Meditation on Psalm 5

During the last week I've been meditating on Psalm 5. I would like to share some thoughts that I have had from meditating on this Psalm.

Give ear to my words, O LORD,
consider my sighing.
Listen to my cry for help,
my King and my God,
for to you I pray.

In the morning, O LORD, you hear my voice;
in the morning I lay my requests before you
and wait in expectation.

Currently, I'm writing a blog post called "Wait on the Lord." All I have written down so far is the title "Wait on the Lord" the rest is still in my head (I'm still waiting :). Maybe you'll get to read it someday! Anyway, I love what verse 3 has to say, "In the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation." How often is that the case for you? I often lay my requests before Him and then when I say "Amen" I pick them back up and head out into my day. Do you believe the Lord really hears your voice every morning and do you leave your issues before Him and wait? I'm still a working on this!

You are not a God who takes pleasure in evil;
with you the wicked cannot dwell.
The arrogant cannot stand in your presence;
you hate all who do wrong.
You destroy those who tell lies;
bloodthirsty and deceitful men
the LORD abhors.

This is one of the major parts that I really have been reflecting on. Do you believe "God takes no pleasure in evil and that with the wicked He cannot dwell?" This day and age you can hear lots of ideas about what grace in regards to Christianity means. What exactly is grace? Our church had an excellent sermon 2 weeks ago on the topic of "Applied Grace" by Sam Dharam (11/1/09). In that sermon he said that the majority of way the word grace is used in the Bible means, "God's enabling power." Did you know that? God's grace in our life isn't a blanket to cover over our sin to hide it, excuse it, keep it nice and warm rather it's His strong power to set us free. Jesus said, "Go and sin no more." Just because God has paid they price for sin does not mean sin is now okay with God. God still hates sin as much as He always has and He still doesn't want His children messing with it because it is DANGEROUS. That is why He went to great lengths to make a way for us to be free.

But I, by your great mercy,
will come into your house;
in reverence will I bow down
toward your holy temple.

Lead me, O LORD, in your righteousness
because of my enemies—
make straight your way before me.

We still all sin, don't we? These verses show us what to do when that happens. We can go boldly before the throne of mercy and fall down at His feet and say, "Lead me, O Lord, make your paths of righteousness straight before me." He more than gladly wants to do this. If you've been trying to walk out of your sin on your own, stop right now, you are just going to fall down in that giant pit again. Rather go before Him, He sees your nakedness and He is more than willing to lead you if you let Him. (If you are currently caught in a besetting sin please consider reading my three part series on Uprooting a Besetting Sin).

Not a word from their mouth can be trusted;
their heart is filled with destruction.
Their throat is an open grave;
with their tongue they speak deceit.

Do we see the destructiveness of sin? "Not a word from their mouth can be trusted." A friend of mine recently told me that she went through many of her old memories with the Lord and sorted through them. Each memory that came to mind she would ask the Lord whose voice was over that memory. He would answer "This was My voice or this was the enemy's voice." There is INCREDIBLE value in doing this. You have voices speaking to you everyday. There are voices of TRUTH that come into your life and voices of death. For you to have the ability to recognize and distinguish these voices is of GREAT VALUE. A word from the voice of the enemy CANNOT be trusted, it is filled with destruction, it is like an open grave. Beloved, if there is one thing I pray you get from this post it is to take the time to stop and sort through some of the voices you've been listening too. Is it from the voice of truth or is it from the enemy?

Declare them guilty, O God!
Let their intrigues be their downfall.
Banish them for their many sins,
for they have rebelled against you.

But let all who take refuge in you be glad;
let them ever sing for joy.
Spread your protection over them,
that those who love your name may rejoice in you.

For surely, O LORD, you bless the righteous;
you surround them with your favor as with a shield.

2 Corinthians 10:5

We demolish arguments and every pretension

that sets itself up against the knowledge of God,

and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

These things will be the end result of you taking every thought captive. The Lord will demolish and destroy the strongholds the enemy has built and/or is trying to build in your life. May the blessings of the Lord and His shield cover over you.

Part 3: Uprooting a Besetting Sin

Alright, we are at the end of this one! I promised you I saved the best for last. These were the things that made the biggest difference in this battle:

5. Realize that many sins are a distortion of something good of God’s.

I read Gary Chapman’s book: Anger, Handling a Powerful Emotion in a Healthy Way. If you are looking for steps one, two, three and really practical hands-on stuff to do, this book is it. What it did for me was open my eyes to the fact that anger in itself is not wrong. God gave us the ability to be angry for a purpose ~ to help us to take action. However, there are justified situations for anger and there are situations that aren’t. The things I was reacting to were not justified situations and I wasn’t reacting in the right ways. So like I said, the enemy will take something God intended for good and distort it. If, anger is part of your “personality" then learn how to use it in the way God intended you too.

