I Need a New Start

Things have been far from easy or comfortable for quite some time for my husband and me.  This journey of learning to trust God as a couple, fully, for our daily provision and not get discouraged when things don’t seem to be working out well, has made me feel double minded, as I ride a roller coaster of emotions.  Some days I’m a faith giant and others I’m bottoming out in the frustrations of how long this is taking to get on stable ground.  I know we are where God wants us, obeying His direction and timing, even though it is not the road we really want to travel right now.  The main battle is with my flesh that just doesn’t want to be in this situation of struggle any longer.  

Some things I know:  

• We need to not make this worse by believing things which trouble our minds that aren’t even a reality
• Even though the process feels very painful, it is a good plan which will ultimately put us in perfect alignment with God’s will for our lives
• The transforming process burns, yet these fiery trials are purposed to renew the way we think
• There are some things we have to let go of even though it feels like doing so will cause us to slide over the cliff of security and free fall into the valley of the unknown
• Through this we will learn to trust Him at deeper levels than ever before.

In my quiet time with God this morning I closed my eyes and just breathed, slowly, declaring, “God…We need a new start.” I waited in the silence fully expecting Him to speak and I then heard Him say, “I have given you a new day.”

This may not have felt like the answer I wanted but it actually was just what I needed.  No matter what we are going through, each day is our opportunity to start over.  But how do we start over when our circumstances are still anything but ideal?  Our new start comes when we start over in our mind, being purposeful in thinking about what we are thinking about.

Truly, our thought life is what is at the root of our depression, fear, anger, sadness, lethargy, lack of motivation, bitterness, frustration and a plethora of other emotions we feel.  What thoughts are going through our mind continuously?  It’s important to identify because those thoughts result in the emotions we feel.  Emotions follow a thought.

What I have noticed is that the more I don’t check those negative, random thoughts and just let them run wild like a child out of control because of their parents’ lack of disciplinary action, is that they grow.  They grow more constant and they grow more negative.  They begin to spread like cancer, infecting even what used to be a healthy outlook, until we have a mindset that is negative.   Our mind is now held captive to a dark side that struggles to see anything good anymore.  Everything gets tainted with filters of negativity and our perception is out of balance and false.

The eventual reality of what happens in our lives is that we unknowingly attract, draw, or create the things we think about.  Job confessed that the very thing he continually thought about in fear and dread is exactly what came upon him. (Job 3:25)  “As a man thinks so is he,” (Proverbs 23:7), shows us that it doesn’t matter what we present to the outside world.  Whatever is going on inside our mind is what we truly are.  So if we think negative thoughts, we will be a negative person. If we think positive, Godly thoughts, we will be a person who is a blessing to ourselves and others around us.

  

Life is cycles.  We see it in nature: condensation, precipitation, evaporation, condensation, precipitation, evaporation; spring, summer, fall, winter, spring, summer, fall, winter; seed, time, harvest, seed, time, harvest; and it’s true for our life as well.  We have a thought, we ponder it, it gets down into our heart, we speak it, which causes us to have more thoughts, and the cycle starts all over again. 

Our words are creative since God made us in His image; everything that we see was created by the WORD of God.  Proverbs 18:21 states, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it and indulge it will eat its fruit and bear the consequences of their words.”  Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. (Luke 6:45)  What we say flows from what is in our heart, and what’s in our heart is what we put there by continually thinking about it.  We create a cycle with those thoughts and then before we know it we start muttering or speaking what is going on in our mind/heart until eventually, the very things we fear, dread, hate to have occur are the very things that do!  We have to guard our thoughts and hearts and only allow inside that which is good for us so that blessings will eventually manifest in our lives!

So how do we start over in the “new day” God gives us?  We CHOOSE to “think on things that are lovely, pure, true, of good report, if there be anything excellent, if there be anything praiseworthy, think on these things.”  (Philippians 4:8)

Since God made our minds incapable of thinking two thoughts at the same time, that actually helps us to choose which one we will think about.  Our initial problem with this can be that perhaps we don’t understand that we can take our thoughts under our control and they don’t have to just run randomly all over the place.  According to God, we most certainly can take authority over our own minds and make it obey us:  ^“casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5)

After we figure out that we CAN control our thoughts, our next temptation is to be lazy with it or let self-pity or self-focus be fed by our thought life.  Let’s face it; sometimes it just feels really good to have a pity party with our thought life!  

