JUST 2 DEGREES

I am writing for Five Minute Friday and this week's prompt word is GRADUAL.   

Sometimes getting off course can be a gradual, almost imperceptible deviation from God’s path, from what is right and true. 

Being just 2 degrees off course is a small deviation to begin with, and a gradual slope, but over time it can mean you are significantly removed from where you should be and going downhill fast.  

We make small sacrifices, allow small compromises, turn a blind eye to little issues, ignore red flags, and then find ourselves in trouble, and not know how to get back to where we should be, or even if it’s possible.  

Perhaps we don’t realise what we’re doing, and perhaps we do realise we’re doing it, but not where it eventually leads and how devastating it can be.  

I’ve heard it said, when researching how a marriage dies, that there are many that don’t end over one big issue (like infidelity), but rather the relationship dies by a thousand paper cuts, a thousand ‘small’ betrayals, by gradual neglect, by small careless choices, and slight deviations from what is right and true. 

I think the same can be said of friendships and other covenantal relationships.  

At 60 miles, a 2-degree error puts you 2 miles off track, but over hundreds or thousands of miles, that small angle multiplies into a massive positional error.

That small deviation can be so gradual, it’s barely noticed but it is significant.  

On November 28, 1979, Air New Zealand Flight TE901 crashed into Mount Erebus in Antarctica, killing all 257 people on board.   The flight's navigation coordinates had been altered by roughly 2 degrees, shifting the flight path about 27 to 28 miles away from open water and directly into the path of a volcano during whiteout conditions.

How do we stop ourselves from those gradual changes that lead us down a slippery slope or on a collision course? 

Abiding.  It’s not about following a formula or a set of rules or even the teaching of our church or denomination.  It’s about hearing Him, staying close, repenting when He shows us something that needs to die or change, following His footsteps. 

It’s about our relationship with Him, and obedience to Him, (trust and obey) being more important than our goals, our desires, our passion, our work, our relationships, our image, our doctrine, our gifts, our anointing, or even our ministry.

He will keep us on the path, and He will show us where gradual changes and ‘little’ compromises can lead to a major deviation, IF we are responsive to His voice.   

We are inclined to wander and to ignore gradual or minor deviations from what He asks of us.    

Some of those gradual deviations are taught to us by people, sometimes His people, and yet they are wrong.    We need to stay close enough to the Shepherd to know His heart, to hear His voice.     

We need to hear Him above all else.  And we need to obey.  

 

Ponder the path of your feet,
And let all your ways be established.  Prov 4:26

Today, if you will hear His voice:
“Do not harden your hearts………………..  Ps 95:7,8

Show me Your ways, O Lord;
Teach me Your paths.
Lead me in Your truth and teach me,
For You are the God of my salvation;
On You I wait all the day.  Ps 25:4,5

Your word is a lamp to my feet
And a light to my path.  Ps 119:105

 

I will not forget
Your love for me and yet
My heart forever is wandering
Jesus be my guide
And hold me to Your side
I will love You to the end

Nothing will I fear as long as You are near
Please be near me to the end

ThyWord is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path
Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path
And a light unto my path
You're the light unto my path

 

 

WHAT DO I NEED TO ABANDON?

I'm writing for Five Minute Friday and this week's prompt word is ABANDON.  

Sometimes the Lord will wake me up with the lines from a song.   Perhaps it’s a song I’m familiar with, perhaps not. 

A while back, I woke up with these lines

What if we rewrite the stars?
Say you were made to be mine
Nothing could keep us apart………….

I heard in my spirit the first line, and then knew enough to remember the next two, but after that I drew a blank.  

It happened more than once, so I decided to find out the context of the song. 

What if we rewrite the stars?
Say you were made to be mine
Nothing could keep us apart
You'd be the one I was meant to find
It's up to you, and it's up to me
No one can say what we get to be
So why don't we rewrite the stars?
Maybe the world could be ours
Tonight

 

I knew it was from The Greatest Showman, but wasn’t sure of its meaning in that context.

