believing and praying

"I've anchored my life in the belief that God can do anything, but somehow feel presumptuous believing He will for me.  That's doubt masquerading as false humility. And that, my friends, saddens God and limits His work in my life."  Glynnis Whitwer in her devotional at Encouragement for Today.

How much of the time do I pray, even now, feeling presumptuous because I know God can do anything, but will He?  Will he for me?


I fear praying bold prayers, giving voice to the silent dreams inside, afraid they are not what God wants for me.  That allows fear and doubt to rule me, to dominate my life, to dictate what I am going to do and say.  Instead, in faith, I need to step out and believe.  Pray, daring to believe that God will answer my prayers.  If they aren't in line with His will, He will make them line up.  He will say no.  He will redirect me.


I don't want my prayer life to take a back seat to "life" as I live it.  The "life" I live as I run from one thing to another, exhausted.  Not taking care of myself by getting enough sleep, or eating correctly, gets me tired and crabby, which then overflows into how I care for the kids and interact with my husband.  


Is that really Life?  No, not the way God intends us to live it, and not the way Christ modeled it.


Jesus made prayer His priority.  When He was tired of the crowd and needed refreshing, He went to be with His Father, He rested, He ate.  I need to do all those same things.


I need to start my day at nightfall, getting good rest and continue my day, following that rest by time with Jesus.  Time in prayer.  Time in His word, refreshing my spirit the way my body was refreshed by sleep.  Then the rest of my day should continue in productivity with whatever God has laid out before me.


I need to restructure my days and nights so that I get into a different rhythm.  I need it.  My spirit needs it.  I spent the weekend without any one on one time with God, and I could feel it yesterday.  Thursday, I spent some good time with Him in the morning, but Friday, Saturday, Sunday and even mostly yesterday, I didn't concentrate on time with Him.


I now am running on an empty fuel tank... on fumes.  My new day, starting with my nightfall will be spent at work, in a meeting and locking up after another meeting is done.  I won't get to really rest till well after nightfall tonight (or should I say tomorrow? See, my brain can't wrap itself around this one!)


I long to be closer to Jesus.  I want to pray in His will.  Yes, I am still afraid to pray the wrong things.  The only way I will know how to pray His will is to take care of myself, as God's temple, and to restructure my busy schedule so that I can have the room to take time out and away to spend time with Him.


Yes, God can do what He says He can do.  And He is willing to do it in my life, and in yours.  It isn't presumptuous, its called stepping out in faith without trusting in my own strength to do something "just in case" God doesn't come through the way I think He should.


I never knew it would be such a struggle to really believe God.  It sounds so easy, but it is a daily decision, a moment by moment decision sometimes.  Prayer, effective and powerful prayer is found in someone who really truly believes God, has faith and is willing to step out over the edge of a cliff without seeing anything that will keep them from falling.  


That unwavering faith is what fuels someone to ask the seeming impossible, because with God all things are possible.... for those who believe in Him.

The right Garden...

I read something recently comparing the Garden of Eden with the Garden of Gethsemane.   

The different men in them.

They were both wrestling.

When you read the beginning of Genesis, you don’t see the wrestle.  But it’s there.  It’s implied between the lines.  If you’ve been walking in the garden with God, in freedom and love and trust, there is a wrestle to move away from that.  How difficult the wrestle is sometimes depends on how long you’ve been walking with God, and how deeply you have believed Him.

The thought that God didn’t really have their best at heart must have been like a knife.

The thought that God was holding something out on them, or denying them something they hadn’t even thought to have asked.  Painful.

To have the truth twisted just a little bit, turned a minute hair, and the wrestle was over.

The choice was made.

They ate.

And then they saw, really saw.

Oh, I have lived so long wishing that my eyes had never lost their innocence!  Wishing that different choices had been made.  Wishing I had won my wrestlings, and thus stayed close to God.

How much regret and guilt and shame must have weighed Adam down.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, there was another wrestle.  A hard fought one.

