Remind Me Again….Who Am I???

Once again time to revisit…

We should be able to spend a lifetime discovering who we are.  I feel like I spent a lot of that time running from who I was…or at least who I let others, or events tell me I was.  We do not realize how much we seek approval from others.  If someone does not respond to us in the way we had hoped, for some reason we believe that we are less than.  I did that for a big part of my life.  I couldn’t figure out why I could not just get it right, or do better.  It started out as not being able to be a better little girl, daughter, sister, teenager, mother, wife, woman and then just a better human being.  I failed.  Over and over again.  My story and my perceived response from the people around me kept repeating, “you’re doing it wrong!  You are missing the mark.  If you could just try harder and tone back who you are then maybe you could be worthy of a better response. You could be worthy of love.”

I didn’t know that I was seeking some sort of identity and validation in that approval.  I know now that I can not get my life, my worth, or my purpose from any person.  The only one I can get my life from is God.  He is the one who created me.  It wasn’t until I heard Him say to me, “I am God.  Creator of all things.  I created you Jennifer for relationship.  I want to know you.  I want you to know Me.  Nothing that this world can do to you, or that you can do, can change what I created you for, from before the foundations of the earth.  All throughout my Word I speak to you, inviting you into many relationships with me.  So many ways I want to love you.  I am God.  You are My friend, My sister, My servant, My blessed creation, My beloved daughter, My chosen bride and sometimes you are the clay in My hands as I transform you even more into the freedom of your true identity in Me.  No matter what happens…..you are still Jennifer.  You are Mine….just as I  created you to be.”

And that changed everything…

Tempation Is NOT Sin….

I miss blogging soooooooooo much!  It is burning with in me again.  Please pray for me during this time of trying to balance my business which is a calling in itself and blogging which has needed to take a back burner.  I know this one is a repost but it keeps coming up and needs to resurface for now.

Seriously, temptation is NOT sin.  I hate it when Christians judge themselves, or others and they use temptation as their gauge.  Temptation is not you.  It is not God.  Guess who it is?  It is your enemy.  He wants you to think that it is you though.  He wants you to believe that it is who you really are.

It makes it really hard to believe that you have been made new in Christ if you are also believing that every thought that pops in your head is something you are seeking out.  It makes you believe that, that old stuff is still your identity.

I’m sorry guys but I’m going to use men and lust as an example only because it is easy to see, not trying to pick on ya.  I was introduced to pornography when I was five.  It is very hard to unsee something.  But pornography doesn’t have quite the same impact on gals as it does guys, or I would use my own experience.

I have spoken with men who struggle so much with temptation.  They believe that if a thought, or a picture crosses their mind that they have somehow backslidden all the way back to the beginning.  That is a lie.  You are still on the same path.  Those are called tempations not sin.  You are not responsible for repenting for a temptation. Do not own it, or let it own you.  Point that finger right back at your enemy and say it is you who are tempting me!  This is not who I am, it is you.

It is what you choose to do with the temptations that makes the difference.  Even if you get carried away, or caught up in the moment and you catch yourself, that is praiseworthy!  You can not have conviction without the Holy Spirit in your life.  If you get convicted you do not slump over and call yourself pond scum.  You praise God that He is in your life.  The very fact that you are convicted is evidence of that.  “Whew!  Glad I can see the evidence of God in my life right now in this.”  That is what it looks like to walk in your identity in Christ.  It is what being made new and being transformed into His likeness looks like in everyday life.

If the enemy gets away with making you feel like you have backslidden all the way back to the beginning and have made no progress, or the progress you have made was somehow lost, then you are relying on your ownself for your salvation.  That of course is completely wrong.  You would be believing that the work of the cross was not complete.  You would not believe that He is who He said He is, or that He paid for everything with His life and it is finished!  We were redeemed because of His actions, not ours.  We are identified now by His actions and who He is and not our actions.  But what does that look like when you are in the midst of being tempted and it hits you in all the old familiar places?  We have to remember who Jesus is to us and who we are to Him.  He does not call us wretched, filthy, or pond scum after His purchase of us, after we have been made new in Christ.

