The joy of a cold

It's been years since I have been sick. Then last week it was a stomach bug and now this week - a head cold. You might think that this would be something to lament but I am finding myself grateful for this illness. Ok, so the sneezing and coughing is not pleasant and I certainly don't want to spread the illness to others.... but to be honest, I have been too busy lately and have not been as disciplined with my time as I should be. This sickness has brought everything to a screaching halt. It's not that I am not going to work or doing the things that need to be done; it is just that worrying about stuff and over thinking stuff (my 2 biggest challenges in life) just seems to be too much effort. So that is just it. I have stopped striving and I am resting in Jesus..... just resting. What a wonderful Savior he is!

And even when I have the realization that this place of weakness and dependence is what He has called me to and if I was actually fasting like I know I should be that this illness would not have been necessary..... there is no condemnation. Only realization and understanding and acceptance. The peace and rest remain. How sweet and precious is the Lord's chastening.

So I am grateful for this sickness. Whateve it takes, God!

Getting Down to the Basics

It never ceases to amaze me how God uses the young, the simple and the unexpected to make profound, deep and meaningful points in our lives. This post by Randy Bohlender makes that point better than any I have read in a long long time. This is a beautiful picture of the child like faith and love to which we are called.
It also brings up a subject that has been on my heart for a while now - balance. I think that there are seasons when we focus so intently on serving in our churches, in our work and/or in our communities that our reach exceeds the depth of the roots that keep us grounded. This is when burnout can creep in. Then we admonish ourselves with scriptures like "Do not weary of well doing" and thoughts like "if I don't do it, it won't get done" and other things that on the surface may be true (of course scripture is always true within the context) but they can keep us from focusing on the real issue of relationship with Jesus instead of doing things for Him...and all of a sudden we find ourselves drowning in a sea of frustration, bitterness and self pity...wondering how we got here. We are out of balance. We have been doing so much that we haven't had the time to rest either physically or spiritually. We can look back and see that our prayer time has gradually gotten shorter, time spent in the word has decreased. And we have plenty of excuses. We are all experts at justification!
This is the real battle ground: the mind. It is what we choose to think about that determines our feelings and our actions. When we do not choose to spend time focusing our minds on the Word, on the person of Jesus Christ, learning to take every thought captive, we make ourselves easy prey for the enemy to come in and distract us with slightly twisted versions of the Truth. It is almost never something that is easily seen (otherwise we wouldn't be deceived). It is those "close to the truth" thoughts that get us one degree of track. We don't notice the deception at first because it is so close to the truth. But as we travel down the path of life, that one degree difference pulls us further and further from where God wants us to be.
So often that slight deviation comes in areas of our passions in ministry. For those with a heart for service, we over commit. For those with a heart for intercession, we can lose our heart for being Jesus' hands and feet in the natural. For those with a passion for evangelism, we can forget to disciple the very people we so passionately went fishing for. If we neglect our relationship with the one for whom all of our passions and desires originate, we are like a tent with posts that have never been hammered in to the ground. And the larger the tent, the deeper the posts need to be. And if you want to go deep, you have to get back to the basics: Spending time reading the Word, spending time in prayer, studying the Word, fasting, tithing, serving. This is the only way I know of to guard my mind against deception. It is the only way I know of the stay in Balance.