The thought of what God was asking Him to do must have been like a knife.

The thought that God might find another way to work out His purposes, yet be choosing Him to suffer.  Painful.

Through the wrestle, maybe Jesus’ emotions cried out terribly to not even have to make a choice.  Maybe He didn’t want to.  I know there have been times when I have been forced to make a choice and all I have wanted to do was run away.  But in the running, that is a choice as well.

I have lived with the agony of emotions torn apart.

Jesus did that night in His garden.

Jesus’ choice was made.

He ate.

In His eating, He saw, really saw, the depths and the heights.

His eating took time.  Painful, pain filled time.  Torture, separation from His Father, death… but then, glorious resurrection!

In the Garden of Eden, Adam made a choice.  It was a choice to believe the lies, and not God.

Adam chose unbelief.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus cried out, “Not my will but Your’s be done,” He made a choice.  His choice was to believe the truth, believe His Father.

Jesus chose belief.

Belief.

Trust.

In our gardens of wrestling, where are we going to land?

Are we going to be in the right garden?

Am I?

Am I going to be in the right garden with Jesus, crying out, “Not my will Father, but Your’s be done!”  Or will I succumb to the lies and the subtle and not so subtle traps of the enemy in the wrong garden and tell God that I am going to do it my way, not His?

If I pick the second, I am choosing unbelief.  That’s the start to all other sins. If I don’t believe God for something, I am going to try to fix it on my own, try to escape whatever is bothering me, and land myself in more sin and trouble.

If I pick the first, I am choosing to believe my Living God.  Actively believing God means trusting Him with my all.  Me.  My life.  My family.  My job.  My church.  My future.  All of it is in His hands.  His plans are the best for me. 

That active belief produces life altering peace like nothing else I have ever experienced.

I want to always end up in the right garden, the Garden of Gethsemane.

Yes, it was filled with pain.  Yes, it was filled with tears.  Yes it was filled with wrestling, sweating to the point of blood.  Horrid wrenching emotions, nearly leading to despair. 

But it is a Garden filled with God. 

It is a Garden in which  I can walk with Him.

It is a Garden I can be free and unashamed…. Even unashamed of the emotions the wrestling has pulled out of me.

It is the right Garden.

The Garden of Belief.

By Faith....

Today was a good day.

I sat at the coffee shop after dropping off the kids at their respective schools.   I relaxed with my hazelnut breve and settled in. 

It was the first day all week that I didn’t have to rush anywhere. 

I took the time I needed to refill... to be recharged.

The last week I have felt God carrying me.  I can’t describe the peace.  I don’t know if it’s possible to even come up with the right words.

Last week I described how I felt pushed and pulled between what I knew God was wanting me to do, and what I felt He was calling me to, and what my self, my flesh was wanting to do.  I was willfully choosing not to listen to Him.

After working on my bible study some a night or so after I wrote that post, I came across something about God wanting us to start believing Him.  It was the time now, and we shouldn’t wait till tomorrow.

However, at that point as I read it, Dave was rolling over to turn out the light, so I had to wait.  I just said in my heart to God that I wasn’t putting Him off again, but logistically I needed sleep, and my husband was turning out the light.

In the morning, I headed to the coffee shop before I went up to the church to lead our morning ladies bible study.  There I sat, with my bible and bible study open, and my journal out.  I wrote to God about where I was at, what I was feeling and my hesitations.  I thought about my counseling session earlier in the week and how Tricia had been working with me, trying to help me really know and believe that even though this “thing” happened in my past, that I was still valuable, worth saving and pure. 

The more I prayed through it, I could see how God had paved the way through my study that week on my value in God’s eyes, and that He wanted me to believe that I am who He says I am.  God is so good how He orchestrates things.  There is no way that this (and other things He has done) are coincidences.