Let’s not forget that He calls us His sons and daughters, His friend, His Bride, or His blessed creation.  Without Him for sure we are nothing.  Don’t get me wrong.  But I believe that the enemy would try to twist our good hearts that God redeemed in us to turn on ourselves and believe that we are less than who God says that we are.   To make us believe that we have gone all the way back to the beginning of our battle.  That’s a bunch of crap!  He put us on a new path.  We are going to stumble, fall flat on our faces, or even stop and dig ourselves a little pit at times.  But it is His grace that is big enough.  The very fact that we can identify that something is wrong is evidence that He is in us.  It is evidence that we are on a different path and have been made in to something else.  I know I would have no problem living from the old places if I did not have the new.

If we can not see this for ourselves, then how are we going to be able to extend grace to others?  How will we be able to see them how God sees them?  How then will we ever believe that others have been made new?  How will we ever be able to believe that we all have the same enemy and it is not each other? (our battle is truly not with flesh and blood but principalities and powers.)

Temptation is NOT sin!  Temptation comes from “our” enemy and it is used against us more to steal our identities than anything else.

At the end of almost everyday, I have been tempted to:

go to food for comfort

to try to arrange for my own life

to worry about finances

to go to anger instead of taking the time to figure out what is really going on

to judge others or myself

to choose comfort over excellence

to hate instead of love myself

to blame or accuse God

to question God’s heart for me

The fact that I can list those things is more evidence that I have been made new.  I am still Jennifer, beloved daughter of the King of Kings, chosen bride to the Lord of Lords and blessed creation of the Creator of all things.  To believe that I am anything less than His…..would be a lie.

To believe that I have overwritten something that God has made into a brand new creation…..isn’t right either.  Temptation is NOT sin.  The enemy gets away with too much already.  Do not let him get away with lying to you about this.

Temptation is NOT Sin…

I miss blogging soooooooooo much!  It is burning with in me again.  Please pray for me during this time of trying to balance my business which is a calling in itself and blogging which has needed to take a back burner.  I know this one is a repost but it keeps coming up and needs to resurface for now.

Seriously, tempation is NOT sin.  I hate it when christians judge themselves, or others and they use temptation as their gauge.  Temptation is not you.  It is not God.  Guess who it is?  It is your enemy.  He wants you to think that it is you though.  He wants you to believe that it is who you really are.

It makes it really hard to believe that you have been made new in Christ if you are also believing that every thought that pops in your head is something you are seeking out.  It makes you believe that, that old stuff is still your identity.

I’m sorry guys but I’m going to use men and lust as an example only because it is easy to see, not trying to pick on ya.  I was introduced to pornography when I was five.  It is very hard to unsee something.  But pornography doesn’t have quite the same impact on gals as it does guys or I would use my own experience.

I have spoken with men who struggle so much with temptation.  They believe that if a thought or a picture crosses their mind that they have somehow backslidden all the way back to the beginning.  That is a lie.  You are still on the same path.  Those are called tempations not sin.  You are not responsible for repenting for a temptation. Do not own it, or let it own you.  Point that finger right back at your enemy and say it is you who are tempting me!  This is not who I am, it is you.

It is what you choose to do with the temptations that makes the difference.  Even if you get carried away, or caught up in the moment and you catch yourself, that is praiseworthy!  You can not have conviction without the Holy Spirit in your life.  If you get convicted you do not slump over and call yourself pond scum.  You praise God that He is in your life.  The very fact that you are convicted is evidence of that.  “Whew!  Glad I can see the evidence of God in my life right now in this.”  That is what it looks like to walk in your identity in Christ.  It is what being made new looks like in everyday life.

If the enemy gets away with making you feel like you have backslidden all the way back to the beginning and have made no progress, or the progress you have made was somehow lost, then you are relying on your ownself for your salvation.  That of course is completely wrong.  You would be believing that the work of the cross was not complete.  You would not believe that He is who He said He is, or that He paid for everything with His life and it is finished!  We were redeemed because of His actions, not ours.  We are identified now by His actions and who He is and not our actions.  But what does that look like when you are in the midst of being tempted and it hits you in all the old familiar places?  We have to remember who Jesus is to us and who we are to Him.  He does not call us wretched, or pond scum after His purchase of us, after we have been made new in Christ.

