Lingerdog's World

My blog focusing mostly on my creative writing endeavors, but also with updates on my life and how I am serving God.

Prayer, do we really believe in the power of it? I know a lot of times we say we do, but do we really accept it's power, or do we take it for granted when we pray? I imagine we would all say we believe in prayer, especially those that have seen answered prayer in their lives but take my personal experience. Two and a half years ago, I was saved but out of church, not serving like I should, neglecting my Bible, neglecting God in my life. I still said my prayers at night though, and one in particular I prayed every night, that I be made a better Christian. Now I didn't know what that entailed, I knew I needed to go to church somewhere, I figured that would make me a better Christian, but even though I wanted to get up and go, I couldn't find my get up and go. So I guess I thought praying that prayer, God would put it on my mind more, impress upon me the need to do better. I learned God's ways aren't our ways. I lost my wife, my marriage over, I didn't know where to turn so I turned to God. I got back in church, I started serving.

So God answered that prayer, not in the way I thought He would, but He did answer it, and yes it was excruciating at first, but God helped me make it through.

So I was studying and thought I understood Proverbs 3:5, I interpreted it to trust God, don't try to figure it out. No matter what happened in my life, trust God and don't try to figure it out. I didn't know how personal that verse would become to me, and how I would be tested in following through in what I was hearing from that scripture.
But think about that, don't try to think your way out of a situation, trust that God is using it for His good, and guess what His good is going to be good for you even if you don't get it at first. Don't question what happened just trust that God is in control. And verse 6 reminds us to acknowledge Him in all ways and He will direct our paths. If we trust Him and acknowledge He's in control of our life, He's going to lead us, He's going to show us the way. He's going to place us on the path He wants us to be in. Do you get that part of it, He's going to direct you to go where He wants you, it's part of acknowledging Him, it's giving Him control over your life.
When you give Him that control, He's saying don't question what's going on, don't be a back seat driver, trust that He has His hands on the wheel and eyes on the road. He knows the best road to take, even when to us it looks like a hard road. See to God it isn't a hard road, it's just a road and He knows if He wants us to get down that road as long as we trust Him we will make it because He strengthens us, He does it for us through His strength. He carries us when we're too weak, He helps us until we can walk the walk on our own.
The Lord is that good shepherd that leads us beside still waters. He leads me in the paths of righteousness. When I am in the shadow of the valley of death, He is there with me.
Are you letting Him lead your life? Do you want to lead or do you want to follow? Do you want control, or would you rather God direct your path?
Lead or follow?

I prayed another prayer too. This one.

Lord, fill me with your spirit this week. In scripture we see the spirit come in different ways so I would ask that you send your spirit as rain to refresh me, send your spirit to open rivers in me that I might become an overflowing tributary of your spirit's fullness to others, as wind to breathe new life in me, as a fresh anointing of oil to give me practical wisdom for life, fill me with holy wine that I not be filled with the things of this world, come as fire to refine me into what you would have me be to inflame me with a passion for your work and send your spirit as a dove to rest upon me and grant me peace.

I took for granted that God would answer it, I thought He'll send His spirit and It will do these things in me and I'll be lifted and I'll be somehow better for it maybe. But God's ways are not our ways. See I missed something big.

For the Spirit to refresh me as rain, I need to be a dry and thirsty land, I needed to be parched.

To become an overflowing tributary of the Spirit's fullness, to be filled with that river I would need to be emptied of myself.

If the Spirit was going to breathe new life in me, then I have an old life I have to let go of.

If I wanted to be anointed with His wisdom, I had to let go of my own.

To be filled with the wine of the Spirit, I had to be emptied not just of myself, but of the things of this world that live in me.

If I wanted to be refined by His fire, I would have to accept, there are things in me that need to be burned away.

And if I was to receive peace, I would have to experience turmoil.

See God answers prayers, it's true, but His ways are not ours and He will use our prayers to make us look more like His son, to conform to the image of Christ. We pray for what we want, the Spirit in us communicates what we need. And though we don't always understand it right away, it's what we need, it's necessary for us to be what we were called to be. Because sometimes we let stuff, people, ourselves get between us and God, and He has to move those things so we can get closer to Him.

Like the preacher said Sunday night, if you love anyone, or anything more than God, then that person is in danger because God will move the things that keep you from Him. That's how much He loves us. That's grace, not that I would find Him, but that He came for me. Not that I was looking for Christ but that when I was running as fast and far away as I could on a slope getting steeper and steeper on a path straight down into hell, that when I was running from God, He outran me! That is grace that He would come for us, who ran from Him.

A journey is always began with a single step, and usually the road is smooth because unless you like hiking and are a masochist, why would you start a journey where the road is hard.


The other thing about a journey is they end. Sometimes we think we know where the journey will take us only to find we can't go as far as we thought. The way gets too rough, or too steep, and sometimes the person we were on the journey with decides they are on a different journey than the one you are on.

Left cold alone and heart broken on the trail you can turn back, go start over, see if someone else wants to take the journey with you.

Some find their original companion there ready to tackle the journey with them this time.

Some see that their journey is to be one of solitude and loneliness.

You can decide to just stay where you are on the path, see if someone comes along to rescue you in your abandoned state.

You can abandon the trail and go searching in the wilderness for something that will ease what you feel. Your hurt, your pain, a broken heart.

Still you can choose to go forward, hoping someone else abandoned along the way will find you, or you them, and through shared pain journey together, stronger and more fulfilled in the journey than either of you were while walking alone.