I did some research and discovered that the characters were two people in love, who were not supposed to be in love because of cultural restraints.    It talks of fate and destiny and all that secular stuff, and you might wonder why the Lord would use a song like that to speak to me, because He wouldn’t be supportive of something written in the stars. 

We have to remember that He created the stars and He did indeed write His story in the stars, long before people would know how to communicate the gospel message with the written word.   His story in the stars is beyond the limitations of any particular written language, even the ancient ones.  

If that interests you, you can check out God’s Voice in the Stars at this link: 

All that aside, what was the Lord saying to me through these lines and through the story behind the song?

I’ve revisited that lately, and He’s been talking about ‘kingdom’.   

He has shown me more clearly something He first introduced to me as a concept over 20 years ago – kingship.    He is a good king.  Most kings are not.   

My father had a kingdom mentality – based around his own kingdom.    He was more concerned with being our king than he was with being our father.    He was more concerned with being our mother’s king than he was with being her husband.  He was more interested in building a kingdom, and with ownership and control, than connection.    He had kingdom rules and there were penalties for breaking them.  Some of those rules and penalties were spoken out.  Most were just learned by cause and effect. 

My husband was also raised by kingdom rules, and they came from his maternal grandfather, who was a very controlling man, and then those kingdom rules were lived out and enforced by his daughter, my husband’s mother.   

When I got married, I basically transferred from one kingdom with its rules to another kingdom and its rules.   I was conditioned to follow rules to keep the peace, and to earn love and acceptance.    Connection was not as important as compliance.

When we belong to someone’s kingdom, we are really only as valuable as we are useful and compliant.   That lends itself to all sorts of rejection, abuse and neglect, sadly.   

We learn that our value comes from performance and that keeping the rules equals keeping the ‘peace’. 

My father saw me as a pawn in his chess game.   Did he love me?  Sometimes.    Did he use me?   Often, in different ways.  

My husband saw me as part of the package, a way to start building his kingdom.   By his own admission, ours was never a story of being in love, but him finding a wife as part of the plan.   That is easy to see now.   Did he love me?   Sometimes.  Did he love our children?   In his own way, yes.   But he was very much governed by the kingdom rules that he had inherited and rarely questioned.   

His mother saw me as a way of perpetuating the kingdom that her father began.   She honestly believed that was a reasonable thing to pursue, and that’s what love looked like for her.   I watched the Lord break things in her to reach her with His love.   It was a very painful process to watch, but it ended beautifully in her coming to know Him on her death bed.   What a pity it took the breaking to get her to come, but her father’s kingdom principles were so ingrained that she couldn’t see or hear the love story that her heavenly Father had written for her. 

I am now having to unlearn, actually abandon, many of the rules and mindsets that I learnt as a child and as a wife, so that I can be healthy.   I’m slowly working through those mindsets with my Father, and with a Christian life coach.  

Our walk with Him was meant to be, and should be, at the very core of it, a love story, but it’s one that is misunderstood by most in Christendom.   We’re often conditioned and actually taught that it’s a set of rules, dos and don’ts, to appease a powerful and capricious god.  

But His kingdom principles are not about control.   They’re about a love so great, so good, so deep that it displaces every fear.  

That performance-based story is not the story HE wrote about my life. 

Perhaps that’s why He wants to rewrite the stars - the story in my brain - so I can be in a love-based relationship with my heavenly Father, Husband and Friend.   

Perhaps, instead of abandoning myself to build someone else’s kingdom, I need to abandon those lies, mindsets, strongholds, habits and defaults that have kept me from living in HIS.

So the question He has been asking me, and I that have to ask myself, again and again:

What mindsets, treasures, riches, lies and defaults do I need to abandon to truly inherit His kingdom?  

