Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Lena's Discipleship Journalin to Acts 27 today

Usually words that are truly from God to us, especially about our circumstances, are so mind boggling. They rarely ever make sense.
I was struggling the other day at something the Lord was saying to me personally and I heard the Holy Spirit coaching me, Lena, YOU KNOW MY ways are not your ways, it’s always “backwards” to you.
An example would be- a person has wronged me. If they ask forgiveness I am prepared before God to forgive them. Then God says a backwards thing, forgive them BEFORE they ask! Huh? My minds says that’s backwards! It’s NOT supposed to work that way.
The Bible says our natural man cannot fathom the things that come from God’s Spirit, they are mind clogging. Our brains go “tilt”. Our spirit man wants to follow the ways of God that are not the same as our ways.
Our own ways we’ve followed have led us to hell, into the miry clay, off a cliff, etc. THEY don’t work. So why do I keep trusting the ways my mind tells me? The word is trying to shake my natural mind up. I must discipline and train myself to do the word of God anyway, the backwards stuff, the stuff God says to me, that makes NO sense at all.
These guys were not accustomed or disciplined in following any voice except the voices of their own heads. Their logic and the logic they’d been taught.
Have you ever noticed how quickly books go obsolete? Textbooks in our colleges especially! Isn’t THAT mind boggling? What was just taught the last class has now been improved on and the information is old news, and maybe wrong information!
Does that alone not warn us that we need to hear and follow God’s voice more than ever before? He is the Ancient of Days, knows the end from the beginning, is All knowing and is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
So He says stay here, in a spot where it is usually not a nice place to stay for the winter. Don’t be so short sighted that you have to figure it out or wait for another confirming word before you decide! Paul warns them, you may lose your whole crew (family)!
I’ve seen warnings like this given to the body of Christ in our day, I’ve watched people take the word casually and I see people’s lives even lost and tragedies happening now over taking words spoken by heralds so nonchalantly.
Time to tune in, and not do the norm. Maybe we should listen backwards….Or at least begin to think that way…Step outside of the natural mind of understanding. Not every storm is a trial. Some were invited, or could have been avoided by obedient heedful actions.
Beware, when God’s Spirit has spoken, the weather may change abruptly!!! The wind is stronger than we are.
Yet inside of mistakes and disobediences there is hope if we are still alive to tell of it. God will redeem us, save us and show us His ways again. We may have lost some things, like extra baggage needed to be thrown overboard, but we will have our faith, which is the prize to keep.
Purpose preserves life. Hang around people who have and know of their destined purposes in God, you’ll be alright. Paul needed to stand before Caesar, before he passed away. That was His mission to fulfill. Nothing could take Him away form that plan.
Is there a plan of God you are in heavy pursuit of? On purpose?
What’s your life-line/boat? Human reason or understanding? Paul said, if you cut it off, you’ll not perish!!! WHAT??? Did HE say what I thought he did? Man, that is so backwards! Then he says eat, does he not know we are almost out of food, and now we also are to throw the wheat crop overboard!
Dear God my mind cannot comprehend…..Aha! Your natural mind cannot, but your spirit man can! They had communion with God when they obediently ate, listening to what was a confounding word to their very souls, but life to their spirit man.
The passage said winter. I wonder how cold the water was??? (There goes my natural mind again ) The will of God is worth swimming towards, even in cold water, no matter how disobedient we have been. It’s worth pursuing, even if it means everything else we hoped for is gone.
When was the last time you asked God what His thoughts were on a matter? I mean in a way where you’d hear and heed His backwards to your own understanding thoughts? When was the last time, with a willing to hear and do heart, did you ask God what His plan for you was?
Not telling God what yours is and asking Him to bless it. I mean be willing to throw away your own plans, all of them, to hear His specific ones and change yours over it.
I’ve heard so many people who gloriously want to go to Timbuktu to preach the gospel, yet at home they have no relationships that count. What would be exported? Good works? One’s own plan? God’s order is never the same as mans, man must find the plan of God and place His life inside of it, making His life fit into it, not God’s to fit in His.
Like if God says, change, so I have something to export, and we’re not going to China we’re going to Mexico, what would you say? I rebuke you devil, stop trying to steer me otherwise? Or “Yes Lord, do what You will”?