the rear view mirror

One day in Masters I opened a gift from one of my leaders with a rusted rear view mirror in it...and he spoke to me and said, " you can spend your life driving forward but looking back in the rear view, but sooner or later you are gonna miss something ahead of you" I almost fell out of my chair! I was like dang! Ain't that the truth! Ive been looking at my past so much that I forgot that i was driving forward towards something better!

One of my Pastors spoke about this last night...he used the exact same illustration...and it hit me like a ton of bricks that my relationship with God and with the people in my life is ever growing...and just like a hurtful past or pain can keep you from your future, like it kept me from mine before... so can not growing in God and in your relationships now...I don't want to live with the same stagnant walk with God and get to heaven and have to think long and hard about the last time God changed me and spoke to me!!!! I dont want to have the same routine relationships that get us no where, dont keep us honest, never challenge us, or keep us accounatable for our actions...the bible says we should sharpen each other how iron sharpens iron and it also says we should go from Glory to Glory in Christ! So come on stop looking back in your rear view mirror at the bad or at the GOOD!, Move on towards BETTER...using each mile gained as a compass and as a staircase towards what God has in store for us!

Siamese Twin syndrome...

This is a simple revelation. Nothing too deep. But relationships are blinding sometimes. Friends, Family we become so connected to them that sometimes we forget they are people. Created at a different time for a different purpose. We treat them as Siamese twins of emotions..."if i feel like this then you must feel the same way!" "If you are my friend you have to agree with me!" or how many times have we prayed for our family and tried to manipulate God to get them to do something in our favor? Its like "If you give my parents $5million dollars they could buy me something cuz they love me... and I sure do need new car!"

The thing is we are all a different people going a million of directions, light speed at the same time, created for entirely different purposes (1 Chor 1-30). Just because we are in relationship, doesn't make them our Siamese twin. So if you are gonna pray for someone, especially an intimate prayer, pray for them as people and not as your mom, dad, sister, husband, wife...pray for them as children of God...think of their best interest not yours...and watch God spill over their blessings to you if they are intended....this is a quick way of making you selfless and pointing the eyes of the people we love back to where and who they belong...

blissful backfire....

Love life. its tough. Trying to come up with a way to justify what we want. What we feel we deserve. What we think it will be like when we get to that point of total bliss and someone will take our breath away and nurture our heart. I spent a lot of time praying that God will send me the man to love me and make my dreams come true..and most of all i spent hours groveling, begging God to please, please, please never let anyone break my heart! Oh NO! For the love of all that is good, God please not MY heart i cant take it! And i would go on and on like a whiny 5 yr old throwing fits of poutty woes at God...it all made sense to my heart, it was the only way to pray for a mate...and carefully guard my heart 

Until one day on my way to San Diego, to meet up with a date in Carlsbad, I gripped the wheel and pulled over. Hazards on, on the right side of the road I felt the weight of my prayers about my heart fall back on top of my heart. I realized that at that same moment, a single, independent, God fearing man was praying the same prayer and it could possibly be intended towards ME! It was as if my own prayer back fired on me! How could this be Lord? What I'm asking for is expected of me too? And so the shoe was on the other foot, and I had desires of love and the expectancy of my heart...but without the willingness to serve and give that back. I received the peace that as long as I pray for the heart of my future mate, God will make sure to remember my desires. Sigh. What a relief right? The only thing left to do is to be ready to be that and more to someone else....i was sure ready to be swept off my feet...but was I ready to sweep someone off theres? not at all...its funny the years we spend working on our list, countless chick flicks, sappy weddings, even the talks with friends about bad relationships and the "i know what DONT want" lists...but how often do we think about who we want to be in a relationship? Who did God intend for us to be for someone elses tall order of desires?

I understood at that moment off to the side of the rode, with my hazards on, that i was in no shape or form ready to be back on the road towards blissful love...i was a hazard and my prayer was a blissful backfire! I took another road trip alone to Phoenix, in the 6 hour car ride i prayed for my future husband in a different way, i encourage you to allow God to make your prayers for a mate, your desires of your heart completely backfire on you so that you can experience the bliss He intends for the two of you....
(i use girl vocab, if you're a male adjust accordingly =)

Heavenly Father please forgive my selfishness for pretending to ignore the precious gift that my husband will be to me. I want to be what he is praying for God. Whisper to him tonight that you have him taken care of as you transforn me each day Lord.