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.   Matt 5:3

For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.    But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.   Matt 6:32,33

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.   Matt 13:44

 

 

When I feel like there's so much noise
Livin' rent free in my head
Heaven finds me in a still small voice
And it sounds like grace instead
You remind me who I am
When I look in the mirror and I'm not so sure
Lord, I don't wanna listen to the lies anymore

The truth is I am my Father's child
I make Him proud and I make Him smile
I was made in the image of a perfect King
He looks at me and wouldn't change a thing
The truth is I am truly loved
By a God who's good when I'm not good enough
I don't belong to the lies, I belong to You
And that's the truth

THE COST OF STAYING COMFORTABLE

I'm writing for Five Minute Friday and this week's prompt word is COMFORTABLE.  

When I saw this week's prompt word, my thoughts jumped to something that will probably be uncomfortable for some.  

But this needs saying because I've seen too many mums get hurt because their daughters want to stay comfortable. I've been on both sides of this struggle, so I get how it works.  

This week I was chatting with a friend whose adult daughter wants a close relationship with her father - the same father who was unfaithful to her mother and for the most part, absent from her life as she was growing up, by his own choice, while the mother carried the burden of parenting alone.  

This father is now showing up, love-bombing his daughter and telling lies about the mother to gain her trust.  And she's falling for it and questioning her mother's recall and character, the mother who was the present parent through all those years.    

I watched as another friend, several years ago, went through the same thing. It was devastating for her that after years of abuse, having to live on the run with four small children, raise them alone, with no financial or emotional support from the father of those children, to then have the father show up when they were young adults and encourage her children to question her version of events, and her character.  

It feels like a betrayal of trust, an injustice and a huge knock to your confidence. It is all of that and much more.  

I remember doing something similar with my own father. I desperately wanted to believe that he was a good man and that his love for me was genuine. While he loved me to a point, his love was limited by his selfishness and his desperate need to control everyone and everything. One day, he did something very unkind to my mother, in his usual sneaky way, so it wasn't clear what he was up to, and I wanted to side with him. My mother was acting 'crazy' because he was pushing the familiar buttons, and his tactics were working. And the Lord very firmly said to me, 'You will lose your mother over this if you side with him.' He showed me what my father was up to and why.

It was a hard choice to make. It was the beginning of the end of our falsely peaceful relationship. I had to choose and it cost me. I didn't want to accept that this man's intentions were unkind and harmful. I didn't want to accept that he was using me to punish his wife.  I wanted to hang onto a picture of him that honestly wasn’t realistic, but actually quite childish.  The cost of staying comfortable would have been too high.   

No daughter wants to accept that their father is faulty, even if the facts say otherwise. There's a grief and a knowing that comes with that, that you can never unknow. It is not at all comfortable and yet, we need to acknowledge the truth.    

I have seen this play out again, and again. Daughters want their dads to be the original prince charming who loves them and is always good, and they will often ignore the facts to hang onto that childish picture of who he is. Sometimes it's because they don't want to face the deep pain that he has caused them.   Sometimes it’s because their relationship with their mother is strained.   Sometimes it’s because they don’t have a stable man in their lives and they’re grasping for that.  

But our heavenly Father is ready to comfort us as His daughters, if we will accept things as they are, and if we will go first to Him.   I am starting to wonder if we don’t really grow up until we accept who our earthly father is and was - the good and the bad - so we can find our true fulfilment in our heavenly Father.   Our earthly father was only ever meant to point us to Him, not replace Him.    Part of growing up is being realistic about how things really are, and switching our blind loyalty and trust to Him alone. That process isn't comfortable, but perhaps it is actually a necessary step towards true emotional maturity.   Even a daughter with a good dad needs to see him as he is so she can lean wholly on the ultimate Father.   

Accepting the truth about our earthly father is about as comfortable as sitting on these rocks. But like these rocks, the truth is solid, and will hold us steady when reality hits hard.   And like these rocks, our heavenly Father is solid and unchanging, and Someone to really build our lives on. 

 

It is not at all comfortable for a mother to hear from a daughter about the man who abused her that 'he's not really malicious, he didn't mean it, he can't help it, you misunderstood him, you've misjudged him, he said you did XYZ...' when that mother knows what she's lived, and what she sacrificed to protect her children. There's nothing comfortable about any of that, even if the mother isn’t or wasn't herself the perfect parent.    

