When the Storm is a Storm

Yesterday morning I posted a short post called "Winds of Change", which you can find here. Yesterday I talked about when we seem to be experiencing the billowing, gusting, bending, wind of the Holy Spirit and mistake it for a storm instead of the Lord doing a changing work in our life.

Today, however, I want to talk about when the storm is a storm. There are storms in all of our lives. Storms that rock us, seemingly drowned us, swallow us, and block out the beauty, hope, and joy that the Light gives.

I have experienced a few such storm, some of my own doing and some that I have experienced due to what others have done. I have felt the pull beneath the surface to just give up, I have often forget the beauty and life of the Light, and I have cursed and yelled, blamed and resented in the midst of my storms. However, just because the storm is a storm doesn't mean that I am there alone. When my bones are weary, my eyes are wet, and my soul is done, the Hope holds onto me. When I have let go of the Hope, the Promise, the Truth...He has never let go of me. He has preserved me, led me, carried me, and sustained me. He has made every provision for me in the midst of the storm, as He does for all of those who place their hope in the great LIGHT OF HOPE.

You see, just as a storm came upon Noah and his family, God spoke to Him long before the storm was to come. He prepared Noah, gave him specific instruction and set him to task. When I think of Noah and the Ark, like many, I fast forward to the end, to the rainbow and dry ground, the offering and the new beginning, I skip the middle or at very least skim over it and most of the beginning of his story. I skip the part where it tells of how God preserved Noah in an Ark, provided for him, promised him, and delivered Him. I'm sure Noah's storm was wrought with stench, sea sickness, hunger, weariness, loneliness, hopelessness, worry, anxiety, irritation with his family, and the list could go on. My storms are not so different, they to are wrought with many of the same things, and like Noah, the Lord Almighty, has preserved me in an Ark. He has preserved me in His grace and mercy, in His presence, as HIS. Now I don't know what your Ark may be, but I promise that if you look where you yourself stand and not at the wind and waves that are about you, you will find yourself in the arms of a Loving Father who has placed your feet on the Rock.

Hebrews 10:23
"Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful."

Isaiah 43:1-3a

But now, this is what the Lord says—

    he who created you, Jacob,    he who formed you, Israel:
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;    I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters,    I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,    they will not sweep over you.When you walk through the fire,    you will not be burned;    the flames will not set you ablaze. 
For I am the Lord your God,    the Holy One of Israel, your Savior;

Winds of Change

Last night I sat in my bedroom cleaning out a box with miscellaneous stuff in it. While cleaning and tossing and putting away all the little odds and ends that had found there place in this box I came across a piece of paper with some thoughts I had jotted down about this time last year and I wanted to share them here.


I sit here in a car rider line having just scrambled for a pen. It's as I sit here, waiting to pick up Big Sister from a day camp, the winds begin to pick up and an ominous cloud moves overhead. The winds are billowing down on the nearby crepe myrtle trees, the basketball goals in the parking lot are rattling against the gusts, and as I sit here I begin to ponder the similarity of the bowing wind to that of the Holy Spirit in my life at times.

I pray for a fresh wind of the Holy Spirit in my life...a refreshing, cleansing, life giving breath of the Holy Spirit. However, when those winds are stronger and pushing against my stubbornness, bowing me over, I have this tendency to view it as a storm and not the Lord answering my cry for healing and life through the cleansing life giving wind and rain.  

As I sit here, these crepe myrtles are being shaken about and blossoms are being loosed into the wind. How many times in my own life do I stand staunch, resistant to the wind, not allowing anything to be loosed from my heart, clinging desperately to what is mine and often times being forced into a position of surrender and submission. So the questions this morning is this is the storm a storm or the Lord answering our cries with winds of change and adding life giving rain?

Purity for the Modern Woman: Part 1 Lift Up Your Eyes

So in today's culture "Modern" is such a broad and loosely used word. So, let me start off with defining what I mean by "Modern". Modern Woman, as it is discussed here is a woman living in today's culture and society, whether young or old, single or married, mom or career woman. A woman living in the here and now in this modern day and age.

Now with that out of the way... 

It was last week I found myself thinking about this idea of Purity. I had just received an email from a friend asking me to speak with a group of young ladies attending a True Love Waits Conference, at the church I grew up in, about Purity. Unfortunately, due to a scheduling conflict I won't be able to, but it started me thinking. Thinking about that little piece of paper I signed when I was in youth group, about the key necklace I wore and gave to my husband the day that I got married, and what purity means for me today. 

