the big bad wolf

A.W. Tozer: “Among the gifts of the Spirit scarcely one is of greater practical usefulness than the gift of discernment. This gift should be highly valued and frankly sought as being almost indispensable in these critical times. This gift will enable us to distinguish the chaff from the wheat and to divide the manifestations of the flesh from the operations of the Spirit.”

My husband and I had a discussion a few days ago about our goals for 2012.  While things like “achieving a shape other than round” and “reading more” were mentioned in that conversation, our goals for the new year revolve more around the things we want to avoid.  I have spent this last day of 2011 sitting at home and reflecting on all the things I DO NOT want to repeat or carry with me into 2012.  My reflections have resulted in countless tears.

I am looking out an open window and enjoying the beautiful spring air.  Wait a minute!  It’s winter.  Yet, even with an open window and clear view of the weather outside, it seems like spring.  The high today was 62 degrees fahrenheit.  The disguise this winter day is wearing has fooled even the birds who have dined at my window feeder since the early morning.

In Aesop’s Fables, a wolf slips into a sheep’s skin and is able to fool the shepherd into believing that he is a member of the flock so that he can devour the sheep.  In Little Red Riding Hood, a wolf dresses like a little old lady in his attempt to eat a little girl.  In the Bible, we are warned about false prophets who are just ravenous wolves disguised as sheep.

No matter the reference point it, the big bad wolf is always the same character ~ Someone hiding malicious intent by displaying kindness, gentleness or the need to be cared for.

2011 has been filled with wolves.  I could write an entire book (and I probably will) about the humanitarian Ponzi scheme that costs us a good chunk of our savings.  Or the wounded person I encouraged for the majority of the year whose wounds weren’t exactly real.  Or the people my husband has encouraged for the past few years that have now made false allegations against him.

Guess what?  I’m thankful for the wolves.  The wolves have forced us to grow and become truly aware of all that God is doing around us and in us.  The wolves have taught us that discernment is a not just a word to be thrown around, but a gift that we are responsible to act on and that is necessary for survival.

A.W. Tozer: “The healthy soul, like the healthy blood system, has its proper proportion of white and red blood cells. The red corpuscles are like faith: they carry the life-giving oxygen to every part of the body. The white cells are like discernment: they pounce upon dead and toxic matter and carry it out to the drain. In the healthy heart there must be provision for keeping dead and poisonous matter out of the life stream.”

This statement was like a slap across the face for me.  It doesn’t matter how strong your faith is.  Without discernment, your spiritual-life will be filled with disease and poison.

So… in the middle of all the deception we’ve encountered,  we’ve learned to trust our discernment.  For those of you not clear on the experience of discernment, it’s your God-given intuition.  That sick feeling in your gut when something just isn’t right about a situation or a person.  It’s the voice in your head telling you to question what you’re being told or to dig a little deeper.  It’s the conclusion you come to after testing what you’ve been told against the Word of God.  It is wisdom.

My #1 goal for 2012: Let the discernment God has given both myself and my husband guide us and protect us from becoming ensnared in the types of trials we’ve endured in 2011.  #2: Achieve a shape other than round

While I do wish you a happy 2012, my heart’s desire is that anyone who reads this have a new year filled with wide open windows providing a beautiful view.  I pray that you have a year filled with peace and faith that is pure and holy.  I pray that you recognize every big bad wolf that should cross your path.  I pray that you find joy in all that you do.  And… I pray that you never stop thanking God for everything. Even the wolves.

1 Thessalonians 5:14-21  My friends, we beg you to warn anyone who isn’t living right. Encourage anyone who feels left out, help all who are weak, and be patient with everyone. Don’t be hateful to people, just because they are hateful to you. Rather, be good to each other and to everyone else.  Always be joyful and never stop praying. Whatever happens, keep thanking God because of Jesus Christ. This is what God wants you to do.  Don’t turn away God’s Spirit or ignore prophecies. Put everything to the test. Accept what is good and don’t have anything to do with evil.

 

 

 

 

 

warts

If you’ve prayed with me at any point during the years since I was diagnosed with cancer you’ve probably heard me ask God to “not let it hurt too bad.”  We’re guaranteed to face trials and painful situations throughout the Bible…

James 1:2-4  Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.  Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Notice it doesn’t say “IF you face trials of many kinds”.  Because of this guarantee, I try to always ask God to let my faith be tested and my perseverance developed without too much misery.

