Tuesday, June 12, 2012

LETTER TO GOD




Perspective!  Attitude!  What powerful words!  You changed my perspective last night from “me, me” to “what about them?”  You helped me see how the last 20 years with 10 surgeries might have affected my family – those who love me and have been here for me. 

The good news is that all of those surgeries produced something good.  The best being a baby girl named Emily Ann.  Four had to do with breast cancer and reconstruction.  I am alive and have never had to go through chemo or radiation.  So what if it’s not my original equipment – I have boobs!  Two had to do with the effects of chronic allergies – the eye duct stints, and one has helped me keep over 50 lbs off for more than 4 years.  The knee replacements will restore my ability to work and exercise and play.

It seems a little ironic that all of this came after I began to really believe that You are a healing God.  Thank you for all the things You healed me of without surgery and things that I didn’t even know I had.  From my perspective, You are the God who heals – spiritually, emotionally and physically.  I rise up this morning and take from Your healing hand, a new knee that will function beautifully, and if it be Your will, a few weeks later, I will get the other one fixed.  I thank you for unlocking the medical mysteries that make these kinds of things possible.  I thank you for the resources to pay for this.  I thank you now for the opportunities to share Your goodness with all those I encounter.  You have already been preparing the way for this day – going ahead of me – selecting the time of day and who will be working and which operating room and hospital room I will have.  You have planned for every procedure and medication to work for my good and not to bring harm. You leave nothing to chance.  Every person who helps me will be Your hand picked instrument – Christian or not.  It will be Your marvelous skill and medicines that You’ve allowed men  to discover that will restore my knee.  It will be Your very own Holy Spirit hovering over me – partnering with those doing the work.  Holy Wind will stand guard rebuking and repelling every assignment of the enemy that might try to come against me or my loved ones.  I get a picture of powerful angelic beings ready to spring into action.  Their presence is comforting to me in their tenderness and intimidating to the enemy because of their POWER!  Jill Ann, the daughter of God, is abiding in Christ and Christ is abiding in her.  She has everything she needs.

I love yesterday’s blessing from Blessing Your Spirit by Sylvia Gunter and Arthur Burke p 140 Day 15 GOD OF GODS – You are the God of gods and I call my spirit and Tim’s spirit to attention to hear again the words of this blessing:  “I bless you Tim and Jill as you walk among men and women of power that they would defer to that which is not visible in the natural.  I bless you with causing unsaved men and women who do not know the God who made you to defer to the power of God that is manifested in you.  I bless your life with experiencing human power deferring to the God of gods who is in you, who is part of you.  You are part of Him.  You are the incarnation of the ultimate power on earth.  I bless you also to be that same incarnation of power of God wrapped in tenderness to the most fragile, the most vulnerable,  the most insecure on Earth.  I bless you with being like the God of gods who presents himself in tenderness without devastating the dimly burning flame that is about to go out.  I bless you with being that kind of incarnation of the God of gods to the culture around you, for He made you out of his own substance and essence.  I bless you in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit.  So be it.”  Isn’t that amazingly fitting for someone going in to a hospital setting where I’ll encounter doctors, janitors, others who are ill and everything in between!

So I leave this post, confident in the God of gods.  Confident in the gift of His peace, the peace that surpasses all understanding.  Confident that his peace will reign in my spirit as my spirit stays connected to my “Abba,’ my Papa, my Father God.  Confident that I will abide in the Holy Spirit and He will have dominion over my mind, will, emotions and body.  “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord.”  And that same Holy Spirit will surround and saturate those who love me – Tim, my beloved husband;  children and grandchildren; family members and friends who bless my life daily. To God be the glory!  Great things He has done and is continuing to do. 

In conclusion, (tee hee) I have prayed and have agreed with others for a supernatural healing, a creative miracle that would make this surgery unnecessary.  Even in the final preparations, it could happen.  It is my desire that I not have to go through this, that my family not have to go through this,  BUT as Jesus prayed, “Not my will, but thine be done.”   I know that all of the faith He had to go through what He went through is available for me whatever the outcome!  And it’s there for you as well. Thank you, my faithful God of gods.

Your daughter, Jill Ann (youthful heart, full of grace) is loving you back.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

A Lesson on Lingering


Another morning.  Another day that You have made.   I have a choice to make this morning – to think about pain, dirt, gnats or to think about You.  Why would I allow my thoughts to linger in the muck and mire of life when there are so many lovely things to think about?  (from my journal entry dated April 28, 2012)
Linger is my word.  Our family jokes about my use of it knowing that it comes from my religious past.  For me it always evokes a negative feeling – if I linger, something bad will happen. Invitation songs with lines like these - “Careless soul, why will you linger; Wandering from the fold of God? Hear you not the invitation? O prepare to meet thy God.” Careless soul, O heed the warning, For your life will soon be gone; O how sad to face the judgment, Unprepared to meet thy God.”
The song’s message is a serious one, and not altogether inappropriate.  But all four verses came across to me as whip lashes of guilt intended to scare the unbeliever into a decision.  And if you linger (stay in a place longer than necessary, typically because of a reluctance to leave) you will be damned.  From my perspective, it seems like that’s all I ever heard in church – hell, fire and brimstone sermons followed by invitation songs meant to scare you into the  steps of salvation.  Except in my heritage, you couldn’t really know if you were saved.  Even after you were baptized, if you sinned and died before you asked forgiveness, you would go straight to hell.  That’s what it felt like as a child.  I seemed to have come away from that with a very toxic impression of the word linger.
However, on page 675 in the same old hymnal is a delightful song that more nearly represents the God I know and the response to Him that I have as an adult.  “I am resolved no longer to linger, Charmed by the world’s delight; Things that are higher, things that are nobler, These have allured my sight.  I will hasten to Him, Hasten so glad and free. Jesus, greatest, highest, I will come to Thee.”  Each verse encourages one to leave the negative aspects of life for all the benefits of a loving Saviour and to do it quickly – hasten.
So why would I choose to linger in destructive, negative thoughts when there is so much good to think about.  Why wouldn’t I linger over the joy of waking up to a new day? Linger over the truth that a loving God is in control.  Linger in the joy of His presence.  There is a time to hasten and a time to linger.  
I started this post weeks ago and in the process of lingering over the word linger, I have been set free of the word's negative effects!  You would not believe the countless times I have seen that word since I began this little segment of my journey.  Seems like every writer I respect and follow has used that word in the most positive and life-giving ways.  Linger, linger, linger..................I love it.
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