Category Archives: Faith Rest

My Kingdom Versus His

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Things have been happening, lately; mostly inside. I don’t mean inside my house, but inside my thinking. Since I haven’t really been able to get a handle on it, I haven’t been writing about it. But last Sunday I read an article that really blew the doors off, so much so that, though I felt freed, I was not really sure how my newly acquired perspective fit into everything. Nor was I sure it was going to last. I’m still not sure, but things do seem to be falling into place.

For awhile now I’ve been wrestling with the sewer. The icky feeling. The self-condemnation for being slothful, undisciplined, impulsive, distractible. I’ve written about it here. I didn’t really know why I kept having this issue and finally asked God what was wrong with me.

I think He answered, but it’s been a process. He was already showing me even before I asked. Thus I’m going to go back to an entry I wrote in my journal last week .

29 March Monday 9:09am  I’m in the sewer again. All anxious, condemning myself, confused, frustrated. I’ve put myself in a damned if you do/damned if you don’t situation. As I set this down, I see that I”ve had wildly unrealistic expectations for this day. I wanted to get up, make muffins, clean the house and work on Sky, all before I leave at 10:20 to take Mother to the Oncology Center for her treatment. In each of those scenarios, I imagined myself as relaxed, pursuing the objective without distraction or worry, as a believer in Christ should. But I was also, I realize now, imagining them all happening at the same time. Get up, do the morning routine while making the muffins and cleaning the bathroom, one giant integrated process whose separate steps were intermingled… or maybe it was just an alternate dimension thing where things were just happening simultaneously.  

The reality is, there isn’t time to do all that. My morning routine ensures a limited amount of order and cleanliness, but it seems when I make that my priority, the writing doesn’t get done. Conversely, when I make the writing my priority the routine doesn’t get done, the house grows very dirty, laundry and ironing pile up and suddenly I have even more that is demanding I do it. Which is kind of where I am now. Today, just to catch up with the routine I have sheets to fold, clothes to iron, the floor to sweep, vacuuming, clean the bathroom, wash the muffin tin and hang out the towels (all of which have been put off and put off). I also need to go to the store, preferably before noon, since this is another task that was put off and now I don’t have food for lunch. After all that, I’ll be too tired to write and will just dink around again. If I write now, though, I’ll be too tired to do the housework when I get back — or at least too tired to make myself do what I won’t want to do. And the piles will just get bigger

So I have defined the problem. Both the house and the writing are important. How do I decide? If I go with emotion, I’ll pick writing and be upset about the house. If I go with “responsible thinking” I’ll pick the house and be upset about another day of no progress on the book. So what do I do, Lord?

Hmm. It’s arrogance that wants to control everything, isn’t it? Arrogance that wants my way even though that way is delusion. It’s me seeking MY kingdom instead of His.

And in my kingdom, one is required to do two things at the same time, be in two places at the same time and violate strictures of time and space. My kingdom involves the magic of traveling 100 miles in one hour while driving at a constant speed of 50 mph. In my kingdom you must do all required things, or disaster will befall you. What that disaster is, you aren’t allowed to know, only that it’s coming. Also, you must choose the correct thing to do if you insist you can only do one thing at a time. Choosing the wrong option leads off into that blank space at the end of the map where dragons will eat you.

So. In seeking God’s kingdom and His righteousness (which is sane and sensible, unlike mine), I have only to stay in fellowship and seek His guidance, choose whatever option I’m led to choose and forget  the others for now. Which, weirdly enough suddenly seems to be housework. Okay then. I will now ignore the clamor erupting at the back of my head about my calling and how I should be ignoring all the accumulated domestic tasks so I can work on the book. I will go with my choice and trust that God can set me straight if I’m wrong.

 Or at the very least pick up the mess. And definitely save me from those dragons at the end of the maps.

Tomorrow: the blog on how distractedness may not be such an awful thing for writing after all… And a spot on description of what trying to work on the book has felt like of late.

Do the Next Thing

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“Waiting is the rule, not the exception. When the door is closed and the stage is empty…we’re to wait resting. In patience. Patience is the ability to (sit back and) wait for an expected outcome without experiencing tension, anxiety or frustration.”

