My Little Window to the World

Let’s pray for:

New York 

Manitoba

Czech Republic

Not sure what this post means?, then click on the Hugging the World link above the photo. Thank you for everyone who is joining me in prayer for people in these places.

Please pray for my dh. He is a minister and going through a lot, including an upcoming medical test/procedure. Please pray for healing in all areas of his life, and please pray for the rest of our little family, thanks.

 I’m thankful for:

—Vicki’s posts on The Lie, part one and two

—this book: Bosnia Hope in the Ashes, by David Manuel. An incredible journey both physical and spiritual by the author to pre and post war Bosnia. A fascinating read and faith booster.

—this past week the above mentioned book and blog posts in conjunction with some events that the Lord used to really speak to me. All of these things have really changed my life. If you can, read the blog posts and the book.

But the most important thing is the Word of the Lord, the Bible and how it has helped me this week. I was reading this morning and found this Psalm. This says it all for me this week:

Psalm 66

For the choir director: A psalm. A song.

1 Shout joyful praises to God, all the earth!
2 Sing about the glory of his name!
Tell the world how glorious he is.
3 Say to God, “How awesome are your deeds! Your enemies cringe before your mighty power.
4 Everything on earth will worship you; they will sing your praises,
shouting your name in glorious songs.” Interlude
5 Come and see what our God has done, what awesome miracles he does for his people!
6 He made a dry path through the Red Sea, and his people went across on foot.
Come, let us rejoice in who he is.
7 For by his great power he rules forever. He watches every movement of the nations;
let no rebel rise in defiance. Interlude
8 Let the whole world bless our God and sing aloud his praises.
9 Our lives are in his hands, and he keeps our feet from stumbling.
10 You have tested us, O God; you have purified us like silver melted in a crucible.
11 You captured us in your net and laid the burden of slavery on our backs.
12 You sent troops to ride across our broken bodies. We went through fire and flood.
But you brought us to a place of great abundance.
13 Now I come to your Temple with burnt offerings to fulfill the vows I made to you—
14 yes, the sacred vows you heard me make when I was in deep trouble.
15 That is why I am sacrificing burnt offerings to you— the best of my rams as a pleasing aroma.
And I will sacrifice bulls and goats. Interlude
16 Come and listen, all you who fear God, and I will tell you what he did for me.
17 For I cried out to him for help, praising him as I spoke.
18 If I had not confessed the sin in my heart, my Lord would not have listened.
19 But God did listen! He paid attention to my prayer.
20 Praise God, who did not ignore my prayer and did not withdraw his unfailing love from me.

Psalms 66:1-20 (NLT)

For more Thankful Thursday posts, click here

Let’s pray for:

Massachusetts

Quebec

Bosnia

Not sure what this post means?, then click on the Hugging the World link above the photo. Thank you for everyone who is joining me in prayer for people in these places.

I’m excited about this new feature that I’ve started for this blog. Please, pray for the people in the following places. For more information about what all this means, click on the “Hugging the World …” link above the photo.

Florida, (United States)

Ontario,(Canada)

Paraguay, (South America)

 Please join me in prayer as you are led by the Holy Spirit.  Thank you so much.

For maps of these places go to www.sitesatlas.com.

I’m so thankful for Jesus, who is with me through thick and thin. I’m thankful for His over abundance of mercy and love, no matter how much I’ve messed up. I’m so thankful for the opportunity to pray for others (see below). I’m thankful for each one of my readers.

For more Thankful Thursdays, click here.

See my post below for an explaination. Today we begin with:

Maine

British Columbia

England

Join me in prayer for people in these places.

In my former blog, I started a weekly prayer list of places to pray for. I would choose a state, a Canadian province and another country. I’m toying with the idea of doing something again. I’m not sure where you all are reading my blog are from. So I think I’ll do something like that again. But I may do it more on a daily/near daily basis.

Before you read this post, please read part 1, the post directly below, entitled: Dirty hands and feet for Heaven, 2007.

