Sneaky Snakes and Fiery Serpents

 Recently, I was at a ladies event at my church when the Holy Spirit began to deal with me about my current situation.  Here's the back story...This past year I was unemployed for 6 months, and it was a definite faith walk, but I'm happy to say that my prayers were answered and I landed a job that paid better than my last position. Hallelujah!
I've been at my new job for a few months and as with any new job, there is stress. Unfortunately, this past week the stress went to a whole other level and I left work feeling overwhelmed and utterly defeated...in fact, I cried. 
In my car, I cried out to God in frustration that "all I had wanted was a job that I could enjoy and get paid well!"  Forgetting in that moment, that is EXACTLY what I already had!
How did it get to this point? The job that I had been rejoicing over, was now causing me to cry. 
Two words...murmur and complain.
Oh, it started subtly enough and sitting at the Ladies Event I began to wonder "how subtle was the complaint that Eve had in the garden of Eden that the enemy was able to disguise himself as a serpent and sidle up to her and convince her to disobey the only command she had been given?

In Genesis 3:1-3 MSG we see the serpent ask her about what she did NOT have:

The serpent was clever, more clever than any wild animal God had made. He spoke to the Woman: “Do I understand that God told you not to eat from any tree in the garden?”

^2-3 The Woman said to the serpent, “Not at all. We can eat from the trees in the garden. It’s only about the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘Don’t eat from it; don’t even touch it or you’ll die!

This is how easy it is to fall into murmuring and complaining.  It begins with a mere thought about what you don't have or a perceived slight, and the more you dwell on it, the more it slithers from your mind down into your heart, twisting your perception so that you start to murmur. 

By definition a murmur is a soft indistinct sound and it is also a condition in which the heart produces or is apt to produce a recurring sound indicative of disease or damage.  I found it interesting that a murmur is used to detect a "heart" condition.  OUCH!

The speaker had us turn to Numbers 21:4-9, where we read about the "fiery serpents" that were sent forth among the Israelites while they were in the wilderness because they began to murmur and complain about God and Moses.  Imagine having to pay for complaining with your life!  With the results of their sin slithering between their legs and wreaking havoc, the people repented for their words and cried out to Moses and God.  The Father was faithful and did not leave them in their distress, he instructed Moses to fashion a serpent out of bronze and place it on a pole and all who looked upon it would be healed.  
This definitely puts a new spin on how important our words are and how deadly they can be!
James 3:4-6 MSG further shows us the power of the tongue:

A word out of your mouth may seem of no account, but it can accomplish nearly anything—or destroy it!^5-6 It only takes a spark, remember, to set off a forest fire. A careless or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that. By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it, smoke right from the pit of hell.

Thank God, it only took a moment in the presence of my Heavenly Father to make the heart adjustment and to choose to set my eyes on all that He had done for me.  It only took a moment to choose to be grateful for the job I had and to pray for wisdom to handle all that it would entail.  The next day I went to work surrounded by the peace of God and was greeted with this verse on my daily calendar, found in Proverbs 16:3:

"Commit your actions to the Lord, and your plans will succeed.

That's exactly what I will choose to do and when those sneaky snakes start to slither their way between my legs, urging me to voice my complaints, I will choose to focus on the one thing that will heal me...the Word made flesh who dwelt among us and was lifted up on a pole to heal a dying world.  I will look unto JESUS, the author and finisher of my faith and I will rejoice in all He accomplished for me.

Can you take a punch?

Just the other day, my brother and I were talking about our prayer walk and how when you first start out with the Lord, everything seems easy.  You pray, He Answers...BOOM, it's Done!  It galvanizes your prayer walk and you can't wait to pray again!
Then as more time goes by and you pray, it seems as though the LORD answers back and says things like, "umm, you need to get that right first."  So we repent, and as soon as we get our heart right, we see the manifestation.
Then more time elapses, and as you pray, you hear....NOTHING!  You feel....NOTHING!  So you get before God and check your heart and wait to hear if there is some area that needs adjusted and you wait.  You wait. You wait and Y.O.U.W.A.I.T.
Then you start to question.  "Daddy God, is everything all right?"  Did I do something I'm not supposed to be doing?  "Can you hear me Lord?" 
Crickets are chirping and your heart is falling flat and you feel as if you are drifting alone in this wilderness called life.

