Stuck Between The Yellow And The Green

…let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” – James 1:4

Have you ever been running late and then find yourself hitting every red light along the way? I remember a time when out of frustration I decided that if the car in front of me tried to run the yellow light, I would too. Low and behold, the car sped through the intersection and I quickly followed after. I couldn’t even wipe that smile off my face before I heard sirens behind me.

As I pulled over to let the police officer pass by, I was surprised that he stopped behind my car. Still not having a clue, I said to the very serious looking officer “Good morning and how are you”. Although he didn’t return my enthusiasm, he did humor me with “You didn’t play follow the leader right!” I believe my intelligent answer was, “huh?” The officer proceeded to tell me that my back wheels had not cleared the line before the light turned red and that I would be cited for running a red light. I, a crazy grandma, had one more brilliant comment, “Oh, I knew that it wasn’t polite, but I didn’t think it was against the law.” I think I stumped the unstoppable officer, although I didn’t mean too. After he ran my plates, or my license, or whatever else they do in the secret of their police car he came back and said questioningly, “Ma’am, is it correct that you have never had a ticket?” Again, I had a brilliant answer… “Why yes, sir, I had a ticket back in 1968!” I am batting a thousand here as he then commented, “That was nearly 40 years ago, what was the ticket for?” “Speeding, sir!”

I have found that when I run too fast through life I miss out on what life is all about. I don’t take the time to learn the lessons along the way. I didn’t grow; I missed out on the “green”. It’s like I was in such a hurry to get there when I didn’t even know where there is. All of this was from my own immaturity, so it makes sense to me that maturity does take a lifetime. Sometimes the things that slow me down are God’s way of protecting me from me. It has taken me a lifetime to really know that the world does not revolve around me. I am a slow learner as my story above confirms.

In all fairness, it did take me a lifetime to develop all of my old habits. In fact, it took me so long that the habits seemed quite normal. I was impatiently stuck in the “yellow”. I had to humbly admit my mistakes and then be willing to let God remold new habits within me. Developing new habits does not happen overnight; it takes time and it’s only through constant repetition that these new habits become normal. Slowing myself down, making the time for prayer, spending time in the Word, fellowshipping at church, calling someone just to say I care are all ways that I have found helped me to develop new habits. As I strengthen these new habits I am moving ahead to the “green”. Green represents mature growth – I am growing in the Lord!

Just because we cannot see the face of God, as He is working in and through us, it doesn’t mean that we don’t feel His presence as He walks by! My prayer, “Lord Jesus, when I get discouraged help me to see how far I have come, not how far I have to go. I thank you that you will continue to move me closer to the “green” and that you will never give up on me. You will complete the work in me that you started!” Amen

Oh, in case you were wondering, I did get a ticket that day and after $365 dollars later, I became very careful about waiting for the green!

You're Good Enough -- Start Now

“If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done.” – Ecclesiastes 11:4 NLT

Have you ever been taught that “Anything worth doing is worth well!”? Or perhaps you have heard this one, “If I can’t do it perfectly, why should I do it at all?” Some do not serve the Lord because they don’t feel good enough. Others only serve when they can be on top. I am learning to serve where I am needed and that no job is too small. In fact, I prefer to serve in the background doing what may seem small. “It takes a village, as the saying goes… a village of God’s people working in the church together. Some are meant to be leaders and some are meant to me helpers. My gift to serve is with the low profile and that is OK!

In reality, we all do poorly when we first start doing something. That is how we learn! The important thing is to start, to just take the next step. I know; you have heard me say that over and over again. It is because that is my refrain now, meaning I am trusting in God for the next step. Real servants of God begin by doing the best with what they have at the time. The important thing is that we begin by beginning to serve with the small things. Rick Warren made a statement, “Less-than-perfect service is always better than the best intention.” We need to believe that it doesn’t have to be perfect for God to use our service. Every one of us has been blessed with specific gifts and it takes all our gifts to make up the body for Christ.

In the words of Maya Angelou,

“You did then what you knew to do, and when you knew better, you did better.”

