Breath

Let Your aroma seep from my pores,
Perfume flowing, creating a river from my steps.
Discernable to all alike,
As a fragrance of life for the living,
That they may rejoice.
As an odor of death for the dying,
That they may repent.
Let your fragrance exhale,
As I breathe out Your Spirit,
Flooding a world of stale complacency,
Blow the breath of life through my life.
Send the enemy spinning,
Reeling,
Wretching,
Dissolving,
Blown away by the reality of Your pure wind,
Rushing forth through me.

Mindfulness and Appreciation

I have always had a difficult time getting out of my head. I am challenged to become more aware of my body, food, and sensations at meals. It is so incredibly difficult. I LOVE to distract. I love to turn off my senses and zone out at the computer or in a good book while I am eating a meal. I think that the more I don’t realize that I am eating, the better. This is still rooted in the fear of feeling and enjoying food. It is a fear of losing control. I am learning more and more that the loss of control isn’t always a bad thing. Until I let go of my illusory sense of control and allow God to take the driver’s seat, I am headed for impending disaster. I want to be entirely in control of my emotions. I want to be in control of my body. But the Lord is calling me to let go. In this moment, it is letting go of my body enough to feel the enjoyment, satisfaction, and pleasure of food. God gave us food for enjoyment, nourishment, and as a physical symbol of our daily need for Him and His word as our daily bread.

Oh, it is so hard. It feels like a necessary evil for me, and given the opportunity to take a pill to gain nourishment, I would. But this attitude limits my freedom and healing. I want to experience what Nehemiah told the Lord’s people as they celebrated the completion of the wall of Jerusalem. There was great rejoicing, eating, drinking, and sharing with those who had none. The verse is concluded with the statement that the “joy of the Lord is your strength and stronghold.” Eating is joyful, fulfilling, and a wonderful opportunity for fellowship. Eating is not at all something to be worshipped, idolized, or feared. It is not to be dreaded, nor are we to simply cope with it.

The process is long. I have to be so incredibly deliberate about mindfulness during meals. But I find ground being gained. The enemy wanted to steal my joy in one of the most vital activities in life, and he cannot have it. I will yet praise the Lord through my meals. I will celebrate that I am fearfully and wonderfully made, and I will rejoice in a body that receives nourishment. God could have made pills, or He could have made bodies that self-nourish. How odd is it that we have to eat three to six times a day? It is a reminder of our dependence on something outside us. It is an opportunity to trust God to provide. It is also another part of life that God created for our personal pleasure. The body is not for food, but food for the body, and man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the Lord. We are, however, partaking in a gift from the Lord in appreciating and enjoying the food that He has for us: Healthy, delicious, nourishing, life-sustaining food. So I praise the Lord for meals. I praise the Lord for the ability to taste, smell, and chew. They are so easily taken for granted, but I refuse to do so any longer. I commit to recognize the gift of food, and joyfully partake of the daily bread that He has provided.

Screwtape on Body Wars

In reading The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis for the fifth or sixth time, I am presented with Lewis’s perspective of a very therapeutic truth regarding attractiveness in the feminine form. Screwtape, in his letters to a lower demon by the name of Wormword, is talking about the traps that the enemy has set for humans in marital attractions. He says that it is the goal of the evil spiritual forces “to guide each gender away from those members of the other with whom spiritually helpful, happy, and fertile marriages are most likely.” This is evident in our society just as it has been with societies stretched across history. The enemy does this through making secondary characteristics primary, such as beards, weights, and complexions. Screwtape describes one effort in this perversion by saying, “we have selected an exaggeratedly feminine type, faint and languishing, so that folly and cowardice, and all the general falseness and littleness of mind which go with them, shall be at a premium.”
In his next statement, I see today’s society: “Now we teach men to like women whose bodies are scarcely distinguishable from those of boys. Since this is a kind of beauty even more transitory than most, we thus aggravate the female’s chronic horror of growing old and render her less willing and less able to bear children.”
Lewis pegged the enemy’s attack on women who find themselves driven by eating disorders. He has placed a standard of beauty that is ever-fleeting, so unnatural, and entirely handicapping. I am irate at this plot to destroy the testimony and effectiveness of today’s teenager and young woman. The enemy is creating a desire for the feminine body that is unattainable. He is effectively destroying lives with this lie.

What happened to holiness?

What happened to Holiness,
When Your name was too precious to utter?
What happened to greatness,
When You were bigger than our pride?
What happened to surrender,
When we left all to follow your Son?
What happened to trust,
When You knew better than our intellect?
What happened to death,
When we denied self, and picked up our cross?
What happened to life,
That was hidden entirely in You?
What happened to vision,
That saw past temporal into eternity?
What happened to the name “Christ,”
As we have paraded our flesh as your body?
Forgive us, Father,
And draw us back to You.