Seth has warts on his feet.  One of them is very big and painful and in the middle of his arch.  We went to the doctor a couple of months ago only to be told that we should either soak his foot in hot water several times a day for ten days or cover it with duct tape and wait for his body to have a negative reaction to the tape adhesive and attack the wart in the process.  Gee thanks, Doc. Have you ever tried to keep a piece of duct tape on the foot of an eleven year old boy?  Let me save you the trouble.  It just gets really stinky and he rips it off when it stops him from running/climbing/jumping etc..  Have you ever tried to make a stimmer stick their foot in “not-quite-scalding hot water”?  Let me save you the trouble on that one too.  They scream and call you names and tell you that “you’re crazy if you think you’re going to make them do it four more times that day, or any day for that matter”.

Doing what any good mother would do, I went out and bought a freeze-off kit and attempted to remove it the traditional way.  We made our first attempt about a month ago.  It didn’t go so well.  He screamed.  He cried.  He told me I was abusing him and then he closed himself in his room and said that I could not make it better.

Mom of the year goes to…….not me.

A few layers of the wart have peeled away, but it clearly needed another treatment.  Two nights ago, my dear husband decided it was time for the second treatment.  The tears and screaming began immediately upon the site of the freeze-off kit.  This time around I wrapped my arms around my baby boy and with my mouth pressed to his ear prayed, “Father, we thank you for providing us with a way to remove this painful wart from Seth’s foot.  In John 14:14 you said that we could ask anything in your name and it will be done.  So Father, in your name, we claim the healing that you’ve already promised and we ask that you block the pain and not let this healing process hurt. Amen.”

By the time we were done praying, my dear husband was done freezing the wart.  Guess what?  Seth didn’t feel a thing.   About an hour later he came to my room and said, “Hey, Mom.  I think we should always ask God to block the pain when He’s healing us.”

“You know what, Seth?   I think you’re right.”

through the roof

I have a fascination with Moses.  When I started this blog I referred to it as my “Moses basket”.  It was intended to be used as a vessel in bringing us our adopted daughter.

Moses’ Mother put him in a basket and set the basket in a river.  He was found and adopted by the pharaoh’s daughter.  Moses married the daughter of Jethro.  Jethro was a priest and a shepherd and for the forty years before God appeared to Moses in a burning bush, Moses busied himself with tending to Jethro’s flock.  There is a Jewish story (midrash) that seeks to explain why God chose Moses to lead the Israelites.  The midrash tells that Moses was chosen to lead the Children of Israel because of his kindness to animals. One day he was bringing the sheep to a river for water and one lamb did not come. Moses went and got the little lamb and carried it to the water so it could drink.  Aligned with the heart of God, Moses cared about each individual in the group, and not just about the group as a whole. His ability to recognize the value of each sheep in Jethro’s flock proved that he was worthy of leading God’s flock.  If you want to read all about this portion of Moses’ life it’s covered in Exodus 2 and 3.  In this part of the book of Exodus, God is simply known as “Jehovah”.  The Great I am.  The Hebrew name for God is actually unpronounceable.  His greatness is to not to be truly comprehended, but experienced.

In our journey to bring Sofija home and in the twenty months that she has been our daughter, my fascination with Moses has led to many moments of experiencing the greatness of God.  God likes to place orphans in families.  God LOVES adoption!  God loves to find those stray little lambs and carry them if necessary to make sure they belong to a flock.  As a special needs Mommy, we call that INCLUSION!  How cool is it that our maker loves inclusion?!?!!

With that little piece of the heart of God in mind, I came across a story in the Bible yesterday that I haven’t thought about in a while.

Mark 2:1-4 ¹ A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. ² They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. ³ Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. ⁴ Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on.

Those four men who lowered the paralyzed man through the roof got it.  They understood and had a moment of experiencing Jehovah ~ The Great I Am.  Throughout our adoption journey we repeatedly experienced Jehovah-Jireh (God as our provider).  He gave us everything we needed to bring our daughter home and He has continued to provide everything we need to help her develop her God-given potential.  Yesterday I realized that God has allowed us to walk in the shoes of the four men who went to extreme measures to bring a disabled man into the presence of God.  I also realized that we are not done walking in those shoes.

