Your Anointing Is Not for You! What?

 A while ago, last year, in fact, I listened to a video of a minister that made me think about some things differently. I took a few notes to share them in a post, but as things usually go, I turned the page and forgot about it. 

Today I flipped through my notebook and ran across my notes from that video, and I think now is as good a time as any to share it. I have to be honest here and say that this information gave me insight into some things that have troubled me a lot. 

The anointing you have is not for you. It's for others. Elijah died of sickness, but his bones still raised the dead. However, he couldn't heal himself! The devil doesn't care about you. He cares about those you will help. So stopping you prevents you from helping others. 

So, the last two statements opened up a whole avenue of revelation. Now, months later, that avenue has broadened. I don't know that it made me feel better, but it seemed to explain some things so that now I pray for an understanding of what I learned.

Looking for answers is often like beating your head against a wall. I don't know about others, but I spend a lot of time struggling with the "whys" of my journey. There are times I know things and they seem so pointless because I can't do anything useful with it. I can't use what I know in any way that produces something positive. So I pray about it and walk away. That feels like defeat. 

Then there's the writing. I write this blog because these thoughts pour out and demand to be written. I have to do something with them. The important ones won't leave me alone until they're written. I have no earthly idea if a single person reads it, needs it, or heeds it. I just pray for something good to come of it. Sometimes, I'm the one who needs it. Sometimes I read it and wonder what in the world it means. 

This post, though, this one is for my enlightenment. I needed to know this. Desperately needed to know. I'm tired of feeling like a failure, tired of wondering why my gifts don't work FOR me. It never occurred that they weren't FOR me. There are things I am called on to do that I can't, for the life of me, figure out why I have to do them. Only God and I know about it. I do them but ... they aren't my favorite things. It's exhausting, stressful, and feels risky. And yet, this is something I've had to do again and again for YEARS! Sometimes I see some positive results and others, a dismal failure. I know the failure isn't my fault. But it's still a disappointment when it happens. Each time I think this task won't happen again. I ask God, "Why do you keep sending me this? I'm no good at it!" And yet, it arrives. 

This brief message from a stranger is an explanation that fits. I'm just an instrument to perform a task. I don't benefit from it in any tangible way. Because it's not FOR ME. That's hard to grasp, hard to accept.  

Only I'm OK with it. When you can be of service, expecting nothing in return, that in itself is a gift.

Going Nowhere

I sometimes wonder why I bother with all this writing stuff. It seems such a waste of time. I should just walk away...that doesn't present a logical imagery. It is typing, not walking.

You're tired.

I am. Of lots of things. Fatigue has been a monster this month. I rush around to get some things done because I know time is running out and I'll be splayed out on the sofa unable to do anything but watch mindless shows with Mike.

Why does it bother you to do nothing?

............

I asked ...

I heard you. I'm thinking.

Take your time. 

I don't know. Is that an answer? Yes, of course, it is. Right. I don't know. My life was filled with things to do. I made it so. I  married at 17 and for five years I was a wife. I stayed busy with church, reading, sewing, finishing school. I had children. I stayed busy with a  hyperactive child, moving several times overseas and back, sewing for a family, cooking, cleaning for a family of 4, training my children, refinishing furniture, and remodeling various houses we rented.

I went to college at 31, spent the next five years in school, my husband got sick, then he went to Desert Storm, I stayed home with two teenagers and a full class load. He came back in a year, got sicker and got out of service and drove a truck for two years so we wouldn't starve. I was still raising teenagers and in school. I finished and went to work. He got a local job then got sicker. I worked. Kids married crazy people and moved away but came back bringing crazy people with them. Crazy people left, kids stayed. Then my husband died.

So, why can't I do nothing?

You feel useless.

I feel unproductive. Then, the writing goes nowhere. I should take up pottery. Quilting. Painting. Something tangible. Even crochet more stuff.

It's one of those days, isn't it?

You could say that. I'm really tired. I've worked all day on this story and I'm feeling a bit down in the dump.

You don't know how to not do something. 

No. I don't. We're taught, very young, that idle hands are the devils workshop. So, we have to be busy. So, I feel that I have to be doing something. But most of it feels as if it isn't progressive. Even this post seems to go nowhere.





Written in May, 2015 - It didn't go anywhere.

#ConversationsWithHim

A Great Awakening of My Own

It has taken me months to write this. Probably because I was so overwhelmed by what happened that I simply couldn't write it down. In October I attended the Re-Write writer's conference in Austin, Texas. This is the second year of this Christian writer's conference. It was my first writer's conference and I went with no preconceptions of what to expect. I was more than surprised.

Sometimes in the midst of the big plans and busy schedules I find myself brought to a standstill as He steps around a corner into my path. My trip to Austin was filled with these kind of interruptions. From the start, there was an atmosphere that I recognized but did not expect to find there. God's presence completely surround me and I found myself overwhelmed at times by it. It stunned me beyond an ability to describe it.