Let’s not forget that He calls us His sons and daughters, His friend, His Bride, or His blessed creation.  Without Him for sure we are nothing.  Don’t get me wrong.  But I believe that the enemy would try to twist our good hearts that God redeemed in us to turn on ourselves and believe that we are less than who God says that we are.   To make us believe that we have gone all the way back to the beginning of our battle.  That’s a bunch of crap!  He put us on a new path.  We are going to stumble, fall flat on our faces, or even stop and dig ourselves a little pit at times.  But it is His grace that is big enough.  The very fact that we can identify that something is wrong is evidence that He is in us.  It is evidence that we are on a different path and have been made in to something else.  I know I would have no problem living from the old places if I did not have the new.

If we can not see this for ourselves, then how are we going to be able to extend grace to others?  How will we be able to see them how God sees them?  How then will we ever believe that others have been made new?  How will we ever be able to believe that we all have the same enemy and it is not each other?

Temptation is NOT sin!  Temptation comes from “our” enemy and it is used against us more to steal our identities than anything else.

At the end of almost everyday, I have been tempted to:

go to food for comfort

to try to arrange for my own life

to worry about finances

to go to anger instead of taking the time to figure out what is really going on

to judge others or myself

to choose comfort over excellence

to hate instead of love myself

to blame or accuse God

to question God’s heart for me

The fact that I can list those things is more evidence that I have been made new.  I am still Jennifer, beloved daughter of the King of Kings, chosen bride to the Lord of Lords and blessed creation of the Creator of all things.  To believe that I am anything less than His…..would be a lie.

Little Kung Fu Lesson….

I have the wonderful pleasure of having family in town.  Being so far from everyone this is such a great thing for our hearts.  I just wanted to touch base as the dust is settling from our 7 day challenge.  Keep in mind that as you begin to settle back into life this week everything you challenged will appear to be stronger than ever.  I want to encourage you to not give up.  What I mean by that is expect to struggle.  Expect to fail.  Expect it to be harder than ever.

Kung fu lesson ~

1.    Your enemy will come at you harder than ever but it is because you are walking closer in the fullness of your identity.

2.    Next he will make it feel like you have blown it completely.  He wants you to feel like you have made no progress…like you are starting all the way back to the beginning.   This is a lie.  Keep that truth in your sites.  God’s grace is sufficient and He is pouring it over you while you work this all out.  You do not have to rely on your ability alone.  If you make it to checkpoint 12 then God will give you opportunity to try it and try it again until you are ready to move forward to checkpoint 13.  You are not starting over at the beginning.  Do not let your enemy deceive you.

3.    As you counter these attacks and block those hits, the big double punch and kick will come at you.  You will most likely hit the ground hard.  It will be almost impossible for you to believe that you are not a controller/manipulator as being the truest thing about who you are, or that you have no other choice but to control/manipulate because no one is coming through for you.  You have the power to take that place, even flat on the ground, and take the power out of the hands of your enemy and say “your actions do not define me, nor do my own but Christ’s actions define me.  I have been bought and paid for and I am not for sale!  I am who God calls me.  I am at the very least of who I am His daughter and at the very most of who I am His Bride.  I will get up tomorrow even stronger than today.”

This should give you a few moves to counter your opponents moves against your heart and identity today.  Just like learning a new dance move or fight move, practicing makes you stronger and it gets easier.

I am going to visit with my family.  I am still praying for us all.

Take the Challenge Encouragement #6

Can you believe it has been six days?  For some of you who have started a little late please keep going all the way through to finish out your commitment of fasting control/disrespect for the full 7 days.  Maybe you only were going to chew off a few days from the get go.  That is great too.  Just follow through with the timeframe you began with.  It will help to feel more victorious as you challenge yourself.