Heavely utterances

I got my prayer language on Sunday night. Over the past week or two, the Lord has brought it to my attention that my hang-up with not getting my prayer language is that I always have to think through what I am going to say before it comes out of my mouth. Well, you cannot think through a prayer language. It flows out of the spirit and not the mind, so there is no room for premeditation. This messes up my control-freak nature of speaking. As I lay in my bed praying for Stacy’s protection on Sunday night, I surrendered my tongue to the Lord. I gave up control and asked Him to take over. I uttered a couple sounds that had been ringing in my mind for some time, and the language of the spirit bubbled up forth from my diaphragm. It was so weird. I thought it must have just been gibberish, and it seemed so odd and unnatural. But I guess that it is unnatural. It is spiritual. The crazy thing is that just when these heavenly utterances were flowing forth from my spirit, my friend was screaming at the top of her lungs as a jeep pulled into her driveway, hesitated, and backed out. She was afraid it was her brother coming to kill her and her mom. I am wondering if I was given tongues at that time for that very reason. As I was driving over to my friend's house later, I was battling in the Spirit. I believe that the Lord used this spiritual language to protect us on Sunday night. I have never experienced a night like that before. We read scripture, my friend cried, she kept me awake through her fear. Her anxiety was calmed and then awakened again. She was hyper aware of every sound. I sensed such oppression and overwhelming evil in the house that I could hardly bear it. I have never been so relieved to hear my alarm go off. I came home at 6, got ready, and slept until 8 when it was time for work. Praise the Lord that He gave me strength for the next day. I was afraid that the spiritual prayers were a one-time occurrence, but they remained. I prayed them the next morning and afternoon. I prayed them today…in the car, in the shower, in my room. I am afraid to let anyone hear them. I am afraid they sound crazy. They are more guttural sounds: not at all lady like. They just sound like gibberish, but they give me a wonderful sense of being completely out of control. There is a rushing torrent of power that spills forth from the core of my being when these sounds are coming out. It is so fulfilling, so invigorating, so freeing. I must balance praying in the spirit with praying with my mind, as Paul admonishes. In light of this, I see great potential in this gift. I do not want to elevate it. I want discernment within it. I want more freedom and more abandon. I want to fear spontaneity less and let go more. I love the reckless abandon. But I desire a balance. Some people will understand and rejoice. Others will not. Some will be indifferent. Some may be disdainful. I just find it very providential that Janelle would mention it last week and promise to pray that God would give me my prayer language, that Shelby my roommate would have a prayer language, that my good old southern Baptist best friend would disclose that she has a personal prayer language, and then that the Lord would bring forth my personal prayer language. I know that it is in line with the Word. I know that in my spirit, I feel a peace and confirmation in its validity. I pray that I will come to know more and more the power of this gift and experience more fully the character and heart of the Lord in the exercise of this gift. I am thrilled. I am nervous. I am hopeful. I am still skeptical. But I am seeking His face, and He is faithful to reveal Himself when we seek Him.

Hope

Will I shatter in Your hand?
Will you hold this heart with care?
Will I crumble neath the weight,
Or find You there to bear?
Can I step out farther still,
To find that I won’t fall?
Can I give up my own quill,
To see you write it all?
Dare I hope?

Isn’t this enough,
Or do You ask for more?
I think I know Your answer,
But I ask to just be sure.
Love beckons me deeper,
Will I hope?

My faith has turned to sight.
The night has turned to day.
The darkness turned to light.
My eyes now see the way.
Your word is proven true,
You guided me with care.
I have been made new,
Your life I now can share.
And still I hope.

From offense to compassion: A journey of love

I have been learning some painful, precious lessons lately. It seems that the value of the lessons is directly proportionate to the pain that accompanies the learning process.

I have battled with insecurity and fear of man’s opinion. I know that this is the human condition in its fallen state, but I am so discontent with it. It colors my words, actions, and choices. I have encountered so many hurting people lately who manifest their hurt in criticism, anger, annoyance, and irritability. In my narcissism and self-centeredness, I have assumed that their behavior is somehow connected with me, my personality, and value as an individual. I have forgotten to take Christ’s eyes and to view His creation through His perspective rather than through my own. My own eyes distort reality, making it into a self-fulfilling prophecy of rejection, fear, and resentment. Offense is birthed out of this self-centered reality.

I am broken by this affliction of sinfulness. It is pride. It has been a process, and I find myself growing painfully slowly within it. Oh, the lessons of the average Starbucks barista! There are so many broken, hurting people. To see them as broken, hurting, and in need of love awakens me to a new compassion and understanding. Love sees through the exterior of hardness or porcupine-like spikes. These are defenses of fear and self-preservation. IT IS NOT ABOUT ME. It is not about my deficiencies or negative aspects. It is primarily connected with their internal hurt. It is not about offense or resentment. It is a plea for love, acceptance, and encouragement. These situations of criticism and hostility can be open doors for presentation of the hope and the love of Christ, the agape love, which is not contingent on behavior and acceptability. This love is the overflow of a heart that is saturated in the Spirit, which is being conformed into the character of Christ.

“Love (God’s love in us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it (it pays not attention to suffered wrong).”

This love is not natural. It is contrary to human nature, and even pop psychology. We assume “rights” as individuals. We expect a certain kind of treatment, but our Lord said that if the world rejects you, it rejected Him first. Christians can expect this rejection and even take joy in the midst of it, because in it, we are associated more to our Lord.

I am inclined to be self-seeking, fretful, resentful, and record wrongs that are done to me. I keep an inward tally of personal offenses, and as they build up, I rage and fume internally, creating a furnace of self-destruction and bondage. This carries over to other relationships and emerges as fears and dysfunctions that only eat at my heart and mind. The flesh cries to be heard, to be justified, to be seen for my motives and heart. I want people to understand the purpose of my actions and my feelings behind my behavior, yet I do not seek to understand their hearts and hurts that influence their behaviors toward me.

Oh Lord, let me see others as you see them. Help me to give them the grace and mercy that You daily bestow on me. I don’t deserve Your compassion and loving-kindness. In response to Your gift of atonement and reconciliation, I can seek to give the gift of grace and reconciliation to others. I can see attacks as opportunities to respond with love and light that will illuminate the darkness of their hearts. Love breeds love, and cycle can continue from broken heart healed to the next broken heart.

“The Spirit of the sovereign Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed and qualified me to preach the Gospel of good tidings to the meek, the poor, and afflicted. He has sent me to bind up and heal the broken hearted.”