All posts tagged: Obedience

Flamenco dance, Seville, Spain Credit: Laurence Vagner/Flickr/Creative Commons

The Dance of Life

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Español: La Danza de la Vida These past few weeks my eyes have been opened to my need for love, respect and acceptance from others. I tend to accuse others of being uncaring when they dismiss my plans and ideas. I demand from others what I am lacking in myself and make others responsible for the way I feel. When I quit blaming others for the way I am feeling (angry, hurt, rejected), only then can I see what the real problem is — my lack of self-esteem mostly. I needed to ask ‘why’ am I blaming someone else for my lack of self-worth and insecurities. Why do I so badly need to be right? Resentment and anger are dis-empowering. They debilitate and cripple us, yet we unknowingly lean on them like crutches to get the emotional support and love that we so badly need. When we seek love without giving it to ourselves first, (embracing our value and worth in God and believing that) we will never be satisfied with what we get from people.  …

Healings are not about how spiritual I am, but rather on how willing I am to be used by God

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[by Ken Zerbin] Sometimes our journey of faith meets some real challenges when we try to measure our faith.  I would like to encourage fellow believers to keep trusting the Lord and His Word, no matter how strong or weak we might feel our faith is.  Remember…it is Who we are putting our trust in that is important…it’s not about the “quality” of our trust. Several summers ago I was at one of my lowest spiritual points of my life.  We had gathered a number of our paid and volunteer staff from the church for a training event.  The instructor did a great job, but as the day’s training progressed, I couldn’t help but notice two things about him.  He made several comments about being in a church doing this kind of training.  His comments seemed to be a cry for spiritual attention.

How to be a successful failure

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From man’s perspective, the prophet Ezekiel was an absolute failure. God sent the prophet to call Israel to repentance. But everybody hated him. Nobody listened to him. Nobody repented. It all started in chapter 2, when God commissioned Ezekiel. The Lord told the prophet, He was sending him to a rebellious people (v 3).  And if Ezekiel had any expectation the people would respond, God told him:

Why your ways are not God’s ways

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In Isaiah 55:8, God says that His ways are not man’s way and He explains in the next verse that His ways are higher than man’s. In this second verse, God is referring to His long-term goals and plans that man —  with His finite mind — is incapable of understanding. God is always peering into next week and next year, and is desiring to coordinate our steps in the present to fulfill longer-term goals. Proverb 14:12 has a similar theme:”There is a way which seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.” Situations come up in our lives that in the short-term seem the right thing to do. In fact, they could be down-right beneficial. But this decision heads us down a certain path and God says that the “end” or long-term result of this decision — which could be months or even years away — is death or destruction.