Your enemy may present it to you as a checklist.  You will see how you failed trying to do any of it, or most of it so you’ll just scratch the whole thing off.  The other temptation would be just say that it’s not disrespect, or control it is just my personality and he knows I do not mean it.  So many of us, myself included have gone there.  It is not right.  For what God has revealed to me about control/withdrawing/disrespect is the equivalent to the guy who is way too flirty with other women, or struggles with pornography over and over again.  Now see it is easy for us women to view those things as breaking trust and acting disrespectfullly to our relationship and who we are as a wife in that relationship.  We need to take the view of what it looks like to our guys for us to break trust with them and act disrespectfully to our relationship and who they are as a husband in that relationship.

When we go to control, or withdrawing we are manipulating the circumstances to either have an outcome that is more favorable without having to be vulnerable enough to share our desires or our hearts, or we want them to pay almost like a punishment for not coming through the way we thought it should look.  Either way, we all loose!

The reality is our men, even though they don’t get it right all the time (again almost unfair because we can have unreasonable expectations like mindreading and other such super powers we are expecting them to have) really really really want to come through for us.  A weight they carry that stares at them everyday is “do I have what it takes to come through for her?”  They can be paralysed at times by the weight of this.  They want so badly to have what it takes to come through for their wives.  Everything about them as a man is being tested and weighed all day long. Then we end up getting to a place where they can not do anything right, or the way that we think it should be done.  We end up giving them an F on their report card so to speak.  So many men will resign to passivity because the conclusions they come to by our actions, or lack of actions is “she doesn’t trust me or respect what I try to do for her anyway.  If she doesn’t think I have what it takes then why bother trying.  If she doesn’t think I have what it takes then I must not.”

Now, I do not believe that husbands or wives should get their validation from each other.  We have to get our core validation of who are from God first.  Who does God say that I am.  There is a definite place where we are called to speak into our spouses identity.  But we are responsible for not letting our spouse have the authority to take God’s place there.  When I do not feel loved or seen by my husband, I have learned to check in with my heart.  Am I believing I am who God says that I am to Him?  Many times it has nothing to do with my husband at all.  I am looking to my husband alone to validate that I am worth listening to, cherishing, fighting for etc.  When I take that time to check in with God about fulfilling my core need there and remind myself that I am the Bride He came to lay His life down for and give up everything, it sure helps gain perspective.  I have to remind myself that Jesus is in love with me.  From there I evaluate what, if anything is going on with my relationship with my husband.  Sometimes it does mean I need to share with my husband, my desire for him to take me out on a date, or go for a walk with me.  I don’t know about your husband but my husband does not have super powers.  He can not read minds.  I do not come to him with a tone of “you haven’t taken me out in a while”, or whatever it is.  I trust him so I share my heart and desire with him.

In all fairness, many of our husbands are beaten down and/or afraid to step out here especially when we voice our needs/desires.  We have to get our core validation from God, be vulnerable and now give tons of grace while they try to come through for us.  Let him come through in the glorious way that he tries to.  So many times I pray to God about something, then He shows up in a way so cool I didn’t even know I needed.  I believe our husbands have access to a sight into us that we do not even have.  The masculine heart was designed to lead (give up it’s life for), protect and provide something that the feminine heart can not reach on it’s own.  Sometimes what we think we need is not what we really need at all.  If we give up our control on what the outcome should look like then we can begin to receive more than what we limited ourselves to in the first place.

Since we have been “breaking trust” in our relationships for a long time now we must realize it is hard for them to trust us in this place.  Remember what it can look like for a guy to break trust in our relationships if you cannot wrap your brain around what it is like for them to be on that end of things.  It will take time, grace and tons of prayer but fight for it!  Out of all the fighting we do in our lives this is something so worth fighting for.

Again, I am flying out the door but to work this time.  I have not yet had time to read through this so please bare with me and hope it is not too hard to sift through.  I can read it a little later but do not want to wait to post as I feel the urgency to start the day out here.