Sometimes we miss opportunities to serve because we lack spontaneity or we don’t believe that the Holy Spirit is directing our path to serve. I believe that sometimes these opportunities are fleeting and pass by just one time. The occasions that have hurt me the most have been when the Holy Spirit speaks to my heart to witness to an individual or maybe to go and pray with them only to find out that they passed away in the night.

Lord Jesus, forgive me for not following your direction. Help me to do what I can, with what I have, for you today. Help me not compare or compete with others who serve you. Help me focus solely on what you’ve called me to do. Help me to just take the next step. Amen.

Spinning Out of Control -- Surrender!

Today, I found myself reminiscing back to a time when my husband and I were first married. We thought we knew everything and that there was nothing we couldn’t do – including speeding down the highway in a 1965 convertible. Then one day, while driving way too fast just after a heavy rain, we began to spin out of control. It was a divided highway with traffic coming on both sides and a grassy median in between. Our car spun and spun and spun and spun around in that median. In that split second, which seemed like an eternity at the time, I just surrendered myself to the fact that we were both going to be killed. I prayed the quickest prayer ever and remember saying, “Lord Jesus, is it time?” It was that total surrender that took all the fear from me. Did I learn my lesson? Ugh, no – not at 20 years old! I never forgot though the feeling of peace I had when God took control of the car and stopped it within inches of nearly leaving the median and into oncoming traffic.

There have been many times in my lifetime where I have felt that my life was spinning out of control. For instance, there was the time that my husband was sent to Korea during the Vietnam War. I had a baby son, soon to be a year old, and another child on the way. He was gone for 13 months and didn’t see his second son until he was 10 months old. It wasn’t until I surrendered myself to the situation of him being gone, that I felt the spinning stop. Surrender is a beautiful thing, especially when it is the right surrender.

These are just a couple of experiences where total surrender helped me get through a tough situation. The same is true with our relationship with God. He wants our reconciliation, not resolution. Total surrender is reconciling our will to God, which doesn’t automatically resolve our situation. Just like with the words of a song sang by Garth Brooks, “…thank God for unanswered prayer”. Yet, the seemingly “unanswered prayer” was really an answer for it was the right answer!

When times seemingly got to difficult and I couldn’t see my way through I would go for a walk with Jesus. Have you ever done that? It is an amazing experience. I learned to do that as a very young girl coming from an abusive home life with an alcoholic father. There were many closed door secrets, yet I was raised in the church (major contradiction.) How did I turn out loving God? Because at the time, as a young girl, Jesus was all I had and he never failed me! Of course I didn’t go for walks on my own as a young child, but I would go to my back yard and lay in the grass looking up to heaven and just chat with Jesus.

As I grew older and the trials of life would take its toll, I would go for long walks just talking with Jesus each step of the way. OK, it wasn’t just talk it was also shedding of tears and heartfelt pleading! Picture this, it was a time when there were no such things as cell phones, or I-Pods, or MP3. To passersby, it probably seemed a bit crazy seeing a woman walking down the street in tears and talking away when no one else seemed to be around. I would tell Jesus all about my troubles. Most of the time he never changed my situation, but by the time I got home he certainly changed how I felt about the situation. I had an important lesson to learn and growth to happen; somehow I instinctively knew that deep inside of me! When I totally surrendered and yielded to God’s will the spinning stopped.

I want to share a chorus of a meaningful song that my husband and I would sing in our high school youth group. Little did I know that those words would hum through my mind even to this day, some fifty years later!

Have a little talk with Jesus tell him all about our troubles
Hear our fainted cry answer by and by
Feel a little prayer wheel turning know a little fire is burning
Find a little talk with Jesus makes it right

Time -- Life's Most Precious Gift

...your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." Psalms 139:16 NIV

Many of you give of yourselves to others every single day. May the Lord continue to richly bless you, for you already know the real meaning of love. You're care givers to your parents, your grandparents and neighbors. You bring food to those in need. You sit by the bedside of the lonely and dying. You have a servant's attitude and a heart for Christ.

Our days are numbered before we are born. God has already predestined the length of our life. He is the only one who knows how long our life will be. This makes our time very precious. Whenever we live through one day, that is one day less of our time here on earth. Knowing this, believing this, we should make the most of every day that we are given. When we give of our time to someone else we have given a precious part of ourselves. When we give the gift of our time we are showing a Godly love.