You have to ignore the fact that the person that left you on the trail is going on like you never meant anymore to them than a bug in the road. You have to ignore that abandoning you didn't effect them at all. And when they say they are sorry, remember, it isn't because they are sorry they hurt you, it's just to make them feel better about crushing you.

So you keep walking, you choose a path of solitude, at least there you'll be safe, you think. As long as you stay to yourself no one can hurt you, the last two times you let someone walk with you they saw fit to destroy you, whether they meant it or not.

And what does the world expect you to do? A huge act to show your love, to show they should come back? Twenty seconds of courage to lay it all out, to explain what you feel and hope they feel something too? How'd that work out for you before, you chased for half a year, wasted that time. You found some healing sure, but why chase, why must you always chase?

It's because you're insecure, you don't realize you are good enough and someone should meet you halfway rather than make you do all the running. There's a reason Atlas shrugged, no one can hold the weight of the world on their shoulders forever.

But insecurity is a disease, it eats at you because you value others opinion of you more than your own. You believe if they tell you you're good enough maybe you will start to believe it.

Insecurity is in my backpack on this journey. And it's heavy. It weighs down every step I take, every move I make. People wonder why you stand stooped, it's either because of that weight, or because someone hurt you again without realizing it.

There's a broken heart or two in my backpack too. Not ones I've caused that I'm aware of, but my own collection of them, because the truth is, broken hearts never really go away. Even when you think it's been mended, it shows up when you least expect it and reminds you of how worthless you feel sometimes. Reminds you that you weren't good enough, that when you were at your best, it still wasn't enough. It tells you that you shouldn't love someone with your whole heart because when you do, you risk everything.

You risk falling into a black hole from which there is no escape.

So why do it, why risk it again, isn't two broken hearts enough for one life? Especially when it's from the only two people you ever loved. Never have you loved someone that didn't end up hurting you because guess what, they didn't love you. They didn't just leave you on the trail, they left you bruised, bleeding, in pain, feeling like you can't go on.

You feel ashamed. That's because you're a failure, you know it's true, if you weren't a failure you wouldn't be feeling this right now. If you weren't a failure you wouldn't have a broken heart right now.

Shame and failure in your bag make it too much to carry so much as you may want to go on, you sit, you can't take it anymore, the thought of another step is just too much to take, why keep going forward, why allow anyone into your life ever again, they're all just going to hurt you.

And what's so bad, what maybe hurts the most is you're told, trust me, you can tell me what it is, and you fall into that trap because you couldn't trust, the very words you say close the door between you and cement it shut.

You stare at the door before you that you know is closed to you forever, a door you were afraid to go through in the first place because you didn't want to be hurt, and you find out, you should have just stayed on your side of the threshold.

Life is pain to you. And no it isn't fair, but who said it was supposed to be?

Every journey ends it's true, even when you thought there were miles more to go.

And you may never understand it. How you can be walking in the same direction one day, and twelve hours later it's just you again.

You may never understand how you can love two people with all your heart and be told everything is okay one night, and the next day find out it's completely over.

You may never understand how you can have two different people give you the same speech as they break your heart.

You have never felt as unloved as you do right now, and you may never understand that, why you have to go through it again.

But you rest in the shadow of the cross and you remember Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

You know, trust God, and don't try to understand, don't try to figure it out, just trust God.

Life is full of light and shadow
O the joy and O the sorrow
O the sorrow
And yet will He bring
Dark to light
And yet will He bring
Day from night
When shadows fall on us
We will not fear
We will remember
When darkness falls on us
We will not fear
We will remember
When all seems lost
When we're thrown and we're tossed
We'll remember the cost
We're resting in the
Shadow of the cross

And though it may be hard, this is all you can do, quit thinking you have any control over your life and where you end up, learn what you are supposed to learn, ask not why it's happening but what you are to learn from it. If God chose to break you down in pain again, if He saw fit to break you for some reason, ask only that you learn what you are supposed to from the experience.

Why do I write this? Because, it's how I process, how I deal, how I release my pain. It's my outlet, it's how I keep it from eating me alive. And if you don't get it, that's fine, heck probably no one reading it anyway, who wants to hear about someone else's problems?

But it helps me to put it out there, so I do.

But I also write it to say that, every journey ends, and this is the end of mine.

Another thing about journeys, a new one is waiting to start as soon as you're ready, who knows where the next journey will take you, or what kind of person you will be as you embark upon it.

Will you be stronger from having been hurt again, will you heal better than you were before.

Will you be bitter, will the pain make you hate everyone and everything around you?

Will you go forward allowing what others think to influence and control the decisions you make in your own life?

Or will you love someone based on the merits you see in them, not needing approval from others before giving your heart away?

Will you be strong enough to stand, will you be brave enough to love, will you be open to a life of possibility?

Will you love without fear, will you care for those that haven't cared for you, will you mend relationships that have thrown you against the rocks time and time again, will you forgive those that don't even realize they hurt you and haven't asked for your forgiveness?

Will you give your heart away to someone that deserves it, someone that loves you as much as you love them?

Will you trust? Will you be open? Will you communicate your hopes? Your dreams? Your fears? Your insecurities? With someone that is willing to open themselves to you as you were them?

You can hide in the shadows if you want, no one would think there was anything wrong with that, they can see you're hurting, but when you're in the dark, you miss what's out there in the light.

One journey is ending, which new path will you take?

Lingerdog's World

A Blog Dedicated to the ins and outs of my life, with occasional trips into creative writing.

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I love writing and am rediscovering that passion. I love my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and want to tell as many people as I can about him and what he has done for me.