I have been avoiding work  for the last hour and a half or so (I ate lunch and watched rain, so it wasn’t all idleness) because I’ve been afraid. Afraid that the summary I wrote yesterday will turn out to be much worse than I think it is, that I won’t know how to fix it and have to start over. Also, afraid because I don’t know what I’m going to do besides read through the summary. I think of the book and an avalanche of disconnected thoughts and ideas sweeps over me. I have no idea how to make order of it all, no idea how to take a small bite, no plan, no goal, nothing…So I dither and stall and procrastinate.

And then I think the Holy Spirit brought two things to mind (since I asked for help) 1) that I can take the “sit back” part out of the above quote and just think, “Patience is the ability to wait for an expected outcome without experiencing tension, anxiety or frustration.” It doesn’t mean I sit back and do nothing, necessarily. Elizabeth Elliot noted that “God’s guidance comes most often when men are doing what they normally are supposed to do. David was taking care of the sheep, Samuel serving in the temple when God called them. ‘Do the next thing’ is one of the best pieces of advice I have ever had. It works in any kind of situation and is especially helpful when we don’t know what to do. What if we don’t even know what the next thing is? We can find something. Some duty that lies on our doorstep. The rule is DO IT. The doing of that next thing may open our eyes to the next.”

So right now, what is my next thing? Well, read that dratted summary, I guess. And do it without tension, anxiety or frustration, knowing that God will do it. He will guide me, tell me which way to go and what to do next. I have only to ask…

——

[Note: I wrote the above last Monday, early afternoon. But then the Lord showed me what I needed to do, and I ended up pulling most of my summary/synopsis together, all but the last two paragraphs. By the time I was done, I was too tired to even think about a blog post. In fact, I’d forgotten I’d even written one. Then  yesterday I came across that Global Warming article and felt that a post on it needed to go up in a timely manner. Then I found this “Do it Next” post… and as I’ve continued to focus on the principles in it, it seemed a good one to put up, even if it was “out of order.”

The synopsis is now done and sent in to Bethany House. I await their response.]

Live in His Rest

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It’s been a challenging week, and the challenges look like they’re going to run through the weekend into Monday.

Last Monday my mother received her third treatment in the four-week cycle her doctor has devised for her. On Tuesday she received a shot to increase the white blood cells the treatment had depressed. That was all regular and expected. After that we thought we were to have a two-week rest from doctor’s appointments, chemo treatments, etc.

But on Wednesday she developed a severe back spasm in allergic reaction to the shot. I called the doctor who prescribed one Benadryl and two tablets of Vicodin every four hours. My mother, of course, didn’t want to take any of them, certainly not over a period of time, though she did. Not sure how clear her mind would be (recalling how unclear mine was when I’d taken Vicodin for my broken arm) I went over every 4 hours during the days to make sure she was doing okay and to see that the proper drugs were taken in the proper amounts at the proper times.

When it wasn’t better Friday I called again and spoke to the nurse who said the symptoms should abate over the weekend, since they rarely lasted longer than three or four days. She  added that I should have my mother take two Benadryl and two Vicodin every four hours over the weekend. Despite my telling my mother this — multiple times over the weekend — she kept thinking she was only to take one of each, so if left to herself, that was what she did. And then complained the meds weren’t doing any good. She also kept forgetting to eat when she took the Vicodin and so got an upset stomach.

Things were beginning to improve ever so slightly Saturday night. Then this morning she awoke with a “terrible sore throat”. So I checked the chemo-drug information which told me to contact the doctor as soon as possible. I called the Oncology center and talked to the on call physician who told me to go look for white spots in her throat and if there were he’d call in an anti-yeast medication for her. So I looked. Hmmm. There were whitish areas, but they weren’t spots. Didn’t even look like “patches.” Certainly not like cottage cheese or “lesions,” as the internet articles described.

Having no real idea what I was looking for, I didn’t call him back. He said if it wasn’t better in the morning, we were to call the center again and she’d have to come in. I wasn’t sure, but it seemed he implied that the sore throat might also be a side effect of the shot. On the other hand, thrush is apparently common in those with cancer and when one has dry mouth and she has had a very dry mouth ever since taking the Benadryl. So… I have no idea.

