This is Not What I Signed Up For

 

Isaiah 43:15-19 (NLT)

“15 I am the Lord, your Holy One, Israel’s Creator and King. 16 I am the Lord, who opened a way through the waters, making a dry path through the sea. 17 I called forth the mighty army of Egypt with all its chariots and horses. I drew them beneath the waves, and they drowned, their lives snuffed out like a smoldering candlewick. 18 “But forget all that—it is nothing compared to what I am going to do. 19 For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.”

“I don’t know how I’m going to make it through this situation – every time I turn around there’s a problem to deal with. I can’t take it anymore. This is not the Christian walk I signed up for!”

My family of eight once lived in a four-bedroom, two-bathroom home that accommodated our needs quite nicely. A few years went by and we downsized to a two bedroom, one-bathroom rental home. In addition to downsizing our space, not long after, the size of my family decreased as well because of a difficult divorce. The mental and emotional twists and turns squeezed us in ways that even shocked me. I married a man with three children, and at first, the combining households appeared to work seamlessly, but in no way was I prepared for how quickly the newly marital bliss would turn into marital hell on earth.

Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into long arduous months of daily competitions between the children, and then between my husband and me. I prayed all the time for God to help me get through it all, but the turmoil at home hardly ever let up. It was despair day after day, and I felt as if I was drowning in it. I did what many others do when they realize that the unexpected craziness and devastating disappointment of life is beyond our capacity to handle it, I blamed God. I became depressed, upset, and angry. Although I may not have spoken it out loud, I was angry with the Lord for allowing things to go so badly for me. And at the same time, I knew I desperately needed Him to do something new in my life.

I was angry because I expected things to be different, and more to the point, I expected to be happy. When I wasn’t happy, but miserable, I thought to myself, “this is not what I signed up for.” I didn’t just feel this way about my marriage, I felt that way about almost everything. I had heard about surrendering to God through Jesus Christ all my Christian life, but I didn’t understand what it meant until I had no other choice but to do just that.

When you grow up in an abusive home, you somehow assume that you will avoid making those same mistakes. This is one of the most insidious characteristics about the tricks of the devil, because he uses our fears and doubts to set us up for failure. God warns us in 1Peter 5:8 to stay alert and watch out for the devil, because he prowls, just like a lion; he’s looking for someone that he can destroy. The question that you and I have to ask is how the devil distinguishes his prey. The answer is that he looks for those that are still living with fear in their hearts and are allowing this fear to call the shots. In other words, he looks for folks that make decisions and steer their own paths instead of allowing God to direct every aspect of their lives.

Fear belongs to the devil; he owns it. If I own a house, I get to control everything in it. When you or I play around with something the devil owns, he knows it because we’re dabbling around in his territory. As women, we are sometimes afraid to be alone, and once we become intrenched in a relationship, even when we’re being abused, we stay because of fear. God tells us to release everything that belongs to the devil. In Hebrews 12:1(NLT), He tells us, through the Apostle Paul, that because we’ve witnessed the examples of others that have walked by faith, we should model their example. Paul tells us to “strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.”

God sets the race that you and I should run, but many of us have our own ideas about life and what we want to do with it. God is very patient with us, because He is always willing to come to our aid, but the spiritual lessons of patience and humility will continue throughout our lives. We must recognize that the enemy wants us to stay in a cycle of fear and doubt, so that we never surrender to God. Bondage and suffering is what the devil wants to cause in all our lives, but if we give ourselves to Heavenly Father by being obedient to His Word and following the example of Christ, we will walk in the Spirit’s power and become what God wants us to be. 

It wasn’t until after my divorce that I realized the trap I had fallen into because of the choices I made. Sometimes, we need to change in ways we are not conscious about right now. James 1:5 says that if we lack wisdom, we must ask God, because He gives it to us generously, and He will not be angry with us for asking. There isn’t a better time than the present to ask God to teach us the spiritual lessons we need to learn so that we won’t go down the wrong path. If we are humble, and if we earnestly desire to please Him above all else, God will keep our feet from falling. He will set us on the right path. 

When Jesus Christ is the head of our lives, and we are serious about our relationships with God, Heavenly Father will transform us from the inside out. A different way of living, behaving, thinking and speaking is required, and it makes all the difference in life. But you won’t engage this process until you pray and ask God to help you see the things that you need to see. We aren’t perfect and God knows this, but He requires our willingness to let Him do the heavy lifting of transforming us. This means we must be on board with His agenda for our lives. Do yourself a favor and trust God to turn your life around. Doing your part only requires that you follow His lead.