"It was only a writers' conference," you say. For me, it was so much more. The stories from other writers about their writing life, how it started and how they do it,  and the encouragement to write filled a vacancy in my soul that I had not realized was there. When one of them stood up and said, "Your writing is your gift, given to you by your Father" I wanted to cry. It became the theme running through the whole conference. This is my gift. I write.

You may view your writing as your talent that you worked hard on and all credit is your's alone. I do not and have never felt that way. I've always felt that I did not even own the stories I wrote. They come from someplace that I'm unfamiliar with and can't describe. So when those words were uttered, they opened a floodgate of emotion and brought such a peace and understanding about why I am driven to write.

I came home with a different view of my gift and found I was more concerned with the act of writing. I suppose you could say I came back with a clearer vision and a more defined purpose and a desire to keep those feelings alive. I want to write.

I also found myself craving the kind of spiritual environment discovered at the conference. I don't think anyone there was of my faith but rather, they were a bunch of people who felt a calling to write. Most were writing Christian fiction. I don't write specifically Christian fiction. I like what I write to be clean enough your great grandmother wouldn't blush.

But it wasn't about that. It was a room filled with a Presence because the people there, from several denominations, were in some way inviting that Presence. God wasn't denominational that weekend. He wasn't picking and choosing who to touch. He just was there in the middle of lectures on publishing and writing! There were no profound spiritual statements, no erudite monographs on Biblical events, and no sermons on proper Christian values, characters, and behavior. And still, there He was, right in the middle of the business of writing.

This should happen to everyone. I rediscovered the pleasure I get in writing. More importantly, I came away with an intense craving to stay in the Presence of God, wherever I go and in every circumstance.

I'll be honest, I don't actually know how to do that. I don't know how it  happened and I don't know how to recreate it. I have some pretty awful days filled with horrible stresses and pain that I can't begin to describe. You don't feel very close to God at those times and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't so angry at times, I can't even hear God or see Him. When all of your life hurts and you can't change it or fix it and there's no one to call, you feel about as isolated as it is possible to feel, as if you're on a distant, abandoned planet. You spend a lot of time searching for something to stop it all.

My experience at the conference showed me where I want to be and what I want to do. Everything in my life works against it. But like writing, you have to keep doing it. Keep pushing forward through pain, heartaches, and stress. Maybe up there, around the next bend, He's waiting.

Some people say God always walks beside you and you're always in His presence. I disagree. A lot of times He steps away or runs ahead and leaves you alone. I'm not sure why. Maybe He thinks you can handle the things you think you can't handle. If so, He has a lot more confidence in me that I do in myself.

Still, despite all the daily things that kill me mentally, spiritually, and physically, all I really know is that I long to be in a room saturated with that Presence. Indeed, I do not want to be anywhere else.


#re:write2013
#conference

Divine Inspiration or Human Perspiration?

       Who wrote the Bible?  How many times have Christians been asked this question by those seeking only to debate?  It is a question that often leads to a feeling of frustration and aggravation for those who are expected to have the answer – namely, Christians.  What a question.  And those asking aren’t going to like the answer anyway.

Did someone just start writing these stories in the Bible and add to them until someone decided it would make a best seller called the Bible?  Did God dictate the words to all those men in different centuries, cultures and languages?  

Long before it was a written document the stories of the Bible had been handed down for generations around campfires.  Oral stories were the only way to pass on the cultural identity of a people. In ancient cultures those in charge of carrying the history were taught carefully. 

The “tellers” were told the stories long before they could talk themselves.  They were expected to learn, remember and retell the events that defined the nation.  To not do this would have been considered a terribly loss by the nation and in fact, there is one point in the Bible where the oral history and traditions were not being passed down.

“And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers: and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel.” Judges 2:10

In God’s sight, this was a crime so bad that He punished Israel.

The first fully developed system of writing is only about 5,000 years old – far younger than the human race.  Early writing was done on wet clay tablets with special pens and invented by the Sumerians.  The shortest written item required painstaking time.

Even after the invention of writing the many cultures, including the Hebrews, still loved to recite the history of their nation.  Read the Psalms of David in which he recounts great moments in Israel’s history.  The Psalms and other historical poetry was written to read aloud so the nation would not forget. 

Since each generation had more to learn, you can understand why it was absolutely necessary to invent writing.  Try telling the history of the world on a cold winter evening. 

So, the Bible was thousands of years in the making.  It wasn’t even complete as we know it in Jesus’ day.   Jesus and the disciples in their letters quoted from texts that are not even in our current KJV  of the Bible!  Many texts that were considered sacred by the Hebrews are not included in the KJV.  In the Gospels they tell us that they could not include all the things that Jesus did.   One of the things I learned in news writing was that there is a lot more of a story that you don’t know.

As for God dictating the words, well, the Bible said “All scripture is given by inspiration  of God” not by dictation. For those who don’t know, dictation is where someone literally speaks to you and you write down their exact words with no omissions. 

Inspiration, on the other hand, occurs when you see, hear, or experience something that stimulates you to action, it motivates you. All writing is “inspired” by something – good or bad. 