As I said in my previous post, in the last paragraph, sometimes church people are hard to love. I’m realizing that this may be more of my fault than theirs. Wait, don’t get me wrong, they are not perfect, (but neither am I). They have their quirks, their sins, and their feebles. But who doesn’t.?  I’m saying it could be my problem…given my background.

Through an  email, a dear Christian sister has listened to God’s leading and prodded me to think about the sins of others and how I view them. I thank this sister from the bottom of my heart. This email correspondence and some situations that have happened in the past couple of days, really led me to make some major breakthroughs in my thinking.

I’m sharing this in the hopes that it might help someone else. Even if no one else finds help; its good solace for my soul to write it out.

I’m beginning to realize that I was raised in an environment that fostered perfectionism. Not that the people in this environment were perfect….they were far from it. But when they were out in public, especially in church the facade, the masks came on and everything appeared right. But it wasn’t. Things happened that soon crushed their masks. Life happened. Money was short. Sickness came. Things broke. The perfectionism was merely a facade. But the appearance of it had to be maintained at all costs, even though behind closed doors life was a complete distant reality from the perfection the facade made it out to be.

In addition to the facade, this environment taught that others, especially Christians had to be perfect and to believe exactly as the people in this environment believed. If anyone else showed their true selves;different beliefs,  their struggles with sin,(including smoking, alcohol, etc), their money struggles, etc, they were seen as not acceptable.

Do I hear the beginning of an amen out there in blogosphere? It took me a long while to realize what I had come from, and all the ramifications of this day-to-day teaching had on my worldview.

Now fast forward a few years. I volunteer to be a mission worker on an Indian reservation in the Western U.S. I LOVE it–working with the Native Americans through various ways while living right on the reservation for two years.

Then I went to seminary. I hit a HUGE wall of liberalism. This coupled with the fact of cultural readjustment from the isolated, rustic, rural reservation to the city life of a east coast MAJOR city, complete with a materialistic, hurried, competitive society, was hard to take for the first several months. Eventually life settles down and I adapt to city life, and to working, studying, and eventually, marrying :).

The best thing during seminary besides meeting my husband there, was the job I had as a student.  The hardest thing was dealing with some students, but mostly professors who presented a very liberal side of Christianity. That really caused me to struggle.

I was missing the strong faith of the Christians on the reservation. There on the reservation Christianity was a mere 2% of the population. The ones who belonged to Christ did so knowing they would be persecuted by family and friends. Persecution was mostly social, but still a strong force nevertheless.  I was missing their strong faith.  When Christianity is not the dominant religion in society, then its often stronger then those societies who are called, ‘Christian’.

There in seminary, I began to be disappointed in the Christians I was meeting. I wanted the level of faith that I had experienced on the reservation. The higher expectation, the deeper commitment, etc.  That disappointment festered throughout the next decade. At various places after seminary I would meet some Christians who believed just like I did. But mostly the Christians in my husband’s churches (he’s a pastor) were ones who either were secular Christian and had the facade of Christianity; or those leaning toward liberalism.

 How could I manage that?

In the midst of all this, my husband and I changed denominations. He worked to have his ordination recognized in a denomination that was different than the ones we both formerly were part of.  Down through the years I guess, I have been looking for what I saw on the reservation, and being disappointed in not finding it. 

Now, present time. 

My husband is in the midst of a church struggle due to the dysfunctionalism of a particular church that goes back decades. It is not because of us personally. Whoever would be in our shoes would have been treated the same way. This church has a history.

I’m disappointed big time, as I said in the last paragraph of the former post. I also have recently realized that growing up, I never was taught about God’s love from HIS point of view. I was always taught from MY point of view—- which was looking up, trying to be right, trying to do right, trying to be Miss Christian the way God wanted us to be…while all the time God is looking at us from heaven with eyes of love, and arms full of love and mercy. Not condemnation. Yes we sin; but He forgives, if we accept. He sees us as people of worth, and forgives us our sins. These sins don’t make Him back away and write us off. He still loves, forgives, woos us, and cares for us. He gives us the chance for renewal.

