Change your thinking
Have you ever considered that you may need to change your thinking? Most of us are comfortable with our beliefs and have lived with them so long that they "seem" right. We love when people confirm our belief system. However, when they say anything contrary to what we have always thought, we usually bristle inside. A lot of people bristled during Jesus' messages. Jesus would say things like,"you have heard it said...but I say..." He wanted us to change our thinking.
The Jewish nation was not ready to change. They wanted God to be all on the "outside." The old covenant deals with our outside. Things like sacrifices, circumcision, outwardly blessing with riches, even following the law. Check on your beliefs. Do you feel that God owes you something because you are faithful? Do you feel cheated when you get sick or suffer financial hardship and not the ungodly neighbor who is prospering.That is outside covenant living. Think for a minute about every Old Testament story. God's people ALWAYS won every battle. Abraham's family and descendants were wealthy. Job was a rich man and God returned all that he had lost. Does that always happen today? I don't think so.
He is concerned with what is going on inside when we are in a new covenant relationship. There are plenty of godly people who are poor. I DO NOT subscribe to the "prosperity principal." It is old covenant thinking. Jesus said some radical things about life. He said things like "deny yourself." Jesus was never mentioned as wealthy. Paul was ship-wrecked, beaten, had a thorn in the flesh, which God refused to remove. Why? God wants to improve our inside, not our outside. He commands us to rejoice in every trial because it does plastic surgery on our inside.
Being cut open is painful but it heals. Quit holding on to old ideas, like the Pharisees. God cares more about our holiness,than our happiness. He cares more about our posterity, than our prosperity. He cares more about our sanctification, than our level of comfort. He cares more about showing His strength in our weaknesses than us helping us hide our weaknesses.
"Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
The Transforming God
You know I wouldn't leave you hanging on like that. There is a happy ending to the story and it certainly had nothing to do with my husband and I. I can still remember doing a Beth Moore Bible study on Believing God. One verse we studied was Hebrews 11:6 "And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." It hit me like a ton of bricks. Without faith, I was not pleasing to God. I only had fear about the future. I started retraining my thoughts. When fear came over me, I forced myself to remember who God was, regardless of what I thought he was. I started praying about the unseen and not the seen, the eternal and not the temporary. In other words, I remembered WHO GOD IS and not who I was!
Can't tell if God was waiting on that or not. I just will tell you that if I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would not believe it. God gave my son a new everything! He transformed him. He remade him. He threw out the old and gave him the new. You could brag that you witnessed the parting of the Red Sea and I would not be as impressed as I was when I saw God take a person' s life and remake it totally.
My son knows he has been rescued. He loves the Lord more than anyone I know. That is all he talks about. He has a great job, owns his own home and was married to a precious girl in our living room a year ago. If you ask me to explain it, I would simply not be able to. However, God doesn't need explaining...he just needs to be trusted and for me to realize that He is always good. He does not care whether I am happy and have a perfect life. He cares that I am holy and reflect his glory. Thank you God for remaking me.
Can't tell if God was waiting on that or not. I just will tell you that if I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would not believe it. God gave my son a new everything! He transformed him. He remade him. He threw out the old and gave him the new. You could brag that you witnessed the parting of the Red Sea and I would not be as impressed as I was when I saw God take a person' s life and remake it totally.
My son knows he has been rescued. He loves the Lord more than anyone I know. That is all he talks about. He has a great job, owns his own home and was married to a precious girl in our living room a year ago. If you ask me to explain it, I would simply not be able to. However, God doesn't need explaining...he just needs to be trusted and for me to realize that He is always good. He does not care whether I am happy and have a perfect life. He cares that I am holy and reflect his glory. Thank you God for remaking me.
I felt the prompting to clarify some things about my prayer life. Interesting enough, I wrote the thoughts on prayer(yesterday's blog) when I was at an all time low in my life. I am not sure if I am emotionally ready to write about this but maybe someone needs to read it to help them through a hard time.
I guess you could say that I am a person who likes to control things. I like to be in control of the outcome. If I am in a group or organization and I sense that no one is taking charge, I will step up to the plate and take over. When I became a mom, I immediately quit my teaching job and stayed home to "do it right." I was positive that no one else could raise my children better than me and I guess I still feel that way.
As time went on, I returned to teaching thinking that I could check that off my checklist. I had a checklist of items that a mom had to do to insure that her children turned out okay. My husband and I get up early every morning and read the Bible together and pray together. We have taught Sunday School together for 30 years...singles, then 12th grade youth and now college. We try to really lived out our faith for our sons to see.
