A new leaf

Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

Ever made a really dumb decision? I know I can list a few, perhaps even more than a few. We all make mistakes sometimes, some 'dumber' than others, with some standing out as the 'dumbest' of the 'dumb'. These probably have led to some pretty deep hurts - hurts that seem to hang around long after the decision was made and done. What do we do with the deep hurts that are part of our past mistakes? We can repent, 'turn a new leaf', and move on, or we can harbor those hurts, rehashing the guilt of those decisions over and over again. 

When the hurts of the past aren't in the past, we find the rehearsal of those hurts to sometimes be worse than the original 'misstep' was in the first place. God wants to do a work within us of actually getting those hurts into our past and having them reside there permanently! Those hurts, continually rehearsed, will hinder us from moving forward in life until God affords us the pathway to finally let go of them. We need to follow that path he lays out.

God's voice is gentle - it isn't accusatory. If the voice of accusation is holding you back today, it is time to change who it is you are listening to! God's voice is sometimes no more than a whisper, but it is calling us onward, not back to the past. If God asks us to deal with something that we thought was in the past, it is only because we didn't fully deal with it at the time he asked us to let it go. God doesn't rehearse our sins, so we shouldn't either. He covers them with the blood of Jesus, removing all the stain of our guilt, and gives us a new pathway to follow. 

It is possible we haven't been ready to let go of the past. We hold onto something, even when it isn't doing us any good, bringing us down and loading us up with all kinds of guilty feelings. I want to tell you clearly today that God is ready to transform you right there. Right where your missteps got you into so much difficulty and caused you so much hurt. Listen for that 'whisper' of his gentle voice today and see what he will do as you respond to his voice. You don't have to live under that load any longer. Just sayin!

Is laughter the best medicine?

Laughter can conceal a heavy heart, but when the laughter ends, the grief remains. (Proverbs 14:13)

Nicolas Chamfort said, "The most wasted day of all is that on which we have not laughed." Laughter is not always from a cheerful and giddy heart. There are many times it conceals a hurt much deeper than the naked eye can see. There is little mirth in fear, but someone who is fearful can giggle or laugh in their nervousness over the situation. Sometimes there is very little 'amusement' in what is going on in someone's life, but there will be laughter instead of tears. We may never know what a laugh really conceals, but when we are open to being led by the Holy Spirit, the opportunity to help someone past their fear, grief, or inner pain may reveal itself.

What makes a heart heavy? We all realize loss can weigh a heart down, sometimes for a long time. There are times when our heart is made heavy because of what we are feeling for others - experiencing just a bit of their pain over something catastrophic in their lives. Probably the worst kind of 'heaviness of heart' is when our sin-nature gets the best of us, and we fall for some temptation that we should have avoided completely. This one brings more than just a 'heaviness' of heart - it can carry a whole lot of guilt that just piles on over the top of our sorrow, making the burden quite heavy to carry at times. We might attempt to 'laugh away' that guilt and sorrow, but the only true means of being 'unburdened' from it is to confess it and let God restore your heart.

Some tell-tale signs that someone might be concealing a bit more under that laughter could be:

- Laughing when the topic is touched upon and then quickly changing the subject, so they don't have to dwell upon it

- Laughing as the subject is brought up, then continuing to use sarcastic humor to 'poke fun' at oneself

- Laughing at a suggestion that they might benefit from a little help, or perhaps confiding in someone they trust about whatever it is that is causing them so much pain

These are but a few, but you likely know of some ways we 'conceal' our heaviness of heart just by looking at how YOU do it on occasion. Realize that we aren't alone in this 'concealment' process - we all have our 'coping mechanisms' - good and bad.

How can we be sensitive to someone's heaviness of heart today? It begins by asking God to open our eyes, ears, and heart to others and their needs. When the Holy Spirit prompts, be ready to respond. Not all laughter will be the result of a heavy heart, but when one is being concealed, he will reveal it to the one who has asked to be used to ease the burden of others. Just sayin!

Suppose....