The question is…are we, am I giving this same love, Christ’s love, to other Christians within the church, who don’t act the way I think they should?

Who am I to judge?

Am I perfect? 

NO.

God is!! 

God is perfect, and yet He loves us despite all of our filth. If the Perfect One can still love others, than shouldn’t I, the imperfect one do so too?

I’m changing my world view. Yes, I still sin. Yes, others in the church sin, but with God’s help, I’m going to be more accepting of others and give them the grace and Christ’s love that Jesus would want me to.

Thanks for reading this long post. Hope it makes sense.

A little over a year ago, I joined another blogger, in Dirty Hands and Feet for Heaven in 2007. Since I took a blogging break due to my husband’s health issues, and other personal stuff for a good portion of the year, and also since changing blogs, I wanted to update on this revolution.  

 If you click on the “In this picture” link above the top photo, it mentions a little why I’m doing this. I felt called to come out of my comfort zone for 2007 for Jesus. And boy did I!!! 

The Lord has allowed many various trials and struggles for me to go through this past year.

I have learned a LOT. I am not done learning, either.  The lessons continue.

Some of the major lessons I have learned this year are:

–ministry if it is truly to be done for Jesus, must not be done on our timetable, or our way, but Jesus’ way and in His time.

–ministry is from Matthew 25

31 “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. 32 ”All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. 33 ”And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. 34 ”Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35 ’for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; 36 ’I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’ 37 ”Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? 38 ’When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? 39 ’Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ 40 ”And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’ 41 ”Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: 42 ’for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; 43 ’I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’ 44 ”Then they also will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ 45 ”Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ 46 ”And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” Matt 25:31-46 (NKJV)

another version:

31 “When he finally arrives, blazing in beauty and all his angels with him, the Son of Man will take his place on his glorious throne. 32 Then all the nations will be arranged before him and he will sort the people out, much as a shepherd sorts out sheep and goats, 33 putting sheep to his right and goats to his left.
    34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what’s coming to you in this kingdom. It’s been ready for you since the world’s foundation. 35 And here’s why:
   
   I was hungry and you fed me,
    I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
    I was homeless and you gave me a room,
    36 I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
    I was sick and you stopped to visit,
    I was in prison and you came to me.’
   
    37-39 “Then those ’sheep’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?’ 40 Then the King will say, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me— you did it to me.’
    41 “Then he will turn to the ‘goats,’ the ones on his left, and say, ‘Get out, worthless goats! You’re good for nothing but the fires of hell. 42 And why? Because—
   
   I was hungry and you gave me no meal,
    I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
    43 I was homeless and you gave me no bed,
    I was shivering and you gave me no clothes,
    Sick and in prison, and you never visited.’
   
    44 “Then those ‘goats’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or homeless or shivering or sick or in prison and didn’t help?’
    45 “He will answer them, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me— you failed to do it to me.’
    46 “Then those ‘goats’ will be herded to their eternal doom, but the ’sheep’ to their eternal reward.”

Matt 25:31-46 (MSG)

It is truly to those ‘least of these’ or those, “being overlooked or ignored” that my heart cries out to reach.

–some of the hardest lessons to learn this year is that Jesus loves the church members who have hurt us, and who have only an appearance of a relationship with Jesus.

–another really hard lesson for me to learn this year, that I’m still working on is that Christians in churches can often be more of a mission field than people realize. Their hobbies, their language (often foul), their choice of beverages, their choice of addictions, (from gambling, to gossip, to smoking, to whatever), are often harder at times for me to accept than it would be for me to accept a street person outside of the church with the same problems.

–I guess what I’m saying is that church people have let me down this year– big time. But Jesus still calls me to see them with forgiveness, and with grace. I am not perfect, and neither are they. Jesus came to die for me,  and for the street person, (who I would love to go along side and befriend), and those hard to befriend church people!  Our sins may be different, but Jesus still loves us all, and died for us all. That’s a tough thing to swallow.

More on Dirty Hands lessons in upcoming posts.