Category: peace

‘Sunning Ourselves in the Smiles of God’

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A boy stood on a windy hillside, flying a kite. He continued to release the string of the kite and it went higher and higher until it was completely out of sight. One of his friends walked up and asked how he knew there was still a kite on the other end. He replied. “I know it’s there I feel it tugging on the line.” Like the kite, we can’t see heaven with our eyes, but we can feel it tugging at our souls!

As a person with Bipolar its easier in some ways to think about that place I am journeying to.  Through many cycles of mania and depression I find this present life gets old, and the more I hear about heaven, the more excited I get.  I imagine a life without meds, and the constant monitoring of my moods. This place is going to be good!

 Heaven is described as:

  1. a great reward, Mt 5:11
  2. present suffering not worthy to be compared with future glory, Rom 8:18, 
  3. eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, 2 Cor 4:17,18,
  4. surpassing riches of His grace towards us, Eph 2:7, 
  5. beyond all we could ask for or even think, Eph 3:20.

I sometimes think of my infirmities and pain.  I can’t wait to “shed” this mental illness. 

To be free from it will be one of best thing I can think of.  To take off my depression, like a heavy coat on a warm day. To sit with Jesus in a cool garden with living water, that’s more refreshing than any iced tea. Eternity is my favorite things to think about–

“Where the unveile’d glories of the Deity shall beat full upon us, and we forever sun ourselves in the smiles of God. “

—Ezekiel Hopkins 

I want to encourage you who are struggling now, with depression, anger,  schizophrenia, paranoia, abuse, OCD, addictions, PTSD or Bipolar. There is a day coming for us, when we will forget the agonizing battles that have gone on within us.  I boldly tell you with all the strength I can muster–there is coming the day.  So take hope and journey one more day, thinking of heaven.

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A Full Bucket

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by Alana Dishong

Some people in our lives were really going through it in 2018 and it has been one thing after another, trying to weaken and wear them out.

You may know who they are, and you may be the one with a cat toying with you as a mouse, the devil is roughly playing and enjoying the torment of the wearing down until it’s easy to take them out.

I have had a very rough year and I am not putting my hardships above anyone else. I started to realize over the past two days there is a strategy being used against some people. I am usually sensitive to other’s sufferings but I have been unusually overwhelmed so that I can barely handle my own stuff let alone someone else’s. That is the strategy.

The devil is a Mastermind of strategies and why take out only one when he can affect two, or even three…

While some people in my life are undergoing heavy blows I am being detained elsewhere and put in a hold. You may be facing this too.

We can make excuses for our busyness but the truth is we are called to serve. I had to repent for my mistake and apologize to some people. Allow this to be my apology if I owe it to you.

I had to recognize that I may not be able to everything but I can do something, and it is wrong wording to say “all I can do is pray” when that is probably the most powerful thing we CAN do. No one should be too busy to pray!

I was remembering Paul in prison and how fear and whatever else kept people who could have, and probably even should have, from visiting him in his desperate times at his end.

While I have had a lot of hardship in my year, I began to look at my mom laying in a bed in a nursing home. She didn’t want to be there. I assure you its the last place she would choose to be. She didn’t want to fall, didn’t want to be incapacitated having no ability to use an arm and a leg! She didn’t want to miss her favorite season and the fun of the holiday preparations she enjoys. She didn’t want to lay waiting while people called off work and make a place short-staffed and crabby. She didn’t want to be alone this holiday while others did their merry things…

I see the strategy where my visiting her regularly was an occupying joy to her long lonely days and how my passing out and being sick and weak through this holiday week was in fact being used against her and others who need us.

People need us!
We can’t be so busy with seasonal things or life in general that we forget people. We may have to restructure our priorities when wrapping gifts takes more value than being a gift.

Or when we visit places where many are and there is someone alone…

We may need to be mindful that there are people in desperate need of who we are or something we have and we get detained in busyness and thereby withhold from them.

May this NEW Year bring a structuring of priorities and putting people before things, and needs before wants.

Pour out for others. If your bucket gets empty, go refill and come back. Don’t forget to come back!

God bless what we set our hands to and our awareness there may be someone who needs you more than whatever has you tied up and busy.

Go fill your bucket and readily pour out by serving in order to fulfill the law and…

Love One Another,

Alana

 

 

 

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Real Prayer for “Real” People

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“The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.”

Psalm 145:18

I don’t want to pretend anymore. It’s been a little more than six months ago since I prayed this simple prayer: “Lord, may it be the real me who comes to the real you.”

‘Lead me in your truth and teach me,
    for you are the God of my salvation;
    for you I wait all the day long.’

Psalm 25:5

I have never had a prayer answered so quickly. I moved from delusion and darkness into truth and light in just a brief moment. Thirty years of “christian living” had left me a little befuddled, and I was no longer possessed a vibrant faith. I was worn and tired, and perhaps even disillusioned. I guess I had absorbed a lot of lies. I started to walk carelessly, as if my faith didn’t really matter anymore. Perhaps I was poisoned.

“Lord, may it be the real me who comes to the real you.” This prayer– (more like a heart’s “scream”)– came out of nowhere. As I started to pray I felt a tearing of something inside me, like when the veil was rent in the temple, just like when Jesus died. A desperate cry for truth wrapped itself around my heart. I furiously began to reach for God. I knew I hit something. He had my attention.

I wanted his truth, and no more theology about him. I sought his doctrine well, but not his face. I wanted the real Bryan to come in fellowship with God, and no more masquerades. No more silly pretense. Just the real me, meeting the real God. In a short time things were broken and dislodged within me; years of complacency and cynicism were uprooted. It was kind of like a flash flood in a desert ravine.

Thomas Merton carried this prayer inside his jacket. It should bless:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am  going
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that
I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am
actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that, if I do this, You will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for You are ever with me,
and You will never leave me to face my perils alone.

–Thomas Merton

You must find your own prayer; locate your heart’s cry. Vocalize that with the Holy Spirit’s direction. Merton’s own prayer can become an example of an almost brutal honesty, but it has to become from your own heart. A lot of David’s prayers in Psalms can fuel your search. Find out the truth, and then grab it and don’t let go.

“Lord, may it be the real me who comes to the real you.”

“Teach me your way, O Lord,
    that I may walk in your truth;
    unite my heart to fear your name.”

Psalm 86:11

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