Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Visions and Decisions

God brings people into your life for one reason I believe and that's to be an encouragement somehow for each other. A dear friend of mine spoke on intercession and talked of how when God gives you a vision or promise the next step is to pray for the next step. While she was sharing this with me this is what I heard in me.

God has a promise for you. He's told you and shown you what He's going to do in your life. And then when it doesn't happen right away you get anxious and decide to make it happen when you think it's time and go about fulfilling it it the way that the world has done it before. If you don't think that your decision to move before God will bring any reprocussions or affect any one else's life, just take a look at how Sarah took the promise God gave to her husband and made things happen before God moved and tried to fulfill His promise the way that the world has always brought an heir. We are still seeing the affects or consequences of her decision today in Israel. It is not our job as a wife to take the vision God has given to our husband and make something happen but to support him and encourage him in prayer as he listens to God.

As women we tend to want to fix things and make things happen so others and happy. We can't try to interpret what another person has heard or sees. What we can do is lead them to the Word so that they can continue to hear and listen to the voice of God.

This encouragement is a part of friendship that can be taken to deep levels if we allow our heads to stay out of the way and allow the Spirit of God to lead. It's at that place where you are quick to rebuke the pride, judgement, jealousy, and strife that poisons the potential that can be made when two are united in the Lord.

I believe that the world will know we follow Christ, that we are Christians by the unconditional love we have for one another.

Websters dictionary of 1828 says friendship is defined as...

1. An attachment to a person, proceeding from intimate acquaintance, and a reciprocation of kind offices, or from a favorable opinion of the amiable and respectable qualities of his mind. Friendship differs from benevolence, which is good will to mankind in general, and from that love which springs from animal appetite. True friendship is a noble and virtuous attachment, springing from a pure source, a respect for worth or amiable qualities. False friendship may subsist between bad men, as between thieves and pirates. This is a temporary attachment springing from interest, and may change in a moment to enmity and rancor.

There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.

There is little friendship in the world.

The first law of friendship is sincerity.

2. Mutual attachment; intimacy.

3. Favor; personal kindness.

4. Friendly aid; help; assistance.

5. Conformity; affinity; correspondence; aptness to unite.

What stuck out to me the most was "There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity."

When we can enter a friendship in confidence that you won't expect anything in return, it will be a beautiful long lasting friendship.


At least that's what I think :)

Monday, August 1, 2011

Thoughts from an afternoon

As I sit upon this grassy knoll reminding me of psalms so beautifully written to remind me of His presence here with me I hear the cries and laughter of those on the ride of steel. Seeing only the soliloquy of life represented in this moment I am panged to think that they are within feet of knowing the one in which they seek. That the thrills in which they chase on the ups and downs and twists and turns of this man made beast could never compare to the son of man. That the knots of this ride isn't what will satisfy but only the knots of a tree. A tree carried by a man so innocently bleeding across these knots...the knots...the blemishes that serve to remind of a disease that deformed the original design but after being worked on by the Master is carved and polished to be beautiful and desired. These knots on this tree carried by the one who was sent be the thrill that I search for, that I long for, that I desire...this knotted tree from an ordinary field not raised to be anything eloquent or carving so glorious but simple known from seedlingly that the One wino breathed life into the seed knew that it was to grow into the tree used by the Master to set this world free so that the one that is driven by the thrills of life would some day come to know the One who loves him so, every knot, every up and every down was there to be breathed on and one day used by the Master. It's on this moment that I realize I am here. Here to sing of His love so amazing, so unchangeable, so astonishing and His beauty and magnificence that is mine to sing, nay to shout to the one on the man made beast HEY JESUS LOVES YOU!