Today there are those who say that because human bias is involved in all writing this “inspirational” type of writing the Scriptures can’t be completely true.  It is accurate to say that human bias is evident in all writing.  This is what causes skeptics to ask questions.  And questions are not bad. They drive humans to seek answers!

For example, the Gospels have several instances of apparent conflicts.  Examine the way one gospel will describe an event that is also described in another gospel. However, the differences are not because someone made a mistake.    

I noticed this when I read the story of the crucifixion where Peter cuts off the ear of the servant of the high priest.  In John’s gospel Peter is named but in no other gospel is he named as the person who cut off the servant’s ear.   Why?  They were all there.  They all had to know it was Peter.   And even though the gospels are written 50 years after Jesus’ death they would not have forgotten that night.  Yet, only John named Peter as the offender.  Why?  And why did the others not name him in their description?  Were they embarrassed or did they desire to spare Peter further embarrassment?  Maybe. 

Did John have a reason, other than accuracy for naming him?  Maybe.  Could John have been experiencing a little human jealousy of Peter?  Remember, John was the beloved disciple but Peter had been given the keys of the kingdom given.  We can’t know the answer and it may be nothing more than oversight on the part of the three other disciples. That alone intrigues me. I would find it hard to believe that all but one disciple forgot who cut off that man’s ear.  It is an interesting puzzle.

Read passages such as this carefully and you may be able tell something about the personality of the writer by comparing the way writer describes an event with the same event described by another writer in another gospel.

Another instance is in the recounting of the Sons of Thunder seeking a special place in the kingdom.  In Matt. 20:20 we are told that the mother of the Sons of Zebedee came to Jesus and asked that her sons be given places on Jesus’ right and left when he comes into his kingdom.  Yet in Mark 10:35 it is James and John who come to Jesus with this request.  So who did ask?  Both stories say that the other ten disciples were angry with James and John for asking such a thing.  Remember, the “right hand” in scripture denotes power. 

Well, as a mother, I can believe that that mother just might have made this request.  Matthew says she came with her sons, “worshipping him”.  So she knew what power she was addressing.  Or maybe the boys had asked Mom to ask for them.  Maybe Matthew knew this and was simply being accurate. 

Let’s say Mark also knew that the boys had put their mother up to this. In light of how women were viewed in that culture, at that time in history, it is conceivable that Mark may have discerned the source of the request and simply cut to the meat of the matter, not mentioning the mother.  James and John were the ones desiring elevation; Mom was just a means to an end.

Interestingly, in this example, if you take things literally, it appears that either Matthew was mistaken or Mark was mistaken.  Or you might assume that after 50 years anyone might be a little unclear.  A person looking for discrepancies latches on to this type of example to prove there are errors in scripture. 

Since I believe the Word is true, I believe this is simply an example of perspective.  In both of these examples the event did not change, only the way it is perceived changed.  Two different writers saw the same event happen and wrote about it in different ways—the way they saw it. 

That is why discernment by the Spirit is so valuable in reading scripture.  You must be able to strip away the writer’s bias and get to the inspired Word.  To say a writer has no bias is an error in thinking.  Time is not a factor to God and His creation (humans) has not changed since He did the creating.   The men who wrote the Bible were exactly like men today.  Every writer leaves his mark on everything he writes.  It is the very thing that helps Bible scholars identify books written by different authors, particularly when the name of the writer is not known. 

In 2 Peter the Bible says, “For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”  Holy men of God, motivated or inspired by the Holy Ghost, wrote the Scriptures and prophesied.  It doesn’t say the Holy Ghost spoke.  It says they, the men, spoke as they were moved on.  

What motivated the writers of the Bible?  An old, little used definition for the word inspire means “to breathe on” or “to inhale.”  God “breathed on” all writers of the Bible and they “inhaled” that “breath”.  What does that feel like? 

As a writer I can tell you that there is something inside me struggling, always struggling, to get out, to be said. That is what moves me to write.  When I am able to put it on paper, it is one of the greatest feelings in the world.  Writer’s block is a living nightmare to a writer.  The struggle goes on but there is no relief.

I can also tell you that when God is the motivator a writer will often write things he or she doesn’t want to write but which a driving urgency demands that he write.  And while God has often given me things to write, it is never easy to get it right.  The things that come from Him are the hardest to put into words.  It takes a lot longer too.  I have to pray over everything I write, while I am writing it!  Then I have to leave it awhile, pray, and start again. 

I suspect a similar thing occurs with preachers.  They choose the words they will use to convey a particular thought. However, the thought may not be their own but rather, the direction of the Spirit.  Finding words that accurately convey the thought is often difficult.   Two preachers may have the same thought but use different words to convey that thought.  Again, it is never easy to get it right.  And sometimes, when they are done, they still wonder if they got it right.  Ask any preacher.  I have no doubt that true men of God must earnestly seek the face of God before they can deliver a message from God. 

So who wrote the Bible?  It depends on who you ask.