Fear Not!

If I could change one thing in this world, I would banish limiting fear.

Limiting fear is the stuff that phobias are made of.

Limiting fear keeps you from flipping on the lamp when you hear a bump in the night.

Limiting fear creates a barrier between you and your dreams.

Limiting fear builds walls between you and those you love or want to love.

Limiting fear chains you to the prison wall.

Limiting fear deceives you so opportunities look like traps.

What overcomes limiting fear?

God’s Word in Deuteronomy 13:6 says, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”

When you have a limiting fear, remember this truth from 2 Timothy 1:7, “For God gave us not a spirit of fearfulness; but of power and love and discipline.”

Then respond as Hebrews 13:6 teaches, “So we say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?”

The truth is limiting fear doesn’t come from the Lord.  Limiting fear is a tool used by our common enemy, the devil.

It’s a choice.  When fear rears its ugly head and tells you that the Lord is not strong enough to help you meet the need at hand, you can choose to believe that lie or you can trust the Lord’s Word.  He will walk with you through whatever you’re facing . . . no matter what that circumstance may be.

From personal experience I know the Lord is with me.  I believe He will never leave me or forsake me.  I trust that He will lead me through the fear and help me come out on the other side . . . stronger, wiser, and closer to Him than ever before.

He will do that for you too . . . if you’ll trust Him and take a step forward toward the fear instead of hiding from it.

To quote John Wayne, “Courage is being scared to death — but saddling up anyway.”

 

Taking a Stand in 2012

“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.  Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Matthew 5:11-12

How can we possibly engage in the deep conversations necessary in our culture if we can’t engage in the deep conversations in our church gatherings?

Our model is to take a stand.  Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were commanded to worship King Nebuchadnezzar and they took a stand for Yahweh and were thrown into a furnace for their troubles.  Jesus took a stand when he cleared the temple of the money changers.  That was a stand against the Jewish religious leaders and one of the tipping points that caused them to plot his death.

One example shows men of faith standing against unbelievers.  The other example is The Man of Faith standing against the religious establishment.

In my daily interactions on Facebook, I note that those people who live and support a worldview vastly different from my biblical worldview are often the most outspoken.  One friend who considers himself a Christian wrote that if any of his Facebook “friends” supported a particular evangelical governor as a presidential candidate, my friend would unfriend them.  This is a man who preaches tolerance of all lifestyles, yet his words and actions seem intolerant and angry.

In an up close and personal experience, I witnessed two Bible study participants go at each other’s throats over differing political opinions.  These were two believers in Christ who allowed political opinion to momentarily overrule their godly love for each other – throwing vile, hurtful words rather than engaging in reasoned discourse in order to come to mutual understanding of each other’s views.

On the other hand, I’ve participated in as well as witnessed intelligent, well-spoken Christians using silence and non-participation when I/we should have spoken up against injustice, lies, and wrongdoing.  Why?  Because it is easier to stay silent than to enter into the fray.

Easier doesn’t make it right.  Avoidance isn’t taking a stand.  Peace at all costs is no peace at all.

Here are the arguments I’ve used, and I’ve heard from others: “I don’t know what to say.”  “I might hurt their feelings.”  “They might not like me anymore if I don’t agree with them.”  “Christians aren’t supposed to argue with people.”

Really?

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how I am to engage people in my sphere of influence.  I’ve examined my fears.  I’ve looked hard at what pushes my own buttons and sets me off onto some tangent.  I’ve scrutinized my filters, my values, my worldview, my stand on a variety of issues of the day.

My conclusions are these:

• I must look at all things through my biblical worldview no matter who I am addressing.
• I must listen first and stop rehearsing my response in my head.
• I must strive to keep Jesus first in my thinking rather than putting people’s impressions first.
• I hope to become less fearful and more fearless.

So this coming year I am taking a stand.  First, I will determine if the Lord wants me to enter the fray.  If He says, “No,” then I will sit down and be quiet.  If He says, “Go,” then arming myself with the fruit of the Spirit, I will act or speak as the situation warrants.

The key:  At the end of the day, I must stand before the Lord with a clear conscience knowing that I did as He asked, that I did not charge ahead of Him or lag behind Him.

His opinion of me matters so much more than the opinion of others.

Dear Lord, help me to live this daily even as my palms sweat and my heart pounds at the thought of persecution, probable loss of friends and being labeled as a freak or troublemaker.  Help me to allow You to be enough for me.  Amen.

My Christmas Gift To You

Free of charge, I offer you Kathy’s Three Steps to a Worthwhile Life.

Instead of striking out on your own and expecting to come up with the best of everything, try this easy three step method.

Step One: Ask the Lord what He wants you to do.

Step Two:  Stop talking so you can hear His response.

Step Three:  Do what He tells you.

For those of you who insist on looking a gift horse in the mouth, here’s what the horse says:

Step One is often ignored.  None of this works without Step One.