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“This Is Not What I Signed Up For”, written by Kim for https://rescuefromdomesticviolence.blogspot.com© 2020. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

The Territory of Christian Life

 

 1 Peter 5:6-11(NLT)

6 So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor. 7 Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you. 8 Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. 9 Stand firm against him, and be strong in your faith. Remember that your family of believers all over the world is going through the same kind of suffering you are. 10 In his kindness God called you to share in his eternal glory by means of Christ Jesus. So after you have suffered a little while, he will restore, support, and strengthen you, and he will place you on a firm foundation. 11 All power to him forever! Amen.

In 1Peter 5:6, we have God’s assurance that if and when we humble ourselves under His mighty power, He will lift us up in honor. Heavenly Father makes a connection between humility and honor, and we cannot afford to forget it. Many of us tend to take matters into our own hands, especially when we are under attack by the enemy, but we should never do this, because it wastes our resources of time, energy, and effort. The way to handle any problem is to humble ourselves before God and have faith in His power and willingness to rescue us.

Instead of worrying about all the problems and issues that come with life on earth, we are to give everything over to the Lord. We must also be aware that the devil will try to convince us not to do this. “God doesn’t really care about me. He has bigger problems than mine to think about.” This is just one of the many thoughts the enemy whispers in our ears, trying to persuade us not to have faith in God. It’s how the devil gets us to give our power over to him, because he knows that our faith in Jesus Christ is the key to our victory.

This is one of the reasons why God tells us through the Apostle Peter in 1Peter 5:8 to stay alert, and to watch out for the devil, because he’s walking around the earth looking for someone that has refused to have faith in God. We have a destiny in the Will of God. He has plans for us. These are good plans that will give us fulfillment and purpose. Fear will keep us in doubt about this. It squashes our faith. When we’re attacked by the enemy through domestic violence and abuse, we are attacked at the very core of our being. And the enemy is using our abuser to instill terror and layer it so thick that our self- worth is suffocated. 

We shouldn’t be surprised that there are tribulations and struggles. They come with the territory of being a believer in Christ, but God tells us in 1Peter 5:9 to stand firm in faith. Maybe you’ve been in some tight spaces, you didn’t’ feel like you could make it through another day or that you could overcome the darkness, but trust that the hand of God is on your life. Trust His plan for you. When you feel like you want to sink and give up, have faith in God instead.

1Peter 5:10 tells us that suffering exists, but it also assures us that suffering doesn’t last. Our faith in Jesus Christ means that we can count on God to restore, support, and strengthen us. Only Heavenly Father can put us on a firm foundation. When we’re facing the most challenging situations we’ve ever faced, and the devil is attacking us through another person, it may not seem as though we have a choice, but we do. We can trust in God, cast our every care on Him and know that if we humble ourselves under His mighty power, He will lift us up and restore honor to our lives.■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

 “The Territory of Christian Life”, written by Kim for https://rescuefromdomesticviolence.blogspot.com© 2020. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

What Can Man Do to Me!

 

Hebrews 13:5-6; Keep your life free from love of money and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”  So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?”

Some of the biggest issues in the lives of Christian believer’s is their financial instability.  Everybody has someone within their families who are struggling or having a difficult time some way.  Whether it is in their relationships with their sister, brother, mother, father or child – there isn’t one of us that doesn’t know someone that isn’t going through some kind of turbulence in their lives.  It’s a condition of a continual curve ball after curve ball being thrown your way without knowing how to duck or dive to miss it in life. 

Financial woes, if not tackled with an immediate solution, can cause the believer to lose faith in their ability to believe God to get them out of their mess.  You begin to believe that every Christian has these kinds of problems, and yes, this is true. But it doesn’t have to begin and end there.  God has made it very clear that we should keep our lives free from the love of money and be content with what we have. Now this is not for believers to believe that you should be ok with living a mediocre kind of lifestyle, where you live paycheck to paycheck and say well “ as long as I have food on the table, I’m ok.”

We are to be thankful and grateful for all the many blessings God has bestowed upon us, His children, but we don’t have to sit back and say to ourselves, poverty is where it’s at.  God wants glory’s in us being bountifully blessed and filled to overflowing with His blessings and goodness.  For He has already declared that He will never leave us nor forsake us.  He wants us to get it – He’s not going anywhere, it’s up to us to live according to His plan and will for our lives. Nobody can touch us as long as we are with God.