Take the Challenge Encouragement #5

I know this challenge is moving quickly.  Hopefully you can go back through on a different set of weeks and move through it slowly, or you have taken some good notes along the way about what God might be doing and can revisit those.  I am going to repost something I believe is essential.  We can not move forward for very long without this understanding that we all have the same enemy and it is not each other.  Our marriage will end up with limitations that we can not seem to get around.  Paying attention to the fact that our enemy will take us out to get to our spouse, or vice versa is a huge tool in battling/exposing some of the warfare set against marriage.  Then you will begin to notice how you can apply it to every other relationship you have.  But for now we are going to focus on applying this understanding while arriving in our marriage with a fully engaged heart.  Whew!  Good thing we are multi-taskers right?

This is a hard one to believe at times especially where marriage is concerned.  “We both have the same enemy?” It is irritating how simple the truth is yet how complex it is to default to that truth.  There definitely is an enemy at work, but it is not each other.

How hard has the enemy worked to distract you from that truth?  How many times has he hidden in the shadows while you, or your spouse stood holding the very instrument that seemed to cause the wound, or damage in the relationship?

Have you ever considered that the enemy will take you out to get to your spouse?  What about the flipside?  The enemy will take your spouse out to take you out?  He already has.

Now, let’s keep wrapping our brains around this because it will take a while.  Jesus gave us the ultimate example of how we all have the same enemy.  He was beaten to near death because the church, (His Bride) manipulated through control, an entire group of people and even it’s ultimate authority of the law.  While He is hanging there suffering and getting ready to die, He starts to pray for us….those who hung Him there.  He says, “Forgive them Father they know not what they do.”  Then He lays His life down for (us) His Bride.  He still chooses to be married.  He still chooses to see us for who we really are and He is focused on fighting “our” enemy.  “Our” meaning, His and ours.  We all have the same enemy and it is not each other.  Jesus’ ultimate example of not fighting flesh and blood but focusing on principalities and powers is completely powerful, beautiful and is what we should be striving for.

It is irritating how simple these issues really are.  They boil down to really dealing with losing sight of a couple simple truths.  But why cant we see it in the moment?

I have a theory.  At least this is how I see it taking place.  If the enemy wants to distract us from the truths and from peace then he is going to have to create chaos, urgency, pain and misunderstanding.  So many times I think he kicks us in the face so-to-speak.  It creates pain and chaos instantly.  Your eyes tear and you are not exactly sure where the blow came from.  There is an urgency to deal with the blood gushing from your face and it places you instantly in a self-protective mode.  As you are able to focus again the enemy is nowhere but your spouse, parent, child, best friend, sibling etc is the one standing there (it is going to hit you in a relational place).  The pain aspect causes a reaction of blame.  “Who is to blame for this?”  Did you know we can not even have a car accident anymore?  Insurance companies and lawyers have to have someone to blame because someone must pay for the circumstances.  The gal that rearended me was at fault.  She was so worked up over her own blame I had to keep telling her it was an “accident”.  Accidents can happen.  It means you did not do it on purpose.  If you are blaming someone then you are in a self-protective stance and you can not trust anyone in that place.  The flipside, they won’t be able to trust you either.

So in order to be able to fight back at the real issues you have to be able to break down what the real issues are.  If you go into a kung fu match you better have taken a few kung fu classes so you can counter your opponents moves.  You do that by learning how they fight.  Well this is a little lesson in warfare.  You have to begin to learn how the enemy works and what his tactics are.  What is he really aiming at in this situation.  He could have taken me out and had but he wasnt aiming just for me, he wanted my kids and my husband to go down too.  Not only that but he wanted their wounds to come from me.

How can you stop in the midst of a battle and pull back enough from your own emotions to consider how the enemy is coming against the one you are in conflict with?

Consider what angle the enemy is using against them?  Pray and ask God to open your eyes, or to bring His truth.  If you seek me with your whole heart you will find me.  He IS truth.  He IS light.  He can reveal but you have to call on Him.  It takes practice.  It is like learning a new fight maneuver.  It is awkward at first.  But trying it more and more it gets easier.  Then it is a natural reaction to what is coming against you.

Let’s just let that marinade for a little while.  The bible holds supernatural truth.  It takes us a bit to wrap our natural brains and understandings to catch up or catch hold.  It is a truth we must choose.  It is a truth we must fight for.

