Weekend: A Tale of Two Deliverances

Posted by Admin on Jul 20, 2013 in July 2013, Weekend | Comments Off on Weekend: A Tale of Two Deliverances

The sword of the Spirit is a powerful offensive weapon given to every believer by the living God. This sword is His Word and is exercised under the direction of the Holy Spirit. Not one word or syllable of God’s Word is devoid of power, and when initiated by the leading of the Holy Spirit, it will surely hit the bull’s-eye and accomplish what God intended it to do.

God is able to quicken His Word to the heart of the newest believer, and when that Scripture is prayed or spoken with faith, it will achieve God’s purpose.

I’ve learned a bit about the utilization of God’s Word as an offensive weapon through the years, often by trial and error.

The main thing I’ve learned is that when I am confronted with impending trouble or disaster, I must lean heavily upon the Spirit of God. He always has a way of escape for me; my job is to check in with Him to find out what it is. If I mechanically press the “Gospel button” of my choice, then I assign myself as the one in charge of how I’m rescued, not the Lord. When I am facing sudden danger, I must let Him lead. Let me explain by presenting to you this Tale of Two Deliverances.

Deliverance Number One

Many years ago, I was handing out tracts with a group of friends outside of Busch Stadium, home of the baseball Cardinals. In front of Stan “the Man” Musial’s statue, a friend and I were talking with a scraggly young man who was standing with his back to the curb. A strange look came over his face as he leaned in toward us and snarled, “Have you ever considered that you would be martyred for your faith?”

Up from my insides, I spoke the words I heard: “At the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.” Philippians 2:11 and 12 just filtered up from my spirit and viagra sans ordonnance sur facture flowed out of my mouth! The sword of the Spirit was in operation.

But the next thing that happened left my friend Cat and me with dropped jaws. The man, leaning into us and threatening one minute, collapsed backward the next, onto the hood of the car parked behind him at the curb. Some of the guys in our group approached us just then and asked if we wanted them to take over. Cat and I, who were punching each other in the thigh in shock—that really happened? left the fallen man to the guys.

Deliverance Number Two

God has been good to me and has gotten me out of a lot of dangerous–and potentially deadly–situations. Another time He helped me did not play out the way I thought it should. You see, I was in awe of what He had done for me in front of Musial’s statue, and I decided that the Scripture that rose up within me that night was my secret weapon. Philippians 2:11-12 is amazingly wonderful, and every time I read it, I think about how God displayed His might that night at Busch.

One 4th of July, three of us were returning from a city-wide fireworks display. Traffic in the park was bumper to bumper, just inching along, and we had the windows rolled down. A young man in the park, all liquored-up, was screaming into the grid-locked traffic, “ROCK AND ROLL!!!” He and I caught eyes, and he yelled at me, “DO YOU LOVE ROCK AND ROLL?!?”

I looked at him out of the passenger window, and as he approached the car, I said, “I love Jesus.”

He lost his mind. Cursing, he grabbed me and attempted to pull me out of the window. Ah hah! I thought. I get to use my secret weapon again! and I quoted Philippians 2:11-12 as he continued to yank away. Instead of letting go of me as I expected, he became even more enraged and pulled harder.

Hmmm….this is not good, I thought, and quietly listened to the Holy Spirit within me to hear what to do next. With the upper half of my body being wrenched out of the window, I began to pray in tongues out loud, looking him in the eyes as I did so. I don’t know who was more shocked of the two of us, because he instantly let go and jerked away in disgust.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhrrrrrrrgggghhhhh!” he bellowed. “You’re WEEEEIIRRD!!!!” And off he fled into the night. I squirmed back into the car, but not before he poured the rest of his beer on my head and the windshield.

My Take Away

As I reflected on the two tales of deliverance I experienced, I started to realize something. God doesn’t necessarily perform according to our script!

1 Corinthians 12:4-6 says, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons.” If God has a variety of gifts, ministries, and effects, would He not also undertake deliverance for us in a variety of ways? Indeed, God never changes, and Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever; but He works out His wonders in a multitude of ways. The key here is: He does work wonders for us.

Your job and buy nolvadex 20mg mine is to trust, ask the Lord for help, listen, and then obey whatever He shows us to do.

