We put so much “perfection” and “deeper life” pressure on new believers and fellowships. Let’s just chill out and learn that God delights in meeting us in whatever He uniquely designed us to be and do.
Been Hearing God Lately?
Chilling Out
Category Archives: Struggles
Goodness
The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness… Gal 5:22 NIV
When reading fairy tales or watching movies, good usually triumphs over evil by the end of the story. Often in real life, our desire is for the happily ever after fairy tale ending. But even in movies or fairy tales, the hero or heroine has to overcome many obstacles before they achieve goodness.
Kindness
The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness…Gal 5:22 NIV
Kindness is extending God’s grace to an often unpleasant situation. Many times the easier road to follow is one of impatience, sarcasm, criticism or being judgmental.
For myself, I often need to stop and make the choice to respond with kindness.
Single Parents
Single parents are ubiquitous in the church; however, often they are a very misunderstood group that usually doesn’t quite comfortably fit anywhere.
As a former single mom with 25 years of single parenting experience, these are some of the impressions I have collected. Maybe it is different if you are a single dad, but I don’t have any expertise in that area.
Patience
The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience… Gal 5:22
The King James Bible calls patience long suffering. Somehow to me patience sounds like a virtue to desire, but long suffering… well that sounds 
too much like Job!
I think everyone would love to be able to say that they are patient, but probably none of us enjoy the process of long suffering that is required to actually become patient.
I believe the only way to grow in patience is to experience times of trials, disappointments, frustrations and failures. It is during these difficult stretches that the Lord enables the fruit of patience to grow strong.
Though You Slay Me…
I don’t know about you, but the Lord sometimes loves me enough to nearly kill me. And I’m not talking metaphorically.
In fact, for those who have given our lives to Him, the Lord loves us so much that some day He literally will take our lives so He then can give us eternity.
Short of death, however, the Lord sometimes kills something important to us or in us – some vision, some hope, some confidence, some quality or attribute, some accomplishment, or even something good He previously gave us.
It’s not that the thing He kills necessarily is wrong. It’s just that it needs to die so we then are free to be and do whatever He wants of us, and for us, as we move forward in Him.
As Job understood, in the midst of everything good in his life being stripped away, “Though you slay me, will I trust you Lord.” Job 13:15.
Joy
The fruit of the spirit is love, joy… (Gal 5:22)
Joy is a word that I believe is easily misunderstood. Let me give you an example. About eleven years ago, I adopted my little dog. I named her Joy because her personality radiates joy.
One day a young workman came to my house. After he finished the repairs in the kitchen he asked me, “You named your dog after soap?” He was referring to the bottle of Joy detergent that was on my kitchen counter. I explained that she was not named after soap, but I named her because she always acted so joyful. He did not seem to really understand, but I think that is not as unusual as it may seem.
Joy and happiness are often used interchangeably and people assume that they cannot have joy unless they feel happy. I disagree.
Slaying Giants
On Christmas eve several years ago, Marianne and I spent time with about thirty brothers in the jail. During our time of fellowship, one of the men read the poem below.
Here’s the story behind the poem, then the poem …
Earlier that December, I shared with those men how our journey in the Lord is like Israel’s journey from slavery in Egypt, through the desert, and then into the promised land.
God takes us out of the bondage of Egypt, but then uses the wilderness to burn Egypt out of us.
In the wilderness, God prepares us to take possession of the promised land – that place where we are able to own and responsibly manage the things He has created us to both be and do.
Touching the Heart of God
Even in my sorrow, I also know gratitude. Jesus is able to handle both, and as they’ve merged I’ve touched the very heart of God.
https://crossroadjunction.com/2009/03/30/sufficient-grace/
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This last year has been marked by very painful and difficult health issues. Through it all, however, I’ve been grateful for what the Lord has done for me even as I struggle with the sorrow of diminished capacity.
Purpose
Purpose was the Lord’s word to me for 2012. I really thought that perhaps He had made a mistake because that sounded more like Jim than me. However, as the year unfolded I came to see that purpose was indeed God’s word for me.
Timing
Over this past year, the Lord has been teaching me about His timing. I certainly don’t have the answers about timing but here is what I have observed.
First, God has an incredible sense of humor. When I tried to do or make something happen, the humor that God displayed in the answer made me laugh instead of being hurt when He said NO.
The Power of God
We don’t go looking for or emphasize miracles, but in our fellowships we’ve been seeing the miraculous happen time and again.
We had one man collapse and then die right in front of the paramedics and the fellowship he had been helping to start in the jail – and then come back to life shortly thereafter on the gurney in the jail infirmary after brothers gathered together to pray for him.
Apples and Pears
On Saturdays I love to go to the Farmers’ Market. I always go to one particular stand because they have the most flavorful peaches, apples and fresh vegetables. At the Farmers’ Market I enjoy the eclectic mix of people as well as the fresh produce.
Because it is the fall season, apples and pears are in abundance. The number of varieties is astounding! When I go to the market I look for the fruit that is unblemished. If I arrive near closing time, often the bruised fruit are the only ones left. Everyone seems to desire the perfect fruit, not the damaged ones.
Hanging On – Part 2
Are we living up to God’s plan for His body? What is His plan for His body? Are we all heart? Are we all head?
I believe a spider web exemplifies the body of Christ. A spider web is both beautiful and useful, but also very complex. The spider’s silk has the unique ability to become softer or stiffer depending on the stress the web receives. It is not stagnant but active. God so designed the spider’s web that when one strand breaks, the strength of the entire web actually increases.
God desires the same for His church. There are times when a situation requires softness and the “web” needs to reach out and actively demonstrate that attribute. In contrast, sometimes the body needs to show stiffness and resolve, so rushing to the rescue might not be the best answer.
Faith
Faith is a much maligned word.