I am blessed to have a husband who has chosen to fight against “our” enemy and not me.  He chooses to see the truer things about me.  He knows that I am still Jennifer and loves me past my wounds, past my hormonal issues and even past all my weaknesses.  He has had to fight to get there both on his own and in collaboration with me.  We have given each other permission to share and talk about how the enemy is trying to take us out with mistrust, miscommunication or just stress.  We also have given each other permission to speak truth in those moments to help us not get distracted.

*Now I am in no way advocating a dangerous or violent situation.  But what I will say, (which is completely not politically correct) is to seek out, or pray for someone who is not just going to tell you to leave your spouse.  You want someone who can see that you both have the same enemy.  You want someone who can recognize that you both need to be rescued. *

Standing with you all ~ Shield to shield!

Take the Challenge Encouragement #3

Sorry this is so late today.  You can imagine the warfare in our own house.  Sheesh!

We have to discuss the ginormous role that justification and rationalization play in this whole thing.  How many of us control, withdraw or take our relationships hostage because we have good reason to?  Of course we have good reason to.  Otherwise there would be no need to take a self-protective stance.  Notice the word “self-protective” as in “all by myself”.

All of us have reasons to not trust our husbands on some level.  It may be that you don’t trust him with other women, pornography, money, kids, laundry, finances, your heart, his own relationship with God, or even many simpler things.  I have a friend who would never go on ladies retreat until her kids were old enough to kind of take care of themselves.  She was so controlling that she just knew those kids were not going to get a bath at night and probably end up eating cereal for dinner.  She didn’t trust him but she also was being unreasonable.  Your kids will survive a night or two hanging out with dad letting dad be dad.  Why can we not give our men the freedom to be the dad’s they want to be?  When I asked her why, she was embarrassed about her own lame justifications and rationalizations.  She was beginning to see how much she controlled everything to the point where no one could come through for her no matter how hard they tried.

I am going to go back to a time in my marriage when my kids were very young.  I remember my husband getting home from work.  He came home to craziness because that was just that season of our lives.  Dinner would be half-cooked and kids everywhere.  He would ask me to sit down with him on the couch for a minute.  So many times I would say in a minute, or as soon as I am done with this or that.  I remember one night it was about 10:00 pm and I was putting in the last load of laundry and kids were all in bed finally.  He looked so sad and said, “do you think I could rate on your list somewhere after laundry?”  Ouch!  When he came home he was choosing me first.  He had kids on his legs and everyone talking to him at once.  He would make his way to me first and want to put his arms around me and give me a kiss.  Doesn’t that sound almost fairytale-like?  I would be in such a mode that I could not engage with him.  Believe me all of my justifications and rationalizations were very convincing and even right – things have to get done.  But in the light of putting my husband’s heart after everything all evening, even after laundry ….. super lame….super wrong…..and even sinful.

If you can relate to that any of those situations take that same scenario and apply it to your marriage with God.  How much of your relationship with Him do you control?  How much time is spent in some mode or agenda that doesn’t allow you to choose Him first?

Now I hesitated bringing in our relationship with God to this encouragement because again we are female and we tend to do good with a checklist and forget to engage our hearts fully.  The temptation will be for you to totally spiritualize this challenge and forget to fully engage.  You are going to have to go to God in all this and let Him search your heart and reveal what needs to be revealed.  But I do not believe that you should loose the focus on the marriage to your husband in this exercise.  You can not do one without the other but in this case I feel that many of us will be tempted to make it be all about “God” and still miss our husband’s heart in the process.  Even though you would have superb justifications and rationalizations to back you up all the way.  The enemy will use your good heart and intentions against you.  You have to begin to open your eyes to this tactic.  We are at war.

So for this exercise try to apply the jist of either one of those examples to your lack of trust therefore control regarding your husband with other women, pornography, money, kids, laundry, finances, your heart, his own relationship with God, or even many simpler things.  It is going to suck.  It will be hard.  It will feel impossible to do without all of your justifications, rationalizations and even plain logic.  But when I was healing from a violent relationship where I had a lot God touched my heart in those ouchy places and asked me about them.  The first thing out of my mouth was “But he….” did whatever.  God kept asking me over and over the same questions.  I was getting frustrated.  Finally He said, “Jennifer I am not asking you about him and what he did.  I am asking what you did with what he did in your own heart.”