I finally surrendered last Thursday morning.  I sat in a secluded corner of the coffee shop, cried and wrote and told God that I was going to choose to believe Him.  Right then and there.  No matter what He called me to.  No matter what it looked like.  No matter what I had to leave behind.

In Hebrews 11:8 it says, “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.”

I feel like God has been calling me to my promised land.  Though I do not know where I am going, I am packing up my things, getting rid of what I don’t need to weigh me down in the journey, and I am obeying.  I am going.  I don’t know where.  I don’t know what for.  I don’t know how. 

But I do know Who I am going with.  I also know that He is going to reveal more and more of Himself to me.  The more I know about Him, the more I will realize that God is that, and so much more.  I will never learn all there is to know about God. 

I am ok with that. 

I just know that since I have chosen to believe Him… every day this week… I have felt a peace that I haven’t in a long time.  I have felt a joy – not always that I’m happy – but a deeper internal “something” I can’t really describe. 

Maybe it’s a knowing I’m not alone.

Maybe it’s the feeling that I’m finally making the right choices to believe Him.

Maybe it’s that I’m finally obeying Him.

Maybe it’s that I’m not running away any more.

Maybe it’s that I’m not holding onto my past.

I am finally choosing to believe that I am fully forgiven for every past sin – completely and absolutely forgiven.  To the point that it is wiped out, demolished, destroyed.

I am finally choosing to believe daily that I have God’s child, He has a glorious inheritance for me, His incomparably great power is at work within me, He protects me under the shadow of His wing, and His love for me is far bigger, deeper, higher, and wider than I could ever imagine.

For me.

Me!

He knows me inside and out.

So do I.

He knows me better than I do, even the motives behind things I do, that I don’t even realize are there.

But He holds me tight, even when I let go of Him, he never lets go of me.

I know this because I have seen it.

I know this because for a while here I have let go of Him.  Now I am choosing to grab back onto His hand (at least with a more conscious effort than in the past months) and believe Him for every promise He has given me.  Promises He has given to all of us.

In love, we are blessed, chosen, adopted, accepted, redeemed, forgiven, secure, called, confident, free, anointed, able…

That is who God says we are… but there are even more things that are promises to us, just one of them being that He will never leave us or forsake us.  (Yes, even when it feels like He has, He is still there)

Personally, I have the sense that I am being called out to my promised land here on this earth.  I have a heavenly promised land, but I believe that God has a “promised land” here on earth that He wants to give me. 

All He is doing is asking me to believe Him. 

Asking me to follow where He leads. 

Asking me to take the time and really listen,

Really watch to see where He is moving, 

Where He is calling me to.

It’s not going to be in ways I expect maybe, but it is going to be great!  Because our God is a great God!

I am excited.  Scared.  Anticipating what He will do in my life.  Afraid.  Anxious.

Yet at the same time I feel this very secure sense of peace.  Yes, some things have come along this week to try to throw things into that peace.  There have been times when I have succumbed to the pressure, but each time, God has turned my eyes, heart, thoughts back to Him and the peace has invaded my soul again.

I feel like He is asking me to just stay close to Him, resting in His embrace.  I feel like I am truly covered with His feathers and finding refuge under His wings.  (see Psalm 91)  I am just standing next to Him, waiting as He points to something and says, “Try that, there.  See how this stretches you?  This is where I want you to go.”

One new little assignment He gave me that started this week.  I don’t see the big picture.  I’m not supposed to.  He does though.  I am choosing to trust.  Choosing to take the time to see what He sees and to listen like He wants me to.

I am choosing to actively believe Him.  Walking in faith.  Walking, not just believing IN God, but BELIEVING Him.  Believing Him leads to hope...

I want God to later say of me, “By faith Heather….”




Though this post is a bit late for the Walk with Him Wednesdays, I couldn't help but join in on this discussion this week, because I saw how God was working through time in my life - and asking me to take the time with Him I needed.

Please hop over to A Holy Experience and meet Ann.  You are in for a treat.