My Utmost for His Highest

In my devotion I read this morning by Oswald Chamber, once again I moved by the depth of this man. He causes me to delve internally and ask myself some pretty important things, like is it really all that bad? Listen to what he said today;

What does it matter if external circumstances are hard? Why should they not be! (That in and of itself is a pretty important question.) If we give way to self-pity and indulge in the luxury of misery, we banish God's riches from our own lives and hinder others from entering into His provision....When God is beginning to be satisfied with us He will impoverish everything in the nature of fictitious wealth, until we learn that all our fresh springs are in Him. If the majesty and grace and power of God are not being manifested in us....God holds us responsible. "God is able to make all grace abound;" then learn to lavish the grace of God on others.

Here is the thing I hear, it's not about my happiness, my comfort, my ease that Christ died, it's about Him doing through us what His sovereignty chooses and us loving others the way this sovereign Lord has loved us! Think about it!

What's your perspective?

I am in New Orleans on a job this week and admidst our work today my boss and I were discussing "perspective", he said concerning a matter, "it is all in your perspective". This lead to a conversation that really has me thinking and thinking and thinking, especially the use of the phrase, "it is all in your perspective". Is that true, I mean from a biblical standpoint concerning the matters of life, it almost sounds like some kind of excuse doesn't it?

Now I realize that you're probably saying, "well it depends on in what context you are using the word". Yes that is true. Let me give you the definition of the word perspective: noun- frame of reference, the state of one's ideas of the facts known to one, and the faculty of seeing all the relevant data in a meaningful relationship. Doesn't that sound all to philisophical? A couple of synonyms for perspective are; context and sight. Now this is the way my mind works, I say, ok sounds deep now what does that mean to me? As my boss and I were talking this through we agreed that everyone has a perspective and most the time it is based on your life experientially. I guess the red flag that I thought about was, "but what about truth, life cannot be based on just experience alone", if it is seems like that might cause choas when trying to make decisions, big life decisions!

How about this, what if I don't think anybody loves me, here I am in New Orleans and nobody from my family calls me today or for that matter anytime this week while I am here, if I just base that on "seeing all the relevant data" I guess after a week, I could be feeling kinda low! This is the point where my foundation is very important, the foundation that I've been building for the last 25 years of love, concern and care in our family. I totally rely on that foundation, not necessarily my perspective at that moment.

We also decided definately that one's perspective changes over the years. I don't see things the way I used to that is for sure. Now look at the word context, it is a synonym for perspective. If I look at my life in context, I can see that just because my family didn't call me doesn't mean they don't love me. There probably was a time due to immaturity and a poor grasp of truth that I might have thought that. If I base important life decisions, moral and otherwise on truth, in context, now there is a foundation upon which all perspective can rest firmly.

I haven't thought this through much more than that, but it's interesting isn't it? I would love to hear what any of you think, (other than, "she needs a life"). So ponder on that for a moment and lets talk!

I wanted to just quickly say something about what happened at our church last night; Dennis Jernigan was there and lead in worship for the services and God ministered to me as well as so many others, so I wanted to share my thoughts! If you don't know Dennis' testimony, it would be good for you to look at his website, because the power of God is moving through this man's life bringing glory to the Father! During the service he was asking people to stand if they were struggling in different areas of life, you know the normal ones, such as grief over the lost of a loved one, or lost of a certain relationship, but I couldn't believe he asked if you are grieving over the lost of a vision or a dream stand so we can pray over you! I immediately stood as if called out specifically by name. That's what is happening to me, I am grieving the lost of a vision and a dream, and I am fighting my way through it, seeking the deliverance of God from my sorrow! My thought is; is it sorrow, or self pity?

I know that nothing happens by chance, God's hand is in every area of my life, growing me to be who He created me to be. Sometimes though leaving behind what is good and comforting is like slowly dying, or it seems. I understand how people get to a place in life when you are so concentrated on yourself that depression sets in. To put this altogether, I have to tell you that when my mother in law recently died I was comforting the family with the fact that life and death are apart of our earthly existence, so it comes as no surprise when a loved one dies. Now God is reminding me that the same is true within our living existence, changes happen, death of dreams happen and life goes on! I think I am sounding a bit morbid here huh? But the things in our journey that occur are not always uplifting at the moment, as a matter of fact these are the times when if responding correctly to the sovereignty of God you turn full faced to the Father seeking Him more completely to be your all in all! So that was the encouragement for me last night, to grieve the loss of a dream and move on, not holding to tightly to anything! Hear the words of my anthem again; "On Christ the solid Rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand, all other ground is sinking sand"! Turn toward Him and be encouraged today and think about it....

