Author Archives: Seeking Peace

Clarity

28 Tuesday May 2013

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“The problem with clarity is you might not like what you see.” – Ryan Morrison

My friend spoke these words this weekend and they have stuck with me.  I always want to see the picture more clearly thinking it will bring understanding and insight.  While that is true, I seldom think I might not like what I see; that seeing the truth may call for changes, major changes, even hard changes.  I want clarity when it brings me new hope and new paths full of roses and sunshine.  I am not as big a fan of clarity when it helps bring light to the dark I didn’t have to look at before.

Seeing God with more clarity is a double edged sword.  I get to see the Creator and Savior of all, the LORD sitting on a throne shining more brightly than I can begin to imagine right now.  And in this moment, I also can see the areas where God wants to keep molding, shaping, chiseling to remake me into His image.  In the long run (which is where my focus really needs to be), the molding and re-shaping will make me stronger, more refined but there may be pain in the making.

It is in these moment of clarity I get to choose what I want – comfort or joy.  Comfort for today or joy for the days to come.  With clarity, I can see where I am and I can see where I am headed.  What I fail to realize is that even in the comfort I think I might have today, there is worry, fear, trepidation about what might happen next.  In looking to the future, I can see the journey has turns, bumps and hills to climb but I can appreciate, if not enjoy, those obstacles knowing there is great beauty and peace ahead.

Grace and peace.

Praying For What?

16 Thursday May 2013

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There are some good things that come with not having a job.  One, people I meet with buy my lunch most of the time even though I asked for the meeting.  Two, I get some Godly advice.  (The downsides are that I am going to need to buy a lot of lunches when I get a job and some advice is less than Godly, even depressing at times.)  That said, I met a guy for coffee the other day.  It was our first time meeting.  He was a friend of a very good friend and a strong believer.  I told him about my times of depression, of panic, of wondering if God was on the journey with me and was going to answer my prayers in a positive way.  Here was the response…

“You can pray very hard for what you want and God will answer your prayers.  Or, you can pray very hard for God’s perfect will to be done in His timing and God will answer your prayers.  Which prayer do you want answered?”

BAM! WHAP! KA-ZOWEE!

I want God’s perfect will answered in His perfect timing.  Oh, I may not keep encouraging Him to advance His perfect answer a little faster but I rather it be God’s design than mine.  I’ve seen what I can do with life…I think I will prefer God’s plan for my coming days.

Grace and peace.

The Who

14 Tuesday May 2013

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Who are you?  Great lines to a song.  Great question for life.  It is something that I have asked myself many times and many times found myself trying to be someone that someone else wanted me to be.  I’ve been the good boy who didn’t talk too much.  I’ve been the good boy who was the youth group leader.  I was the good student.  I was the accountant.  I was the good Christian following all the rules.  I was the person others told me I needed to be or should be…but I usually wasn’t myself.

I have heard people wonder why teenagers were drawn to alcohol and drugs. Or, why are adults drawn to alcohol and drugs?  What would possess them to ruin their life and, potentially, hurt others in the process?  I think the answer in the most simple form is that they are not happy with who they are so they are either trying to be someone else or just trying to forget who they are for a little bit.

There are people today who think I have lost my mind.  I have made some decisions that don’t fit the norm and, looking at it from one angle, have put me in a precarious position financially.  Yet, I have a strong sense of peace as I think about who I am and what I want to do with the rest of my life.  I have a strong faith that God will provide all I need.  Sure, He isn’t working on my time frame but I was reminded the other day that God’s time frame is perfect, mine probably isn’t.

The last few years have allowed me to explore who I am and to begin finding contentment with the answers.  It is restructuring my faith.  It is restructuring my financial condition.  It is restructuring how I see others.  It is restructuring what is truly important to me.  And it is giving me more internal peace than I’ve ever known.