May God show you His wonderful delivering power as you hold fast His Word, listen for the leading of His Spirit, and lean heavily upon Him.

Dorothy

Double up on the Discerner

Posted by Admin on Jul 18, 2013 in July 2013, Prayer Perspective | Comments Off on Double up on the Discerner

Back in 1986, I felt as if I was being tackled by a dark cloud of oppression. Try as I might, I could not lift it. I was horribly confused by its intensity and had a critical decision to make—to go on an already-planned extended dream vacation with a friend or to stay home because of the heavy uneasiness I felt. A pastor I talked to told me to “double up on the discerner”, God’s Word, because it would discern between soul and spirit (see Hebrews 4:12) and shed light onto the right course for me to take. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 states, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” As I increased my Bible intake—not even on a particular topic—and sought God about the pressing decision I had to make, wisdom came.

I made the tough decision to cancel all plans, disappointing my friend, and obeyed what I believed to be the leading of the Holy Spirit. Days later, I knew why I had been “tackled”. My mother had been scheduled for a routine operation on the day I was to leave and was doing great just out of surgery. But within 24 hours, my dad called. “Your mother’s dying. Come home.” I found out that due to surgical error, her intestines had been punctured and she was dying from the release of toxins into her body.

Doubling up on the Word gave me the discernment to stay in town instead of camping out–for weeks–in the swamps of Georgia and the beaches of Florida like I had planned–before the days of cell phones. Had I ignored the pressure of the Holy Spirit or neglected to increase my Bible intake to receive the discernment I needed, I would have been unreachable when Mom was dying. On top of that, I would not have returned until long after she passed.

I will be forever grateful for the coordinated working of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God in my life at that crucial time. Thanks to the Holy Spirit’s tackle-like leading and the increased discernment I received from the Word of God, I was able to quickly make it to my mother’s side when her life unexpectedly drew to a close.

Thank You, Holy Spirit, for Your wonderful, intimate leading!

Weekend: The axe head principle

Posted by Admin on Jul 13, 2013 in July 2013, Weekend | Comments Off on Weekend: The axe head principle

I like to share encouraging testimonies of God’s mighty deliverance on the weekend. However, this weekend, the mighty hand of God may just want to reach into your heart and give you a Holy Ghost tune-up to recapture His vision for your life.

Have you ever lost your confidence? Has your peace lifted from you? Has the fire in your belly gone out? A look into the life of the prophet Elisha may help you to reclaim any missing components of your Christian walk.

Loren Cunningham, founder of Youth with a Mission (YWAM) was the first person I heard to share this teaching—the Axe Head Principle—pulled  from 2 Kings 6. The lesson he taught has stuck with me throughout my life.

A group of young prophets were building a home for themselves when one of them lost an axe head. It flew off the handle as he was chopping down a tree and landed in the Jordan River. To make matters worse, he had borrowed it from someone else. This young man called out to Elisha for help.

“Where did it fall?” Elisha asked. The young man took him to the spot and Elisha cut off a stick and threw it in. The iron axe head floated to the surface and was recovered.

I don’t know about your experience, but according to my vast scientific knowledge, iron does not float. And according to some Christians’ life experiences, once things start going south, they never get better.

However, scientific law sometimes has to take a back seat when God comes on the scene, and the downward spiral of your life must halt and reverse when God throws in a stick.

Let’s imagine that Elisha was still alive and visited your home. You might tell him that you lost your confidence in God, your peace left you, or your fire died out.

He would respond to you just like he did with the young prophet. “Show me where you last had your confidence.”

You would then walk him back to the spot where you last moved in confidence. (This principle, of course, also works for peace,  joy, freedom, the fire of God, etc.)

There he would throw in a stick and you would recover the missing fruit in your life.

But, Elisha is not here. The Holy Spirit is, however, and He is more than capable of walking you back through the past few days, weeks, months, years—even decades, if need be—to help you discover when you last had the peace of God operating in your life. And instead of a stick, He will stir those waters with the cross of Christ.