Therefore, we have to deny that carnal side of our nature, and starve it to death by refusing to feed it with negative thoughts.  We need to be quick to say, “In your face, negativity!  I’m gonna think on things that are GOOD FOR ME to think about!” 

 

Another very powerful weapon is to call that bad thought a liar.  Sometimes I will literally say out loud, “You’re a liar!”  I feel the power of that simple statement as it shuts the mouth of the voice that is counter to God’s truth about me, my circumstances, or anything else that I need to refute.  For instance, if we have a thought pop in our heads like, “You’ll never have enough.  You will always struggle.”  Declare boldly, “You’re a liar.”  You can then come back with God’s word on the matter, but that means you have to study His word so you know what to come back with.  :)

Cut that thought off at the pass.  You can tell when it’s going to be a bad one and just refuse to let your mind finish it.  You can say, “I rebuke that!” or even a simple, “No” will suffice.  Don’t let it complete its destructive message.

The next thing to understand is that we need to replace the bad thought with something good.  Why “replace” it?  Let’s demonstrate this. I want you to form a picture in your mind about a pink elephant.  Got it?  How about some polka dots on her?  What color are those polka dots on that pink elephant?  Now STOP thinking about that pink polka dotted elephant!  No, I’m serious! Stop thinking about that pink polka dotted elephant!  How’s that going for you?  That’s why we have to replace that thought with something else.  It’s really hard to tell ourselves to stop thinking about something unless we move onto something else to think about.

  

So now think about a cuddly puppy with fuzzy, soft, brown fur and that odd yet intriguing breath which only puppies own.  See him rolling around on the floor biting your favorite shoe?  Unless you put that pink polka dot elephant in the background behind that adorable puppy, you stopped thinking about her once you formed that pup in your thoughts.

No matter how terrible our life may seem, we all have something we can be grateful for and we can think on those things.  We have a God whom we often misunderstand. He is a good God who loves us and truly could give no better of a gift then giving the life of His Son as our Savior.  We can turn our perception around of a situation and focus on an enjoyable part of our life.  We can choose to believe God loves us, has a wonderful plan for our life and when He sees the time is right, will change/use the undesirable part at some point.  Life alterations can take time and we need to give Him room to operate. 

 

We can begin to look in God’s word regarding our circumstance to find what He says about it which will be the opposite of what our flesh, the world, and the devil want us to believe.  For instance, if I am experiencing lack in my finances, I need to declare what God says; that I have life in abundance, (John 10:10); that with Him as my Shepherd, I shall not want, (which means lack). (Psalm 23)  He meets our needs according to the riches of His glory in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:19)

To help us get in the right frame of mind, we can create a worshipful atmosphere with good music that delights our hearts and makes us feel His peaceful presence.  We have plenty of resources like no generation ever before to have music at our techie fingertips. Worshipping God will DEFINITELY make you feel better if you do it long enough to chase away the blues, “Put on a garment of praise for a spirit of heaviness.” (Isaiah 61:3)

How long do we need to work this plan?  We need to do this however long it takes to change our mind.  It may be a few times a day to seeming thousands of times.  It may be for a long period of time or just a short season.  But stick with it until it works.

To recap:

1.  Stop the bad thought before it finishes

2.  Replace it with the opposite thought found in God’s word or thought of how good God is

3.  Create a peaceful atmosphere of worship

I know that through this current and lengthy circumstance, God is perfecting that which concerns us and if we will allow the process of trials to do their work, we will be “perfect and entire, lacking nothing.” (James 1:4) So when I get up in the morning, I choose to declare “This is the day the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it. Your mercies are new this morning and it’s my new start!” (Psalm 118:24, Lamentations 3:22-23)

Father, please change our minds.  Amen.

Alone, Even in the Crowds of Life

October 19, 2015

I’m very aware of my labored breathing today; a heaviness of something wanting to be purged from my spirit that needs to go but is having trouble expressing itself fully.  It’s like when you are nauseous and know you will feel better if you can just throw up but it doesn’t quite come.  So I deeply sigh one more time and ask God to please show and deliver me of what this is.  

As my husband and I face yet one more trial of provision with his position at his job being terminated and severance pay having ended, I know that another stretching of our faith is occurring.  Although it creates opportunities to stress and worry about the what if’s (we JUST finally got planted in our house/HOME and I do not want a 6^th MAJOR move since 2009,) I have a deeper sense of our Provider’s care and that He will faithfully supply for us as He has always done in the past.  I am standing on Amos 9:15, “I will firmly plant them there in their own land. They will never again be uprooted from the land I have given them," says the LORD your God.” Although I have a level of discomfort at times, ultimately I trust Him.  So I really don’t think that is at the root of this latest sigh.