This morning was particularly difficult and afterward I had to remind myself that I am not responsible for this. I did not cause it, I do not have the ability to make it go away, I don’t have the training to know what’s going on, I’m not a nurse, so it’s absurd to expect myself to do all this correctly. To think I have a clue.

Then less than two hours later in Bible Class, Pastor once again spoke directly to me (though unknowingly, of course). The lesson was on living in the peace and rest that should be ours thanks to having been reconciled to God. Thanks to the fact that God’s got everything under control and has already done all the work.  He even spoke about medical things, just an offhand comment/illustration, but my goodness — exactly to my situation:

“One of the greatest problems we have is living in fear, worry and anxiety. Those things take away our rest. In fact, I found that I have felt the best these last few months when I decided to give up worrying about medical stuff: Did I eat the proper food? Take my medication? Am I doing the right thing? Should I even put this stuff in my body?”

That’s a quote from my notes which paraphrase to some degree, but boy was I excited. Exactly the things I’ve been dealing with in regard to my mother. Why is it so hard to remember… I don’t have to take control. I don’t have to solve the problem. It’s God’s problem.  He knows exactly what’s going on, what is causing what, what He wants to happen and all the rest. I’m just a stupid sheep. Why would I even think that I could know all that, and more, that God would demand such a thing of me in order to solve the problem? No. He demands that I let Him solve the problem and I just can’t quite let go and do that. It seems right, it’s almost compulsive this insistance I have on trying to fix things…. How stupid. How… crazy.

But that’s the flesh: sick, unsound, deceitful…

I only have to stay in fellowship and if I’m not at rest, I’m not in fellowship. More than that, rest connotes confidence, so if I’m not at rest I’m not confident. In fact I’m disobeying God’s word, which says the only thing I’m to fear is not being at rest. He’s commanded me to STOP WORRYING AND TRUST HIM.

And really, that is not hard. You just do

So. I may not be home for a good part of tomorrow. Then again, I might. But seeing as I’ve  already fallen out of the habit of get up at 7 and work til 9 on Sky, I think tomorrow I’ll shoot for doing at least an hour and a half of that before tackling the throat issue.

Living in the rest and peace that comes from understanding that you have been reconciled to God.
Romans 9-11 series: 2112-458
Taught on Jan 24, 2010

Trying to Take Control

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Today has been the usual mish-mash of routine-interrupting events. As a result, I didn’t get around to my writing time until 1pm. And then kept being distracted by one thing after another. An idea for a thankyou card to make, the weather (they keep saying we’re supposed to get rain), the dog, email, cookies… Finally I sat down and made myself write a nonstop, though, as you will see even in that I couldn’t pay full attention.

In fact I wondered why I was even bothering, came very close to stopping but kept on and in the end, again, discovered why I was directed to write it. And not because it was going to show me what to do with Sky…

Looking at it now, the story seems to be about Varko and Tyrus, which is what I thought. Or Varko and Talmas. About Talmas thwarting him in his attempts to kill Ouranians, and about Varko’s constant struggle to find him, catch him, destroy him once and for all.  

In a way it’s almost more about Varko than Talmas.  But doesn’t have to be. Just is with what I have now.  

But then there are the Ma’ael. The Erpaki. 

And the Beni Hai.

I set those things down and don’t even know how to think about them. Don’t even know what questions to ask. How do these elements relate to the others?  

I keep stopping to stare at the screen and chew my nail. I don’t know what to do. No thoughts. Don’t even know what to ask. Should I go consult my plot development article? This is no different from any other book. I have beginning elements, a general notion of where things are going… and the ending. Without much connection between them.  

Maybe I don’t really want to do a nonstop right now. Maybe I don’t have to just keep typing. Because I want to stop and stare and my mind is empty. So if I keep typing I just type emptiness as I am doing now. This process all comes by the Holy Spirit. He reveals the story to me piece by piece. And that’s weird. I mean, why? Why not just download it all into my skull and let me type it out?  