Right after the time in your life when you last experienced the peace or confidence of God, what changed? Did you involve yourself in something that went against the heart and purpose of Jesus? Was it something you never really dealt with? He’ll show you if that’s the case, and He will give you the grace to quickly make it right. He wants you reunited with that confidence, peace, and fire more you can imagine. (Kenneth E. Hagin used to say that it only took about five seconds to truly repent—you repent, and then, with trust in God and obedience, you get right back on the course He’s set for you.)

Perhaps you never violated your conscience with an outward act of disobedience. Maybe you neglected doing something that the Lord had directed you to do. James 4:17 says, “Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.” Did you drop off on your time in the Word or fellowship with God? Did you clam up about your relationship with Christ for fear of what people might think? Did you neglect to forgive someone or to ask them to forgive you? Did you start harboring a grudge against a pastor, a church, a friend or a family member? The Holy Spirit will reveal to you how you lost that axe head, and again, He will give you the grace to quickly make it right.

The Holy Spirit is always very clear when He convicts you. He reveals some specific thing that has been standing in the way of your joy or peace, gives you the grace to repent, and redirects you in the right path. That is how the axe head principle works.

On the other hand, the voice of condemnation is vague. You will feel bad about yourself for all your flaws and will want to beat yourself up. You will think you deserve to be punished for your sinfulness. This is not how the axe head principle works. You may think, as you bang your head against a wall, that you are searching for the elusive axe head, but you aren’t. You are beating yourself up, and the Holy Spirit is not in that. Stop it now!

If condemnation describes you, then you may have found the lost axe head after all! The axe head you misplaced is the knowledge that you are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14) and that you are accepted in the Beloved! (Ephesians 1:6, KJV.) Pick that axe head back up, praise and thank God for it, accept His grace, soak in His great love for you, and get back on track.

How, where, or when you lost the axe head is not the main issue. The main point here is that God wants all obstacles removed so you can pick that axe head back up, rediscover your inner “lumberjack”, and press on in Christ, free and clear, for all you are worth!

Here’s to recovered axe heads!

“Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.” Ephesians 3:20-21

“Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.” Jude 24-25

Disregard

Posted by Admin on Jul 12, 2013 in Everyday Observations, July 2013 | Comments Off on Disregard

Part Four

Simmering under the surface in many marriages is a disregard and lack of appreciation, one spouse for the other. Every evening, sitcoms use this underlying disrespect as fodder for laughs as couples (married or not, heterosexual or not) battle it out with witty insults. And the unspoken message is that the winner is the one with the most dehumanizing, ourageous put downs.

Synonyms for the word disregard are: ignore, take no notice of, discount, pay no attention to, forget about, and disrespect. Do you ignore your spouse? Do you take no notice of her or pay no attention to him? Do you discount him or forget about her? Does your attitude and your behavior expose an underlying disrespect for your spouse?

I’m no marriage counselor, but I have caught myself in dismissive, bitter, and disrespectful attitudes, conversations, and behaviors toward others in my life. Try as I might to get God to fix the offending one for me, He wouldn’t budge! And then I realized it—God’s concern with me is what I do about my part, not how He and I can fix someone else! That bothered me a lot; I wanted the other person to feel how much they hurt me; I would have liked for them to get hit over the head with how wrong they were!

Go figure—God made me repent about my attitude toward my offenders! But along with the adjustment in attitude He directed me to make, He also showed me that wrong behavior is wrong behavior, and He doesn’t endorse it in anyone.

What works for me may work for you, too, when you find yourself in strife. I pull aside, allow myself to focus on the Lord, and acknowledge that He made both of us—myself and my human antagonist. I thank Him that He loves both of us and that Jesus died for both of us. And if the one who offended me is a believer, I trust that the God who dwells in me dwells in him, as well. I forgive him and then tell God, “If the veil was torn away, and he (she) could see clearly how hurt I was by his [words, actions, attitude, snubbing, etc.], I know that he (she) would fall to the ground, cry, tear his garment, and beat his hands and feet on the ground in sorrow over the pain he caused me.” Then compassion for his (her) agony of repentance rises up in me and I am able to forgive him cleanly, whether I see the fruit of it yet or not. If unforgiveness raises its ugly head within me again, I just pray the same way again and watch it flee from me. (After I’ve prayed such prayers and have truly forgiven people from the heart, I’ve experienced the softening of  attitudes toward me as well as apologies given—more than once.)

