God's Way Of Doing Things

God's way of doing things is the very best way. We can only learn what his way is by seeking his face everyday. We have to spend time with him in the ways that are available to us. We need to be consistent and persistent. How do we seek his face and learn his ways? We read his Word, The Holy Bible, everyday and we talk to him everyday.

Before we read the scriptures, we ask Our Father to illuminate his scriptures for us. To give us revelation knowledge through his Word. We ask for the ability to rightly divide the Word of Truth. We thank him for breaking up the stony ground of our hearts so that his Word can enter in, take root and bear much fruit. We thank him for transforming us through his Word and helping us to rightly divide it. We ask him to give us discernment of his Word so that we can apply it to our lives in a practical way. We confess that we want to see circumstances and people in the way that he sees them. Most of all, we thank him for helping us to see our lives and ourselves in the way that he sees us. We make sure that we open the Bible every day and read something, no matter how much or how little.

The second way to seek God's face is to meet with him and talk with him everyday. There are 3 types of prayer that will help us to understand God's way of doing things, formal prayer to God, conversation with God and listening to God in quiet time. Formal prayer is when we have a format in which we pray. It is a rotating combination of words, phrases, scriptures and favorite statements that we give to God at a specific time of day. This is the prayer that we pray each day, such as in the morning when we commit our way to him before we face the world. 

 

Though it consists of our favorite format, it shouldn't be repetitive, traditional or ritualistic. The word tells us that our traditions and rituals make his word of no effect. (Mark 7:13)  The most important use of the formatted prayer is in committing our path to God at the beginning of each day. Our formatted prayers are not enough to learn God's way of doing things because they consist mostly of us talking. While commitment and statements of confession are very important to our growth, there is a more important way of seeking God's face.

We need to have conversations with God throughout the day. This is when we talk to him candidly and openly. We revere him as Our Heavenly Father but we talk to him as a friend. If you want to pray and talk to Jesus, that is ok because Jesus is God also. For me, I find that praying and talking to God works better. I also talk to Jesus and thank him for many things. Because God is the one who sent Jesus to shed his blood and have his body broken for us and who raised Jesus from the dead, who cares for me and has numbered the hairs of my head, and is my only Heavenly Father, spending time with him and committing all to him works best for me. 

Jesus is Heir To The Throne and I am joint heirs with him. I will rule and reign with him and without him I can do nothing, so my relationship with The Lamb of God is just as important, but different. It is God's Holy Spirit that bore upon me so that I could accept Jesus as my Savior and it is God The Father who holds the time of Jesus' return. The most important things about my existence and origin I can attribute to God but not to Jesus. It is through Jesus' obedient sacrifice that I am able to seek God's face but God sent Jesus so that I could be restored to fellowship with him, God The Father. (I Peter 1:21)

When we have conversations with God throughout the day we should simply tell him our feelings, our hopes, our confusions our angers. Yes, he knows our thoughts, our hearts, but building a relationship means that we need to tell him about our lives. Our father wants to commune with us, laugh with us, cry with us, share with us. Many of us don't know how it is to have a real father, so we have to learn, to practice having a true, pure, holy relationship with God. 

We've seen TV programs and movies where fathers were loving and kind. We can take cues from them on how to cultivate a loving, sharing relationship with Our Father. It's just a matter of pretending that he's there, imagining him listening, seeing in our minds' eye him nodding his head, choosing to believe that he's answering and conversing. As we reach out he will help us and make it real to us. Before long, we'll look forward to sharing with him day and night. 

The third type of prayer is to be quiet and just listen for the still, small voice of God's Spirit to talk to us. For me, this is the hardest. It's difficult to quiet the mind talk. To not be distracted. I try to sit somewhere quiet, where I can look at the sky if I can. I have chosen to sit 15 minutes each day and just listen for God's voice. Very few people would hear him in the beginning of the process. It takes time, patience and commitment. It takes time to be able to truly quiet our minds. Don't worry if you don't hear anything for a long time. The most important thing is to have this quiet time before God as often as you can and to stick with it. The reward will come. Our Father is faithful!

Seeking God's face to learn his ways makes all the difference in appropriating and manifesting his promises that we find in The Bible. It's one thing to be saved. It's another to live in the fullness of God. Getting closer to him and sharing with him is a peaceful place, not only to learn his personality, but for restoration. We begin to recognize his ways of doing things in our lives and can work with him, not against him. We enjoy going to a place where we can bare all, be exactly who we are and know that we are loved deeply, no matter what. 

God's Blessings Through Transitions, Transfers And Changes

I've learned that nothing that God does in our lives is necessarily permanent. Though I thrive on changes, transfers and transitions, some that are unexpected and unwanted are very difficult to cope with.  As Christians, we are often ashamed to accept a change when we shared that God did the thing and blessed us.

We think because God did it that it is engraved in stone and can never change. God gave it and we have it, for good! When the blessing circumstances begin to change, we are apt to and often encouraged by less-enlightened Christians, to believe that we made a mistake. Maybe God did not do it after all, because things are now changing. If God did it, it would not change, right? As we grow in Christ, we learn that this is not true.

