Fear, Faith and a Mustard Seed

Everybody has something that they are afraid of...heights, clowns, spiders. I am one of those people who is not too fond of heights. I had a very unpleasant experience as a young child stopped on the very top of a ferris wheel with one of my cousins who will remain nameless. To this day, I haven't gotten back on a ferris wheel. I wasn't scared because I was stuck or because the machine was broken or I was falling, I was scared because these things MIGHT happen. Fast forward several decades and the list of fears has grown. Fear of failure, rejection, loss, not being good enough, the future. Fear of change, of letting go of things that are comfortable to me.

What is fear? The Bible says that fear is a lack of faith (Mark 4:40). Do I not have faith? I consider myself a faithful person, wife, friend. I have faith in God. What I lack sometimes is faith in what God can and IS doing for me in my life. When things aren't going like I think they should, I worry. I doubt. I shed tears. I get angry. I get discouraged. Guess what? I am not in control. I like to be, but I'm not. In my quest to live a more disciplined life, I have made a lot of positive changes along the way. I've lost some weight, learned to like exercise, become more organized, but I've realized I haven't let go of all of my fears. Why do I want to lose weight? I want to feel better and be healthy. I want to honor God with the body He has given me. I want to walk into a store and not have to look for an XL. But I also have a shallow desire to be attractive/pretty. I don't want people to tell me I have a pretty face. When I hear that it screams "but she has an ugly body"! After 39 years, I have become comfortable with the way I look now. I have also become comfortable with food as my comforter. Even though I want to lose weight, it scares me sometimes. I am still scared of things that MIGHT happen. How will people perceive me and how will I react to them?  My insides must change for the better along with my outside.

Thinking about faith and fear made me think of a song I learned this fall. I don't know the name of it, but here are the lyrics...."Well there's nothing that I need that He won't provide and there's nothing that I need that He won't supply. Cause I believe, yes I believe. I will say to the mountain move. I will say to the mountain get out of my way. Cause I believe, yes I believe." This song led me to think about Matthew 17:20 which says, "Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there', and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you." Do you know how big a mustard seed is? I had to squint to see it in the picture at the top of the blog. It is smaller than the BBs and the air rifle pellets that I sweep up off of my floor. It's smaller than legos, squinkies, or any Barbie parts lying around my house. It might be so small that you don't know that it is there. Now I know my mustard seed is there. I'm holding on to that thought throughout this journey. It won't be easy, but it WILL be worth it!

2 Timothy 1:7 God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love and self control.

Don't Hide it, Divide it!!

     Have you ever hidden something and then could not find it later? I have done this many times. Sometimes it is a good surprise... like finding the $100 bill that I hid for emergencies. Sometimes it is not so good...like when my daughter "hid" a raw egg in her closet and I "found" it while cleaning. I almost just gagged writing about it! My point is, what good is something while it is hidden? Even though I was supremely happy to discover the money, it did not multiply while it was hidden. Certainly no one benefited from the hidden egg in ANY way. When we play childhood hiding games such as Hide and Seek the joy is in finding the person, not in them staying hidden. When children hunt Easter eggs, they don't leave them behind, they pick them up and keep them.

     I think the same principle can apply to our abilities and our talents that have been given to us by God. Guess what? EVERYONE has a talent, yes...even you...and me. Even some things that I think I am not very good at can be God-given. Take for example, public speaking. CAN I speak in front of a group? Yes. Do I WANT to speak in front of a group? Negative, ghostrider. However, if HE is calling YOU, there is no better person for the job. Why do we hide? The answer is simple for me....FEAR. I let myself doubt. I don't want to mess up...or look stupid. But am I doubting my abilities or His? If I truly feel that He is telling me to do something, be it a small or large task, isn't my doubt really a lack of faith in Him? 

     There have been times that I have stepped out in faith and gone where HE was leading. These times were glorious and I felt really close to Him. Why do I let my flesh get in the way of what I need to do? One of my big issues was (and sometimes still is) praying out loud. I am no stranger to praying.  I pray daily. I used to talk (silently, in my head) to God non-stop. Now I have added listening as well. I think part of it stemmed from the denomination I grew up in. Only men prayed. Even at mealtime, unless a cute young child insisted on doing the blessing, it was given by a man. There was a time in my life that I would do almost anything to escape praying in front of people. Faint, fake a seizure, whatever it took. Then a friend asked me for prayer. For ME to pray. How can you refuse someone that you love and respect that is asking for prayer? So I did it, feeling inadequate the whole time. Guess what? The world did not end, I did not spontaneously combust and the person thanked me for praying for them. I then realized that although you will not find me raising my hand when someone asks for a volunteer to pray (yet), I am okay with where I am now. I will pray when led. I will pray when asked for prayer. I will not keep the gift of prayer that He gave me buried or keep it for myself. 