Sometimes, however, the One you are ignoring, paying no attention to, or disrespecting is God Himself.

Romans 1:20-21 states the case that humans, from antiquity on, have known God; since creation His invisible qualities and divine nature have been clearly seen and are understood through simple observation of all that He has made.

Our generation fits this description every bit as much as those alive in Bible times: “For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened” (Romans 1:21).

Of all the undermining behaviors I’ve written about this week—role-reversal, control, and passivity—I believe that disregard for God is at the root of all of them. You know God; do you honor Him as God? You see the majesty of God in nature; do you give Him the thanks He deserves?

When you honor and thank God as a way of life, your heart and mind are guarded in Christ Jesus (see Philippians 4:6-7). This gives the act of thanking God a protective edge. When you acknowledge Him, when you give Him praise, when you thank Him in your life—especially on an ongoing basis—your human tendencies toward role-reversal, control, nagging, or passivity are less likely to dominate your personality. As you make it your business to acknowledge God with a thankful heart everyday, the deceptive, seductive, degrading suggestions by the culture and the enemy cannot find a foothold in your life. When you disregard the practice of thanking and acknowledging God, you are more likely to fall into the mindsets and behaviors described in the rest of Romans 1.

The take away from all of this is to tackle every thought, suggestion, mindset, emotion, offense, and worldview that comes your way with an eye toward the Word of God, acknowledging God as God, and thanking Him for being your God.

Keep yourself on firm footing by refusing to disregard God or His Word in your life any longer. He is God, and as you acknowledge Him as God and give Him the ongoing thanks He deserves, you will find yourself growing in wisdom and clarity about the world around you and His will for you in it.

Thanksgiving is a force that will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus.

Be bold in your acknowledgement of Him and stay thankful,

Dorothy

Passivity

Posted by Admin on Jul 11, 2013 in Everyday Observations, July 2013 | Comments Off on Passivity

Part Three

Passivity. I almost didn’t write about this topic because I just didn’t feel like it; I was thinking if I kept putting it off, you would do it for me.

The primary complaint concerning passivity in marriage comes from women whose husbands who have laid aside the leadership role in the household. Although he tends to lead everywhere else, she laments, he doesn’t do so at home. There are many underlying reasons for this, but passivity on the part of a man toward his God-given responsibility can be extremely harmful to a healthy marriage. For an excellent outline about this, I am including a link at the end of today’s blog.

Since passive people, due to their characteristic avoidance of conflict and submissive demeanor, don’t create waves, you might think that passivity is a key to godliness. However, passivity toward God-given responsibility is a primary cause of ineffectiveness and unfruitfulness in Christian life.

For example, you probably eat three square meals a day without giving a second thought to the big bites of your time that eating consumes. However, have you ever thought that feeding your spirit with God’s Word was too time-consuming? When you can’t spare five or ten minutes sometime during the day to read or meditate on the Bible, you just might be spiritually passive.

“Seven days without prayer makes one weak” flash signs in front of many churches. Corny? Yes. True? Yes, again. But when you can’t seem to find the time to communicate with God, you just might be spiritually passive.

Jesus called you, His disciple, the salt and light of the world. The salt in you was not meant to rest forever in the shaker; your light was never meant to sit permanently idle under a barrel. No matter how thrilling it is to hear testimonies of souls won, lives changed, and prayers answered, those miracles didn’t occur without the salt being poured out first or with the light still turned off. In every case, someone rose up out of passivity and lived boldly, spoke freely, or prayed fervently. God used someone’s salt and light to perform His wonders.

With the world squeezing in against you from every direction, you can’t afford to live  a passive life. You will never be able to address the persistent twisting and distortion of truth in our generation effectively with bland passivity or wishy-washy conviction. As the old saying goes, “If you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything.” Only by soaking up the nutrients of the Bible and by spending time in fellowship with your God on a daily basis will you find the ongoing strength, wisdom, and power to face off with the assignments that God will send your way.

Wishing the world would straighten up on its own won’t make it happen. Wishing the rapture would just take place now won’t make that happen, either. You are salt and you are light, and since the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He Himself will quicken  and empower you to do all that He’s calling you to do. But He cannot do these things in you without your active cooperation.