I likened it to a boxer learning the ropes.  Now, I don't know much about boxing, only what I've seen in the movies but it's enough to illustrate my point.  The boxer doesn't start in the ring, he starts his training on a bag...it doesn't hit back.  Then he graduates to a sparring partner, who hits back, but the boxer has on a helmet so the hits sting but don't usually take him out.  He learns to take a punch before he finally steps in the ring with an opponent and the pads are off and he is on his own.  His trainer is in the corner yelling out encouragement and will be there to fix his cuts and send him back into the fight. And finally, if he trained hard enough, he will be the last one standing when that final bell dings.

Our faith walk is like a prize fight.  We have the Holy Ghost in our corner, but we are in the ring by ourselves and the enemy is going to be throwing his best combinations at us to take us out.  The best fighters seem to be the ones with a plan.  They don't swing aimlessly and wear themselves out.  They are meticulous in their punches.  Sometimes, they even take a few because they know that this will wear their opponent out. The best fighters seem to know when to duck and when to cover themselves under the protection of their gloves. The best fighters also believe that they will be the one still standing, regardless of what they see coming at them.  That is what Faith is according to Hebrews 11:1 NLT

Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.

Walking things out in Faith is not for the faint-hearted.  I always laugh when I hear non-believers refer to being a Christian as a crutch, like it's a bad thing.  Years ago, I broke my leg badly and believe me when I tell you, that crutch was a life-line.  It was hard at first; but eventually I got the hang of it and I was grateful for it.  Trust me when I tell you that when something is broken in your life, you lean on your Faith with all your strength and you rejoice that you have something that holds you up so that you don't end up flat on your face, more injured than you were before.  Paul explains it well in 2 Corinthians 12:9 NLT:

Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.

When I am weak in my own ability, I lean on my Faith in God and I use it to carry me through until I am strengthened and I can make it to the next mark in my journey. Because my friend, life is about the journey and we are to continue to keep pressing forward, despite the pain, despite the loss and as we continue each leg of the journey we celebrate the small victories because in reality, there are no small victories in Christ.

I love this time of the year! It enables me to reflect on what our Lord accomplished for us.  He began this week with a triumphal entry into Jerusalem with shouts of "HOSANNA" ringing in his ears and he ended it lying buried in a borrowed tomb, after suffering the death of a criminal.  To the world, he had failed miserably. He had been abandoned, by all but a few.  I don't know about you, but I can relate to his sorrow.  I have failed.  I have been abandoned.

However, we know now that it was NOT over.  The best was yet to come! On the first day of the new week, the Earth trembled, the stone rolled away and Jesus conquered Death, Hell and the Grave!

He did it for me.  He did it for you. He did it for all.  I remember hearing years ago, a song by Carman called, The Champion.  It had a huge impact on me.  (If you have never heard it, click on the link.)  By the end of it, you will be cheering and declaring the Victory won by the Champion of the Ages...

“Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” I Corinthians 15:54-55 NLT

Faith in the midst of Failure

I had a dream last night that I was sitting around a table with my mom, hubby, and a former Pastor. He was sharing with us about how his current endeavor was failing terribly and all I could say is ...:"I know, we have been there,..."  I woke up before I could say any more and as I went about my morning routine, the Holy Spirit spoke something to my heart that stopped me in my tracks!  He said, "I lose more of my people in failure than success."

Whoa, news flash!

Immediately my thoughts turned to two examples in the Word...Peter and Judas.  The only difference between them was that when they both failed Jesus, one ran TO Him and the other ran FROM Him.

In Luke 24:12 The Voice, we read:

Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. When he reached the opening, he bent down, looked inside, and saw the linen burial cloths lying there. But the body was gone. He walked away, full of wonder about what had happened.

Peter was full of wonder and we know that he went on to be a man of such great faith that he died the death of a martyr.  However, Judas' story had a much different ending, in Matthew 27:3,5 The Voice:

Judas—the one who had betrayed Him with a kiss for 30 pieces of silver—saw that Jesus had been condemned, and suddenly Judas regretted what he had done. He took the silver back to the chief priests and elders and tried to return it to them....Judas threw down the money in the temple, went off, and hanged himself.

Believe me when I tell you, I know what it means to fail.  I recently had a Birthday and it caused me to look back over my life.

What I found was that there were many times that I knew I should have done things differently, but I did it wrong anyway. In those times I threw myself on the mercy of God and repented and happily went on knowing I was forgiven and it was forgotten.

However, there have been times when I did everything RIGHT and yet, I appeared to have failed in every way. 

Now, let's be real, those times are the hardest! It was also when my faith seemed to falter the most.

I racked my brain and tried to determine how did it go so wrong???  I tried to determine what I would have done differently and came up empty because there were no answers.  I felt so defeated that I didn't want to pray anymore and every time I picked up the Word, I could feel the weight of my failure.  You may be asking, "What do you do during those times?"