I promise you this exercise will reveal things about yourself you did not know.  It will also help make you wiser to the ways of your enemy and how deceitful he really is.  It will begin to shed some light on all that he has gotten away with in your relationship.  I am fighting and praying for this in all our marriages.  Much love.  Keep pressing in with an engaged heart.

Take the Challenge Encouragement #2

How are we all doing?  I can feel the pressure just in my own life here.

You may think I have it easy this week because my husband is out of town on business for part of the time.  But really it is harder for me.  Partly because I am kind of doing it all by myself.  I have been a single mom too so I do know the difference.  Partly because as things come up and circumstances change at home sometimes I slack on what he said to the kids, or how we have agreed (collectively) to handle certain things. I will overwrite things and be too laxed, or too harsh depending on my mood.  I know my husband is very easy going.  He doesn’t care about most of it and knows it is hard to deal with things as they arise.  He knows that things are going to come up and change and he trusts me and my judgement.  But if I am totally honest with myself, especially since I am being challenged, I am not always considering to respect first.  It is super easy for me to then fall to the “I have to figure this out for myself, nobody is going to do it for me” – when the reality is my husband offered me support and protection before he left provided all of that.  It requires my respect to let it work for me.  When I don’t take him up on his offer to lead so I don’t have to figure it all out by myself, then the beauty of who I am, is not available for those around me to be experienced.  The beauty that God has for them through me fades away.   Ugliness!  There is nothing reflecting beauty in that place for me or anyone else.  Once I even entertain that temptation I can end up having the worst attitude.  Shortly after that I fall to resentment as well.  I spiral out of control inside of my control mode and everyone is diving for cover.  No one can do anything right when I am in that space no matter how hard they try.  It is because I am not able to be reasonable during that time.  He trusts me as Captain of our ship and I can sink a boat in a matter of minutes.

When I let him, my husband many times comes in like Jesus with a rescue.  He will ask one simple, calm and reasonable question, “so where are you with your heart right now? ~or~ Where did you go?”  I don’t about you but when you are in an unreasonable mode and someone who is sane and reasonable, calmly asks you a deep question that and makes you have to stop and look at what you are doing…..it really makes me angry.  At least at first.  Like I said, it is hard to stop once I have gained momentum.  It gives the illusion that I need to keep going in this mode in order to get everything done, because I have too much on my plate and no one will come through for me so I have to do it all by myself.  Ugh!

The reality is that when I stop to let myself be asked that question(s) I find that my answers are super lame, unreasonable and missing the bigger picture.  I have to remember what Eve went through and what God said.  This is going to be my battle.  If my heart is not present and I have withdrawn it from those relationships around me and taken it into my own hands, then I am not fully trusting God.  Part of the beauty we possess as women is our ability to be at peace with our God fully trusting Him with everything.  In that place we bring a nurturing, tender and fierce mercy through offering our hearts and who we really are.  Do you feel like those around you are experiencing who you really are?  Are they experiencing the beauty and peace of who you have been called to be in their lives?  Whether you are at home or the groccery store are people experiencing the beauty of a woman at peace?  Sometimes mercy is tender and sometimes it is fierce.  You can totally have peace while keeping order as long as your need for order does not sacrifice the hearts of anyone including your own.

I think that is enough hard encouragements for the day.  Be on the look out for the different ways you will be tempted to take your heart into your own hands and withdraw it from those around you and God.  Begin to recognize patterns and triggers that you notice set you off in that direction.  Write them down and keep track like you would finances that seem to go astray so you can account for where it all goes.  We were called for so much more and many of us are living out a much smaller story than we were created for.  See you tomorrow.

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stilljennifer

Seriously, tempation is NOTsin.  I hate it when christians judge themselves, or others and they use temptationas their gauge.  Temptationis not you.  It is not God.  Guess who it is?  It is your enemy.  He wants you to think that it is you though.  He wants you to believe that it is who you really are.