Because my volition is involved. Because when it’s hard, you have to stick. You have to trust. You keep trying to blame yourself, take control, freak out… when it’s an opportunity to trust and in trusting to bring glory to God. That’s the whole point, the main thing, maybe the only thing He wants us to do. Relax and trust Him. He’s already provided everything.

The story is there. Everything I need to write it I have or will have when I need it. It’s just a matter of spinning it out in whatever order He’s ordained, and the fact it’s not coming smoothly is a reflection of life but also… of the organic, living nature of the process. Of one’s relationship with God. My relationship. I’m in such a hurry. To grow and to write the books. But growing takes time. I cannot force my own growth. Why think I can force the writing? I know I can’t. It’s God’s work, not mine, and I have to remember where my place is. So I’m here. I’m available. I’m waiting on His timing.

I’m reminded, reading through it, of something Pastor Joe said in the week of teaching he did before the conference: why do we keep going back to the old ways? Because somewhere we really believe that if we keep trying eventually our plans and efforts will pan out. That’s what’s happening with this recurring impulse to “take control”. I keep falling into the idea that I can, if I just try hard enough, be determined enough, want it enough.

And I never can…

Walk by Faith, not Sight

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Continuing my thoughts stimulated by Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan  on the validity of human-acquired wisdom, information, predictions, etc. 

In Chapter 5, entitled “Confirmation Shmonfirmation” Taleb observes, “…a series of corroborative facts is not necessarily evidence [of something]. Seeing white swans does not confirm the nonexistence of black swans…” However, seeing a single black swan will  prove that not all swans are white. In the same way finding a malignant tumor proves you have cancer, whereas not finding one doesn’t prove you don’t. [As the doctor said recently to my mother, the cancer cells migrated from the first location to the second and logic says they took up residence elsewhere besides in her leg bone. Hence they opt for another round of chemotherapy. How can we know that the chemo is needed, that it will kill the cells we are hoping it will? We can’t.]

Taleb calls this “negative empiricism” and contends that negative instances (like cancer, like a black swan) can bring us closer to the truth than verifying instances. “It is misleading,” says he, “to build a general rule from observed facts. Contrary to conventional wisdom, our body of knowledge does not increase from a series of confirmatory observations.”

That’s one of those sentences that makes you stop and ponder. It seems that the more we see of something, the more certain we can be of the truth, but the reality is, we just don’t have a large enough sample size. Or, put another way, we simply don’t know the big picture.

This recalls to mind God’s command that His children live by faith in His word and character and not by what they see. Sight would involve confirmatory observations, and we crave confirmation of the things that we believe. Yet as we grow God increasingly asks us to put that desire for confirmation aside.  Noah had never seen rain, had not one convert in his 120 years of preaching to the antedeluvian world, yet he kept on.

Abraham spent his entire life waiting for a city without foundations and is still waiting. Moses spent his adult life traveling toward the promised land and never got to enter it. The church has waited 2000 years for the return of our Lord with no confirmatory evidence for the most part. (Though lately that’s been less true than in the past!)

And then there was Job, who was actually being shown off by God to Satan and the world. “Have you noticed my servant Job?” he asked of Satan. “There is none like him in all the world.’

Job was a mature believer with whom God was well pleased. And what did He do with His mature believer, one who had been faithful for many long years? He drew Satan’s attention to him and allowed him to take all that he had without cause. And after Job lost all his children, all his livestock and houses and servants, and even his health, there wasn’t a lot of confirmatory evidence to bolster the notion that God loved him, and that He was a just God who had all under control.

Nevertheless, Job’s initial response was to affirm that very viewpoint: “The Lord gives, the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Even after his wife came advising him to curse God and die, he said, “Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?” and did not sin with his lips. It was only when those three so-called friends arrived to sit with him silently for seven days before urging him to confess his sins because it had to be his fault that all this had befallen him — which was not at all the situation! — only then did he start to fail the test. Why? Because he had only the word of God to rest in and the lack of confirmatory evidence had gotten to him, especially when the “friends” used that very lack against him.

Our Lord also did not seem to be in the Father’s plan when He was tried, convicted and marched up to the hill of Golgotha to be crucified. There His enemies mocked Him, demanding, once again, confirmatory evidence: “Why don’t you come down from there if you’re the son of God? Where is He? Why doesn’t He deliver you if you’re really who you say you are??”