Nor is it comfortable for the mother to accept that this adult daughter is someone she now needs to be guarded with. It's not comfortable and it's not fair.   

I've felt it this week as a mother, and as a friend.   

Do we want to stay comfortable? Or do we want to grow up and let the Lord comfort us with the grace that meets the truth we must tell ourselves?  

There's grace when facing the truth is painful.   

But we have to start with truth if we want to live in that grace.

And as mothers, we need grace for the daughters who don't get it - to love them carefully while He holds us steady.       

And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. 1 Peter 5:10

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ. Ephesians 4:1

Lead me in Your truth and teach me, for You are the God of my salvation; for You I wait all the day long. Ps 25:5

 

This song speaks well about truth and grace.  

What can cause the broken things to heal?

Only a power that is real

What can cause the prideful heart to kneel?

Only a grace that none can steal

 

For so long I was searching for truth

When all along I was searching for You

Then You opened my eyes

 

You opened my eyes to see You Lord

Oh, I was blind to love before

You opened my heart to know the truth

Now all I see is You, all I need is You

 

ARE YOU BENT OUT OF SHAPE?

I'm writing for Five Minute Friday and this week's prompt word is RESPONSIBLE.

If, as children, we are asked, conditioned, or pressured to be responsible for things that are not ours to carry, we can end up damaged.

And we become adults who often avoid things that we should be responsible for.  

As a child, we should not be held responsible for managing a parent's emotional health.

As a child, we should not be held responsible for the long-term management of a sibling's behaviour or emotional wellbeing.

As a child, we should not be held responsible for keeping the ‘peace’ so adults can avoid problems.

As a child, we should not be held responsible for providing food and shelter and clothes.

As a child, we should not be held responsible for the well-being of our parents’ marriage.

As a child, we should not be held responsible for the damage caused by others, nor for ‘fixing’ it. 

There are many things we should not be held responsible for, nor feel responsible for.  

Those are heavy loads, too heavy for a child, but one that many are given to carry.  

When we learn to carry these things too early, it affects us – deeply.    It stunts our healthy development. 

And we often don’t understand that until much later, if ever.

As a child, we should not be held responsible even for our own well-being.

That comes gradually, with age and development and maturity.    

The crossover for that is the teen years, where we should gradually become more and more responsible for ourselves without constant prompting or external motivation. 

What I have found is that I am resistant to certain responsibilities that I should carry because I have carried too much that I shouldn’t have carried.    

Interestingly, in those areas where I am resistant to carrying responsibility that IS mine to carry, it’s usually because there is some resentment or exhaustion because someone else has loaded me up, or simply dropped the ball on the things that they should be responsible for. 

Sometimes it’s because what the Lord wants me to carry and care about, no one else really has and so I often view it as not that important, compared to other things.  

That resistance to carrying what’s mine is a good place to start looking.   That’s what He’s been pointing out lately.

It reminds me again of those verses in Matthew 11 where He talks about an easy yoke and a light burden.    Often our lives don’t feel like that, do they?   And we wonder if the Lord has forgotten us because we are carrying so much.   But when we sit with the disparity between that verse and our reality, really sit with it, we can hear His whisper and His questions about what we’re really carrying that simply isn’t ours to carry. 

Trouble is, putting down what isn’t ours to carry will almost certainly upset someone and that is precisely why we often don’t.

Sometimes that person who gets upset is us – because of pride or restlessness or fear.

Sometimes that person who gets upset is someone else - someone powerful or pitiful, or both. 

But we need to be like Jesus – do only what He saw the Father doing.

Like I said in my blog post last week, He felt that pressure to keep people happy, to be responsible for things the Father wasn’t asking Him to do.    But, He didn’t bow to that pressure because He knew who He was and whose He was and obedience to the Father was more important than keeping anyone else happy.  

Simple – but not easy. 

Galatians 6:2 says  Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

But then Galatians 6:5 says For each one shall bear his own load.

They seem to contradict each other, but they don’t.