This is deeper and much more painful than the thoughts described above. In asking God to show me what is going on with me, I recall the following:

With the course of my life’s trials, I have been plucked up from homes, jobs, relationships, and friendships that either were just developing to become truly meaningful or were counterfeit to begin with and never settled into something legitimate. 

My latest triggers of sorrow and self-pity have been activated in not being able gather with my family as often as I want because their schedules are horrifically busy right now.  Friendships are difficult to develop because people are either settled in their own lives at this point and just frankly, don’t want to go to the trouble of working it, or they are in different seasons of life than we are and it’s difficult to find common ground and time.  Facebook and social media displays all too largely in my face how wonderfully active others are, so a sense of jealousy and being left out is being fed.  (I know that we all present moments of “look how wonderful my life is” to the world through our social media, because who of us wants to share the real life undesirable events which sometime occur in the recesses of closed doors and hearts; but still…I let it impact me negatively through the life choker called “comparison”.)

So I identify this sigh as an all too familiar sense of isolation; the worst thing to a person whose main love language they need to receive is. “Quality Time” with others. (http://www.5lovelanguages.com/)

I understand the roots for isolation lie in my childhood when I was forced to be alone by parents trying to hide the fact that we were a dysfunctional family due to alcoholism and other factors.  It is painfully clear how much isolation and loneliness I suffered throughout my life due to myself, others and circumstances.

However, even without childhood roots, any of us can feel isolated at times, whenever we feel we are alone, regardless of how many people are in our lives.   Mothers can feel alone when their day consists of endless and seemingly unnoticed chores, but which are critical to the care and wellbeing of their children.  

Leaders/Managers can feel alone because as the saying goes, “It’s lonely at the top.”  The point of which something begins is just that, a point and not a linear group of people.  The responsibility for those they lead and what they are to accomplish rests on their shoulders, not the group of subordinates clustered together below them in the chain of authority. 

We can feel alone in one-sided relationships when both should be contributing, but due to selfishness or life circumstances of the other, we carry the full burden for the relationship.  This particular loneliness is very difficult because it drains us since the other party is only taking from the relationship and not putting anything back. 

We can feel alone when we see something others can’t see and there is no one who relates to our revelation.  Coupled with feeling alone, we can also feel a sense of judgement coming from those who can’t see it, and we may then feel the need to justify ourselves in hopes they will validate us.

We can feel alone with physical or mental health issues which prevent us from having or allowing others to be in close connection to us when we actually crave human touch.  My brother had an adult onset form of muscular dystrophy and was housed in a care facility in Kansas.  While talking with him one day on the phone, it pierced my heart at how deeply he just needed someone to touch him as he had gone without genuine demonstrations of affection and love for longer than what he required and what most of us could endure.

We can feel alone in our “new beginnings” because it’s fresh, raw and unfamiliar, so we are not even sure how to relate anyway.  Plus, fear of the unknown can add to our feelings of instability.

We can be fighting a personal battle no one else knows about.  Perhaps we don't feel that a particular person is one who is equipped to take up arms and fight the battle with us as a side-by-side comrade.  It may not even be appropriate for them to fight alongside us anyway, even though we wish they could be with us in this trial.

We may find ourselves in an arena in which we can’t relate to others around us; perhaps they are a different culture than we or hold a different belief system which we will not nor can we compromise, because it holds the key to our very life.

A major source of loneliness occurs when we lose the most significant person in our life and we now feel abandoned in our newfound and unchosen isolation. 

One of the main issues with loneliness is that it causes us to not feel wanted or valuable.  One day several years ago, as I was standing by the patio doors, a neighbor’s dog pen caught my eye. I observed the beautiful creature inside endlessly pacing around and around in circles.  Each time he would come to the part of the cage that faced the house, he would stop, look at the house, and seeing no one, he would circle around again.  My gut wrenched, I plopped down and sobbed right there in front of the glass doors as I related to that precious dog.  I humanized how he must feel; abandoned as no one came to welcome him into the life of the family but instead only unattached short visits with the sole purpose being to tend to his basic need for food and water.  He was caged for their use, only to be let out when they wanted something from him, “Go hunt for us, and otherwise, stay here and don’t bother us.”  

