are you stuck?

image source: freeimages.com/Adrian, Canada

Have you ever been in a rut? Are you in one now? Do the circumstances of life keep beating you down; does the dialogue in your head accuse you of being weak and incapable to live the life you know God has invited you to live?

I have. Multiple times. It is easy in these times to make sweeping judgments about the goodness of God. We see the circumstances of our life (which seem merciless); we see the weakness in ourselves (how easily we can be thrown into doubt or fear or anger or defeat) and we wonder if we will ever bridge the gap between the life we are currently living and the life that we have envisioned. We start to feel that God is far away. That perhaps we got it wrong; He doesn't care or He is untouched by our difficulties. Maybe we heard wrong; maybe we are not going to be a pastor or an author or an interior designer (or whatever God has spoken into our hearts) after all. Life presses in, doubts grow, and we find ourselves stuck. Not moving forward, but walking wearily the treadmill of life, wondering how long before our legs give out and we give up all together. Were we wrong to hope, to dream? Is this what life really is all about? Are we destined to be tired, depressed and overwhelmed?

I offer a hearty 'no way!'

While it is true that in this life we will experience good times and hard times, we are not meant to stay stuck! Even the difficult times are there to move us forward. Depending on the difficulties of the circumstances we are are facing, it is easy to believe that we have no control. It is simply not true. When we made the decision to follow Christ, we entered into a relationship with God; we became His children and He committed Himself to lead us and guide us into maturity. He has promised to heal and help us. We often complain and moan and fear and doubt but God is willing to lead us just as soon as we ask. He will faithfully take us step by step; the problem is not His lack of guidance, but often our forgetfulness in asking Him or our unwillingness to follow.

Often times the path to freedom is a slow one. Sometimes it is instantaneous, but mostly it takes practice. It is this journey that binds us to God's father heart. It is in our 'stuck-ness' that we learn to reach out; to invite God back into our parenting, our thought life, our careers and relationships.

It is not nearly so tricky as we think it is; it just comes down to this:
Ask Him.
Sit, wait, see what He says.
He will show you the next step to take because He is faithful.
It is up to us whether we will take it.

'Trust God from the bottom of your heart;

Don't try to figure out everything on your own.

Listen for God's voice in everything you do, everywhere you go;

He's the one who will keep you on track.'

Proverbs 3:5 (The Message)

you can get help right now

image source: freeimages.com/Griszka Niewiadomski

Have you ever felt as though you were waiting for something to come to pass? Some solution, some outcome, some answer to a problem? Oftentimes when I have been in a situation I have not been happy with or that I could not seem to get peace on, I have looked to the future, thinking, when is the answer going to come? This line of thinking often left me feeling as though I was just hanging: waiting around for something: a solution, for help, for God to do something. And yet over this past twelve months, one of the truths I am beginning to slowly wrap my head around is the concept of God as a present help. God as I AM and not I will be.

In the Bible, God's names represent a different aspect of His character. When He revealed himself as I AM, God was not only communicating His eternal nature but His Presence and Sufficiency for any situation, for any point in our timeline. Many of our concerns can be traced to living outside of the now. We might look to the past and see failure, disappointment and patterns we think we can't break. We look to the future and may fear the unknown or worry that the past will continue on a loop there. Or we might be waiting for something to happen that we believe will solve all our problems.

But I AM is above and beyond this; He is everything at once. Everywhere at once. I AM was there in the past and will be in the future, but most importantly, He is here right now. He is fully accessible to us in the present tense. That means now. And one second from now. And one second after that. There is no past or present sin, problem, dilemma or wayward thought that can alienate us from Him. We are not depending on the passing of time or the happening of certain events to be ok in life. We don't need to keep projecting our solutions to the future. Our answer dwells in the Present.