It makes it really hard to believe that you have been made new in Christ if you are also believing that every thought that pops in your head is something you are seeking out.  It makes you believe that, that old stuff is still your identity.

I’m sorry guys but I’m going to use men and lust as an example only because it is easy to see, not trying to pick on ya.  I was introduced to pornography when I was five.  It is very hard to unsee something.  But…

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Temptation is NOT sin……

Seriously, tempation is NOT sin.  I hate it when christians judge themselves, or others and they use temptation as their gauge.  Temptation is not you.  It is not God.  Guess who it is?  It is your enemy.  He wants you to think that it is you though.  He wants you to believe that it is who you really are.

It makes it really hard to believe that you have been made new in Christ if you are also believing that every thought that pops in your head is something you are seeking out.  It makes you believe that, that old stuff is still your identity.

I’m sorry guys but I’m going to use men and lust as an example only because it is easy to see, not trying to pick on ya.  I was introduced to pornography when I was five.  It is very hard to unsee something.  But pornography doesn’t have quite the same impact on gals as it does guys or I would use my own experience.

I have spoken with men who struggle so much with temptation.  They believe that if a thought or a picture crosses their mind that they have somehow backslidden all the way back to the beginning.  That is a lie.  You are still on the same path.  Those are called tempations not sin.  You are not responsible for repenting for a temptation. Do not own it or let it own you.  Point that finger right back at your enemy and say it is you who are tempting me!  This is not who I am, it is you.

It is what you choose to do with the temptations that makes the difference.  Even if you get carried away or caught up in the moment and you catch yourself, that is praiseworthy!  You can not have conviction without the Holy Spirit in your life.  If you get convicted you do not slump over and call yourself pond scum.  You praise God that He is in your life.  The very fact that you are convicted is evidence of that.  “Whew!  Glad I can see the evidence of God in my life right now in this.”  That is what it looks like to walk in your identity in Christ.  It is what being made new looks like in everyday life.

If the enemy gets away with making you feel like you have backslidden all the way back to the beginning and have made no progress, or the progress you have made was somehow lost, then you are relying on your ownself for your salvation.  That of course is completely wrong.  You would be believing that the work of the cross was not complete.  You would not believe that He is who He said He is, or that He paid for everything with His life and it is finished!  We were redeemed because of His actions, not ours.  We are identified now by His actions and who He is and not our actions.  But what does that look like when you are in the midst of being tempted and it hits you in all the old familiar places?  We have to remember who Jesus is to us and who we are to Him.  He does not call us wretched, or pond scum after His purchase of us, after we have been made new in Christ.

Let’s not forget that He calls us His sons and daughters, His friend, His Bride, or His blessed creation.  Without Him for sure we are nothing.  Don’t get me wrong.  But I believe that the enemy would try to twist our good hearts that God redeemed in us to turn on ourselves and believe that we are less than who God says that we are.   To make us believe that we have gone all the way back to the beginning of our battle.  That’s a bunch of crap!  He put us on a new path.  We are going to stumble, fall flat on our faces, or even stop and dig ourselves a little pit at times.  But it is His grace that is big enough.  The very fact that we can identify that something is wrong is evidence that He is in us.  It is evidence that we are on a different path and have been made in to something else.  I know I would have no problem living from the old places if I did not have the new.

If we can not see this for ourselves, then how are we going to be able to extend grace to others?  How will we be able to see them how God sees them?  How then will we ever believe that others have been made new?  How will we ever be able to believe that we all have the same enemy and it is not each other?

Temptation is NOT sin!  Temptation comes from “our” enemy and it is used against us more to steal our identities than anything else.

At the end of almost everyday, I have been tempted to:

go to food for comfort

to try to arrange for my own life

to worry about finances

to go to anger instead of taking the time to figure out what is really going on

to judge others or myself

to choose comfort over excellence

to hate instead of love myself

to blame or accuse God

to question God’s heart for me

The fact that I can list those things is more evidence that I have been made new.  I am still Jennifer, beloved daughter of the King of Kings, chosen bride to the Lord of Lords and blessed creation of the Creator of all things.  To believe that I am anything less would be a lie.