Never tell your neighbor to wait until tomorrow if you can help them today. Proverbs 3:27 TEV

Since we don't know that we will have a tomorrow, or we don't know if your loved one or neighbor has a tomorrow we can't know if another opportunity to minister will come along again. None of us has a guarantee that we will have a tomorrow. All we have is now.

"The best expression of love is time. Time is your most precious gift because you only have a set amount of it. You can make more money, but you can't make more time. When you give someone your time, you are giving them a portion of your life that you'll never get back. Your time is your life. That's why the greatest gift you can give someone is your time. Whenever you give your time you're making a sacrifice, and sacrifice is the essence of love." -- Rick Warren

The statement above is from the Purpose Driven Life. It is a revelation to me. Our days are truly numbered, so time is our most precious commodity. When we give the time of ourselves, it is not something we can re-coop later on. Time given away is gone -- thus making our time a precious and priceless gift when you give of yourself to others. This has to be our greatest purpose in life. I remember some of my greatest joys in my life was in helping someone else.

Today, Lord Jesus, I will take the time to love the people you place in my path. Always remind me that loving others is never a waste of time. I hope that I have a tomorrow. Forgive me for all the time that I have wasted, for the missed opportunities to show your love, for the many people I have ignored along the way because I didn't seem to have the time. Bring someone into their path to fix what my actions may have broken -- restore their joy so they can know Your love and mercies. Help me to give time to help others -- to show them Your love and give them hope. Teach me to love those who seem unlovable and give them what they need, not what they deserve. You are their only judge! Allow me to see others through your eyes. Break my heart for what breaks yours, Lord Jesus. Show me the potential that You see. Remind me that loving others is never a waste of time. I ask all of this in Your precious name, Lord Jesus. Amen -- Selah!

My Purpose -- Fix Me? -- Who Knew!

You are members of God’s very own family, citizens of God’s country, and you belong in God’s household with every other Christian.” – Ephesians 2:19b

You have to take the book off the shelf and apply the principles to your life. Hmmm, what a revelation! It can’t just look good on the shelf if you want to feel good inside yourself.

One day I wrote in my journal, as I picked up the book “Purpose Driven Life”, by Rick Warren,

“Jim and I purchased this book in 2004, while living in Washington. We had every intention of attending the weekly workshops at church and going through the book (together) as a group study. It never happened!

“Here I am alone, Jim passed on to eternity (in heaven) 3 years ago, and I find myself asking those same questions… ‘What is my purpose for being here? And now I have added, ‘Why was I left to carry on alone?’

“Six years from the time I actually put this book on my library shelf, I have decided to give my life meaning – to find out God’s purpose for my life. I look forward to these next 40 Days with God.” – signed, Shila Spice

I had a real revelation this morning after reading chapter 17, “We need to recover and practice the biblical meaning of membership. The church is a body, not a building…You were created for a specific role in Christ’s body, but you’ll miss this second purpose of your life if you’re not attached to a living, local church. We discover our role in life through our relationships with others and significance comes, not from within yourself, but from being a part of Christ’s body.”

I like the way Rick Warren describes this, “We need to recover…” To me it reinforces the fact that yesterdays are gone – learn from what didn’t work from the past mistakes, such as “not needing a church to be a Christian”, or perhaps “I have already served in the church and now it is someone else’s turn”. The catalog of reasons for not being a member of, or not participating in, or regularly fellowshipping with a local body of believers are too numerous to list and they don’t matter anyway – excuses never do!

Don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of years I fellowshipped in church with many a great body of believers. Somewhere along the way that fellowship would wane with flimsy excuses that we just moved again and I would have to start all over finding a church and “whine, whine, whine”! We are to fellowship with other believers to encourage us when we did it, disciple us when we lose our way, and to pray for one another – the purpose goes both ways. We are there to learn to live in harmony with our fellow believers, we are there to forgive and reassure. We are there to love one another as Christ loves us. It is a training ground for when we all will live together for all eternity. God wants us to get it right before we get to heaven and with His grace we will if we practice! We are to live in harmony with other believers. Don’t sweat the small stuff and don’t let differences keep you from fellowshipping with the body of believers. There is no perfect church, look for one that is grounded in God’s word and that Christ is in the center.