I was completely unprepared for the failure I felt as a parent when our younger son was caught using drugs and put in an alternative school for 6 weeks. My husband and I felt such shame because we both teach school and everyone in town knew about our "failure" as parents. It did not get any better. In fact, it became much worse. Our son became more rebellious as time went on. I can still remember the profound grief that Mark and I felt that we had failed as parents. We were losing the precious son that we had raised. Our endless prayers seemed to fail on deaf ears.Some nights we did not know where he was and we were filled with fear. God, where are you?
I found myself thinking so often, what had we done wrong? Where had we failed? What did I leave out? What item on the checklist went unchecked? I had no idea that it would become even worse. Our son fell into a deep depression from which there seemed to be no escape. He did not want to live. He finally attempted suicide and was in intensive care for three days before we knew that he would make it. Ironically, he attempted to take his life at the end of a Bible study that we held in our home for his 11th grade class at church. Again, I weakly cried out to God, asking Him when he would answer me. The next few years were filled with sadness, bewilderment, shame, insecurity. Why did Mark and I have no control over how our son would turn out? He had no hope. I resigned myself to the fact that he would not marry, much less hold a job or move out of our home.I know what you are thinking...you were too busy doing the right things and had no time for your kids or you were a control freak and your son rebelled. I read every book or article I could get my hands on to find out how to change. We went to counseling. I had a young mom ask me do I regret going back to work when I did and do I think that if she stayed home from work that her son would not turn out like my son. See, that is what we do. We all try to control the outcome. We try to come up with a reason why we see a child turning out like he does. We are certain that if we can come up with a logical explanation and try not to do that ourselves that we are "safe" and that it won't happen to our children.
I wrote the thoughts on prayer(yesterday's blog) during this difficult time. I had no answers...just faith in the one who had all the answers.
I guess you could say that I am a person who likes to control things. I like to be in control of the outcome. If I am in a group or organization and I sense that no one is taking charge, I will step up to the plate and take over. When I became a mom, I immediately quit my teaching job and stayed home to "do it right." I was positive that no one else could raise my children better than me and I guess I still feel that way.
As time went on, I returned to teaching thinking that I could check that off my checklist. I had a checklist of items that a mom had to do to insure that her children turned out okay. My husband and I get up early every morning and read the Bible together and pray together. We have taught Sunday School together for 30 years...singles, then 12th grade youth and now college. We try to really lived out our faith for our sons to see.
I was completely unprepared for the failure I felt as a parent when our younger son was caught using drugs and put in an alternative school for 6 weeks. My husband and I felt such shame because we both teach school and everyone in town knew about our "failure" as parents. It did not get any better. In fact, it became much worse. Our son became more rebellious as time went on. I can still remember the profound grief that Mark and I felt that we had failed as parents. We were losing the precious son that we had raised. Our endless prayers seemed to fail on deaf ears.Some nights we did not know where he was and we were filled with fear. God, where are you?
I found myself thinking so often, what had we done wrong? Where had we failed? What did I leave out? What item on the checklist went unchecked? I had no idea that it would become even worse. Our son fell into a deep depression from which there seemed to be no escape. He did not want to live. He finally attempted suicide and was in intensive care for three days before we knew that he would make it. Ironically, he attempted to take his life at the end of a Bible study that we held in our home for his 11th grade class at church. Again, I weakly cried out to God, asking Him when he would answer me. The next few years were filled with sadness, bewilderment, shame, insecurity. Why did Mark and I have no control over how our son would turn out? He had no hope. I resigned myself to the fact that he would not marry, much less hold a job or move out of our home.I know what you are thinking...you were too busy doing the right things and had no time for your kids or you were a control freak and your son rebelled. I read every book or article I could get my hands on to find out how to change. We went to counseling. I had a young mom ask me do I regret going back to work when I did and do I think that if she stayed home from work that her son would not turn out like my son. See, that is what we do. We all try to control the outcome. We try to come up with a reason why we see a child turning out like he does. We are certain that if we can come up with a logical explanation and try not to do that ourselves that we are "safe" and that it won't happen to our children.
I wrote the thoughts on prayer(yesterday's blog) during this difficult time. I had no answers...just faith in the one who had all the answers.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Thoughts on Prayer
When God doesn’t make sense, when you feel like God is silent, when you don’t understand why nothing is changing about your situation,
Remember that it makes no difference if I understand God or not. That does not change the fact that He is God . My shabby belief system has no bearing on the fact that God is who He says He is. God’s power is not based on my belief in Him. His arm is never too short, His timing is never off. It simply does not matter whether I accept those facts; they are true anyway.
I can make things easier on myself by accepting them as truth in ANY given situation or I can make things difficult by rejecting those truths…my choice.
