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| Whose Report Will YOU Believe? |
I have been seeking the Lord’s face diligently on certain
matters, because being in the center of His will is the desire of my
heart. I have no problem talking to God,
I know for a fact He has indicated through His Word that He desires to have a “personal”
relationship with me and I delight in that.
Don’t believe it? Take a look:
“Behold I stand at
the door and knock, if anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come in
and dine with that person, and they with me.”(Revelations 3:20)
God desires to have a personal relationship with you. Often time my problem is not with the
communication part, it’s with the response part. The trust and faith that God wants to respond
to ME. In my heart the Holy Spirit tells
me that this is the true. That God loves
ME. In my head (the place that ol’ slewfoot
likes to attack, otherwise known as the battlefield) sometimes it’s hard to believe.
Each one of us has the pages of our youth written upon our
lives. For some of us, if we haven’t had a positive experience with our earthly
fathers, it tends to reflect on how we feel our Heavenly Father feels about
us. Truthfully this is not the
case. Our Heavenly Father is PERFECT,
our earthly fathers (or parents) are not.
For me, I had an earthly father who was not a father; he was solely a “sperm
donor,” what I mean by that is that my birth father had no clue or concept of
how to be a father. He had no interest
in anything or anyone other than himself.
I don’t say that with bitterness, I say it matter of fact. He left my
mother when she was pregnant with my brother, for another woman. He cheated on my mother and left her. Now, the reason why I bring that up is
because I was three years old when the “sperm donor” left my mother for another
woman. I had had a relationship with
him. It devastated me. Children have a tendency to view things with
the limited knowledge of experience they have.
I believed my father left ME.
Now, we live in a broken sinful world. I am no better than the “sperm donor”
everyone sins differently. It is not for
me to judge him. I use to judge him in
anger, but in having once been a prodigal – I can honestly say, be careful how
you judge someone – judging is only the duty of God, not man. You have to tread very carefully or you can
find yourself walking in someone else’s (the person you are judging’s shoes).
One day the sperm donor will have to give an account to God for his actions.
For his sake I hope he has made Jesus his Lord and Savior and is covered by the
precious blood of Jesus.
“Come now and let us
reason together,” says the Lord, “Though your sins are like scarlet they shall
be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson they shall be like wool.”
(Isaiah 1:18)
God brought my mother through it, made her stronger for
it. She put herself through school,
provided for my brother and I (which at that time for a divorced mother was not
easy), five years later, God brought into her life the man who would truly
become my father – my dad, the one who loved me and raised me, the man who
poured his life into mine. My mother became one of my heroes. A stronger woman I have never known.
But the damage had been done… When it came to having a
relationship with my Heavenly Father it was hard for me to accept or believe
that He really desire to have one. That
He would never leave nor forsake me. So
sometimes, believing that God cares is hard for me to do. The scars that one develops as a child are
probably the hardest ones to heal. But
if we allow God to – He is able to heal them. We simply have to lay our pain at
the foot of the cross. Give it to Him.
One of the problems I have experienced in my post cancer life
is a tendency to be filled with anxiety.
I worry. Anxiety and worry are
not of God. But when my anxiety is at its
worse, I lose sleep, I lose my appetite, I become depressed and I get
discouraged. I overthink. The worst is that I often
seclude myself from people when my anxiety is at its very worse. This is exactly what ol’slewfoot wants and its something that I have been working on
within myself because as the Bible says:
“I sought the Lord
and He heard me and delivered me from all my fears.” (Psalms 34:4)
as well as:
“Do not be anxious
about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving,
present your request to God. And the
peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and
minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7)
God desires us to trust Him.
To walk by faith, to not be led by our feelings, this is not an easy
thing to do, the first part of healing comes in recognizing when we are falling
back into our own pattern of worry and anxiety and calling it out before the
Lord just as soon as it happens.
“Trust in the Lord
with all your heart, lean not to your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge
Him and He will make straight your path.”
(Proverbs 3:5-7)
It’s about knowing our promises and reciting them when we
feel weak, when we feel scared. It’s
about knowing and trusting that in spite of what occurred in our childhood that
God is our Father and is greater than anything that has occurred in our past,
present AND future. We walk by faith and
not by sight trusting that God will continue to do His good and perfect will in
our lives because we have given our lives to Him.
He is bigger
than our sicknessHe is bigger than our bills/debt
He is bigger than our depression, anxiety or fear
God IS ABLE!
This is why it is important for us to read His promises to
us – which are found in the Bible and hold them securely in our hearts. To lean on them, trust and believe in them. To look at past examples in the Bible and to
see ALL the times that God delivered His chosen ones. To truly hold dear in our hearts that God
loves us, cares about us and wants us to come to Him and tell Him all the
things that concern us. When we do this,
God will continue to show us that He is REAL and that HE is on the throne and
that HE alone is God.
The question becomes WHO are YOU going to believe? I choose
to believe the report of the Lord. It is something that I have to choose to do,
daily.