God gives and takes away, shifts and turns things in our lives, opens a door for a season and then closes it and opens another door. He even brings people into our lives temporarily to bless us in various ways.  He then moves them out because they were not meant to stay. We are confused and wonder why these relationships are not retained. We lament and look back, when we need to learn to let go and move forward.

We should anticipate the new things that God will do. It helps to remind ourselves that everything in this fallen world is temporary. It all seems so solid to us because we endure time while we are here. Time seems to make permanent things but that permanence is all temporary. God shifts all according to his will and we are not to hold on to what he allows to change.

Transfers and transitions are more often experienced in the lives of some rather than others. Despite this, we all can grow through God's big and small changes as we listen to and obey His Spirit each day. If you have proof within yourself that you made a mistake and God did not do it after all, admit it and move on. Growth is good and God knows where you're at.

When things begin to change, however, regarding a blessing that you know came from God, don't degrade your relationship with Your Heavenly Father by choosing to believe that he never blessed you. Don't allow others to convince you to demean your spiritual growth and your commitment to God. Know that God does not change, but he changes things.

Our Father does not intend for the changes to hurt us. Because of the condition of this damaged and swiftly-deteriorating world, hurts and pains must come. God allows his planned and ordained changes to bring about his purposes. His end result is not for us to suffer for no reason. He plans and allows changes in his blessings to benefit us now and in the New Heaven and the New Earth, in ways that we cannot imagine. We just need to stand firm in what we know and accept what Our Heavenly Father changes, as we grow in our understanding of how He does things.

My Past Is Haunting Me

Are you having problems with unwelcome memories from your past? Is any point or stage from your past life troubling you? Are past experiences, mistakes, journeys, sorrows, sufferings, failed hopes, unrealized dreams, etc., consistently bothering you? Do you feel plagued by past occurrences over which you had no control? 

God is aware. His Spirit is always near and within to help us. Struggling with our pasts, something that is unchangeable, is too much of a heavy burden for us. We cannot and were not meant to bear it alone.

We must always look to God, first as a formal committing over to him each morning the health of our mental and emotional state. Next, we must learn to immediately look to God whenever troubling thoughts and memories surface.

There are many short prayers that you can use. I find that this prayer has been helping me to cast down imagination and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God:

Father, help me to see my past as you see it. Help me to see myself as you see me. Help me to see people as you see them. Help me to look beyond the flesh and into the spirit of myself, every person and every situation, past, present and future.

Pray this prayer, or one similar that you create, and you'll find yourself walking more in the Spirit each day.

Growing Into God's Lessons

 

God carries and supports us through painful training.

God has taught me, through so many stressful lessons, how to not fly off the handle. When we put our training and growth in God, it is painfully endured but he does carry us on each journey. There is something to the quote no pain, no gain. Just read John 15:2 and tell me if you don't think it means some type of pain to be endured. If you persist in thinking that you are ok without any growth pains, then that is probably why you have not grown up in the Lord very much. What is the pain of growth all about? 

Well, it's emotional pain primarily, the pain of being treated unfairly and not jumping to retaliate, the pain of not being allowed to repay evil for evil, the pain of not giving as good as we get, the pain of not seeking justifiable revenge, the pain of not allowing vengeful thoughts to develop, the pain of not correcting others and demanding from them, the pain of being constrained in thought, word and deed, the pain of not vindicating ourselves, the pain of learning to love our enemies (real and imagined), the pain of learning to bow our knees and pray for those who use us in hateful ways, the pain of waiting on God.

We are rewarded on the other side of painful training.

When we choose to put a challenging situation in his hands first instead of acting upon our initial, vehement response, we grow into the lesson that God intends. We are also rewarded on the other side of the pain because we don't suffer for nothing. When we handle a distressing situation on our own, however, we don't get anything everlasting out of it. As it says, we got our reward, in the flesh, and that's all we'll get out of what we did (Matthew 6:5, 21, I Corinthians 3:12-15). That reward is in our flesh. What else does that kind of unrestrained behavior cause?

As a result, we will most likely go on in life feeling resentful about the situation, recounting it and allowing it to replay over and over in our minds. We may have thought what we wanted to, said what we wanted to and did what we wanted to but we end up defeated. We have nothing of significance about our resolution to offer ourselves or anyone else. Most of all, we end up without any hope of spiritual, heavenly rewards for our fleshly effort. 

We end up defeated and without spiritual rewards when we behave any kind of way.

Many times, when I journeyed through with God to the end of the situation, he showed me that my hurt and/or rage was built up through untrue assumptions anyway. I don't think I would ever have found out had I flown off the handle at the onset of the situation. Even if someone or some entity was guilty of what I thought, because of my additional assumptions, they would not have deserved the ballistics that I would have leveled at them had I operated in my flesh. God gets to the root and leaves no stone unturned. A little assumption, a lot of assumptions, it's all the same to him.

Allowing ourselves to be taught and pruned by God quietly detonates the powder kegs of assumptions. Believe me, when we are obedient to God, often he will supernaturally shift things so that the least damage, to us and to them, will be done while he's teaching us. You'll see his right hand work! He's wonderful!

God will supernaturally shift things for damage control.

We don't have to fly off the handle anymore. We can triumph and have peace through every trying event. We can receive rewards for our obedience and endurance, not only here, but most importantly in Heaven.