6. Identify Trigger Points

I realized that there were certain situations that would set me off. Understanding what those trigger points were helped me to make changes entering those situations. One for me was trying to get out the door. I know it sounds so dumb but I like to be on time. It seemed like “meltdown” time always came when I was trying to leave and get somewhere on time! This is where the eternal perspective really helped me. I also tried moving “leaving time” 10 minutes earlier so it really wouldn’t matter if a meltdown took place I would have the proper time to deal with it.

7. Understand where God is in this whole thing!

• Invite Jesus to fight for you! This came from a sermon by my pastor Tom Flaherty (8/19/07 A Pleasing Sacrifice starting @ 43 minutes). He talked about the enemy knocking at the door of your house and you always going to the door to answer and getting beaten up. He said the whole time Jesus is upstairs waiting for you to ask Him to open the door. If you would let Him open the door you wouldn’t have to deal with the enemy. So the next time the enemy is knocking ask Jesus to answer the door. This really worked for me and made a difference, so try it!
• I told you I put a rock in my rock bowl October 2007. I put the rock in after hearing a sermon by Brian White called Free Indeed. It is an hour long and I would definitely recommend that you take time to listen to the whole thing. This is where I understood where God was in all of this mess. I used to think God was at the end of my journey tapping his toes, with his arms crossed waiting for me to get it and that He was disappointed in me and didn’t understand why I didn’t get it. After this powerful sermon, I saw that God was the instigator (and I love Him for it!). He wanted my enemy DEAD. God was NOT going to be satisfied with second best, He was not going to be satisfied with me taking care of part of it but leaving the rest for my kids to deal with. God wanted this sin dead so He was willing to keep the fire burning until the enemy was DEAD. God wasn’t away from me tapping his toes, He was behind me, beside me and in front of me saying let’s kill this thing! When I realized that I was all for kicking this thing where the sun don’t shine! And I was using my anger in the right way now ~ to defeat the stronghold of the enemy.

So thanks for letting me share. I am so excited now. I can’t tell you what it is like to actually sit back and say, “Who is this responding now?” because I am responding with gentleness and patience. I still don’t think it is “me” but now I know that it is God working in me to do His work and it feels so good! So beloved if you’re struggling don’t get bogged down with the journey. Get God’s perspective and go for it! God purchased freedom for us and He wants our enemy dead, so keep fighting until he is dead!

Part 2: Uprooting a Besetting Sin

Part 2 of 3: This blog will come out in more of a list form because that is the way that I think. I do what to restate, however, that I am just sharing my journey and not a “do these 10 things and you will be over anger list.” I firmly believe that our Christianity is about a journey of walking with God in the midst of our mess. We can learn how to walk effectively by looking at others but even in that we need to take what we learn from others back to God and see how it applies to our lives. So the next 2 postings contain some of the things I learned in my journey:

1. First, I had to acknowledge that I had a problem.

• This may seem obvious but there are a few routes I could have taken instead of acknowledging my problem. I could have said, “I am making too big a deal of this. It’s not like I’m hitting my kids ~ I’m just using words.” Jesus likened lust to adultery and hating your brother to murder. In God’s eyes, sin is sin and it is serious! I was sinning against my kids and God and I needed to acknowledge the seriousness of it.
• The second route I could have taken was it wasn’t my fault. I think I could have stayed there for a while. To me, it was my kids. If they would just learn to obey and wouldn’t test me I wouldn’t have to yell at them. This is a slippery road. Yes, my kids need to learn to obey but that was a totally separate issue than the way I was responding and it did not justify my behavior.
• The last route I could have taken was, “that is just the way I am, it is part of my personality.” I will address this more in depth in another point below. It may be a part of your personality but when it crosses the line it is NOT okay and it is not an excuse for you to remain in that place.

2. I had to walk in humility!

• Again this may seem obvious but it was hard. I had to say sorry to my kids and every single time. I would take my kids and sit on the floor. I would look in their eyes and say sorry that Mommy was wrong and she should not have reacted that way. I would ask them to forgive me and then we would pray together. To me, forgiveness is one of God’s most powerful tools and our kids are so willing to use it. Yes, I know what was happening was hurting their spirits and I needed to stop but I was sooo thankful for the power of forgiveness as I walked down the road to freedom.

3. I surrounded myself with truth.

• Check out my posting called Put your clothes on! This talks about putting on the Spiritual Armor on a daily basis. I realized in trying to uproot this sin that I was in a spiritual battle. I also realized God had equipped me to fight. This was one of the most powerful tools to protect me during the fighting.
• The second set of verses I clung had e putting more clothes on (I personally find them more beautiful to wear than wearing the armor!)
  Colossians 3:12 Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.

4. Get to the bottom of it!

• Anger and most behavioral sins are just a symptom of a bigger problem (remember the posting The Overflow of the Heart). I could chop off the anger but it wouldn’t be getting at what was causing me to be angry. I wish I could say there was this huge revelation, or an incident from my childhood that caused me to be this way. I can’t. I wasn’t raised the way I was acting so that one didn’t work for me. I think sadly enough what it came down to for me was I like to be in control, I don’t like being challenged and I don’t like to fail!
• I had to learn to not take myself so seriously and realize that I was going to be challenged by my kids.
• I had to accept that my kids were going to sin and that was okay. What I mean is they are sinners too, to expect my kids to always obey and always listen perfectly was an unfair expectation. I wasn’t failing when they disobeyed me and so I didn’t need to “protect myself” by lashing out at them.
• I had to take on an eternal perspective. Really, in the light of eternity the little stuff that would cause me to blow up really was not important. The only thing involved that was eternal was their little spirits and that was what I was harming. The fact that we were going to be late and they weren’t cooperating with me was not going to have a lasting effect on eternity!I had to refigure out what my job was. My job was not to control these little creatures who had their own free wills! My job was to train them to make wise choices. I guess that helped me to release this idea of control and take on a new perspective of my job.
• As a side note: For those of you who know my family I am so grateful that my first child was compliant and that I began battling this anger issue before my second one came along! Her name is Mercea Grace (which means Mercy and Grace). I thought we named her that because she was going to be an example of Mercy and Grace to the world. But at least thus far it has been to teach Mommy how to be merciful and graceful! She is one strong willed little girl and I realize that I am probably the one to blame for that! She has a power and a fire to her that I can’t wait to see released for the Lord, but until then…

So that's all for today. There is a little more to the list for tomorrow! I saved the best for last so that you would have a reason to come back.

Uprooting a Besetting Sin Part 1

Well, I told you a few weeks back that one day I would try to blog about my journey out of anger. The next couple of days I will try to do that.

Before I start, let me tell you what I am not doing. I am not giving you “10 steps” to overcoming anger (or a besetting sin). Instead, what I am doing is sharing my journey with you and the things I have learned along the way. Hopefully, whether you struggle with anger or some other stronghold you will be able to glean some new truths that will help you in your journey to overcome.

I guess before I had kids I never really considered myself to be an angry person. But when my son was about 6 months old something seemed to “snap” inside of me. A frustration arose in me and I began reacting angrily. Luckily for me, I had a very compliant first child and so the incidences of anger were far between. But the older he got the more I was being “challenged” and the more I began reacting to him out of anger.

I was never pleased with myself for this and I spent many a time at my bed crying and praying to be different and I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t get control of this thing. At times, I could go for a couple of months without an incidence and then there would be a day when I would break again. For those of you who struggle with anger you might know what I am talking about: a rage would build up inside of me and all I could do was scream to get it out. Unfortunately, I wasn’t alone while this screaming would happen and my son would be the receiver of the anger. It was really frustrating especially when I felt like there were 2 mes: the one watching this happen and saying stop and the other part of me that was screaming.

In October 2007, after 2 years of battling this thing I put a rock in my rock bowl and from that day forward I knew there would be a day when I was free from anger. I would love to say that I never reacted in that way after that but I still did. I do now think it has been about 6 months where I know that I am different and can say I am free from the stronghold of anger that I was under.

So here are the things I have learned along the way in this journey from anger:

First, one reason we fight to be free is to fighting so that the next generation can be free. I hated how I felt when I was angry and it truly did frustrate me that I couldn’t overcome it. I, however, looked at my kids and I did NOT want them to be stuck fighting a stronghold of anger because I wasn’t able to overcome it. My former Pastor Shane Holden used to preach about being a David for your family line and taking out the Goliaths of your family line. I was well aware that one of the reasons I struggled with anger was rooted in generational sin and I did not want to pass it out to my children. However, things did not seem to be changing. I love the idea of being a David for your family and I think there is a very powerful picture. But one thing I’ve learned from all of this is that not every battle can or will be taken out in just one blow. If your mindset is that you just have to throw one rock and it will be over then like me you will get very discouraged with yourself and think that you are doomed to be under this thing for the rest of your life.

Now I do believe there are times when God can and does remove things in one swoop however there are times that He doesn’t and this is the picture that I did get for this circumstance. Of course, at this moment I can’t find the reference but it is in there! In the OT, God says that He did not get rid of all of the Israelites enemies because He wanted them to be able to teach their children how to fight. This to me is sooo powerful and freeing! As Christians, we get so discouraged when we struggle with sin and we think there is something wrong with us. But have you ever thought that maybe we need to learn how to fight? I am so glad in retrospect that God did not just take my anger away. If He had I would have missed out on a lot of character building (which you will see in the upcoming blogs). It also would not have gotten to the root of the problem because at that time I was just concerned about “anger” and not concerned about what was broken inside of me and was causing the anger. Finally, I think I’ve learned how to fight. I do not expect perfection from my kids. I do know that when they grow up they will not be perfect and they are going to have struggles. My firm belief is that they will not struggle with anger because that stronghold has been broken but they will struggle with other issues. One of my jobs now as a parent is to teach them how to fight. Instead of getting down in the dumps that we struggle with sin we can rise up and know that we can be set free and that we do need to learn how to fight for freedom.

So this is part one. There is more to come so check back tomorrow…