“If you only had enough faith…”
“Where is your faith?”
We have all heard these words either spoken to us or to someone we know. The Bible says that “we walk by faith not sight” (2 Cor. 5:7) and that if we have faith the size of a mustard seed we can move mountains. (Mat. 17:20)
Finding Freedom From Life’s Hurts
This is a fifty-five minute teaching I shared with about thirty men, based on hundreds of pastoral counseling sessions where God showed up and brought freedom and healing from deep hurts – including abuse, abandonment and so much more.
My blog is a feeble attempt to upload a lifetime of service to the King of Kings. I believe this audio teaching, however, captures better than anything I’ve written some of the most significant things I’ve learned as I’ve walked with folks to those ugly places of bondage and hurt in their lives. When we get there, and they exposed their hurts and lies to the Lord, He brings His loving, healing truth.
In this talk, I also share some of my own very personal story about my own places of hurt, which I had to expose to Lord so He could then bring wholeness to me.
You may think you know me from my writings, but this captures my heart in ways that a written blog never can.
If this resonates with you, I also recommend my related blog, God Shows Up.
Eating of the Tree of Life? Watch Out!
A strange new doctrine has emerged over the last decade to support the old dualism of everything being about my personal, subjective relationship with Jesus – to the exclusion of any transcendent, objective moral code or (in some extreme cases) even Scripture itself.
Choosing Moral Autonomy
The new doctrine goes like this:
God wanted us to eat of the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve, however, rebelled and chose instead to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Tree of Life, they say, is Jesus (which I think is questionable, given that Jesus walked with Adam in the cool of the day and obviously was not a tree, but that’s not my point).
This new doctrine goes on to say that we should only want the subjective, relational attributes of Jesus and not let any objective concept of what is true, real and right get in the way. This is because, they say, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil represents things like morality, objective standards, Scripture, commandments (again, this is of dubious exegesis, but again, that’s not my point), and anything else that may contradict their feeling-driven experience of Jesus .
Like all great errors in Church history, this one has enough truth to be tempting. But truth out of context is deadly.
Inside Out
Like a comfy, worn, ragged, favorite sweatshirt, life sometimes meanders along. Then a tidal wave comes and drastically alters the course of the stream.
So it is with the Lord. At times He allows me to peacefully follow His path; but then He turns my life completely inside out, with all of the fuzzy, bumpy, frayed edges exposed instead of hidden beneath the surface.
To me His ways are usually convoluted.
Acceptance with Joy
My wife, Marianne, wrote this. Where I am vision and logic, she is feeling and heart. The Lord speaks to us in very different ways, and we have learned to passionately value those differences.
Anyway, I think this was for both of us, and maybe it will speak to you too as the first of hopefully many devotionals from her.
~ Jim
Marianne
As I was in the midst of an intense struggle over some situations in my life, the Lord spoke to my spirit: “Acceptance with joy.”
I responded, “Lord, I don’t even know what it is that I am to accept, but whatever it is, there certainly is no joy.”
For me, it became pray, pray, pray: I cried my heart out in hopes that somehow He would let me see what He wanted.
With me, the Lord speaks in pictures, and the picture He showed me was not encouraging.
Becoming Our Past
Often, longstanding hurts, disappointments and emotional wounds are like old, familiar friends. We let them become so engrained into our sense of identity that they begin to define us.
When that happens, we often aren’t willing to transparently expose and turn them them over to Jesus, but tightly hold onto them like a child clinging to a security blanket.
Instead of finding transformation and wholeness, we become our past.
If this is a struggle for you or someone you know, let me suggest an old blog I wrote years ago called God Shows Up. It’s a good starting point on the road to healing.
A Hollow Gospel
Sometimes I get angry and need the Lord to settle my spirit.
I am so frustrated over the shattered lives of man after man who I help find the Lord in jail, who then go to some on-fire, podium-focused, pastor-centric church when they get out.
The Show
Inevitably, I will see those men back in jail again a year later, or I’ll hear that they have relapsed and fallen back into addiction or bondage.
Why are they back in jail or back in bondage? Because that “church” is little more than glory-halleluiah feel-good meetings with exciting sermons framed by manipulative emotional intensity which masquerades as “worship” – all deliberately designed to serve as a platform to showcase the gifted pastor and his gifted team.
Silence = Death
To those who have been violated, and to those who know, may God give you the grace to find the voice they took from you.
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer
For help, or to offer help, I urge you to contact Nathan’s Voice.
I Saw Satan Fall
On Tuesday evening, I understood how Jesus felt when his disciples finally “got it” and reported back, after He sent them out to minister on their own for the first time, that the sick were healed and darkness conquered. In His joy, the Lord said He saw Satan fall from Heaven because of them.
On Tuesday I’m teaching and mentoring a class of students on how to minister in the areas of confession, forgiveness and repentance. After seven weeks of foundation laying, the students this week started doing ministry sessions on their own and – wow! – it was amazing what God did through them that evening.
Beauty from Ashes
Since early this year, I’ve been working on a huge sex abuse case involving a large, local Assembly of God church.
Hurt and Confusion
The human carnage and shattered lives have been great.
I take on these kinds of cases not only because I believe in justice, but because I also believe in redemption. Often, I have the privilege of seeing God’s grace shine through as healing comes and the survivors begin to find the strength to reclaim their lives – and their stolen voices.
As I interview and get to know various survivors and their families, I’m often asked if the pain will ever stop. I tell them how I have seen God bring beauty from ashes time and again, both in others and in my own life.
It is hard, but once we pass through the fire and begin to see what God does with the ashes of our lives, we experience gratitude for who we start to become.
Shameful Silence
When loyalty to the leader trumps integrity, and folks sit silent, then it’s no longer a church – it’s a cult.
Crossroad Junction 