I have learned that you continue to do what you know to do, even when it hurts.  You get right back in the seat and you try again.

My littlest nephew also just had a Birthday and he received a bicycle...a real one with pedals!  He was s-o-o-o excited to jump up on it and GO!  We even have a picture of him on it, beaming ear-to-ear!

However, he is a little guy and he doesn't have any experience with pedal pushing.  Later on, when he couldn't make it go, he jumped off and ran over to me.  With tears in his big blue eyes he said, "Tata, I will never ride this bicycle again, just take it out to the dumpster!" 

A bit dramatic, I know!  I explained to him that he is growing and reminded him that he's never used this kind of bike before.  Also, it's not the right time to learn since there is 2 ft of snow on the ground right now.  I told him we will put the bike away and pull it out when it gets warmer and then we will teach him what he needs to know to be successful. 

AHA!  A light just went off in my spirit...failure teaches us.  It's a painful and necessary part of life and the biggest lesson it teaches us is that we need to keep getting on the bike instead of running away from it. 

I remember my first time of learning to ride a bike without training wheels...I wrecked BIG TIME!  I didn't have firm control of the handle bars and they skewed left, right into my chest!  It knocked the wind right out of my lungs and I ended up in the ditch. 

It hurt terribly and I cried very hard, but you know what?  After I dried my tears, I got up, dusted myself off and got back on the bike.  Now mind you, it was a big blue bike in a much older style and it was not really cool at all!

However, I learned how to master 'ole Big blue that summer and for Christmas that year I got my DREAM BIKE...The Cactus Flower. 
It was a white bike with yellow and orange flowers with a bright yellow "banana" seat and high handle bars!
You know what....it was s-o-o-o worth the pain!  The freedom I felt when I jumped on it for the first time and took off around the block with the wind in my hair and the biggest smile on my face was priceless!  The pain of the past failures firmly where they belong....in the past! 
Did I ever wreck the Cactus Flower?  You bet, but I would just get back on and go at it again .  This is what we all need to do in the face of failure:
Dry our tears.
Dust ourselves off.
Get back in the seat.

and GO!

I get by with a little help from my friends...

Have you ever been going through something and you keep trudging along and it just doesn't seem as if anything is getting better?  The harder you attempt to press through with praise and thanksgiving the more it seems like its pressing down on you.  You literally feel as if something has grabbed ahold of your arms and lashed them to your side and you can NOT get your praise on!
We see in James 1:2-4 NLT  that when these troubles come we are to look at them as an opportunity:

Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.  For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow.  So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.

Not just an opportunity, but an opportunity for great JOY!  I have to be honest, there are days when that seems nearly impossible.  The last thing I want to do is throw my hands up and do a happy dance when life doesn't play fair.  What do I do in those occasions?
I cry out to Jesus!  He is always there and not only that He sends others to lift me up in prayer.  This is why it's important to have people in your life that you can be real with and just say, "nope, nope, nope I'm not gonna do it!"  Then they rally around you and say, "take a coffee break sister, we got this," and start praying on your behalf.
What many of us don't realize, is that one of the primary tools of the enemy is to not only get us to the point that we become so weary that we can no longer do what we know to do but to also isolate us from each other so that he can cut the weak one from the herd and go in for the kill.
When you find yourself in a weary state, there are some things you need to do:

1. Don't let yourself be cut off from others...resist the urge to crawl into bed and pull the covers over your head. 
2. Get honest with yourself and admit that you need a little assistance...we aren't superheroes, we are human and it's OKAY to admit that you need help.
3. When the assistance comes, relax and let them lift you up...just Be still and Be strengthened.
4. Do unto others as they have done to you...when you are strong, don't turn your back on the cries of someone who is weary, lift them up in prayer as others did for you.

I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank all my sisters and brothers who heard my cry and came alongside me and lifted my arms until the battle was won!  We see the same in Exodus 17:10-13 NLT:

So Joshua did what Moses had commanded and fought the army of Amalek. Meanwhile, Moses, Aaron, and Hur climbed to the top of a nearby hill.  As long as Moses held up the staff in his hand, the Israelites had the advantage. But whenever he dropped his hand, the Amalekites gained the advantage.   Moses’ arms soon became so tired he could no longer hold them up. So Aaron and Hur found a stone for him to sit on. Then they stood on each side of Moses, holding up his hands. So his hands held steady until sunset.   As a result, Joshua overwhelmed the army of Amalek in battle.

Just as Aaron and Hur came alongside Moses, you came alongside me and together we got the VICTORY!  Hmmm, that reminds me of a little ditty...Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends!