I Hear Voices

Once we start "eating" the right words - the spoken words of God from sources that line up with the written words of God - we have to be able to apply them.  This requires constant devotion to humility.

Humility is admitting that we are incapable of doing it on our own.  Humility is not downplaying your accomplishments, but acknowledging that your talents are God-given and that some of your success is based on favor with people or teaching from people.

We've all heard the old adage that actions speak louder than words. This is basically true. But the more you watch and listen to people, the more you will understand why people act the way they do.  Behavior is a reflection of belief.  I like the phrase I first heard a couple of years ago: "When you know better, you do better" (This quote may be attributed to Oprah).  It follows then that when we consistently, habitually don't do the right thing, it is because we don't know how.

Behaviors are easy to change; beliefs are next to impossible.  So what do we do?

After we acclimate to the understanding that we cannot change the beliefs of our friends and family members, much less strangers, then:   

• We have to spend enough time with ourselves to understand our flaws (the big ones and the small ones).  
• We have to know God well enough to hear Him tell us how to fix them.  

I just re-learned this lesson.  People we love sometimes have struggles we could help them with.  But their behavior is most likely an effect of their belief and only God can change their beliefs. Let's turn that back on ourselves.  None of us are perfect; we all have flaws we have kept well hidden, consciously or unconsciously. No one can change those little idiosyncrasies and attitudes because they are deeply rooted in our beliefs about ourselves and the world around us.

If you've ever struggled with the idea of knowing God, let me give you two tips.

1. If you are at the beginning of your spiritual journey or you're still deciding if Christianity is for you, know this: prayer is not a monologue; it's a dialogue.  A dialogue requires two people talking and two people listening. When you pray (about all things great and small - your car not breaking down, your day running smoothly, your boyfriend forgetting his fears of commitment and taking you ring shopping, your mother's cancer), also listen to what God is saying back.  God is saying something back.

2. If you are past the beginning stages, you've been reading the Bible and going to church and you talk to God on a regular basis, but you're still not sure how to hear directly from God, know this: "God exists within you as you" (Elizabeth Gilbert) and the devil exists outside of you posing as you. There's a reason the visual representations of the Holy Spirit (your conscience) and the devil are small figures that look just like you whispering in your ear the right and wrong things to do.

One of the devil's most effective tricks is to speak negativity to you and deceive you into thinking the negative thoughts originated with you. The devil wants you to think your mind has an abundance of evil in it that you cannot escape.  But he is the liar, the deceiver, the accuser.  

God created you. When you were born, you had more God in you than you had of yourself and your parents.  In fact, the eternal part of you is simply a piece of God.  So when you align yourself with God's teachings, He removes the negativity that was invading your system and what is left is the God in you that was always there.  When you listen for God's voice during your prayer dialogue, listen for what sounds like your own thoughts or your own voice but lines up with God's words. 

This is why the yogis say, "I honor the Divinity that resides within me."

#iLoveWords

The Risk, The Sacrifice

I just finished editing my first chapbook of poems and sent it off for peer-edits.. There are just over twenty poems in it, many of which I have performed for crowds that liked or loved them.  I wrote these poems mainly during my college years, when I was searching, wandering, losing and finding myself by the week and month.

There is a quote from Anais Nin that I heard on Alicia Keys' album The Element of Freedom and it really touched me: "The day came when the risk it took to remain tightly closed in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to bloom."
Last year I had a show called "The Risk to Bloom" and that is what I am naming my book as well.

I don't doubt that Anais Nin (and Alicia Keys) mean something different about freedom and about blooming than I do, but the quote is so true and so powerful.

 

Sometime during college I closed myself off to lots of emotions - many who knew me then would say that I never cried and sometimes seemed to feel nothing but laughter and anger.  I closed myself off to the piercing power of the Holy Spirit.  After a lot of meditating and reading old poems and journals, I think I was tired and afraid of feeling convicted, so I stopped allowing myself to give in to questions about my motives and my misbehaviors.

I couldn't close down everything, though. I let in beautiful words. I allowed words to feel for me so I wouldn't have to.

After college, that didn't work for me anymore.  I actually didn't write for months on end, close to a year.  Being closed off like that was really hurtful to my sweet roommate at the time.  It got me fired from a job I was good at.  It led me to a really dark place where I behaved as if there were no God to heal and protect and provide. I went through a ministry class at church, because I was asked to, and because I was sure that if I didn't do something "radical" I would not make it much farther. 

What I know now is that there is a beauty God puts inside each of us - namely women (inside the men, I am inclined to say He places a strength - not that women have no strength and men have no beauty but I am speaking generally) - and that beauty is precious and vulnerable.  The devil does not want the world to see that beauty.  The devil does not want the world to see your light shining to glorify the God who made you. So there is an attack on our beauty and on our strength. It is a ruthless attack.  The goal is that we would die emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and then perhaps physically as well.  The devil wants our potential dead because it is a reflection and a manifestation of God's potential - His omnipotence (same root word: potent).  I learned that our beauty is inextricably bound to God.  Without God everything begins crumbling.

Knowing that there is an enemy who wants to attack the strongest, most beautiful part of you makes you want to protect it, to hold it back, to maybe lock it away in a high tower where no harm can reach it...and no one can see it or be inspired by it.

I am thankful to be living after "the day" when I realized that hiding is too painful and detrimental.  But in order to fully grasp that, I must let go of what used to be and how I used to cope.  I must release the hiding and the self-protection in order to bloom.  I must release the people who are attached to who I used to be.  I must be willing to sacrifice what I once wanted - angsty poems that make people cry and applaud, that pull their heartstrings - for what I want more - to be whole and holy in God, and to show others how to get there.

I am afraid that my writing won't be as good without all of the angst.  I am afraid that it won't be as poignant, that it will draw a smaller crowd.

"It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us." - Marianne Williamson

I am afraid that many of those who nurtured my writing from the beginning will shun it when I consistently insist on putting God in the middle of it.  

"I tell you, the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation that will produce the proper fruit. And whoever falls on this stone [that the builders rejected] will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder." - Matthew 21:43-44.  Jesus was quoting Psalms 118:22-23.  He was saying that He is who people reject, the "stone" or building block that "builders" reject.  Because we are all building a life, and we are either building it on Christ or on something else.  He is saying that the "nation" producing "proper fruit" is the nation that has "fallen" on Him and allowed themselves to be broken. He is talking about the people who have sacrificed what they wanted for the Kingdom and then used Him to build their lives on.  Those who won't sacrifice, who won't allow themselves to be broken are those whom the "stone" will crush.  I don't believe this directly translates to God reaching out to smite people.  I think it means that if you don't make the sacrifice to build your life around the Kingdom, you take yourself from God's protection and then life's trials and hardships can and will crush you. 

So I trust that whatever I create from here on out will touch who it ought, where it ought, how it ought to.  I do not have to be angsty and sinful in order to be creative or draw a crowd.  I can be whole and holy.

At some point I will have to sacrifice the freedom of having all the time in the world for the discipline of health.  I have to want health more than I want "free time." It's a change in mindset. I have to invest in the process, the patient endurance, the sweating at a low fitness level until I get to a higher one. 

Exercise and Government

Working It Out
So I went to the gym, a new all-female gym, today. I got measured and weighed (ick!) and debriefed and then I took a step class.

There was a portion of the step class where we did some kick boxing. Kick boxing in general is hard. But the part that was hardest was the jabs. I'm not a fighter and I've never kick boxed before so I was completely unprepared for the burn. And right when I was thinking, "My shoulder is about to fall off and then I will quit" she said "Come on, jab! Like you're punchin' somebody in the face!"
I laughed. And then I flashed back to Camp last weekend.

Saturday night, the message was over David and Goliath. Andy Tilley talked about how David ran to meet Goliath, he ran toward his battle. He didn't approach it cautiously, he ran at it. Andy went on to define our battles as things that effect our daily lives - sin, pain, relationships; Satan, in a nutshell. And he talked about how we are quick to fight for things that don't matter - who said what about our hair who talked to our boyfriend - but when it comes to the things that mean spiritual life or death for us, we back down and put it off until tomorrow.

Not to sound conceited or "holier than thou", but in my opinion, the battles that I face pale in comparison to the world's and the Church's battle against sin and death and Satan. So I spent that time while Andy was preaching wrapped up in thought about how to best fight Satan on behalf of the students I've been put in a position to help lead, or on behalf of the people I go to college with, or how to fight death and disease and poverty on behalf of those who can't fight it for themselves.

And it's interesting how when my shoulders were burning in the middle of my step aerobics class, God reminded me of how passionately I'm willing to battle in the spirit realm and how dispassionately I battle in other areas.
The moral of the story is I jabbed like I was punching Satan and I didn't quit on my step class.
Bein' a Christian ain't just about goin' to church.

Town Hall
Have you ever been to a town hall or school board meeting, or at least seen one on TV? A panel of legislators or representatives or people who are directly related to law-making sit at the front of a room and members of the public attend and participate in the democratic process.

I decided tonight while talking to my mother that if national government were run like state and city government, America would be in better - if not good - shape.

What do you think?