Of Dogs and Directions…..Part 3

I wish this story had a happier ending but sadly it does not.  As you have read in my last posts concerning my dog she was old, obstinate and stubborn, set in her ways and was having trouble with my boundaries I was trying to set up for her.  While she would now come up to the deck to eat her choice food  she would not stay within the confines of the deck when we thought it in her best interest or for her protection to keep her on the deck at night or when we were away.

Last week when I was down in California visiting with my daughters I received the phone call from my husband that our old little doggy had wandered out to the street (which was 5 acres away and baffles my mind as to how she got herself out there) and was hit by a truck.  She died immediately and I have to trust God did not let her suffer.  I am sure she did not know what hit her, nevertheless I was crushed at the way she had to die. 

I had asked and asked God to simply allow her to go to sleep one night and not wake up.  I don’t know why she died this way but I have to ponder that it may have been in part, due to her stubborn obstinate will that refused to allow us to set her inside safe boundaries for her own protection and to prolong her life.

I can’t help but think we are like this with God… God has been in the business of setting up boundaries for mankind since the beginning of time for our protection and to prolong our life.  In the Garden of Eden God set very specific boundaries for mankind.

And the Lord God commanded the man, “you are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die” [Genesis 2:16-17]

And again for the nations:

Remember the days of old; …consider the generations long past…When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up boundaries for the peoples…. for the Lord’s inheritance is his people…

[Deut 32:7-9 NIV]

God has been in the business of protecting us since the beginning and yet as we read, mankind through deception or by his obstinate self will has chosen not to remain within the boundaries set up by our God for our good.

(but this generation) abandoned the God who made him and rejected the Rock his savior….They made him jealous with their foreign gods and angered him with their detestable idols…for they are a perverse generation, children who are unfaithful.  They made me jealous by what is no god and angered me with their worthless idols. [Deuteronomy 32:15, 21]

In this passage God is speaking directly to His children of Israel concerning their foolishness and stiff-necked rebellion in the desert.  This clearly shows an obstinate, stubborn self-willed generation that did not choose to remain within boundaries that God had set for them.  God goes on to say:

The Lord saw this and rejected them because he was angered by his sons and daughters.  I will hide my face from them, he said and see what their end will be; for they are a perverse generation, children who are unfaithful. 

[Deut 32 19-20]

Ok, I feel a little guilty because after days of trying to coerce my dog to stay on the deck I gave up and let her just have her own stubborn way much like God did with the Israelites.  Mind you I did not really endanger my dog near a road, remember we live at least 5 acres away from the nearest street, but I did stop trying to make her do the thing I wanted her to do which was to stay on the deck (that dog was a Houdini and could escape from any boundaries we set up) It was to her detriment and demise. 

And if we behave in the same manner as the Israelites (there is nothing new under the sun, mankind is still the same) and continue to reject our God and the Rock our Savior by choosing to do things our own way, by flat out ignoring his beckoning of us into a relationship, or of allowing skepticism and doubt to dominate our thinking and actions we may find that by our own choice our demise is in our future.

Fortunately we have a loving forgiving creator who gives us every chance under the sun to come under His boundaries and as He said to the Israelites so also He says to us:

See, I set before you today life and prosperity; death and destruction.  For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. [Deut 30:15-16]

There is a warning that comes with this as well….

But if your heart turns away and your are not obedient. And if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed.  You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.[Deut 30:17-18]

This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.  Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.  For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. [Duet 30: 19-20]

God gives us boundaries; He gives us a choice to stay within those boundaries because He loves us.  God wants it to go well with us…He created us and we are His portion, His prize.  He has testified to himself, creation is a witness against us…. we are without excuse. 

God wants us to choose life, choose his boundaries, and choose to love him with all our heart and soul and mind so it will go well with us.

Choose you this day whom you will serve!

Loving on you,

And so the adventure continues….

After final closure on our house in California with a short sale I was recently driving through neighborhoods by the Mckenzie River with big  beautiful homes.  I found myself dreaming about owning our own home again and I began to compare where I was in life against where the people who owned these homes were, basically comparing myself to others.  It was an easy pity party and one that would lead me down a slippery slope. I eventually drove across a bridge and came to a fork in the road.  My options were to keep going the way I was and I would reach a dead end or to turn around, go back the way I came without looking at everything around me and be on my way.