Joshua 1:9; Have I not commanded you?  Be strong and courageous.  Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

This verse is perplexing for many Christians, who have a hard time trusting in that last sentence. They try to envision God standing right beside them.  He is literally with us at all times because He lives on the inside of us.  But we have a hard time getting out of our own way.  There are times when we become so used to doing things on our own that we don’t think to slow down and ask God if we’re doing it His way. 

Many times it’s not because we don’t care, but more so out of ignorance or we haven’t been taught anything different. Fortunately, we have the perfect instruction manual on how to get our life right, no questions asked – It’s all in the Word. God gave us His Word so that we can maximize the most out of this life. And if that wasn’t enough, He gave us His son so that we could live and have the most abundance life has to offer.

Psalms 91 tells us that in Him we can put our trust in, our Lord is our refuge and fortress. There is no way we can lose out if we put all our trust in God. You want to make the most out of where you are in life, whether it’s on the job or in your family, the best result is realizing God is proud of your contribution into His Kingdom. He doesn’t require a lot from us, only to keep Him first and to love Him with all of our heart, all of our mind and all of our soul! This isn’t hard to do and it’s not asking too much of us.

 

 

Nothing Is Too Big for God

 

Got a call from a close relative who had just gotten off the phone with one of her closest friends.  What she described was the making of a devastating decision based on a blow to the heart.  Her friend called her after she found out that her nineteen-year old daughter was pregnant.  That was not the part that was upsetting, it was the fact that her youngest daughter, not only kept the pregnancy from her, but that she had confided in others that she felt unloved, and unwanted.  To add insult to injury, she told her mother she was moving out of her home to live with the mother of her unborn child’s father.

“I felt betrayed by my own daughter, because everything I’ve ever done was to make sure my children were always loved and provided for.”  These were the words of a mother broken-hearted by her child.  She immediately went home and disbanded her daughter’s room, and said she never wanted to see her daughter again. 

Feelings of betrayal cut deep to the core, there’s no question about it.  Whether the hurt came from your husband, significant other, or your own child, all you can think about is the pain.  Your emotions are so revved up that you can hardly see straight. Every day we have circumstances all around us that can easily cause us to get angry or become stressed out over but when we focus on is that we can never allow an individual this much power over your life.  We have the power to shape and mold our existence no matter what we face in life.  Nothing is too big for God and if we’re following after his plan and purpose, we can have every assurance that He’s got our backs through it all.

No doubt, pain is pain and hurt is hurt. It’s how we respond to those stimuli, that shapes and molds us as people.  How do you handle problems or situations that are completely out of your control?  Will you become rocked and shaken over what you have no authority over or control?  One very vital truth that I learned years ago – never react to a situation, take it all in, process it in the moment, keep your words to a minimum and if at all possible, remain silent until you’re able to process the information rationally.

There are countless women that confess they can’t help the way they feel and if words are said that cut deep, oh well! Christian women who say they love the Lord, should learn to watch the words that come out of their mouths, not only words, but the way in which we handle uncontrollable situations.  God tells us in His word that our words have power – so much so, we can yield death and life by just the words we speak. 1 Peter 3:10, tells us that Whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech.  Colossians 4:6; Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

This verse has always spoke volumes about how I handle my emotions.  Simply for it validates the truth of how we as women should navigate through the thoughts and intents of our hearts. We are such emotional creatures that we learn behavior very young that associates pain and hurt with crying and tantrums.  This is not the behavior or mentality of a Kingdom child of God.

We can’t just seek God out when our life starts to unravel, or when tragedy knocks at your door. We have to see Him as our protector, our refuge, our everything. Just like a lot of women want to view their man as their rescuer, God desires that place in our hearts and minds. When we put our focus on Him, we then become delightful in our intimate relationship, and that’s all our Heavenly Father wants from us, is for us to seek Him out above all things and not put another individual in His place.

How comforting it is to know that when you call out, God will comfort and protect us just as a mother would protect her child from danger, how much more will God do for us.  He is omnipotent, and He is our defender, comforter and shield from the evils of this world, and He’s not like human beings that will fail us every time – God can’t fail us. He watches over us through people in our lives, or any means necessary. And we don’t ever have to worry that help will not come, for He is always with us. Just like we can never take our eyes off of Him, He doesn’t take His eyes off of us.