Life is not about me, it is not about you. It is about God and His purpose for each and every one of us. I am only on day 17 of the 40 day journey. Continuing the fellowship and living in harmony with other believers helps us to develop our own purpose. I have missed out; missed out on a lot of the joy that worshipping with other believers bring by trying to “go it” alone. It is easy to love the lovable, but it takes Christ’s love to love the unlovable or those who seem different. It is true that we develop this love by committing to a local church. We learn to live and fellowship with one another by doing – by repetition.

I have to say that the book, “The Purpose Driven Life” is not going the way I thought it would go. There is no magical pill, there is no unknown secret, there is no same answer for finding your purpose if you seek it with the idea of obtaining things of this world. Our purpose is to live out our lives the way God designed us. All of us have a design that will honor and please Him. We are made to worship Him and we are made to love each other.

The book sums it up better than I could say, “You need a purpose to live for, people to live with, principles to live by, a profession to live out, and power to live on. God intends for his church to provide these… Worship helps you focus on God; fellowship helps you face life’s problems; discipleship helps fortify your faith; ministry helps find your talents; evangelism helps fulfill your mission.”

Thank you God, for helping me to grow into the person you made me to be. Help me to remember that whenever I become careless about fellowship with other believers, I’m moving away from you. Forgive me for the times I’ve gotten detached from your Body, the church. Help me to stay connected and committed, and love your church the way you do. This is my prayer today and tomorrow until Jesus comes again in His Glory.

People Get Ready

…and thank you God, for wonderful disciplers such as Rick Warren. If you are not fellowshipping in a bible based church with Christ’s body of believers, I pray you find one today.

But I haven't Even Prayed Yet...

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where something is troubling you and then you begin to dwell on it, meditate on it, almost to the case of worry? I sure have! I will tell myself that I will give the matter to God in prayer, yet never get around to doing the actual praying. Then all of a sudden you realize that God has already sent you the answers! Amazing how our God is!

When I was a child I used to think that my mother had eyes in the back of her head and hearing that could hear a pin drop a mile away. I am sure that I became a mother that my children made the same comments about me. I believe that mother’s do have this special gift because they are so in tune with the children and can know their needs before they even ask, at least some of them. In the same fashion a mother knows when their children are planning a rebellious act for the most part. Mother’s even know the story that is cooking up in your head before you even speak it! OK, kids, your mother is not magic and she certainly isn’t God. She has honed her skills from her own life experiences, but most of all a lot of her awareness comes from the deep love she has inside for her children. God’s love is like that, only on a grander scale. He does know what we are thinking; He is aware of our needs, even before we are; He catches us as we are falling if we reach out to him; He will even pick us up when we fall if we fail to reach out soon enough.

Today I received an answer to a prayer I didn’t think I prayed yet. I have been troubled by the fact that others avoid me because of my witness for Christ. (I do have a tendency to fret and be anxious, sometimes even depressed, by what others say about me – God is already helping me with this one too, but that is another story for another day.) I want people to like me and can’t understand why they won’t accept me the way I am. I am not hurting them by my strong belief in God; at least I don’t think so. I don’t even preach to them! I just try to live my life, one that is pleasing to the Lord, yet I seem to be in their way. I got up this morning and found a daily message in my email – I subscribe to several different devotional messages just to help keep me focused on the Lord. This particular message was written just for me! I believe that the Holy Spirit used it to speak to my heart and give me the answering I was seeking before I even asked. The message was from the “Life Application Daily Devotion”. You have got to check this one out!!

“Many people don’t want their lives exposed to God’s light because they are afraid of what will be revealed. They don’t want to be changed. Don’t be surprised when these same people are threatened by your desire to obey God and do what is right, because they are afraid that the light in you may expose some of the darkness in their lives. Rather than giving in to discouragement, keep praying that they will come to see how much better it is to live in light than in darkness.”

“And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed. But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.” John 3:19-21, NLT

Dear God, help me to see and to understand that it is not about me, it never was; it is about all You and that is what the world doesn't understand. Continue to break my heart for what breaks yours, Lord Jesus. Open my eyes that I might see..., show me how to love...

Hosanna