    So, what are you  hiding? What has He given you that you aren't using to further His Kingdom? He blesses us so that we can bless others. We are to give it away...freely. After all, it isn't ours to keep here on this Earth. I pray that we can all be faithful with what we have been given...whether it is an obvious ability like singing, or a hidden talent that even you didn't know was there. 

1 Thessalonians 5:11 says, "Therefore encourage one another and build each other up". If you see someone stepping out in faith and using their talents or abilities, pray for them, lift them up and give them the support that He would have us give. 

Are You Living the Salt Life?



If you live near the coast, at least in my neck of the woods, you see this logo on a regular basis. I see it on the back windshield of a car sometimes daily. I am a salt lover, I will admit. I add salt to my food sometimes before I even taste it. I even put salt on my salad. When I was in college, a friend gave me one of those hamster "salt licks" for a birthday present. Yes, it was a gag gift, but I actually "used" it a couple of times. I finally got rid of it, because it just wasn't practical to break out a "salt lick wheel" when I had a craving. I'm pretty sure it made me look a little unstable.

As I sat in the elementary school pick up line yesterday, I started thinking how living the "Salt Life" could apply to living a Christian life or a more disciplined life. Have you ever looked up "salt" in the Bible? There are a lot of verses dealing with this word. Many times, especially recently, I have eliminated certain foods from my diet. Soda, chocolate, sugar...all of these things are great and I would not want to live forever without them, but they are not necessary for survival. Salt, however, is necessary for our bodies to function properly. When we don't have enough salt in our bodies, we become unbalanced and don't heal easily. It helps to transmit messages in the nervous system. Salt is also used as a preservative to keep food from spoiling. It was used before modern medicine to help heal wounds or to purify water. Salt when used in food serves to season it, to bring out the best in the taste of the food or to blend certain foods together. For all of these reasons, Jesus called His followers "the salt of the earth".

Guess what else salt does? It makes you THIRSTY. It makes you long for something. When you see someone who is "salty", do you long for what they have? To me, these people seem satisfied with their life. They possess true joy. They don't have to seek validation from the outside world. Other people in general are attracted to these people because they see something in them that they want to have as well. Did I just describe you? As Christians, that is what Jesus challenged us to do. We are supposed to preserve, freshen and sweeten the world with His word and to help heal His people with our deeds and actions. Most of the time I feel like Mrs. Dash...very flavorful, but not truly, genuinely salt. My goal is to surround myself with salty people so that they can season me and I can learn to season others. Jesus put us here to season the world with our presence, our words and our actions. As my thirst increases, I long to make others thirsty as well.

Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. ---Colossians 4:6

Bring the Rain

"Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy." --James 1:2

I don't know about you, but when I have problems, the first thing I want to do is cry...or eat...or throw a pity party where everyone's invited! This past week and weekend was filled with troubles, some small and some big. One problem that occurred was that my cell phone had to be euthanized. The "e" and the "2" key quit working out of nowhere. This made for some interesting text messages. I apologize to the few who were the recipients of said messages. I loathe spelling and grammatical errors, so it was hard for me to function like this. This probably comes from being raised by an English teacher. My password for my voicemail has a "2" in it, so I couldn't check my voice messages either. I have had my share of troubles with cell phones, some of them my fault. I have dropped one in a toilet, a fountain in Vegas, a glass of water, and down into a storm drain in Tallahassee. I was able to revive ALL of the above phones and carry on, but my purple blackberry could not be fixed! You don't think that this problem is that bad? Keep reading.
Saturday comes, and I am at work towards the end of my 12 hour shift when I get a call from my husband. His first statement is, "We don't have any water." Okay...what happened? Apparently my darling son and one of his friends were playing with the water faucet outside and somehow managed to break a pipe under the house which resulted in gushing water for about 2 hours until they decided to confess. Now, I wasn't home at this point, but I feel certain that my husband was totally robbed of his happiness in this moment. I finished my shift, came home, and my husband and father in law were working to fix the problem. About an hour later, they were done. Problem fixed. Water was turned back on. Relief. The kids were all in bed and that's where I went as well. My husband was up for a while longer on the computer and checked on the kids before he came to bed. That is when he discovered that "someone" had turned on a bathroom faucet when the water was turned off, left it on at full blast and closed the drain. Three hours after the water was turned back on, it had become a flood all over the bathroom and into both of the girl's bedrooms. Fabulous. Where is Noah with his ark when you need him? This is the point that I lost MY happiness. But what could we do? We threw down some towels and went to bed. Now it is Tuesday and the carpet has been partially ripped out of both bedrooms, furniture moved, baseboards off, and huge fans and dehumidifiers everywhere. If you like white noise, my house is the place to be.