"On Christ the Solid Rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand, all other ground is sinking sand." That song has got to be my anthem right now, it seems like everywhere I go I hear that song, or even have to sing it myself! I have heard and sang that song for the last 37 years and never has it pierced my heart like it does right now. ( I'm 43 if you're wondering, but I pretty much don't have any recollection before the age of 6, tell you the honest truth, I don't have much recollection before the age of 43! haha) Do you hear the words, let me show them to you, don't sing them, because you will check out mentally, just read them:


My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness; I dare not trust the sweetest frame,but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.
When darkness veils His lovely face,I rest on His unchanging grace;In every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the veil.
His oath, His covenant, His blood support me in the whelming flood; when all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay.
When He shall come with trumpet sound,Oh, may I then in Him be found; dressed in His righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne.
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;All other ground is sinking sand, all other ground is sinking sand.

God is still teaching me the message of this classic hymn that I learned as a small child. My hope is on NOTHING else but Jesus' blood and Jesus' righteousness! I will one day stand before a perfect, sovereign, holy God and nothing else will matter, nothing else will be said that has any importance but "My hope has always been on Jesus' blood!" You know, I have come to realize what depravity means, I see in myself what it looks like, so how my souls swells with praise for the payment made by my Savior! Continue to look at the words; "when all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay". Really Paula? Is He, when everything that is comforting, that is the who of who I am gives way am I your I AM!? Wow, typing that quickens my heart, can you say those words without your heart being quicken also? Keep looking if you will; Dressed in HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS ALONE, faultless to stand before the throne." Faultless? Surely not, but the Truth is I am in Him! It absolutely spurs me on to live out His name that covers me. Then listen to the refrain again, this time sing it out loud, "On Christ the Solid Rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand, all other ground is sinking sand" Wow He is the Rock that is UNSINKABLE! Think about it......

The pride of life...

There is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life. ( 1 John 2:16) My pastor in his sermon last Sunday mentioned this verse, and then ask us which one did we struggle with? I have thought about that all week, and my heart was definately convicted about the pride of life! The pride of life involves self-sufficiency. There has been a time in my life as recently as a couple of years ago that my self-suffiency and my accomplishments all of a sudden looked like they nothing! Everything that I based my life upon being good at, such as being a wife and mother seem to be fleeting. That sounds a bit odd because my marriage is still healthy and intact, I am still a mother guiding and rearing my children, so what is it that seemed fleeting? It was the bases of my identity.

I was reading a commentary about the 1 John passage and it said, " either we can trust in ourselves and our accomplishments or we can derive our values, assurance and life from God." Thus self suffiency = worldliness. He went on to say something really profound to me, "People who live their life like this are dedicating it to things that are short lived" Wait a minute, being a wife and mother is not something that is short lived! Yes that's right, but when you base your identity on those accomplishments and not on your Savior you will get burned! Why? Because life is about change, your children grow up and leave, your relationship with your husband changes and everything you thought you were a pro at is jerked out from underneath you. In my life the climax of the lesson came in this set of circumstances: my husband's job changed, he was gone the majority of the week and finishing his degree when he was home he had to concentrate on homework. This was a difficult time for him also, he by no means enjoyed being away from his family. But for me my role in caring for him had to change and I didn't like it at all! My children were all at different stages, I had one in college away from home and after having homeschooled my children for ten years and loving it, the other two were put in public school each for different reasons. Now that same year I turned 40 and it was like a pie in the face of everything I had accomplished. I now know that God was taking me through repenting of making my family my idol and lovingly helping me understand that even though life changes, He will never and my identity as His child is a constant!

So I struggle still today with the pride of life, because like many of us we self-exalt and that will lead to self destruction. My heart is so moved now, by all that I know that God has given me to do in this life, including my precious role as wife and mother, but I now cling to my relationship with the Eternal One more than my relationship with those here below. I hope you understand my heart on this one and I hope you think about it...

Unbelieveable!