Step Two seems to be the hardest for many people.  Asking is great, but if you ask a question, you’ve got to shut up long enough to hear the answer.  Otherwise why bother asking in the first place?

Step Three: Even if you don’t like the answer, if the Lord told you to do something, you are going to be much better off doing what He tells you than you are ignoring Him.

See?  Simple.  Effective.  Works every time.

Let me know how this free Christmas gift works out for you.  Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Say What?

My husband thinks I’m losing my hearing.

I think there is too much noise in the house.  Not people noise or animal noise.  Electric and electronic noise.  It’s everywhere all the time.

Walking through the house and casually counting only the things that make consistent noise, I found four clocks, the fan on the fireplace insert (our main source of heat), the refrigerator, room heaters with blowers, and electronics that sigh and beep even when not in use.  It’s enough noise to bother my hearing because it never ends.  No wonder I get sleepy.  I’m exposed to enough white noise to knock out a nursery full of colicky babies.

How did I figure this out?  Yesterday I went outside to get the mail.  The night before snow had fallen and rewrapped the outside in pure white.  As I walked back from the mailbox, I stopped to look at the trees and bushes layered in snow.  Lovely.

That’s when I heard it.  Silence.  No electronics.  No cars.  No people.  No animal noises.  My stomach wasn’t grumbling.  Nothing.  A car started up probably a quarter of a mile away.  I heard it clearly because there was no ambient noise distracting my hearing.  Then a dog barked, again from quite a distance away.  I heard these things clearly.  I could hear my shoes scrunch in the snow.

Not only was my hearing clearer, my brain felt freer.  As I sit here typing, my room heater is running.  It gives me a low-level buzzing in my head because of the sound.  How much of that gets in the way of my ability to think?

How much of this ambient noise that we take for granted gets in the way of us hearing each other clearly?

Try it.  Find someplace to go where there is no electronic noise – inside or outside, I don’t care where.  Take a few minutes to let yourself acclimate to the experience of listening to silence.  What happens inside you?  What do you start thinking about?  Does it freak you out?  Make you feel alone?  Or do you love it like I do?

I feel like I’ve discovered something precious that I lost a long time ago.

Silence.

 

Fence Sitters

As a life-long reader of western fiction and fan of western movies, there is one character I watch carefully.  Nope, it’s not the bad guy.  He’s made his intentions clear and has taken a side.  The good guy has an obvious goal, and his actions speak loudly of his loyalty to the cause.

I refer to the fence sitter.  In a Louis L’Amour novel, the fence sitter might be the local banker who knows that two factions are fighting over a ranch; one side to save the family ranch and the other side to usurp ranch ownership.  The banker perches atop the proverbial fence while watching yet removed from the action. He wants to know who is going to win the fight so he can reap the spoils of victory without having to lift a finger.

There are fence sitters in many churches.

Some are malevolent in their intentions, sitting on the sidelines while slipping a word in here and there to cause dissention between parties.  These are the ones who say things like, “It’s not my fight,” yet they spread gossip about the people involved, usually out in public where they can gather underground support to make themselves look good.

Then there are the fearful fence sitters.  The ones who see something is happening and they firmly plant their heads in the sand up to their shoulders.  If they can’t see it, it doesn’t matter to them.  Rather than carefully examining what is going on, these folks choose to take no stand – it’s harder to stand on a fence than to sit on one.  Their fear paralyzes them from being any good to anyone, including themselves.

Here’s the rub with fence sitters no matter if their malevolent or fearful.  Eventually, they do have to take a side.  Choosing to not take a side means you’ve taken a side already.  In all the world, there are only two sides: with Christ or against Christ.

Fence sitters take note.  Time is short.  Choose whom you will serve.

 

 

Giwani

On Wednesday I adopted a girl. Her nickname is Giwani which means “life.” I do not have physical custody of her and probably never will. However, she is like my daughter because I have pledged to pray for her. My friends on the other side of the world are counting on me to keep my word as they attempt to rescue Giwani and other girls like her.

Giwani is living in a city on the other side of the world and is most likely being held against her will in a brothel. I’m asking the Lord to give her hope, to protect her from diseases, to see to her rescue and to watch over her rescuers. I’m also asking Him to make Himself real to her through the people in that city who are planning how to rescue her from her life of enforced prostitution.

I pray to Jesus acknowledging that He is the Eternal Yahweh, God Almighty, King of kings and Lord of lords. He has put this little one that I pray for on my heart because she is on His heart too. He is the One who willingly put aside the grandeur of His exalted position as Creator of all to walk in the dust and rub elbows with the sick sinners of this fallen world. He’s the One who sees Giwani huddled somewhere in a dark room waiting for the next customer to purchase her screams for a few moments of pleasure.  And He moves His people to take action.