God I pray you trust ME with his heart. Help me hold it in the highest regard and care so that I dont break it. Help me not to take advantage his heart and kindness.Help me be thankful and appreciative of all that he gives me in return. Allow me the privilege to be the desires of his heart and the woman he prays for. .. God give me the touch he needs to feel special, wanted and loved. Give me the grace in my words to make him feel Honored, Respected, Celebrated. Allow me to challenge him in You and help me compliment the work you have begun in Him. Help me hear his concerns and understand his needs. Give me favor and allow me to give him counsel, encouragement and strength in his time of need. Make me an Abigail wife (1 Samuel 25), one who seeks you first with instructions on how to love him, A wife who takes care of his needs before my own, one who directs his eyes back to You God and one who rests in the provision of my first love Jesus Christ the source of all desire above all things here on earth.

Amen.

"...until they dont"

Its the cliche everyone says it, its like framed in a plaque above every therapists door..."honesty is the best policy" "Without trust you have nothing" its like a proverb in every religion...we get it...The key to every relationship is honesty and trust..blah blah...

What about that old fable "the boy who cried wolf" He liked the feeling of getting the townspeople in a commotion about what he was saying! They believed him until they didnt...and when the wolf actually became reality...no one believed it. Not only is honesty important for others to trust you its important because relationships do not exist if one or the other cant believe you. Half a truth is half a lie, and while the boy cried wolf with the intention of it being true one day, that half a lie became the only thing the townspeople saw. We are gullible creatures. We expect truth from the moment we are born, but as soon as we figure out what a lie is, we believe until we dont believe.

To start being honest with people, we have to be honest with ourselves. No one will believe what we say until we believe what we say.

"Character may be manifested in the great moments,

but it is made in the small ones."Phillip Brooks

Choosing to be honest can cost you your reputation, your family, your relationships....but most of all your character. And character is all that is left when all other things are gone. People will believe you until they dont. Dont let the cause of not being honest with ONE person, be the reason a whole townspeople or the one you love...believe until they dont....

ICKY...

Sick, weird, awkward feelings in the pit of your stomach. Racing thoughts, overwhelming judgement, blurry views...and most of all endless questions. And that is all in one morning yawn. How do you continue with the day ahead. How can you think with this annoying emotion of ICK? Well, take it from me, you probably cant. Its worse when you just dont know where this is all coming from...I realized that if you're offended, or hurt, or jeolous, or mad, or angry and upset at another person, sometimes you dont even know who or why...it just creeps up on you...the answer is "i should pray for you more" I didnt realize that not speaking life into someone can be just as bad as speaking death into them....and that is what makes you ICKY. The power of your thoughts turn into actions and while actions may not always be physical, actions are actions and they can hurt when harmful thoughts are behind them. They may not even hurt anyone else, but they will come back and hurt you... (Proverbs 18:21)

So in the midst of all my ICK, I prayed for you more. I prayed for people I dont pray for enough. I prayed for things that are great and things that arent great, I even prayed for things that were unknown. I just prayed. with no specific purpose or intention, but on purpose... And i said God im sorry for lugging around this crap i picked up somewhere down the road. Its messing me up and I need you to fix it. And just like that that ICK was gone. (Ephesians 4:31)

priority

have you ever sat down an wrote a to do list before you went about your day? I do it on my blackberry now, but as im punching in the tasks after a couple of minutes i start getting thumb craps! there is just so much to do all the time...and it extends into other days of my week...so it just becomes a governing looming never ending to do list that dictates how much fun i can have, how much sleep i can have, who i can have hour long talks with or who I have to rush of the phone with or God forbid never even talk to just TEXT! Geez...when did my life become a to do list instead of a TO WHO list?

God checked me the other day as i was typing my endless tasks into my blackberrry in the doctors office waiting for my results of a kidney infection caused by you guessed it...stress...yep..my to do list lacked the words Sleep, Eat right, Pray more, drink water...and i started thinking of all the things on that list that were important to me, and even tried to delete a few that werent... i deleted (Go to Target) my need for toothpaste could wait! But just because they are important in this LIFE doesnt mean they are a priority eternally. God only tell us to have ONE priority and that is to Love HIM and SEEK Him...He said that if we seek Him first and His righteosness, all other things will fall into place ( be added unto you...Matt 6:33) so my to do list every time should start with

1. Go to GOD

And He said that all other things will fall into place. We try to fit God in to our To Do list somewhere somehow but most of the time we just end up deleting Him completely! The world and everyone in it will teach you to go after the things that will make you better, bring you more success, more money, but i realized that none of that will even matter if im in the Doctors office with a stress induced kidney infection forcing me to stop everything anyway....just sayin...to do lists can fill your days up quickly but they shouldnt fill your life up, they shouldnt extend into your entire week like mine....i learned that keeping my priorities straight, really only meant keeping one priority first....So today i pray God, give me the grace and capacity to do what you have me do TODAY, not tommorrow, Can I please have todays blessing today? I dont want to miss my today....