God’s power is not contingent on my being able to “figure out” what is God doing in all of these problems. He exists apart from me and my beliefs. How arrogant am I to think that whether I can see His hands move as a result of my prayer is the evidence of His answering my prayer. His answer to my prayer is based on His word that He is a God who “gives to those who ask.” He is a God who works ALL things for good to those who love Him.
Remember that it makes no difference if I understand God or not. That does not change the fact that He is God . My shabby belief system has no bearing on the fact that God is who He says He is. God’s power is not based on my belief in Him. His arm is never too short, His timing is never off. It simply does not matter whether I accept those facts; they are true anyway.
I can make things easier on myself by accepting them as truth in ANY given situation or I can make things difficult by rejecting those truths…my choice.
God’s power is not contingent on my being able to “figure out” what is God doing in all of these problems. He exists apart from me and my beliefs. How arrogant am I to think that whether I can see His hands move as a result of my prayer is the evidence of His answering my prayer. His answer to my prayer is based on His word that He is a God who “gives to those who ask.” He is a God who works ALL things for good to those who love Him.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Being a teacher, I constantly think about how to improve my teaching. One thing that I encourage my students to do is to be an active participant in the process of learning. This may sound like common sense. However, if you have ever visited in the typical 8th classroom, you will see that the teacher is the only one being active in the learning process! The students are wanting to absorb the material through osmosis, not active involvement.
I was reading the other day about neuroplasticity. It caught my attention because I am always trying to understand how the brain "files" and "retrieves files" at a later time. If I could get my students to properly "file" the new concept I am teaching, they could "retrieve" that file when they needed the information for a test or quiz.
Neuroplasticity, or brain plasticity, is the brain's ability to reorganize neural pathways based on new experiences. Simply put, every day we experience and learn new things. In order to incorporate this new information into our brains, the brain must reorganize the way it processes that information. Thus, as we learn things, the brain changes.
Now, how in the world does this apply to you? We can change our brain or retrain our brain. This is the goal of physical therapy or speech therapy. With enough practice, your brain could more easily get to the file that it needed so that it becomes second nature to perform in this manner.
I believe that spiritually we can take advantage of this ability of our brain to learn to do things differently. I think that if I practiced "praying without ceasing," it would soon be second nature for me to pray without ceasing. If I seriously practice "rejoicing always in the Lord," it would be my first reaction(instead of my delayed reaction) to rejoice when I am hit with a unexpected pain or trial. I would like to train myself to "be thankful in everything" instead of living a life without recognizing how blessed I am. I have not experienced speech therapy but I can imagine that it is hard work and requires a strong commitment to improve. Why should I think that it will be easy for me to change the way my brain reacts when confronted with the problems of everyday life?
As I made New Year's resolutions this year, I decided I would try to work hard at retraining my brain to do the things that God commanded me to do. I am not trying to do this in my own strength. However, I will have to be a part of the prayer. Sanctification is a life-long process. It does not happen overnight. I would like to be one step closer when 2009 comes to a close.
I was reading the other day about neuroplasticity. It caught my attention because I am always trying to understand how the brain "files" and "retrieves files" at a later time. If I could get my students to properly "file" the new concept I am teaching, they could "retrieve" that file when they needed the information for a test or quiz.
Neuroplasticity, or brain plasticity, is the brain's ability to reorganize neural pathways based on new experiences. Simply put, every day we experience and learn new things. In order to incorporate this new information into our brains, the brain must reorganize the way it processes that information. Thus, as we learn things, the brain changes.
Now, how in the world does this apply to you? We can change our brain or retrain our brain. This is the goal of physical therapy or speech therapy. With enough practice, your brain could more easily get to the file that it needed so that it becomes second nature to perform in this manner.
I believe that spiritually we can take advantage of this ability of our brain to learn to do things differently. I think that if I practiced "praying without ceasing," it would soon be second nature for me to pray without ceasing. If I seriously practice "rejoicing always in the Lord," it would be my first reaction(instead of my delayed reaction) to rejoice when I am hit with a unexpected pain or trial. I would like to train myself to "be thankful in everything" instead of living a life without recognizing how blessed I am. I have not experienced speech therapy but I can imagine that it is hard work and requires a strong commitment to improve. Why should I think that it will be easy for me to change the way my brain reacts when confronted with the problems of everyday life?
As I made New Year's resolutions this year, I decided I would try to work hard at retraining my brain to do the things that God commanded me to do. I am not trying to do this in my own strength. However, I will have to be a part of the prayer. Sanctification is a life-long process. It does not happen overnight. I would like to be one step closer when 2009 comes to a close.
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