God said your life is like this: you’ve come to a fork in the road; you can keep going toward the dead end you are on or you can turn around and go back the way you came and stop looking around you comparing yourself to others but to look to the plans God had for me and be on my way.

Our lives are a lot like this….when we accept Christ we are at a cross roads we can keep going on the same way with our obstinate self will and our own ambitions while now trying to fit God into our lives or we can turn around go back from where we have come and listen to the plans God has for us.

Oswald Chambers wrote in His devotional titled:         

But It Is Hardly Credible That One Could So Persecute Jesus!

Am I set on my own way for God? We are never free from this snare until we are brought into the experience of the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire. Obstinacy and self-will will always stab Jesus Christ. It may hurt no one else, but it wounds His Spirit. Whenever we are obstinate and self-willed and set upon our own ambitions, we are hurting Jesus. Every time we stand on our rights and insist that this is what we intend to do, we are persecuting Jesus. Whenever we stand on our dignity we systematically vex and grieve His Spirit; and when the knowledge comes home that it is Jesus Whom we have been persecuting all the time, it is the most crushing revelation there could be…..All I do ought to be founded on a perfect oneness with Him, not on a self-willed determination to be godly. This will mean that I can be easily put upon, easily over-reached, easily ignored; but if I submit to it for His sake, I prevent Jesus Christ being persecuted.

Last week I celebrated my 53^rd birthday and as I reflected and pondered where I had been and where I was going it dawned on me that even as a Christian I had really just gone on my same way that I had been before God and just simply tried to put Him into My Life, My ambitions, My dreams, My desires…..and as Oswald chambers wrote this is wounding Christ again and again…..ughhhhhh that killed me….literally….I want the last 53 years of my life to be years in which I have completely yielded to God’s plans for me no matter what they look like.

I believe this is what it means to take up your cross and follow Jesus….to follow Jesus right into the very presence of a Holy God without fear of instantaneous death….into the presence of  God Most High whose character is protective, caring, nurturing, disciplining, rebuking and overall loving.  The blood of Christ has allowed us this amazing privilege.  The rest of this verse goes onto say: 

 “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self? [Luke 9:24-25 NIV]

We are at a crossroads when we accept Christ….we can keep going on the same path and try to fit God into our lives…..periodically comparing our lives with others around us or we can stop turn around and begin to listen to God and yield ourselves into His plan for our lives….

Going on our own way literally stabs at Jesus over and over again…..this should be crushing to us.

Whether you are a brand new child of God or like me have been a child for a long time, the time is now to turn around and yield ourselves into God’s plans for us because as His word says:

For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future."  [Jer 29:11]

And so the adventure continues…..

Loving on You, 

Of Dogs and Directions Part 2

         Of Dogs and Directions….Part II

In my last post I began the story of my old dog not wanting to go where I was taking her, to a place of safety and rest, to a place she would not go.  And how I like my dog am like this with my God…..

And so the story continues….

I confined my dog at night for her safety.  After freeing her from the deck in the morning I wanted to feed her but she would not follow me back up onto the deck to get her food because of her fear and lack of trust in me not to re-confine her for the day.

And I, still like my dog, was reluctant to follow God all the way to this place He was taking me…. the Kerith Ravine (which means failure). 

In the slow process of death to our “self” sometimes God must take us to this place of failure…failure of our own means or “self” sufficiency.

After putting out my fleeces and hearing from God I still was unconvinced I really should do this thing of quitting my very good job as a home health physical therapist.  My own voice of self-reasoning was saying, I want to follow you God but I am not sure this is the best for me. Is it really the best?

So out of His love and long suffering God kept speaking to me.  It seemed every time I opened my Bible some scripture would jump out at me about this same subject of quitting my job….. 

As I was reading through Acts 26 and 27 God began to show me that much like Paul being put on a ship doomed for disaster in order for God to further His plan for spreading the gospel I too had been allowed to board a doomed ship.  

Our doomed ship was one on which we were our own captains and were making decisions based on our own dreams, our own desires and we were living a lifestyle above our means before I had even graduated as a physical therapist and landed a job.  This ship set sail way before it’s time.

As the story in Acts 26 & 27 goes the centurion had a choice to listen to Paul's warning that the voyage would be disastrous and bring great loss to ship and cargo and to their own lives or to listen to the captain of the ship and sail (Acts 27:10-11).  

I suppose God was warning us but we just were not listening and chose to set sail as captains of our own ship in spite of the warnings.  We made decisions based on our own wants, desires, hopes and dreams rather than inquire of God as to what He would have us to do.