"Suppose" can be used as the setting up of an argument, or a belief or theory, as though you were prepared to defend it to the hilt.  Have you ever had one of those moments in time where you want to disprove someone and set up the arguments for your position with the statement, "Suppose that..."?  I think we all have at one time or another, because it is human nature to present what we believe or have perceived to see if it is really trustworthy.  In doing this, we present our side of the argument, then we await the rebuttal.  For example, we start our study of the earth with the statement, "Suppose that the earth is round, how do we keep from falling off as it rotates?"  The statement set forth is the perceived or believed fact, followed by the supposition or question.  We already are holding the truth to be true that the earth is round - now we just want to understand why we don't go flying off into space when it rotates on its axis!  Oftentimes, we find ourselves setting up various beliefs or perceptions in our conversations with God and find ourselves stuck with only half of the truth - the part we put out there as "believed fact" - then we have a whole bunch of questions or misconceptions we pose immediately after those "believed facts" because we want God to either dispel our "myths" or settle the truths we "think we believe" as fact.

Suppose I wanted to hide from you and said, “Surely the darkness will hide me. The day will change to night and cover me.” Even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are the same. You formed the way I think and feel. You put me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because you made me in such a wonderful way. I know how amazing that was! (Psalm 139:11-14 ERV)

Here is where we find David this morning - setting up what he knows to be fact and then setting the remaining "beliefs" or "ideas" out there on the table so God can either cement them as truth to be held onto or myths he must let go of. He begins with the statement, "Suppose I wanted to hide from you..."  Now, you might think this is a fact, since I said you could begin an argument with a set of facts and follow with the questions.  In this case, he begins with the questions and ends with the facts!  In so doing, he is actually talking to himself and reminding himself of what he already knows and believes - thereby settling his questions quickly.  The question of whether he can hide from God is set forth.  I think we may have all "tried" this at one time or another, but we probably have been less than successful, as David is soon to point out.  It is impossible to hide anything from him, so I think it is laughable that we would even want to try!

Many times we try to hide what we are a little uncomfortable with, or feeling some shame over.  It is not uncommon for us to do this, because we rarely want to put our failures "on display" in life.  I recently had a friend ask me why my marriage ended.  It is not one of those things I want out there on display in my life, so unless someone asks me directly, I don't usually speak about it. Why?  It causes me a little discomfort and I find myself reliving past hurts I may have wanted to really put behind me.  It isn't that I am hiding anything in this case, but I don't put these past hurts on display because they are now totally under the blood of Jesus - they are fading scars no longer to be remembered. I kind of liken them to the scar I can barely see from when I had surgery as an infant.  There is a tell-tale sign I went through something, but it no longer is a remembered thing!

There are things we attempt to hide which are not "healed" or even "healing" things, though.  This is where I feel David is connecting with us this morning - we cannot put into the darkness anything which God has not dealt with fully yet. It is impossible for us to hide these things from his probing finger, or discovering eye.  No darkness exists with him, so he is not going to allow us to attempt to squirrel away our hurts.  Herein is love in action - not letting us "fester" on our past hurts and failures.  It may seem like the "discovery" of our past hurts and failures is a little "probing" and kind of uncomfortable, but trust me on this - any "infected" part of our lives is worse when left to "fester" in the dark!  God knows this clearly because he put all our parts, including our emotions, into place in our lives - he created us.  The idea of thinking he wouldn't understand, or that he just couldn't make anything good out of the mess we have created somehow just flies in the face of the truth of his grace and love "out-doing" anything we have done ourselves.

Most of our past hurts and failures are linked very closely to the way we think and feel.  Understanding God is the one who "put together" the very actions of thinking and the plethora of emotions we experience is liberating, because we come to recognize none of these thoughts or emotions are "foreign" to God. They are all understood by him and he knows perfectly well how they interact with each other - one feeding off the other.  Truth is, we can trust him with the stuff we want to squirrel away into the dark places in our lives - because he is already intimately familiar with them - even the bad parts we don't want to admit to or remember!  Just sayin!