If we already have roots of insecurity or low self-esteem, we can feel we are not worthy of attention and this can lead to chronic loneliness and isolation.  Loneliness can be our perception of the state we are in as we truly aren’t physically isolated from others.  We may legitimately have others in our lives but we still “feel” lonely.  Sometimes it’s a fair assessment, but sometimes it’s due to our own walls of self-preservation protecting us from extending ourselves and possibly receiving another wound to our heart.  It can also be due to entrenched self-pity which filters everything as lack when in actuality we do have what we need, we just can’t see it.  “Poor me” is a form of a poverty mentality-(that one is for free! :)  )

If we stay in that outlook, we will actually continue to be wounded by that false protection and self-pity.  People with healthy balance and sense of self don’t erect walls around their hearts and are not afraid to let others in. Instead, we are to ask for and face the revelation God shows us as to why we are the way we are when we sense something is off. He will show us what we need to see in order to go free from the clutches of imprisonment, IF we will lay aside all fear and truly FACE IT. We can recognize it as the past reality of our lives but be grateful that we don’t have to stay that way.  We can surrender to Him as our Healer and Deliverer and go free, knowing that if He is taking the care and time to show us this very important aspect of our lives and hearts, that the time to go free is RIGHT NOW. All our times are in HIS hands, Job 12:10 and Psalm 31:15.

One of the best ways to go free from any form of heaviness is to praise and thank God for what we DO have. Isaiah 61:3 tells us we can receive from the Lord “the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness." 

I am grateful that I now have a husband who supports and is able to show me love. I am grateful I have been able to maintain amazing and blessed relationships with my own children and their beautiful families which have brought me more joy than I ever imagined.  I’m thankful that I have a few true friends that through modern technology, we are still connected and current in our relationships.  I am thankful for the new friends He is bringing.  I am thankful that due to God’s healing power in my life, I have overall good health.  Most importantly, I have a God who LOVES me no matter what I do.  He understands why I am the way I am when I am not the faith giant some may see on the outside.  He feels with me, right alongside me in His unconditional love and perfect understanding of me:

“’In all their distress He too was distressed’ (Isa. 63:9)… Jesus understands heartbreak, betrayal, abandonment, loneliness, sorrow, and pain. He is acquainted with grief. He cares. He cares for you.” (Ransomed Heart-excerpt from “What Jesus Weeps Over.”)

Just as a side bar for well-intentioned friends and family, but who actually have a “Job’s friends” viewpoint, when we judge and say or think things like, “At least you have_____! You are so blessed and you are letting this mean way too much!  There are a lot of people who wished they had it as good as you!  There are people so much worse off than you are,” may I offer that in taking that position with people when they are suffering, it does nothing to help them go free from what is troubling them.  It certainly does not encourage them.  It only heaps condemnation and guilt on someone who is already down and there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, (Romans 8:1).  If we don’t really have a word from the Lord, who is Healer, Deliverer, Comforter, Counselor, Wisdom, then it is best to be as Jesus advised and weep with those who weep, mourn with those who mourn, stay quiet.  Often times more is said in our quiet but genuine compassion and support than our words anyway.  Sometimes the noise of our words trample on the healing moment of the silent work God is doing on their hearts.  Oftentimes when we speak, it's because we feel awkward in not really knowing what to say so we fill up the space with our own "clamor."  Just rejoice with them once they have the manifested victory in Christ Jesus He will give them if they will look to Him for their help, (Romans 12:15, 1 Corinthians 15:57).  Only God knows and understands why something is impacting someone the way it is and He alone is their judge, (James 4:12).  It’s just not our place to decide, short of God’s revelation of their heart, that someone is overreacting, being foolish, or being a bad Christian role model, (Colossians 2:16-19).  We instead need to seek God for wisdom on how to be a help or counsel to this person; pray for them to overcome and that the trial will perfect, establish, strengthen, settle them, (1 Peter 5:10); and ask that God will turn it all around for their good, (Rom. 8:28).

Prayer if you are lonely or feeling isolated:

Father, You said in Your word:  John 16:24 “Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full,” so I ask You now to form the divine connections for friends, family and relationships in my life that will bring me joy.  Give me wisdom and discernment to know what is legitimately from You and help me to be the friend You want me to be as well.  (Repent with the following if the Lord leads you to: Please forgive me for partaking in any way with spiritual forces of heaviness or believing their lies.)  Deliver me from all spiritual, mental, emotional and physical effects of loneliness/isolation. Show me what I need to do to create and foster these friendships and relationships and help me be willing to do that.  Help me see them with Your eyes of love and to understand that none of us is perfect.