Tough truth, are you mad at God? May 24, 2010

I sent this to a friend who is hurting, every day I pray that God will draw her back to Him.

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When I was running from God I had one friend that wasn’t afraid to talk straight to me, she got in my face.  She didn’t accept my excuses; she kept speaking truth to me.  I am so thankful for that friend… and I want to be that kind of friend.

I see you running, I know your hurt and angry, you don’t know what to believe anymore. Don’t you know that faith is only proven when it stands through fire?  It’s easy to believe when things are good… but when everything falls apart, that’s when the real test comes.  The believers in the Bible were BEATEN, MASSACRED, BEHEADED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And look at you, doubting God, throwing in the towel, because why?  Your pride has been stripped?  Your dreams have been shattered?  Life didn’t turn out like you thought it would?  I’ve been there, I did the same thing.  It’s not about you (or me) or what we want, not when we choose to live for Christ, not when we say, yes God, I will follow You, I will live for you.  From that day forward we lose the right to say- that’s not where I want to go, or what I want to happen.  Maybe you were like me, serving God and living for Him sounded really good when you thought you could earn blessing and favor through good behavior.  Funny… the Bible is pretty clear about Pharisaical living and yet so many of us still get confused.  I did the same thing, I ran when it got tough.  I threw the towel in…  I walked that road and let me tell you it is a painful one.  It is the road of self… and it leads to more pain and emptiness that I ever thought possible.  Once you have known God and His love… the world can never compare.  It is empty… an emptiness that I can’t begin to explain.

Forgive, go back to church, make a difference in the life of others, use your story to help others who are struggling.  Stand, fight, take your life back, run back to God.  He is still there, waiting for you, missing you… He loves you and He longs for you to love Him, not because of what you want from Him but just for himself.  Remember what He gave to purchase your freedom, isn’t that enough?

Dessert March 22, 2010

Lately watching my one year old son eat is a very frustrating event.  Once he puts something in his mouth he has to take it back out a few times look at it and then put it back in.  YUCK!  We have to sit right there with him and only give him a few pieces at a time or he just starts playing with it and yep…. it ends up on the floor. Needless to say sometimes I get impatient.  He has also figured out that dessert is much more fun than dinner.  Whether it is yogurt, or jello, or something else, when I try to eat something sweet after dinner I have to share!   The other day I had finished dinner and he was still sitting there pulling the food in and out of his mouth.  I decided to go ahead and get a cup of jello while I sat and watched him.  Boy was that a mistake! As soon as he saw me take a bite of dessert he wanted nothing to do with the dinner that he had left on his plate.  He started going crazy, throwing his food on the floor  screaming and reaching for my jello.

Today God brought this to mind while I was praying.  Sometimes it is hard to understand why God doesn’t give us the things that we want.  Those of us who are attempting to live a Godly life, and doing “all the right things” get frustrated when prayers aren’t answered and dreams don’t come true.  I started thinking about my son and how I can’t give him dessert until he finishes his dinner… and it hit me.  I bet God sees us in a similar way.  He knows that if he gives us certain things to soon… we wont pay attention to the things that He needs us to focus on or “finish” first. 

 Now don’t get me wrong and start thinking that you can earn your dessert by doing good works.  If a dozed glazed donuts with a side of rocky road ice cream is what you are wanting….  God may very well have something more like a 100 calorie jello in mind.  He knows what is best… and when is best.  We just need to trust Him

The Struggle to Trust Him March 16, 2010

Found this email that I send out over two years ago…

From: Gingerlyn Wallace [mailto:gwallace@pinelake.org]
Sent: Friday, January 11, 2008 11:06 AM
Subject: The struggle to Trust Him

Yesterday I was talking to someone in an attempt to encourage them about some things in their life… at one point I asked these questions…

Do you believe that God’s plan for your life is best?

Do you believe that His timing is perfect?

Do you believe that your ultimate joy, happiness, and peace will ONLY be found in His will for your life?

Do you trust Him?