So, the question becomes, what is the difference between joy and happiness? Happiness is based on our circumstances, on what happens in everyday life. I'm happy when my children behave, when I get a compliment, when my house is clean, when I watch American Idol...etc. On the flip side, I am NOT happy when the opposite occurs. Think about it this way...being happy or sad depends on what happens to us. On the other hand, true Christian joy is something that stays with you all of the time. It is the feeling that all is well despite your circumstances. Rejoicing in the fact that we are saved, that Christ died for US is a feeling that doesn't change when bad things happen. This doesn't mean that true Christians are always smiling and never sad. We are all human and made of flesh. Having the emotion of sadness doesn't overrule the true joy that is in my heart. I didn't come to this realization overnight. I spent many years basing my joy and my happiness on the circumstances and the people surrounding me. The "old me" went from happy to sad probably 20 times a day. I wasn't holding on to my true joy. I'm not saying it isn't hard when you feel like life is beating you down. That's why we have the Bible, where we can read God's truths and not listen to Satan's lies about ourselves. I read somewhere that the closer you get to God and the more you desire to do His will, the higher up you go on the devil's attack list.

James doesn't stop there, though. In verses 3-4 he says "For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing." Now, I wouldn't say this past week tested my faith, but it definitely tested my patience! James is making an important point here. Another word for endurance is perseverence. When we learn to persevere, we can accomplish great things. Going through hard times and coming out joyful on the other side by relying on God causes us to grow in Him. When our endurance is fully developed, we will be perfect and complete! So trust in Him and let it grow...

And I know there'll be days, when this life brings me pain. But if that's what it takes to praise You, Jesus bring the rain...
--Mercy Me

You Gotta Have Faith

It's Mother's Day! The one day a year we can relax, kick back and enjoy ourselves...right? For the most part, that was true for me. I got to go to church, go see my mom in Ocilla and eat lunch there, take a nap and then come back to reality and get everything ready for Monday. I definitely consider myself to be highly blessed. In church this morning, my very intelligent and good-looking pastor asked two important questions. (Disclaimer: said pastor asked for favorable adjectives the next time I mentioned him.) The first one was "What part did your mom play in your salvation?" I grew up in a Christian home with parents that are still married today. My mom plays the piano in the church and my dad leads the singing and serves as a deacon. I also had my aunts, my mom's sisters, who lived a block up the road and were very active church-goers as well. These people were in the church LITERALLY every time the door was opened. I mean, we actually had a key to the church! My sisters and I used to devise ways to get out of going to church on Sunday nights. The plan usually involved one of us faking being sick and the others staying home along with the afflicted one. When all else failed, we would just beg and plead. These ploys usually did not work. I can remember sitting with my Aunt Jerrie because she would give us Aspergum to chew (oh the horror!) or Vitamin C tablets that tasted like orange candy....hmm, maybe that's why the 3 of us never did get "really" sick. My Aunt Ment would rub or scratch our backs for us during church. Now, if we sat with our parents, our mom's favorite thing to do to get us to stop whispering during the sermon was to pinch us REALLY hard on the thigh. Now, in my day, if this happened, you had to sit there and endure the pain. Plus, it showed her that it really didn't hurt (right). I tried this technique once during a church service on my then 5 year old son. He whispered, I pinched, and...he literally yelled, "Why did you just pinch me, mama? That really hurt!" I. Was. Mortified. Needless to say, I no longer use that technique on my own children.
The fact that my mom and aunts went to church was a good thing, but more importantly, these women walked out their faith and love for Jesus and His teachings in their everyday lives. They were kind to everyone, always willing to help people who needed it, gave to the church first and they prayed about everything. They were some Titus 2 women. Don't get me wrong, they weren't perfect and didn't claim to be. They loved Jesus and everyone around them knew it.
My mom's mother, who I called Mimi, was 70 years old when I was born. She "kept" us when my mom went back to work and I loved her dearly. She was what I like to call a "fruit-bearer". She radiated love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. She had a quiet strength and people were drawn to her because of this. She passed away when I was 21. I sure wish my children could have known her.
The second question my pastor asked was "What are you doing to spread her faith in the world?" Gulp. Breathe in, breathe out. This is a BIG responsibility. I couldn't even master the "pinch on the thigh move"!! However, I know that I am a daughter of the most high God, and I am raising my children to know that God loves them no matter what. Once you are His child, there is nothing you can do to make Him love you any more or any less. They know that I am not perfect, just like they are not perfect. I try to teach them to love God with their hearts, minds and souls, to be "fruit-bearers" and to love their neighbors as they love themselves. I don't just talk about it, though. I try to walk it out in front of them. They sometimes see me stumble or fall down, but they don't ever see me stay there. They might see me confessing my sins or asking for forgiveness, but they won't see me giving up. I am forever telling them that the only reason you "can't" achieve a goal is because you quit trying.
By walking out my faith, love and other fruits of the Spirit, I don't just want to show His life-changing love to my children, but to the whole world! I pray each morning that God will show me who HE wants me to love that day. Sometimes it isn't who I thought it was going to be or who I wanted it to be, but I am learning to submit to His plans for me and not my plans for me. I try to spread a little bit of my mama's faith every day. I hope that my children will do the same.

Hebrews 11:1 "Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see."