What does Purity mean for me, not as a wife and mom, but what does purity look like for me...for my soul. Well, let me tell you what purity is not. Purity is not abstaining, purity is not avoidance, purity is not trying to do better and be better. It can't be those things. If I want to be pure, truly, really, "without" as Webster's defines it, I can't do it, not on any level. It's false, humanistic, and driven by my own abilities. 

Purity:

a) lack of dirty or harmful substances

b) lack of guilt or evil thoughts

It must go beyond me, because me, is a sinner, broken, weak, distracted, and human. 

Just as Eve in the garden, we want what we want, to reach outside of God's plan and purpose for our lives, even if just a little, thinking no one will ever know. We want what is outside of the design. 

So Purity...HOW?!?!?! 

Let's now replace the word purity with the word HOLY: TO BE ALTOGETHER SEPARATE. If I want to be pure, my purpose and focus must be on that of HOLY. My mind dwells on a million different things thoughout the day and not often on HOLY. Most of the time it is making it from bed, to breakfast, to school, to lunch, to nap time, chores, dinner, kid's bedtime, and then to the quiet. Where does the HOLY fit into that? What does fit into that is anxiety, stress, exhaustion, frustration, short temperateness, and anger. My mind focused on what is before my feet and not what is above me. When our eyes are focused on what is down we will only see what is down, and will be gut-wrenchingly faced with our inability to accomplish all that lies before us. However, we must as the psalmist says is Psalm 121, lift our eyes upward...that is where our help comes from. 

Lifting our eyes is hard, it's scary, it takes effort, takes surrender, and sadly it's usually only done when we have nothing left, no other plan, when we have tried it all, to no avail. At some point we forgot that to which we were born again to. You see in 1 Peter 1 it says we are born to a living hope, through the RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. Y'all for a minute think about that, set aside the innumerable times you have heard about HIS resurrection and just think about that. HE DIED and WAS RESURRECTED!!! He declared death and Satan a liar and a LOSER!!! Because of this we have hope, but not just that... it's a LIVING HOPE. Alive, never ceasing, unending, always, and forever. If He, Jesus, was brought back to life, then we to are given this, allowed this same LIFE, through His great mercy to experience the same. LIFE. I all to often live like the walking dead. In this LIVING HOPE I am granted the boldness and courage it takes to look up to HIM, to meet His EYES. To be beheld and to BEHOLD. Oh to be as Isaiah in Isaiah 6, completely undone before the Lord, purified before HIM, Healed, Whole, and desiring of only HIM, in a world that wants nothing to do with HIM at all. 

It's no surprise that we have every shade of off white, grey, black, and every other manner of that which is not HOLY thrown at us, flashed before us, dangled in front of us. However, when our eyes are set fully only on HIM nothing...I MEAN NOTHING will suffice, nothing will even compare to the glory that is beheld in HIS eyes. YOU will/can be enveloped in the one who has chosen you, ransomed you, healed you, freed you, and bestowed all that HE has on you. Whether your faith is strong or weak? Whether you find yourself full of hope or hope is all but lost? LOOK UP!!!

2 Corinthians 3:7-18 (The Message)

Lifting the Veil

7-8 The Government of Death, its constitution chiseled on stone tablets, had a dazzling inaugural. Moses’ face as he delivered the tablets was so bright that day (even though it would fade soon enough) that the people of Israel could no more look right at him than stare into the sun. How much more dazzling, then, the Government of Living Spirit?

9-11 If the Government of Condemnation was impressive, how about this Government of Affirmation? Bright as that old government was, it would look downright dull alongside this new one. If that makeshift arrangement impressed us, how much more this brightly shining government installed for eternity?

12-15 With that kind of hope to excite us, nothing holds us back. Unlike Moses, we have nothing to hide. Everything is out in the open with us. He wore a veil so the children of Israel wouldn’t notice that the glory was fading away—and they didn’t notice. They didn’t notice it then and they don’t notice it now, don’t notice that there’s nothing left behind that veil. Even today when the proclamations of that old, bankrupt government are read out, they can’t see through it. Only Christ can get rid of the veil so they can see for themselves that there’s nothing there.

16-18 Whenever, though, they turn to face God as Moses did, God removes the veil and there they are—face-to-face! They suddenly recognize that God is a living, personal presence, not a piece of chiseled stone. And when God is personally present, a living Spirit, that old, constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete. We’re free of it! All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.