You know I can't believe sometimes how long it has taken me to learn things. Sometimes I think I've learned them and then I guess I forget and have to learn them all over again! I know that I am no different than you, to say that I am puts to much emphasis on me, makes me the center of my universe. I know that all of us go through the same kinds of things, maybe the circumstances different, but the struggles the same. I want to come back to the thought of what reality is, you see God is working in my thoughts and my heart so that I may comprehend more of His greatness. I have been thinking this week through the prompting of scripture and through the teaching in; In Search of a confident Faith of how I am in need of a paradigm shift, ( I don't really use big words like that on my own, so I borrow them!). In my life I get bogged down with the practical stuff and I forget how big God is. If you try to deal with all the daily stuff without the remembrance of your awesome Lord you will get bogged down. You know that He is so big and so different than anything that is, all of creation cannot hold Him, (Psa. 139:7-12) and yet I don't live my life in such a way that people know how big He is through me. How sad. So I have to step back and ask myself what is it that I believe about Him. Look at Luke 24:4-11. What did the disciples believe about Him before His crucifixion? Did they believe every word He spoke, and if so look at their response, they were just like you and me. They thought the women's words were "nonsense". It did not seem plausible to them that He would be alive, it was beyond their realm of possibility. Praise God that He doesn't work in our realm of anything! Yet when we continue to look at the passage it looks like Peter and John (John 20:8-9) went ahead to the tomb, maybe the words of Jesus, that they did not fully understand began to reverberate through their minds. When they got there, their confidence began to swell, their paradigm began to shift! It was plausible, in fact it was then factual He had risen! The more I walk with God, (my santification) the more I see Him work in my life the more my faith swells also! My friend Lisa and I have been studying the book of James, how powerful! We have in our lives been caught kicking and screaming through trials that God intended to use to grow us in our faith! We cannot now and will never grow fully without them!!! They are the instuments of God's hand that shakes up our patterns of life, our paradigm of the way we see reality. What if, just what if we approached life through the eyes of faith (true reality), what if when suffering happens, when trials come we smiled at the Father, the "giver of all good things" and allowed Him to build us up, teach us to become more of the image of Christ? Wow, thinking about that right now causes my heart to rise with awe for my precious Father! How small minded of me to forget that. In saying that though, we have to realize it is apart of our growing to allow the Spirit of God to identify areas and then agree with God on them and allow Him to shift our paradigm. What other things have I made bigger than God? What things are just not possible? NOTHING! I could ramble on about this, as a matter of a fact let me challenge you to look at the story of Peter walking on the water. (Matt. 14:24-33) You know the story, he saw Jesus, apparently they all did, and he ask to come to Him, and of course the Lord always allows us to come to Him. Peter then stepped out, trancending all physical matter, walked on the water out to Jesus....lost sight of the who he was walking toward and then needed to be rescued by the Savior. The thing that never dawned on me was what happened after that, hand in hand with the Savior they had to go back, walking on the water. That is the why to my needed paradigm shift, to believe that the impossible is possible and then to walk with my Father in the truth of that no matter what the trial. I know that I really sound like I am aimlessly ranting about all of this, but my mind is being taught so much that I find it hard to express it all in intelligible writing, but my heart really wants to say it with a challenge to think about what we consider is possible, then what we believe about God and how the two meet! Think about it...

The Beauty of the Lord

What is beautiful to you? My eldest daughter had her 22nd birthday last week and that caused me to think back on the day she was born. (of course!) I remember holding her in the hospital and thinking about how perfect she was to me, not unlike all of you in the same situation. I have a picture of her being held by her dad, and I can see the awe in his eyes as he cradled his newborn baby girl. How beautiful! Now as she turns 22 and is still as beautiful to me as she was then, I am reminded of how life is fleeting, because her birth seems like yesterday to me. What about beauty though? In Psalms 27:4 David speaks of wanting to gaze upon the beauty of God. "One thing I have desired of the LORD, that I will seek; That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in His temple." Did you ever think about God being beautiful? I haven't , though it would make sense, we can look around us in nature and every human being and all our diversity and the beauty of it all. How awesome is this God that we serve and how absolutely beautiful is He?! God is as much beautiful as He is majestic and powerful! Yet we don't meditate on the beauty of the Lord. As we continue the journey learning more of Him everyday, as we consider His attributes and praise Him for them all, lets stand and gaze into the beauty of the Lord our God! Think about it.

Faith=Confidence

Hebrew 11:1-2 says, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony" The picture that I think I have had of faith in my mind and my heart is sort of mystical, you know something that you can't really understand, but you know that it is an important part of your walk. I think this illustration used in "In Search of a Confident Faith" says it better. The author speaks of a young girl who asked of him one time, "If you can prove that God is real what would be the purpose of faith?" This really is the way I have looked at faith, just something to fill in the gap to that which is unknown. When we understand faith as being a confidence in God (which is a literal meaning) it shines like a beacon on scripture and on how important it is to know intimately our Heavenly Father. When I read chapter 11 of Hebrews, which is familiar to most believers and I put in the phrase "God confidence" where the word faith is it was like that beacon shining through to my heart! How did these ordinary people, unexpected people do such extraordinary things? God confidence! Faith! Their faith was counted to them righteousness! We know that our righteousness is counted to us on behalf of our Savior, it is my confidence in God, not myself or the things I have done, or the things I will do that make me righteous before Him, but because I have confidence in the Father's work of salvation on my behalf through Jesus Christ! Wow! Rejoice in that today and tomorrow and the next day! What freedom comes to my heart when I understand and you understand that it is not faith just for faith sake, but a deep rooted confidence in an Almighty, Sovereign Father that leads us through this life and into the one to come. Can you say Hallelujah? Think about it!