The Great I Am has entrusted us with two very special gifts that require special accommodations in order to participate in our flock.  And… we have faith that Jehovah-Jireh has already provided all of the resources and manpower necessary to meet those accommodations.

Look out, Church!  We’re bringing our stimmers through the roof….

blocked

Have you ever walked through a difficult situation and known that sharing it with others would only justify and affirm wounds and bad attitudes? Yeah. Well, that’s where I am at this very moment.
Our family is walking through a difficult situation and we have some big decisions to make. There is no easy way through and we can’t see how we will exit the other side of this trial without witnessing a few people hurt and humbled.
And… that’s all I can really say. Prayers for wisdom please!

papa Go’el

Go’el, Go’el, Go’el, Go’el
Born is the King of Israel!

Isaiah 60:16 “You will drink the milk of nations
   and be nursed at royal breasts.
Then you will know that I, the LORD, am your Savior,
   your REDEEMER, the Mighty One of Jacob.“

Jehovah-Go’el translates to “God is my redeemer”.  According to thinkexist.com, redeem means:

1. (v. t.) To pay the penalty of; to make amends for; to serve as an equivalent or offset for; to atone for; to compensate; as, to redeem an error.
2. (v. t.) To make good by performing fully; to fulfill; as, to redeem one’s promises.

Think coupons.  Every coupon has a redemption value.  The person using the coupon uses the coupon as the equivalent of cash and the grocery store redeems the coupon by receiving compensation from the manufacturer who created the coupon.

I have spent my entire married life (almost 18 years) attempting to be a couponer.  I have given up.  I am not saying that I don’t use a coupon that I happen to come across, but I will not spend another hour of another day organizing piles of coupons into boxes, file folders or binders in an attempt to save money on groceries.  I know that I have a few friends who will read and this and have an instant impulse to pick up the phone and scold me or remind me of the few times that I’ve cut my grocery bill in half by cutting coupons.  Before you act on that urge, let me explain my concession in the couponing game….

First, my time is more valuable than the money I can save with coupons.  Second, I watched my Mom arrested in a grocery store at the age of five and I am choosing to no longer engage in an activity that makes me think of grocery shopping.  That’s my concession speech.

Here’s the real deal.  I don’t need to be a redeemer.  God sent His Son to pay the price for every single thing I have ever done or will ever do that needs redeeming.  I looked up the meaning of redeemer on dictionary.com.  Wanna know something really cool?  They gave two definitions for the noun redeemer.  1: someone who redeems.  2: Jesus Christ.

One week from today people all over the world will celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.  I could write a book on all that his birth and redemptive power mean to me, but probably the most important thing I can say is that…He Lives!

You don’t have to spend hours cutting and sorting coupons to cash in on the redemptive power of Jesus Christ.  You simply have to choose him.  Go ahead!  Do it!  Ask him to be your Go’el!

Job 19:25 “But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and he will stand upon the earth at last.”

Then let us all with one accord
Sing praises to our heavenly Lord
That hath made Heaven and earth of nought
And with his blood mankind has bought.
Go’el, Go’el, Go’el, Go’el
Born is the King of Israel!

baby Cameron

Proverbs 3:27 “Do not withhold good from those who deserve it when it’s in your power to help them.“

What I’m learning about Daddy Go’el will have to wait until tomorrow.  I learned a few weeks ago that a childhood friend and his wife gave birth to their first child after many years of waiting.  Shortly after their son was born, the new Mom passed away.  Here is a brief glimpse of their story taken from the fundraising page that was started to help Scott with raising baby Cameron:

A message from The Crain Family

“Scott and Kristi tried for nearly 13 years to have a child and were finally blessed by a baby boy to be. The two were elated and prepared everything possible for his arrival. Precious Cameron was born on Thursday, November 10th. Kristi, his Mother, died on the same day just shortly after giving birth. There were no complications during her pregnancy. Due to this tragic turn of events, Scott now faces the unimaginable challenge of raising his first son while simultaneously mourning his wife. If you would like to make a donation in Kristi’s memory during this difficult time, please click on the link below. All donations will go directly to Cameron’s wellbeing, upbringing and college fund. The Crain family is grateful for all of your thoughts and support.”

If you feel led to give during this giving season, a page for them has been set up at….

http://www.gofundme.com/Cameron-Crain (If the link doesn’t work use the one on the sidebar)