One of the biggest blessings of the God-life is the accessibility of help in every moment and circumstance. God's power to transform us, to strengthen us and offer us hope and give us wisdom so that we can face whatever is going on around us. It's the reason the apostle Paul could find joy even when he was in a prison cell. We can get peace in any singular moment, regardless of what is happening in our lives. Our security and help are not dependent on circumstances, on the unfolding of time. That would be a tragedy. There is too much at stake. Too much outside of our control. We could spend a whole life waiting.

Instead, we are offered help now. Today. This second.

Don't get stuck in the time-trap, projecting your help to some future point. Slow down. Synchronise with the rhythm of God and see how He will show Himself strong for you, right now.

'Now that we know what we have - Jesus, this great High Priest
 with ready access to God - let's not let it slip through our fingers. 
We don't have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. 
He's been through weakness and testing, experienced it all - 
all but the sin. 

So let's walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. 

Take the mercy, accept the help.'

Hebrews 4:16 (The Message)

the antidote to worry

image source: freeimages.com/John Nyberg

There are just so many things to worry about in this life. We could fill a whole day with a multitude of anxious thoughts concerning ourselves, our loved ones, our plans, careers, relationships, the world. In fact, if we look around, it often seems that there is more going wrong with the world than going right. In addition to what's going on 'out there', we have our own issues to contend with: past failures, lost dreams and hopes, experiences that seemed to have crushed us and trained us into believing that we might as well give up. We can become stuck amidst this stream of negative thoughts, trapped between the failures of the past and the fears for the future.
When we are overrun with negative, worrisome thoughts, it can be easy to get stuck. To feel like passengers in our own minds as the stream of concerns run through like a freight train, weighted by our experiences, by 'proofs' that things could and will go terribly, terribly wrong.

But there is an antidote.

God has not created us to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders. Not even the weight of our own lives; He has provided a solution regarding those things which concern us. In Philippians 4:6 and 7 we find an invitation:

'Be anxious for nothing, but in everything buy prayer and supplication, 
with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; 
and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.'

Within this well-known passage, we are offered the correct application for our anxieties: Prayer. When we are worried, it is a sign; a sign that we are carrying a burden that we ought not to be carrying. God knows that worrying about things that are outside of our control is not good for us. It is not His design for His creatures to carry the weight of the world; to try and plan their futures and keep all the plates in the air by their own strength. Some things are just outside of our control and no matter how much we churn over them, we cannot come up with answers.

When we are overrun with worry, we are invited to hand over our concerns to God through prayer. We are not casting them to the great void and hoping for the best. We are handing the problems over to a Being, asking Him to work on them for us. He has promised to equip us with strength and ability for every task. He has promised solutions, deliverance and His presence. When we pray, we invite him into the circumstance and secure His solutions. It is passing the problem from our hands into His.

Prayer also works an act of purging our minds of those thoughts that do not belong there. As we release the thought and the control to God, we reestablish our minds; we detox the negative, fearful churning thoughts and are left with a blank slate. God has promised that when we pass our concerns to Him, he will give us His peace.

In the verse above, peace is defined as the following:

• a state of tranquility; exemption from the rage and havoc of war (remember, those things that concern us are not our battle to fight: God has promised to go ahead of us)
• security, safety, prosperity
• the tranquil state of a soul assured of its salvation through Christ and so fearing nothing from God and content with its earthly lot of whatever sort it is

In addition to this, the word guard is likened to a military guard, which works to prevent hostile invasion or to keep the inhabitants of a besieged city from flight. It is a protection, a guarding, a keeping, a watching. When we pray, we release supernatural power; peace guards us but it is our job to stay in that peace. We need to be careful not to rehash a thought that we have released to God in prayer. Reject it; it has been committed to God's care and you can be assured that He will has taken responsibility for it.

This is God's design for his creation; communication with him. Re-aligning ourselves into His care and reminding ourselves that we are not meant to figure this life out by ourselves. He wants to show us the way and He wants to help us in our lives.

This is the fourth installment on a series of fear that I will be doing on this blog. Check back in the coming days for more on fear and how to take back control of a worried, fretting mind.

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