Moments from The Watering Hole

Well.. where do I start. haha something makes me think i started the last post with that statement. the past 48 hours have been oddly spectacular. partly for some really silly reasons (like getting to talk to someone in london, which was great simply because of their accent). and partly for some great reasons. i'm not sure if i know how to put it into words, but things with God .. they're pretty good. for the past month i've been going to this bible study at my church on tuesday nights and there's been truth spoken and God's giving me ears to hear, even though i dont think i asked for them .. either way, its a very good thing. the speaker did a short series on a christian's inheritance, broken up into 4 parts: God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Word.

the first week - God - she talked about God being both all-loving and completely 100% at the same time all-powerful. she said most people dont have a problem believing one of them, but struggle with the other. i feel like i struggle with both of them. i always say if i really believed God was all loving and all powerful, i would act different, and talk different, and live different.

the second week - Jesus - the main point was that Christ's death and resurrection are absolutely, totally sufficient to cover my life. she gave a really neat illustration that i'd never heard before. she said that in her life, she's had 2 different pictures of salvation. one is of a woman out in the ocean, flailing, sinking, and Jesus throws her a life saver from the shore and she catches it and hangs on and says yay Jesus thank you for saving me!!! the other picture is of a woman out in the ocean, flailing, sinking, and she drowns. she dies. she's lying at the bottom of the ocean dead, and Jesus dives out into the water, swims down and pulls her back to shore, gives her mouth to mouth and breathes life back into her. - i dont think i ever realized what a difference there was in those two pictures. my picture of salvation has always been the first one. the speaker put it in such a way that struck me. my picture is Jesus at a distance. throwing me the lifeline but I have to catch it, and then, although i'm safe, i'm hanging on for dear life, wondering if this is what being safe is all about - floating like a bobber...

the third week - the Holy Spirit - man.. the words she spoke, it made me think that i'm crazy to not be 100% dependant on the Holy Spirit, just like i'd be crazy to try and live without breathing air. the speaker gave us a list of 6 examples of what the Holy Spirit wants to do for me, in my life, every day: carry me, counsel and teach me, remind me of my identity, produce fruit through me, provide power over sin, make my yoke light. she equated the Holy Spirit to those people movers at the airport. the thing she said that stuck out the most was that God wants us to hand to him everything we're dealing with. in a picture, she said its like you're on that people mover and you're carrying this 100 pound backpack on your back. and when you're on the people mover, giving it to God is putting the backpack down on the people mover - it doesnt disappear, but you're not carrying the weight. i think i've always believed that to trust God with something in my life means to not ever deal with it or see it again .. not exactly a right view. Nichole Nordeman just put out a new album and one of the songs has a chorus that says "lay it down a little, lay it down a lot - I dont want to hold it anymore. lay it down in pieces, lay it down in whole - everything I've carried on my own. Lay it down"

the last week - the Word - i didnt expect the night to be as powerful as it was. the speaker read hebrews 4:12 that says "For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart." i've read this before, and frankly, it just sounded painful and awful.. like punishment. but the speaker described it.. she didnt use this illustration, but i think it work.. its like you're a person who has a gunshot wound, and the bullet is lodged inside your body. the verse is like a surgeon gently going in, getting to the root of your pain, and removing the bullet. eh.. its not a good description. the point was that God is the good guy. he wants to go in and show me the root cause for frustrations and struggles in my life and remove them at the root. the other great thing of this night was at the end, before having some time to do some reflection questions, they gave us little candles and then turned the lights way down so that we could only see because of the candle light - making the connection that God's Word is supposed to serve that same purpose.

i know it could take a long time for my life to change for me to be molded into the woman God sees me as, but this study has made it more attractive to me, and this nichole nordeman cd (Brave .. that's what it's called) is so perfectly accompanying it. ha. in fact, the song playing right now says "you make me want to live.." seriously. if anyone out there is reading this, and this is stirring ANYTHING in your heart, contact me (if it's not somewhere else... forever_bittersweet@yahoo.com). go buy the nichole nordeman cd, and i'll buy you the series of talks from this bible study.. its exactly what i need to be hearing right now.. maybe it is for you too.

"But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit." ~Jeremiah 17:7-8

could that ever be me?

for the praise of His glory,
Melissa

Basic moments

Boy.. it has been a while since I've been back here. I'll take the easy route out and blame it on work. and me. and me and the TV because we've become all too good of friends. I'm looking forward to the new apartment in which the only TV will live in the closet unless I take it out to watch one of my two dvds. 6 weeks feels like a long time before I move, but it probably will fly by. sooo anyway, on to things of not as much nonsense.

It has been an interesting few weeks; tomorrow marks the completion of my first full month at work. I'm not sure how I feel about the job. I'm not exactly excited that tomorrow is Monday and that I have to go back to work so quickly. But hopefully today will be a day of relaxation and reading - no TV. In the challenges of this season of life, I've begun to notice a lack of dependence on God for everything. I've always heavily depended on church, and bibles studies and other christian activities to keep me connected. I'm wondering if the next few months will change that. I've become hesitant to seek out too many activities. I think church on sunday mornings and the womens bible study tuesday nights should be plenty. and hopefully these two things will challenge me in my personal time with the Lord. Today's focus I believe will be the faithfulness and sovereignty of God, initially through Arthur Pink's Attributes of God book and who knows from there. We'll see... :)

A snipit from chapter 10 of Pink's book... "God has given us many "exceeding great and precious promises," but are we really counting on His fulfillment of them? Are we actually expecting Him to do for us all that He has said? Are we resting with implicit assurance on these words, "He is faithful that promised"?"

"Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful." ~Hebrews 10:23

for the praise of His glory,
Melissa