I graduated and landed a job as a PT.  I had prestige, power and money.  We bought property to build our dream home, lived close to our first grandchild; life was good here in this place. 

Haven’t we all been in this place at one time or another in which we simply ignore the warning signs and sail ahead into what starts out as smooth sailing but quickly turns into our storms of life?

As with Paul's ship, a gentle south wind began to blow and we thought we had what we wanted. Before very long a wind of hurricane force swept down on us (Acts 27:13-14). Chris lost his job again, we had to move to Oregon for his new job our property did not sell, our house did not sell, and after some time in Oregon I landed another job however now we owed a cargo load of taxes from my working and our ship much like Paul’s took a violent beating.

The crew on Paul's ship took to throwing the cargo and even the ship’s tackle overboard with their own hands. (Acts 27:19)

We began doing this as well, handing property back to the bank, and putting the house up for short sale.  It did not do much good.  I kept working, the storm kept raging.

But after a time God said to me much like Paul did to the men on his ship:

All is not lost for what you in our own self sufficiency have done to yourselves I will work for your good (Romans 8:28).

However…….

“you should have taken my advice not to sail…then you would have spared yourselves this damage and loss. But now I urge you to keep up your courage, because not one of you will be lost; only the ship will be destroyed. Last night an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve stood beside me and said, 'Do not be afraid, Paul. You must stand trial before Caesar; and God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you.' So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will happen just as he told me. Nevertheless, we must run aground on some island." (Acts 27:21-26)

So our ship was running aground, this ship of our own doing but God was telling me:

Don’t worry all is not lost, I have you in this one.

And like the centurion who wanted to spare Paul’s life by ordering

…those who could swim to jump overboard first and get to land.  (Acts 27:43)

God was trying to tell me jump off the ship bound for shipwreck and jump into the water and swim, ditch the doomed ship you set sail on long ago…

Now my husband was not convinced of this yet and kept arguing against my quitting saying that since we had gotten ourselves into this financial mess we needed to dig ourselves out ( our own self sufficiency)

God kept reminding me of the fact that Paul also put himself on a sinking ship, a ship doomed to failure.  But he did this at the Spirit’s leading in order to further the gospel.

God had said to me:

that like Paul, I had put myself on a sinking ship by training as a PT and going to work.  However, even though it was to run aground no souls would be lost.  This was in the long run to further the gospel. I was to jump ship and swim

When God starts talking about swimming I put my listening ears on because if you know me, you know I am a swimmer; a strong swimmer and I love the water.

Not to mention that since moving to Oregon I have not had a pool in which to swim my laps something I have sorely missed.   

I had another dream… twice as a matter of fact a few months apart and during the time God was speaking to me about quitting my job…apparently God is speaking to me in dreams.

The dream is this: I was swimming again but my legs were paralyzed and while it felt so good to swim again I couldn’t swim that well because I was paralyzed…. This time I understood what God was saying to me in the dream…. 

As with Paul on the doomed ship I was to abandon ship and jump in. God was saying to me your sins are forgiven, by faith swim by my grace, further the gospel…keep passionately talking about me, about my truth, about Jesus…rather than trying to work at digging yourself out of your own financial mess.

So, in time after much prayer and fasting and with my husbands agreement I did the unthinkable and quit a very good job and literally jumped off a sinking ship and began to swim, well maybe I am not swimming yet more like floating along, trying not to drown.

Rough Waters Ahead! Should have been the warning…

While I envisioned a miracle and our finances would be fine God had planned to take us to this Kerith Ravine (I Kings 17) in which everything looks like a failure.

However I must say that though it has been extremely tight these last few months we have not missed paying our bills or missed a meal and last I looked we still have a roof over our heads.

Just as God provided for Elijah at the Kerith Revine by giving him ravens to feed him, we too are being provided for by Chris’ paycheck.

I’m sure that land is ahead as I swim, I just can’t see it yet. 

But I know that God ever so gently, like me with my dog, is trying to get me to see what He is about, in asking me to quit my job.  That He is trying to protect me, to lead me, to feed me but that I need to trust Him for this versus shying away and stubbornly refusing to hear and follow Him.

If you are in a place where God is speaking and you are having trouble listening or following remember He knows what He is doing.

For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you.

(Jeremiah 29:11)

And

God works all things for good for those who love Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:28)

Loving on you,