crime and social ill than had existed previously. The Prohibition laws were ineffective in bringing about a healthier society or a more righteous one.

Revival in America (First Great Awakening, Second Great Awakening) had a huge effect on society. In many places crime decreased precipitously and bars and brothels closed. The outcomes weren’t based on new laws. They were the result of people coming to Christ and being changed.

The natural always reflects the spiritual. I believe that we need to be a spiritual people, full of the Spirit of God, invested in changing the world around us. We need to begin with ourselves, our families, our social circles and neighborhoods. Within that context we can and should support and pursue godly political objectives, but not at the expense of being godly, spiritual people, and remaining in communion with God.

We need to pursue change that is fueled with love, wisdom, generosity, and hope. If we could all do that, society will change and perhaps the laws of our land will change accordingly as well.

Today, change your mind, be the peculiar person you were created to be, and do something good for someone.

What do you have, that can change someone’s life, today?

Ephesians 6:12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the world’s rulers, of the darkness of this age, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

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Gifting, Spiritual living, Uncategorized

January 17, 2010

So you can see sin? (And you think that is a gift?)

Tags: change, Destiny, God, Holy Spirit, hope, Jesus, love, prophet, sin, spiritual, spiritual and emotional wholeness, transformation

Satan is the leader in calling out sin, and making a spectacle of it. Whose team are you on?

One of the most encouraging things that I have discovered since Raising Spiritual Children: Cultivating a Revelatory Life was published is that a consistent response is that “this is not just about raising children, but it is for adults, too.” That is truth on several levels. One level is that what we missed out on when we were children can often be put into place when we are older, and we can have full restoration in that area.

In other words, when something we missed as a child is put in place within us, all that we missed along the way or over the years is also established in us as though we had had it all along.

Think of a person who has never experienced unconditional love. Their life will have been lived a certain way, with some clear and distinct voids and difficulties. However, at 30 or 40 or 50, if they experience unconditional love and can receive it, that void they have carried all of their life will be as if it was covered with a balm. Although they may have an intellectual knowledge of how they were growing up, they will not only be different today, but the past will not impinge on them in the same way either.

The unconditional love that they experience will make them whole.

It is a little bit like a computer. If your computer has missing or corrupted files, some or all of your computer programs will not work correctly. Overtime, performance even may deteriorate. Some things might work fine, of course, but there will be those programs or functions that simply do not work the same way they work for other people.

Once you restore that missing or corrupted file though, all the programs will work just like they were intended to.

This is a picture of restoration.

People who have been damaged or injured in life may have sinned (don’t we all), but correcting sin isn’t what they most need. What they most need is to have the important voids in their lives filled, healed, covered — pick your terminology. The outcome is restoration.

Today, there is a cultural mindset that instead of addressing the injury and wounds in a person, many people want to be the authority to hand out punishment and keep the focus on a person’s sin. (Trust me, sin will persevere. It doesn’t matter what penalty you try to extract for it; sin will pop up again doing its damage to someone else.) Some want to assess punishment, as if that is their role. (Some people do have this role of course, but it is a small fraction of the people who try to take it on.)

Confronted with the woman in adultery, remember what Jesus said to the accusers who wanted to stone her: “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” [1] After the accusers had scattered, Jesus turned to the woman. “Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?

No, Lord,” she said. And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.” [2]

What changed? The woman changed of course. She had been in the presence of the Jesus, and his impartation of love and hope and kindness transformed her, forever.

As a revelatory person, I see more sin than I would like to. I know that Jesus would have seen far more than me. I also see that Jesus worked to bring sinners to Him and to health and to wholeness. I believe that His words and His love imparted to the woman in adultery transformed her, and made her whole. They healed her and gave her hope.

So I try to let the revelation of sin just be a red flag to point out who needs love and hope and impartation. I want to be able, by the Holy Spirit, to be a person who helps to build His church.

I want to have eyes that see what He sees, and to be the mouthpiece for His message, a carrier of His transforming love.

One of the most gratifying things we experience as parents is when our children grow up and do the things that we think are good and valuable.

As children of the King, I submit that we need to stop trying to please our detractors, stop acting out of fear, and make certain that we are pleasing Him.

It is the sinners around us who need us the most. Do you have what they need?

Jeremiah 29:11: “‘For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.’”

[1] John 8:7

[2] John 8:10-11

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Mountain Musings, New Beginnings, Seasons of Life, Transition

August 13, 2009

Gnu Beginnings

Tags: change, hope, Life

Eight years ago this month our family moved to New Hampshire. We came brimming with hopes and expectations. In some places our hopes were exceeded. We have watched our children become adults and flourish, we have met many wonderful people, we have learned a great deal, we have come to know God more, and I believe that we have made a good deposit into His kingdom.

There were however also great disappointments and discouragements, which seem to have buried the sheen of all the good things.

These kinds of good things often come with buffeting and other disappointments as well. A year ago I found myself “on hold”. Things were happening that I knew weren’t God’s best, things I knew He couldn’t be pleased with, and yet I also knew that He was very much in the outcome. The wrong things seemed to bury many of the good things, to diminish all the good that transpired.

Nevertheless, change was now upon us. Transition might be something you enjoy, but I am fundamentally whiny about this aspect of life. It seems hard. It might be a mistake! It requires learning new things - what if I can’t do it?

In recent months as direction has been coming, and opportunities are bubbling up, I have been hearing “New Beginnings”. Still, I’m so not a kid anymore, I don’t want to be disappointed, and I keep asking for a sign, a word, something that will keep me from a mistake! I feel like Gideon, seeing the fleece, the signs, the words, and always wanting a little more clarity, a little more confirmation.

The other day when I returned from my July trip to the UK I was, well, whining. God, who has such a sense of humor, told me to go up to New London, the center of commerce and social activities for our lives in New Hampshire, and to take my camera.

It didn’t take a genius to see what He wanted me to see. This summer the New London merchants have done a special fund raiser and they have all these fabulous “Gnus” on their street fronts. They are unique and fun, and there are so many of them. (New London is after all a small town.)

As I went up and down Main Street (should I say, “Gnu London”) taking pictures of all the Gnus, I knew that I had my sign about our “new” beginning.” Signs”, really. Here I was, an eight year resident of New Hampshire. We often associate (biblically) the number eight with “new beginnings”. (An octave of music has seven notes, and then a new beginning. There are seven days of the week, and then a new beginning. Of course, I thought. This is our eighth year here, it is a season of new beginnings (actually Gnu beginnings I think), and the signs are all around.

So here we are, on the brink of our Gnu beginning. Suddenly I could see it everywhere. Where my focus had been on what was wrong, all the colorful Gnus shifted me to looking for what was Gnu, what had life, what had potential. Our children, our friends, our neighbors are experiencing new things and they are good. Kids are going back to school, friends have a new business, people are moving to new cities, getting married, someone just got their first new apartment, someone else just got a new car, new friendships are being created, new relationships are being cultivated and old friends are finding their ways back to each. Why didn’t I see it before so clearly? Probably because my focus was on the past and not the future.

It occurs to me today that our nation is also about to celebrate an eight year anniversary that really needs to be a new beginning too, a time to look forward with hope, not back with despair.

Do you need a Gnu beginning? Is a Gnu beginning upon you whether you think you need it or not? If so, please take one of my Gnu pictures for your sign, to remind yourself that hope springs eternal, and there very well may be Gnu things on the horizon for you as well.