Of course the evidence did arrive eventually, but it’s in those dark hours that we most want it and don’t have it and the fact that we don’t is by God’s design.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a philosopher, concerned with human viewpoint, and the limitations of man’s perceptions. He doesn’t touch at all on divine viewpoint — at least not directly, but what I like is how he highlights many of the tendencies we have as humans that make having faith in someone we’ve never seen, having faith in the words of men long dead, as all the while the exact opposite is apparently staring us in the face and “everyone” is telling us how things “really” are, and they aren’t like how the Bible says.

 It also shows the myriad ways in which the cosmic system deceives. With such tendencies in us, it’s not all that hard. Especially when you combine it with our lack of brainpower to process all the details that surround us and our resulting need to summarize. And then there is our almost hard-wired inclination to make stories out of everything, regardless of the amount of actual facts we have. But those are subjects for future posts.

His Plans Not Mine

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Last night’s message in the GBC Basics Class that is going through the book of John triggered some tremendously clarifying thoughts for me. We’ve reached verses 15-17 of chapter 7 where the Jews were marveling at our Lord’s teachings, wondering how He could speak with such authority and confidence when He’d never gone to Rabbi or Pharisee college. Jesus’s answer:

“My teaching is not Mine, but His who sent Me.”

Now, He was not teaching the same stuff as the other rabbis and pharisees, yet they all claimed the same source for their messages. In fact, Jesus’s message was pretty much opposite what the Pharisees were saying (keep the law and you’ll please God and be saved vs believe in Me and you’ll be saved) Naturally the Jews wondered how they could know who was telling the truth? Jesus said,

“If any man is willing (ie, determined) to do His (the Father’s) will, he shall know of the truth, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself.”

Pastor Joe, the pastor in training who teaches the Basics classes, said that the student who makes the word alone his absolute standard and doesn’t tolerate nonsense derived from human minds will know it’s from God. If you keep at it and keep taking in the Word from your prepared Pastor on a daily basis, God will, through that, give you the ability to see the success of the Word when it’s applied to life and circumstances. We see its success in the fact that we have inner peace in a situation that formerly would have reduced us to, as my friend Mary likes to say, a trembling puddle on the floor.

That’s true. I have experienced that. When I gave the deadline and the publicizing of my books over to God to handle, I experienced great inner peace. But as I listened to the lesson and recalled this, I still had some doubts. Forgetting about the inner peace, I recalled that I’d trusted Him with the success of The Enclave. Trusted Him to be my publicist, to build the readership apart from social networking and the help of man which would encourage me to compromise my beliefs.

Yes, I experienced the peace that came with slamming all my cares on Him, but in the other matters it seems that He didn’t come through. My books aren’t apparently huge sellers, I’m not getting a bunch of fan letters and in fact, The Enclave is rated only 4 stars at Amazon, the lowest of any of my books. So… what’s up with that? I trusted Him and this is how He came through?

Ah, but as I thought through that sequence during the class, reminding the Lord that I’d trusted Him to build the readership, etc, the Holy Spirit seemed to say, “Well… who’s to say He hasn’t done that? Maybe He didn’t do it on as great a scale as you had hoped, but He’s still done it…”

True.  And if it’s not as much as I’d dreamed of, well, there’s a reason. More than one. First, being wildly successful would be a distraction to my spiritual life. It would probably have consumed me, I would have thought I had done something to earn it, and wouldn’t have had to go to Him again and again like I have because everything would have been going “right.”  I certainly would not be making the applications of doctrine that I am right now. In fact, now that I think about it… I wasn’t trusting Him with my cares so much as I was trusting Him with MY plan. Seeing that things weren’t going as I’d hoped, fearing that the book would be no good, that I’d lose readers, that… blah, blah, blah… I couldn’t write and so I gave it over to Him to fix. But it was still MY plan.