Yahweh is patient and loving. He sees Giwani trapped in her youth and weakness and works to save her. He sees the ones who purchase her, and He works to bring them to understanding of their sinfulness and His willingness to forgive. He works behind the scenes to make a way for the rescuers to bring Giwani out of that awful place and into a new home where she will be fed, bathed, given medical attention and education, loved, and gently birthed into a new and living way in Christ.

I pray Giwani will respond to the Lord. I pray the people who use her as their child prostitute will encounter our Living Lord and realize He is their only way to heaven. I pray that I will not become so comfortable in my life that I forget to pray for Giwani, her captors, her rescuers and the other children like her.

Humbling to realize that but for the grace of God . . . my life could be so different.

Lord, please save Giwani.

Moving Through

What a delightfully difficult year full of challenges, rumors, confusion, minor wars, lost friendships, bad decisions, self-examination, betrayal, hardship and death.  Makes for a gloomy Christmas newsletter.

There are two ways to face a year like this: in full retreat or walking straight into the fray.  I chose to walk into the fray as did my husband and a few of our friends.  Others chose to retreat.  I’m not sure I can blame them for their decisions because facing a painful issue head on is not for the weak.

Or is it?

Life is a hard thing to live and not one of us is as strong as we think we are.  Neither are we as unable as we think we are.  There is a balance.  But balance, like bicycling, is learned.

I am a comparatively tough person.  Yet, I was unable to face any of these issues under my own power.  I was too weak.  Oh, not that I didn’t try.  The good Lord knows I usually give it a go on my own . . . and He’s right there to pick me up, dust me off after I’ve fallen off my high horse and ever so kindly suggest, “How about doing this together?”  Once I trust Him to lead the way things go much more smoothly.

He helps me move through the issue, not skirt around it or run away from it.  He doesn’t take me over it or under it.  He walks with me through it.  That means sometimes I hurt. I get smudged and bruised.  Dirt sticks to me.  I get tired, occasionally exhausted, disappointed, and even angry.  But He keeps me moving through that until after a while we emerge on the other side.  Then I can look back and see how far He brought me.  Not only am I on the other side of the issue, hopefully with good resolution, I am also a changed person having gone through the issue with Him.

You can’t get to the destination without moving forward.

Some take one look and run for the hills.  Oh, the temptation is huge!  However, the issue never goes away.  It’s always there, especially if it is something inside you.  You can try to run, but you end up dragging it behind you all the way.  It is sad to see people who feel so incapable of facing their issues that they choose to make pets of them.  If you make a serpent your friend, it may feel snuggly for a while but eventually it will bite you.

Others choose to sit on the fence looking at the dilemma and doing nothing about it.  Perhaps their fear tells them that if they take a good look at the troubled area, they may not like what they see.  Maybe so.  I’ve found that when, with the help of the Lord, I shine a light on that problem, it is seldom as big and scary as it wants me to think it is.  Darkness – or something left unexamined – tends to make those things that go bump in the night sound meaner and bigger than they are in the light of day.

So this year I’ve learned to look closely at those things that I didn’t want to face before.  Could I solve my problems on my own?  No.  Did I have connections to the One who could help me face and resolve those problems?  Yes.

Jesus helped me move through some icky territory this year.  I am so thankful to have a closer relationship with Him.  Hmmm.  My Christmas letter looks brighter than I thought.

How are you allowing Him to help you move through?

The Paint Pots of My Mind

When I told Ted I was considering writing a blog for our church website, his response was polite.  When I told him I wanted to call it “Inside Kathy’s Head” his smile turned into a belly laugh.  Looked like a good sign until he suggested that I put a picture with it  — one of gears and springs flying in different directions.  What? Does my loving husband believe the inside of my head is some kind of cerebral car wreck?

When I think about what goes on in my brain, I picture the paint pots of Yellowstone, those oozing, bubbling, popping fields of hot mud — except when mine pop, words appear and colors and wild thoughts.  How is one to harness such activity and put those thoughts into print?

Here’s what I envision . . . as I wrestle with living daily in the footsteps of Jesus, making good efforts to keep Him first in my life, failing miserably at times and succeeding once in awhile, I will record the journey.  If anyone, whether a fellow traveler through the narrow gate or a skeptic or a curiosity seeker finds my trials and tribulations worth remarking on, please do so. My email address shows below.  If you have questions, please ask them.  If you are here to yank my chain, I’ll yank back.  Fair warning.

For those who don’t know me, I am what critics and friends alike have termed as “a strong-willed woman.”  Sometimes I like the way that sounds and feels.  Other times I want to hide under a rock or pick up the rock and throw it.  I live life somewhere between 3/4 and full throttle.  I love when I get it right, and when I get it wrong, it may take me awhile to admit such wrongness, but eventually the Lord brings me around to seeing things His way.

So consider this the first taste of whatever perks in my brain.  I hope it’s interesting.  Otherwise we’ll all just sit here and listen to the crickets chirp.