This was my attempt to help this person realize that in Christ we don’t have to be afraid that we won’t fulfill our purpose in life as long as we are seeking God with all of our hearts.  This morning as I was getting ready I was praying about some issues and things that I have been struggling with internally.  Those very words and questions that I had spoken yesterday began to roll through my mind.  Do I believe that God’s plan for my life is best?  Do I believe that His timing is perfect?  Do I believe that my ultimate joy, happiness, and peace will ONLY be found in His will for my life?  Do I trust Him?  I answered my self with an enthusiastic YES!!!  And then came the question in my mind… THEN WHAT ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT?  I began to laugh at myself… what was I worried about??  Why was I worrying??

It is amazing how easily we can get off track in our minds.  Just like Peter when Jesus called him out of the boat and he began to walk on water… as soon as he took his eyes off of Jesus and began to focus on the wind and the waves he was afraid and began to sink.  Jesus’ words to Peter at that moment were “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”  (Matthew 14:28-31)  I can see Jesus saying that to us daily… when we worry about the many things in our life that we don’t have control over.  The revelation that I had today is this… the only reason we would have to worry about our lives would be if we are not following God.  If we are trying to do this thing on our own, then we certainly have many things to be worried about.  BUT if we are seeking God and trying to live for Him, then ultimately our lives are in HIS hands.  If we begin to worry about something, we need to learn to give that concern over to God because the answer to the question, “What can I do to get where I need to be?”  is SEEK GOD.

The problem is that this is a constant battle… this is something we must do daily.  We have to choose every morning that we will TRUST HIM.  And all day long we must fight the inclination to worry and fear.  How do we fight it?  This is where prayer and time in God’s Word comes in.  We cannot win this daily struggle without these tools.  The longer we go without spending time in prayer and in the Word the more we are given over to fear and doubt, worry and concern, even sometimes depression. ( “Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns.  Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life. Philippians 4:6 & 7 from the Message translation)

Now don’t get me wrong, seeking God and trusting Him will not lead us to a life without hardship.  There will be times of pain and loss.  Sometimes prayers will go un-answered and our dreams might not come true in the way we had always thought that they would.  But part of trusting God is believing that EVEN IN THE HARD TIMES God has a purpose, and that God will work ALL THINGS (even the bad stuff) together for our good.  And those dreams that we want so badly… we have to lay those down too.  We must offer them to God and pray that He would replace our dreams with His dreams for out lives.

There is just one more thing though… we can’t just seek Him.  We can’t just read His word and pray for Him to move.  We must be willing to put our faith into action.  We must be willing to lay things down that hinder us from growing and we must be willing to take a stand even when it is criticized, or when it isn’t the popular thing to do.

2 John 1:6 reads “And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.”  To love Christ is to be obedient to his commands.  Even though we are unconditionally loved by Him and we have forgiveness for our sins when we screw up… this is how we show Him that we love Him.

I’m right here… January 25, 2010

My 11 month old little boy is into everything!  He is crawling and pulling up and discovering the universe know as our home.  Everything he sees he has to touch  and if possible put in his mouth.  A couple of months ago I turned my walk in closet into a play pen.  I put down a large exercise pad, cleaned off the bottom shelves and filled them with toys.  I then put up a baby gate to keep him in the closet and out of everything else.  The closet is in the bathroom so he can see me while I am blow drying my hair and putting on my makeup.

The funny thing is that if I walk over to one side of the bathroom he cannot see me.  For the most part he is ok when I walk out of sight but there have been several mornings when this was tragic.  He will be playing just fine until I step out of view and then he goes into hysteria.  The other day when this occurred I simply began talking to him.  As soon as he heard my voice he started to calm down.  It took constant verbal reassurance to keep him calm.  At one point I said to him, “Can you hear my voice? That means that I am close by”.  Suddenly I felt like I could hear God chuckling and looking down on me and saying “How many times have I told you the same thing?”

A couple of days later we were having a similar situation but this time the crying had gotten so loud that my son could not hear me trying to talk to him.  Once again I felt God using this scenario to show me something.  How many times do we get in a situation where we are scared and we begin to express our fear and all of the negative possibilities.  All the while God is trying to reassure us that He is near, we just can’t hear Him over our own negativity.  This has definitely challenged me to stop and listen to my heavenly Father more often.  And to try to remember when I hear Him speaking to me that He is very near.