Which is hardly the way it’s supposed work. I’m supposed to be trusting Him for HIS plan, whatever it may be. MY plans are stupid and small. Earthly. Temporal. His are way beyond anything I can imagine. Nothing so small and temporal and petty as the acclaim of a fallen world, but plans for my eternal benefit, plans to give me what money can’t buy and very few enjoy. Worldly acclaim can’t compare to unshakable inner peace, joy, love… confidence that His word works, that no matter what He is with me, that He will never leave me nor forsake me… That I am who I am by His grace, and who cares if people don’t like that? Confidence that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

But what about all the people watching — those who read of my decision not to do things the world’s way, and who haven’t seen Him come through for me? Won’t it look to them like He didn’t? Maybe. Will they think to themselves, “Oh, see? She should have banded together with us, trusted us to bring her success. That’s the way it’s supposed to be done.”

But why should I care? Am I serving man or God? And anyway, who decided that worldly success is the mark of God’s coming through? Those, I would guess, who aren’t willing to trust God with their plans and would rather take a shot at fulfilling them themselves.

Rest before Responsibility

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Today I actually began to grapple with some of the material I’ve already written for Sky. Went through the notebook, putting in additional dividers and just seeing what I had, cleared off my desk and backboard, read through the prologue. It’s a start.

At the same time I’ve been thrashing anew with my attempts to take control. Despite all the lessons, all the months and years of learning this concept, it’s still hard to apply. Maybe because it’s been awhile since I’ve had to apply it to writing.

For several days now the internal nag has been growing louder. I have to get to work. I have to get this proposal done. I haven’t. I’m bad. I need to be more disciplined… blah, blah, blah… see about a hundred of my past blogs for this same ridiculous conflict. For me, it really IS “Let go and let God.” Of course, that presupposes the daily exposure to the teaching of God’s word and keeping sensitive to whether I’m filled with the Spirit or not. And confessing if I’m not.

But in practice, when it comes to what I should do, it’s let go. Stop trying to control the process, stop trying to think you know what is supposed to happen in your life, and even what is supposed to be “working” on the book.

For example, yesterday (Tuesday) I took my mother for her MRI. I had to sit in the office for about an hour and twenty minutes. I read Lone Survivor. I know stuff gleaned from that will go into Sky. I know, because stuff from that is going into my life. I could probably do a hundred blogs on that book, but I won’t. (That would surely violate copyright). It’s just there’s so much there that lines up with the Christian life, in the area of training and in the actual combat, so many terrific visual aids…

Even more than that, I’m not just here to write a book. I’m here to bring glory to God and that is mostly done through thinking. Through capturing every thought to the obedience of Christ or Bible Doctrine, since that is the mind of Christ. I’m supposed to be actively thinking the things I’ve learned, applying those principles to ever facet of my life.

And what I’ve been learning lately, over and over, is that God is going to do the work and I’m going to receive the benefit. If you’re going to trust someone else to do a job it means you step away and let them. I have to wait for His timing and stop trying to dictate. It’s a privilege to be able to help my mother, and a pleasure. Why sully the experience by letting myself worry and fret in the background about “time lost”?  It’s not time lost, it’s time spent on my Father’s business.

Instead of condemning myself for doing a bunch of other things rather than the book… recall that God is leading me. That I don’t know what His plan for my life today looks like. That I have to be flexible to follow His leading, not insist on how I think the day should go. And I’ll admit I do have a template that I keep pulling out and trying to slap over my life.  It looks something like this:  I get up in the morning, get dressed, eat breakfast and go immediately to work on the book, writing  a certain amount of words each morning (like every other  professional writer seems to do), and maybe another amount of words after lunch. Then I can feel good about what I’ve done.

Then I can feel about what I’ve done.

Instead of just trusting it to God. Instead of feeling good because I’m in union with Christ, a child of God, in the Plan.

I’m trying to provide my own peace and contentment by “accomplishing things” when that’s not what God wants at all.  Focusing on that peace and contentment seems to be most helpful. If I lose it, I can rebound and remind myself that God has everything under control. Go back to Him and ask again for his leading. I keep wanting to be “responsible” and “reliable” before men (including myself). When what I really ought to want is to be in the rest with the One who really matters.

“Therefore, let us fear lest while a promise remains of entering His rest any one of you should seem to have come short of it.”  – Heb 4:1