“‘Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’  Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.  Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.”  Ephesians 5:14-17, NIV

Stay salty and shine brightly,

Dorothy

For an outline from bible.org on the origins and effects of passivity in marriage, see  https://bible.org/seriespage/passive-men-wild-women-part-1-genesis-31-5

Control

Posted by Admin on Jul 10, 2013 in Everyday Observations, July 2013 | Comments Off on Control

Part Two

Among the most destructive attitudes in marriage according to my pastor’s wife is the drive—whether you are the husband or the wife—to always get your way, to win arguments at any cost, or to control your spouse. She teaches that both partners are accountable to fight for the marriage, not to dominate it. If not dealt with, this mindset will erode and destroy the foundation of what could be a good, solid, and satisfying lifelong relationship for both individuals.

The quest to control a relationship, however, is not unique to husbands and wives. While I was a teacher, I had a ringside seat to the human drive for dominance over others. During my thirty-two years as an educator, I watched as boys, girls, and teens positioned and maneuvered for control over their peers (and sometimes their teachers!) in every grade I taught, from second through ninth.

Winners and losers in the power game unfortunately continue to emerge—without anyone giving it a second thought—throughout society, with both genders, at every age, among all races and ethnicities, and indeed, even among Christians. This desire to be right, to be better than others, to be top dog, is so prevalent that we don’t even blink an eye when we observe it. Strategies are employed to ensure that “I” come out on top and that “I” craft a winning persona. Little thought is ever given to the ones who may be hurt or destroyed so that “I” can secure “my” rightful place as the best, the brightest, the prettiest, the funniest, or the most powerful of all.

And here’s where it gets really weird. We can sometimes cop the same attitude with God! Have you ever caught yourself viewing Him as an accessory to your own success? OUCH! Have you ever spent time in prayer declaring to God how you will become the most anointed, most beloved, most amazing, most prosperous person this generation (or church) has seen? These attitudes very likely originate from the same place that playground “pecking orders” come—from the drive to rise above others so you can get the recognition and success you feel you so “rightfully deserve”.

Such desires are not birthed by the Holy Spirit and are not in accordance with the heart of God. That’s why when such praying is not actualized, it is due to God’s love for the one seeking the “bump up”. It’s His will to form Christ within all of us—in our thinking, attitudes, desires, and behaviors. He refuses to undermine His supreme purpose for our lives by handing out superficial success—like a genie—to anyone who craves or demands it.

Think about this: when one partner in a marriage refuses to be a doormat to the other—while at the same time remaining faithful to his or her vows to love, honor, and cherish—the lust for control is met head on. Despite the accusations of the demanding partner to the contrary, the husband or wife who lovingly refuses to be manipulated or controlled is actually walking the love walk.

In my Christian walk, if I do not yield my frustration and anger to God when things don’t go my way and allow Him to redirect me, then I just might strike out in vengeful self-righteousness at anyone who I perceive as standing in my way. In my desire to be in control, I may stop at nothing—including ruining the reputation of others—to justify my indignation at not getting my way.

When God does not help me to fulfill my driving desire to have my way, however, it is truly a wonderful opportunity for me to reassess my personal motives and methods. He doesn’t condemn me for being a control freak; instead, He lovingly reproves, corrects, and redirects me. At this point, if I yield to His grace and seek His will (not mine), I can patiently anticipate rising up in His timing to fulfill all that He has ordained for me to fulfill.

Neither bullying control nor nagging harping are endorsed by the Word of God for marriage—not for husbands, nor for wives. And when it comes to my relationship with God, I have a choice to make. Will I yield to Him and joyfully embrace and take part in His precepts and purposes for my life OR will I petulantly insist on my own plan and nag Him incessantly to do what I think He should do throughout the rest of my time on this planet?

The choice is up to each individual.

• It is dangerous and it will turn out badly for you to keep kicking against the goad [to offer vain and perilous resistance].  Acts 9:5b, Amplified Bible

• I call Heaven and Earth to witness against you today: I place before you Life and Death, Blessing and Curse. Choose life so that you and your children will live.  Deuteronomy 30:19, Message Bible

• …in order to live the remaining time in the flesh, no longer for human desires, but for God’s will.  1 Peter 4:2, Holman Christian Standard Bible

May God bless and help you as you daily yield control of your life and will to God.