Infatuation Fades, Love Grows January 18, 2010

Once upon a time a little girl grew up in a wonderful home with wonderful parents surrounded by God’s love and blessing.  One day she met a guy that she decided would be her price charming.  She did (almost) everything right, she had even “saved herself” for her wedding night.  And so she got married and began to live happily ever after… If it were a movie this is where the TV screen would go blank, you would hear screeching tires and then dead silence.  In a deep serious tone the commentator would say something like “Does anyone know what went wrong”.  I have heard this story over and over again and I have lived it myself.

“It’s just not what I expected it to be”

“I thought I would feel more in love, more complete”

Sorry sweetheart, there is something that Cinderella forgot to tell you at the end of the story…  infatuation ends.  The goose bumps and butterflies go away.  That crazy way he makes you feel, the way you long to kiss him… touch him… it doesn’t last. So this little girl wakes up one day and doesn’t understand what went wrong or why she is feeling this way… so she leaves.  She runs and turns her back on everything she knows is right.  She breaks her promise to this man and to God.  She is scared, confused, and broken. Her dreams didn’t come true after all and she doesn’t understand why.

I know it’s disappointing to hear and hard to believe.  No one wants to tell you the truth because they are afraid you will give up.  But infatuation will fade every time.  It can even spring back up but it will die again.  Even so there is good news.  You could spend your life looking for tingles that last but you would miss something much more amazing.  Something worth fighting for, waiting for.  When infatuation fades, if you hang in there, love grows.

Trust me I know first hand.  I was that girl, I ran and I searched and I realized that it really doesn’t last.  So I ran back to God, let Him heal me and take over my life.  I chose to believe that there really was beauty and love to be found in a marriage relationship even if the infatuation ends.  So I tried again… and that time, when the tingles faded I held on tight.  I believed in my heart that God would bless us and fill my heart with love if I was faithful to seek Him for my marriage.  And He did… for me It took about a year and a half  into marriage (some fighting, encouragement from others, and lots of prayer) to begin to truly give in my marriage.  At the same time He was seeking God and trying to give to me.  something amazing happened.  We began to learn how to love one another the way we needed to be love.  We both learned how to put each others desires and needs above the other.  We had thought all along that we were allowing Christ to be the center of our marriage.  But it wasn’t until we began to die to ourselves and put each other first that we really let Christ have control.  I’m not going to pretend that we have it all figured out.   We still have fights, and moments of selfishness.  But we are learning and growing.  And I can truly say that everyday I love him more.  I can now see what marriage is supposed to be.

Why are we here? August 11, 2009

I wrote this a long time ago but I never did anything with it.  I was really just chewing myself out… and saying some hard things that we all know but sometimes forget.  My fear was always that it would come across to harsh… but I read it today and I feel like it is so relevant to life right now.  We have got to get our focus off of ourselves…

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What will it take for us to realize why we are here… when will our focus shift from what we are wearing and the condition of our bank accounts to the lost souls and hurting hearts in the world. When will we be more concerned about the orphans and widows than the way that our hair looks today? When will the day come that we spend more time in prayer than we do worrying about that extra weight that we are carrying.

Jesus did not die on the cross so that you and I could have perfect fairytale lives. A relationship with God does not promise a life with out trials and heartache. Where did we get the idea that God owes us something? Why is He the first person we blame when something goes wrong? When did we stop talking to God and start demanding things from Him? What makes us think we can ignore His voice in our every day lives and then expect Him to answer our questions and solve our problems? Being a Christian is much more than just believing, much more than just knowing… It is living like Christ and for Christ… Does your life bring Him glory?

-If someone walked into your home and took a tour, would they know you love Jesus without you saying a word?

-If someone borrowed your car would they know you followed Christ by what was playing on the radio?

-If someone was to interview your friends and coworkers what would they say the most important thing in your life is? Your boyfriend/girlfriend? Your family? Your relationship with Christ?

