// When ministry gets discouraging//

Some people will criticize & belittle your activity or progress. People who are really for you will offer assistance or helpful information & tools towards your success. But when you face people who can only see what you lack or shouldn’t be able to do it’s just the Sanballat & Tobiah in them getting testy. Pull a Nehemiah!! Stay on the wall! Lean more on God & those He’s assigned to open doors on your behalf. Your work is critical to the body’s survival ♥ {Book of Nehemiah}read it 

// Moving into the New Year…//

Not every person we leave behind or who walks away is evil or outside of God’s will. Sometimes we just have a different road to travel or another field to tend. Other times God needs to replant us somewhere else so that the seeds He planted can bloom in the proper environment. It doesn’t make them chaff it just may mean they are more obedient, and pliable to God than to man; trusting His direction over man’s preferences. We have all been welcomed and rejected, had others make assumptions & judgments and done the same to others. There is no greater change than the change in the way we see and treat others. When we receive the same assessment about our personality or actions more than once from different people, stop and consider the reasons. Does that really make them ALL haters? Perhaps we should take stock instead of looking for a reason to reject it. Remember, God often gives tough messages to those who ask to hear Him (not always roses & praise). Let’s learn to be realistic about where we are, who we are and whose we are. Wanting to grow by leaps & bounds is great, but most change happens when we make the commitment & continue to take small steps forward. Count your victories in the steps you take toward the changes you wish to make. God Bless, PLEASE be careful tonight and make 2012 your year of promise. ♥

// A REAL relationship requires us to question God//

What are real relationships made of? What is the measure of a truly sincere and healthy relationship? Is a relationship defined by how much people agree on or on how we disagree? The tests of strength for any relationship is during the times of discontent. The events when we are most difficult to understand, or hardest to live around. Yet of all the relationships we have as Christians we often refuse to admit that the same thing must occur in our relationship with our Creator. We don’t dare blame a negative circumstance on God, because that is contrary to our view of a loving and benevolent Father. Yet did not our own parents chasten us? Aren’t our worst disagreements with the people we love the most? Weren’t there times we were angry with them, not understanding why they would seemingly try to “ruin” our lives? Yet, underneath it all we knew that somehow they still loved us. The relationships generally survived the tumultuous times and perhaps even grew stronger.

This is the discussion in Chapter three of The Message of the Psalms, by Walter Brueggermann. (Surprisingly?)I struggle a lot less with the subject matter of questioning God. I think because I have often felt frustration with various situations in my own life; especially when no explanation for the events seem evident. Unfortunately, early in my walk, we were often admonished by friends and elders that we have ‘no right’ to question the ways of God. Yet, in the Bible, those with the closest relationship with the Lord, often not only questioned God, they even begged Him to let them give up! God did not condemn or ridicule them in their frailest moments. Instead God responds softly, encourages and strengthens. God is not the one who is thin skinned…We are! My mantra for couples has been if couple never argues or disagrees with each other, then one or both of  are them are liars! To me the concept of a continual euphoria in my relationship with anybody is not just unrealistic, it is an outright lie! This lie is used to trap us in a superficial defeated relationship with the only One who has the power to make right everything we see wrong. 

Original Scripture References: Job 30:26-31, Amos 5:18-20

Personal Study Reference: 1Kings 19