This is a helpful article for understanding the difference between load and burden in the original language. 

The Greek words for burden and load give us insight into the meaning of these texts. The Greek word for burden means "excess burdens," or burdens that are so heavy that they weigh us down. These burdens are like boulders. They can crush us. We shouldn't be expected to carry a boulder by ourselves! It would break our backs. We need help with the boulders -- those times of crisis and tragedy in our lives.

In contrast, the Greek word for load means "cargo," or "the burden of daily toil." This word describes the everyday things we all need to do. These loads are like knapsacks. Knapsacks are possible to carry. We are expected to carry our own. We are expected to deal with our own feelings, attitudes, and behaviors, as well as the responsibilities God has given to each one of us, even though it takes effort.

Back to my resistance to being responsible for the things He has given me to carry, and the reminder that His yoke is not mine to carry alone, but with Him.  

That will be this week’s journalling exercise. 

I would often walk past this little tree, which is in the village where we lived for five years.   It still reminds me that even if we had a shaky start and grew up a bit bent out of shape because of the heavy loads we were responsible for, the Lord can still redeem our lives and make us strong enough to stand straight. 

Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”  Matthew 11:28-30 MSG

My life is a light for Your cause

My will laid aside for Your call

And reserved are the depths of my heart

Only for You

 

I'm caught in the rhythms of grace

They overcome all of my ways

Realigning each step everyday

To live for Your glory

 

There's none beside You God

There's none beside You God

CAN WE DO ANYTHING LESS?

I’m writing for Five Minute Friday and this week’s prompt word is APPROVE.

Jesus told them in the synagogue that He was fulfilling the messianic prophecies in Isaiah 61. The congregation leaders didn't approve. They tried to kill him.

Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well.    It was an encounter that changed her life, but the disciples didn’t approve. 

Jesus delivered the demoniac called Legion.   He was finally free and at peace, but the crowd didn't approve, especially when the demons drove the pigs over the cliff. 

Jesus forgave the sins of the man lying on his mat, lowered by his friends through the roof. The man was healed and set free to get on with life.   The religious people in the crowd didn't approve.

Jesus went to the house of the tax collector Zaccheus. The crowd didn't approve – that man had caused them harm.     

Jesus healed a woman on the Sabbath from a long-term malady that had oppressed her.   The religious leaders didn’t approve. 

Jesus healed a man born blind.   From then on, he could see and move and work.   The religious leaders didn't approve.

Jesus allowed Mary to wash His feet with very expensive perfume.    Judas didn't approve.   

Jesus didn’t go straight to Lazarus when he was dying.    The sisters didn’t approve.    And Jesus wept.  

Jesus went to Jerusalem even though He knew what awaited Him.    His disciples didn't approve.   They were frightened for Him, and for themselves.

Jesus flipped tables because His father's house was being turned into a place of worshipping money. The merchants didn't approve. They had a lot to lose. 

There are so many times when Jesus did and said things that His family, friends, followers, and the religious leaders didn't approve of.   He must have felt the pressure of their disapproval, their disappointment, their pain, their opinions and even their physical assaults.  

But He wasn't living for their approval.   I wonder how many of His quiet times with His Father were about shaking off the pressure of their disapproval.

https://www.magnific.com/free-photos-vectors/jesus-solitude

Jesus was about doing the Father's business and living for His approval.   Can we do anything less?   

If only we could be as secure in our identity and our calling as Jesus was, and not seek the approval of anyone but Him.  

Then Jesus answered and said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner.    For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does; and He will show Him greater works than these, that you may marvel.   John 5:19.20

It's just like Jesus

To give me strength when I need it
Hope when I cannot see it
When I'm falling to pieces,
It's just like Jesus
To put me back on my feet when
I was out past the deep end,

You wanted me when nobody wanted me
Now I just wanna be

Just like Jesus

Who is
A friend to all of the friendless
Fighting for the defenseless
Merciful in the messes?
And who can
Make a sinner feel worthy
Lift the head of the hurting
Walk with those who are searching?