The Gift of Triage, Healing, and Recovery!

 We all know individuals who stubbornly hold onto unhealthy patterns.  The thing about those unhealthy patterns is not only do they negatively impact the individual holding to the patterns, but they also negatively impact those around them.  

While God's love is unlimited, His grace is limited, as we discover by reading Romans.  In a unique dynamic of Love, we learn that He will turn people over to their persistent, unhealthy patterns (ie their gods).

Arguably the greatest move of Love is free-will.  

YOU get to choose the life you live; likewise, so do those around you.  

I have spent the past year in triage, healing, and recovery from the results of decisions people close to me had every right to make.  

But, again, likewise, I had the choice to detach from them or continue my close walk alongside the unhealthy patterns of others.

Every day, people self destruct.  Addictions, debt, pride, fear  - to name a few destructive patterns - cripple so much of the population.  Christians and non-Christians alike. Surely, you know that transformation is a completely separate process than salvation.  Both processes are choices we make.  We can align with one or both or neither.  The decisions we make concerning both are entirely ours to make.  

While you cannot control the decisions of those around you, you can  - and greater still - are expected to control yours and choose wisely. 

I have said this time and again:  wise stewardship starts with you; monitoring your thoughts and behaviors minute by minute towards those that are honoring and pleasing to God. 

Let's carefully read God's words in Deuteronomy 30, as if we were reading them for the first time:

"See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil.  IF you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in HIS ways, and by keeping HIS commandments and HIS statutes and HIS rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.  BUT if your heart turns away, and you elect to not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods (appetites/drives)  and serve them, I declare to you , that you WILL perish.  You WILL NOT live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess.  I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.  THEREFORE, choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying His voice and holding FAST to Him, for He is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them."

How many parents reading this desperately want their children following God, yet they themselves serve their flesh daily?  Remember, while people are responsible for their own lives, our individual choices and their impact do not occur in a bubble. They have their impact on those around us for the good or the bad.  Today's lingo is "influencers".  The truth is we are ALL influencers to those around us, whether we want to be or not!  Our actions affect those around us. Whether they are a positive or negative influence depends on if we are actively choosing what brings life or death into our individual life.   Understand this clearly: You will NOT have a positive impact on others while making negative personal choices.  

At the core to the passage above is God's LOVE for His creation.  Who do we think we are to think we know best?  Does a toddler know what is best?  Of course not.  This is why Paul edified us to GROW UP.  A mature adult chooses what is healthy over what is not.  They put away their foolish desires for taking up what will enhance their life, and an additional by-product - enhance the lives of those around them!

Learn this core precept:  

God's desires for you come from a place of love, 

not restriction!  

If you are diligent to nurture this mental script daily, it will change your daily choices, and thus your life's outcome!

Praising Him for enveloping my life;  for His wisdom, for His leadership, for His healing!

Godspeed! 🤍

The Gift of God's Thumb

I awoke to a New Year.....2025, what will it bring my way?   

I sat with the Lord in the early morning hours and soon began sensing His thumb. 

One of my personal goals was to not bring the past into 2025.  Let me be more specific; it was to not bring the negatives from the past into 2025. 

It was an honorable goal before the Lord. As a matter of fact, this was my petition before the Lord for the entire month of December.  

It wasn't long sitting with the Lord before I realized what He was highlighting in me that aligned with this personal goal: cynicism.   

Cynicism is the propensity to distrust others and their motives. 

If the past three decades trained me in anything, it's this. 

But cynicism is a cancer in the soul.  It eats away at true faith, true hope. And it is terrifyingly subtle. 

To distrust is to inherently dislike, and if we are not careful, we will find the object of our dislike to be humanity itself; the very object that Christ came to seek and save.  

How can we walk in union with Him if we dislike what He loved unto death?  

Now, be careful here so as to not misunderstand me. I am not encouraging anyone to stay in close proximity to damaging individuals, but the caution comes when we overlay the negative experiences of one relationship upon all relationships. It is a natural tendency that must be countered in God's power and with His wisdom.  

If we are not careful, our negative experiences subtly replace our trust in God FOR life's experiential knowledge. I don't know about you, but I never want to abide in the space where life's experiences have superseded my trust in my Creator such that I lean more into them than Him!

I sat with Him, realizing the blessing of His thumb. What He applies His thumb to in our life, He heals IF we confess, acknowledge, and release into His hands, our Healer's hands.  

I acknowledged the truth of what He was pointing out, and I found myself with such overwhelming gratitude concerning the awareness that He was intent on removing cynicism from my life.  It will be a walking out of, to be certain; a decision to not be immediately suspicious of people's motives. Understand, I cannot say I trust Him, while at the same time, guarding my heart and being all but misanthropic.  

This is all apart of His command to "turtle no more", (linked here) to be restored as a fully functioning believer who is planted upon a solid, non-contradicting foundation.  

I have to acknowledge my past had led to a foundation with cracks in it; where action didn't always align with belief nor belief with action. I don't want that to be the case moving forward.   In fact, it can't be the case moving forward if I am to walk in all that God has stored up for me.  

God's thumb is indeed a gift because with it comes healing to my fractured soul and greater freedom in His spirit.  

May you, too, sit with Him. What area of your own life do you sense Him putting His thumb on? 

Resist bristling to the conviction, and understand liberation is a mere breath away in the utterance of two simple, yet powerful words: Yes, Lord.

Godspeed! 🤍