Dorothy

Role-reversal

Posted by Admin on Jul 9, 2013 in Everyday Observations, July 2013 | Comments Off on Role-reversal

Part One

I’ve never married, but I go to a church that is very family-oriented, and I’ve heard many messages on healthy relationships and how to keep the balance within marriage partnerships.

I’ve also lived a lot of life and have observed the whole gamut of marriages, from the best to the worst, both among Bible-believing couples and those with less interest in Christ. And working with singles, I have prayed and cried with more than one devastated soul as they attempted to crawl out from under the wreckage of a marriage or relationship they once thought was rock-solid.

One thing central to each marriage mess up, I’ve observed, is a blurring of personal boundaries within those relationships and an accumulated disrespect of partners over time for the value and distinct personhood of the other. Whether it’s overstepping boundaries in the marriage covenant or a passive-aggressive refusal to do one’s part to grow the relationship, lines of courtesy are crossed and the human value of someone once cherished is cheaply discarded.

And again, as someone who has not been married one day of her life, I’ve just given you the full extent of my wisdom on marriage. However, as a human who has had a 38-year ongoing relationship with God, the mistakes we make with Him are strikingly similar to some of the undermining behaviors in marriage. This week, I want to write about four of them: role-reversal, control/nagging, passive inactivity, and lack of appreciation and regard.

Our culture delights in role-reversal; as a teacher in public school, I was instructed by the “PC police” to display boys and girls in non-traditional roles, whether I chose posters for the wall or wrote word problems for math. As a believer, however, I was sensitive to each child’s strengths and weaknesses, and sought to empower each one—including boys interested in more “masculine” pursuits and girls interested in more “feminine” pursuits. Why re-engineer what God had set in motion and viewed as “very good”?

Similarly, one of the greatest destabilizing challenges that you as a Christian may deal with in your relationship with God is that of “role-reversal”.

Simply put, God is God and you are you. He is not you; you are not Him. Many believers can spot  a woman who is attempting to take over her husband’s role from miles away. And yet, there is an almost epidemic phobia rampant in the Church in regard to acknowledging your own humanity and vulnerability. Why is this? I think it’s because of a skewed concept of what being a new creation in Christ is all about.

You’d better believe that in Christ your sins are washed away; in Christ you are a new creation and you have been made the righteousness of God in Him (see 2 Cor. 5:17, 21). As you embrace these truths, you are liberated into a new freedom in your walk with God. Just as a young woman is liberated to experience the full-range of emotions and joy in her new marriage covenant with her husband, so too is the new believer free to walk in the grace, righteousness, and power of God.

However, if that same young woman determined that by virtue of marriage, she was now the husband, himself, you would advise her to see a counselor or shrink, post-haste!

And yet, have you experienced a subtle pressure to portray that you have it all together because of your relationship with Christ? I know I have in my Christian walk, and those are the times I’ve been the most miserable. I’m telling you, that pressure does not come from God! You’re in relationship with Him, but you’re not Him. All the blessings and promises that He has poured out on you are not competitive devices by which He expects you to prove yourself to the rest of the Church or the world. No! What He pours on you and into you is due to His great love for you and for those to whom He sends you. You’re not in a God-apprenticeship, so stop expecting yourself to become Him!

When I learned to embrace my role as the human in my relationship with God is when I stopped yielding to the pressure to “be” God. I don’t have to have it all together because I know the One who does. I don’t have to have all the answers because I am deeply loved by the One who understands everything. Being the human in my relationship with God has given me the courage to face the chaotic flow of national and world events because I know I don’t have to figure them out or fix them. I just know that in my role as human, I have the right and responsibility to ask my God to intervene. And as a human, I then listen for Him, my God, to instruct me as to my part in bringing about solutions. Then I do my part, and leave the results to Him.

If you are under pressure to “perform” in your Christian walk, then possibly you have entered into role-reversal without knowing it. I challenge you: step back, delight in God as God, and fully enjoy the fact that you are the human in this relationship. It will set you free.

Dorothy the Human