Let us evaluate our lives today and everyday…

Comfortable Sin July 7, 2009

I can still remember the first steps I took towards total disaster.  Several years ago I went through a season where I ultimately turned away from God’s path and decided to follow the world and what my flesh wanted.  Just like the Casting Crown’s song “Slow Fade” my disaster didn’t happen over night.  There were small compromises along the way that carried me there and I vividly remember the first one.  It was my first week at a new job, in a new town, and for the first time in my life I wasn’t surrounded by my strong Christian family, friends, and church.  I was on my own and struggling with the desire to be accepted.

Growing up I had always taken a stand and always found myself on the outside because of it.  I couldn’t stand the idea of dealing with that in this new setting.  I still remember the day, the men in the office were laughing and joking about something perverted until they noticed that I was sitting there.  They laughed and said “oh, we can say that kind of stuff around her”.  I quickly responded with “it doesn’t bother me” and laughed along with them.  This was the beginning of the end…  little by little I allowed myself to embrace worldliness and eventually it took over.

Now as I look back on that time, I once again thank God for His mercy and restoration in my life.  But sometimes I still struggle with the pain of being “out side the circle”.  I firmly believe that it is not only the sin that you commit that separates you from God but also the sin that you allow to surround you.  God expects us to take a stand, not to judge, but not to allow it to be a part of our lives either.  That means if you are hanging out with a couple of friends and the conversation turns south, with negative comments and laughter about someone else, you are apart of it even if you don’t say a thing.  Your friend’s shouldn’t be comfortable to sin around you.  They should feel like they can confide in you when they are struggling but that is a very different thing.  If someone says “Oh, we can’t say that around her” we should take that as a compliment.   Although we may find ourselves on the outside because of it, we will be standing on the outside with Christ.  Remember… He was despised and rejected.

One more thing… it is not just because we don’t want dirty sin touching our clean white reputations it is because of our responsibility as Christians.  God expects us to help those who stumble turn back to Him.  These are opportunities to turn people back to Christ, or at least to allow conviction to begin to grow in their hearts.

When I say to a wicked man, ‘You will surely die,’ and you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his   evil ways in order to save his life, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood.  But if you do warn the wicked man and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his evil ways, he will die for his sin; but you will have saved yourself.

“Again, when a righteous man turns from his righteousness and does evil, and I put a stumbling block before him, he will die. Since you did not warn him, he will die for his sin. The righteous things he did will not be remembered and I will hold you accountable for his blood. But if you do warn the righteous man not to sin and he does not sin, he will surely live because he took warning, and you will have saved yourself.”

Ezekiel 3:18-21

Old Stuff Page May 26, 2009

For those of you that have know me for a while now you might remember when I used to randomly send out emails of encouragement that God put on my heart.  I am attempting to find all of those emails and old posts and paste it on this blog on the “Old Stuff” page.  Check it out, I will add to it as I have time…

Bath Time May 26, 2009

For me, reading the Word of God is like giving my spirit a bath.  It drives away my pride, selfishness, and “me first” mentality.  It clears my mind from fear, anger, and material lusts.  It also helps me to refocus when I allow my feelings to get hurt… or when I listen to the whisper of the enemy telling me that I am a failure or that it matters that there are people who don’t like me.  When I begin to pray, worship, and spend time reading scripture everything comes clean and suddenly I hear God’s voice.  I hear Him telling me that He is my provider, my protector, my defender… that He is the one that determines my rises and falls.  He reminds me that He loves me and that there is nothing that I can accomplish on my own… every good thing comes from Him working through me.  That is a relief… to know that my success comes from Christ really takes the pressure off and reminds me that I only have one thing that I have to do in order to “win” in this life… and that is seek Him.

Forgiven Forward?? May 4, 2009

As Christians we are RE-BORN when we accept Christ.  But for those of us who accepted Christ while we were still in diapers it is a little different.  It’s the season when we fall flat on our face and figure out for the first time exactly why we needed Christ to die for us that draws the line in the sand.  When we make it through and turn back to Christ accepting His forgiveness and finally understanding Grace… that is when life begins.