His reality or mine?

Reading in a devotional the other day I was reminded of a movie that I have seen called "The Truman Show", maybe you've seen it. In the movie Jim Carrey plays Truman who lives a life that many would love to live, seemingly perfect but in reality not reality at all. You see Truman IS a reality show and doesn't even know it. All the people in his life are just actors playing a part. In the devotional the author ask the question of truth and reality, what is it? Truman at a point in the movie begins to see something is wrong, his reality is falling apart. He tries to escape one day by getting in a sailboat and sailing away when he runs into the end of the set that his life is lived on; his reality just ran out! That hit me like a rock because not too long ago my reality, the life that I had constructed slowly began to fade and ended one day. It wasn't the death of someone dear, not even the suffering that many go through with physical issues, but it was the death of my carefully designed life that I loved. I loved everything about it, and then it was taken away and I caved! I was so mad at God, I even audibly said, "if You are really even there appear to me right now tell me what I am suppose to do!" You might think how brazen that was and really it was, but at that moment God began something new in my heart and looking back, it had to hit the wall before freedom could come. Where did my freedom lay, in Christ, in who I am in Christ, in who He is in me! My identity was not in the things that I loved, for they are temporary but in the things unseen, because they are eternal. Read 2 Cor. 4, the whole chapter and that thought of what reality really is culminates in the last verse, "...while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal." I have not come to the end of this journey of understanding what God is teaching me about this, but I understand that my reality is not that illusion of what I have created, but is in my Sovereign who reigns over all! Think about it!

Turn off the default

I operate my life on a set of "known" ideas, such as theologians are
smarter than I, rich people are intimidating and if I lose the weight I will just gain it back. Although you say these thoughts aren't necessarily true, you and I both live with such thoughts that dictate what we do and will not do. Where is God in all that? If God is as big as we think He is, why do we not give him our default thoughts and ideas about our lives. As I pondered this I couldn't help but think about the woman at the well and how she was just like me operating in default. In John 4 1-27 is the story of when Jesus was by Jacob's well and there at the well was a Samaritan woman. Jesus ask her for a drink, but of course she was in default, not even considering what this Man could do, when she in a rebuking tone asked why in the world would a Jew be speaking to me a Samaritan. Yes in the culture there was a separation of the two groups and as far as she was concerned there would be no reason for Him to speak to her, after all she wasn't as good as Him. I thought, how many times is God trying to do something new in my life and I operate in the "known thoughts" like, "I can't do that". I say put the known thoughts on the back burner and give God what He so deserves and that is me, all of me! As a work out my salvation with fear and trembling, I am humbled at the thought that He desires to work in me at all, and thus how deserving He is of every place in my heart as well as my mind! Think on the mighty works of God, what He has done is just a taste of what He wants to do! Think about it!

Things I ponder...

I wanted to start this blog for the reason of sharing what God is working out in my heart and mind. I was so encouraged by two friends to share with all who would read this; but I must admit my heart is alittle faint at the thought of posting what I am wrestling with and the "working out of my salvation". I am convinced and convicted in my own life that I must know the One that I say that I follow in a deeper more intimate way. To "love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind" seems to be what I am pondering as of late. To love Him with all my heart seems natural as a woman because we live on such a sense of depth from the heart, though there is even more to that than meets the eye. To love Him with all my soul seems to convict me of the depth of my relationship, or the lack thereof; but loving Him with all my mind, that is the one that quickens my heart, that is the one I know that most scares me. My mind is so rattled most the time because of the urgency that is so apparent, that thinking deep thoughts about such an Almighty God literally hurts my mind! So what do I do with that, I push them to the back, I hide in my complacency and "churchanity" because that would take something that I don't want to give, my time and my mind! I am reading the book, In Search of a Confident Faith; and in the book the authors tell me that sometime in our walk when we ponder the deep things of God, we are afraid because we don't think there is a sense of honesty in our community as believers enough to share what we struggle with. How sad! So we tend to settle back into a superficial Christianity. That is why the world thinks as Bill Maher has said that we have a neurological disorder that keeps us from thinking! So I want to post a challenge to all to think big thoughts of our Mighty Sovereign who wants us to know Him, really know Him to the depths of our being, so if the day should ever come in our lives and it will to most, and He should be all that we have left, I pray that He will be all that you and I want and need!