C.S. Lewis is quoted as saying, “Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.”  I am trusting and I am praying that the hardships I go through today while learning who I am and living my life more in line with who God created me to be will lead me to an extraordinary destiny.  I pray that for my friends too.

Grace and peace.

Weekend Recovery

13 Monday May 2013

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What a weekend.  My daughter came home from college and I graduated from college.

It’s so good to see my children.  They bless me in so many ways and I really can’t get enough time with them.  Every time they are with me I wish we had more time, had talked about more things.  I worry that I don’t always say the things I need to say, to go as deep as I need to go, to teach them what I need to teach them.  On the other hand, there is only so far a dad can go without an open invitation.  I hope my life, the highs and the lows, are teaching them about patience, steadfastness and the ability to get back up when you’ve been knocked down – whether by your own mistakes or the actions of someone else.

I am a Master!  I graduated with a Master of Arts in Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation.  I have not created world peace yet but it’s on my list of things to do.

Now I’m back to consulting work, job hunting and thinking about how to position a new blog, a potential book and a new life journey.  It’s good to have something to do.  Along with that, I keep trying to understand God and His work in my life.  I’m trying to better understand patience, hope, hearing God and when I am supposed to act and when I am supposed to be still.  If I can figure all that out, I’m going to be in a really good place.  I continue in prayer that He will make His paths clear with neon lights, that I will not be able to escape the sound of His voice in whatever form I need to hear it and that He will put me on the right path, soon, so that I can be active and fulfilled in the work He has planned for me.

Grace and peace.

The Difficulty of Silence

09 Thursday May 2013

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I’ve wrestled with the silence of God for awhile.  I have wrestled with it through a divorce.  I am wrestling with it through a job search.  It’s been a lot of years with a lot of silence.  I don’t understand.

Today I was reading through the blog of a man I don’t know.  What I do know is that he just lost his wife and he has friends who love him, hurt with him and mourn with him.  And I came across the following post.  I hope he hears God through this dark time.

I hope I hear God soon.

http://keithbrenton.com/2013/04/16/when-god-is-silent/

Grace and peace.

What Is God Up To?

08 Wednesday May 2013

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I want to be a peacemaker.  On Saturday I will graduate with a Master of Arts in Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation.  It is something I have worked hard at doing well and worked hard to receive and maybe the greatest thing I have done related to the passion of my heart.  And my life is full of turmoil.

I have walked hard roads.  Self-imposed at times.  As a victim of circumstances at times.  Recently I have suffered through a divorce that has been devastation at best, debilitating at worst.  Currently I am technically unemployed and watching my bank account drop (I have had some consulting works that keeps me floating).  Turmoil.

I was talking with a friend today who was sharing the Acts 16 story of Paul and Silas sharing the gospel and winding up in jail, flogged but still singing and praising God.  That’s when a thought struck me.  Does God want me to understand turmoil so I can better understand God’s peace?  To be a peacemaker, does God want me to understand the absence of peace or, at least, the attacks against peace?

Maybe so.  Maybe He has something planned for me that will rock my socks, that will allow me to live a life of passion and significance using what I am learning today in what seems like a walk through the wilderness.

I don’t know the plan.  I don’t know the time.  I am trusting God does and it will all fall together and the exact right time.  Then I will say, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

Grace and peace.

Monday Starts It All Over Again

06 Monday May 2013

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Monday starts the workweek for most people.  Some have schedules that work on different days.  Some don’t currently have jobs.  I digress.  For most people, Monday starts the week and is often viewed as a “bad” day.  Why not a good day though?  Why not a day for a fresh start?  Why not a day to begin again?  To improve?  Monday is just like any other day.  It will be as good as I want it to be, the choice is mine.

I’m going to share another blog post I ran across.  It’s a good thought on how to start the week, how to start everyday really and how to do it with courage.  It’s not always easy to overcome the obstacles I see and imagine.  In fact, it’s a challenge.  I seem like I have to flip a 750 pound tire…

http://everydaypowerblog.com/2013/05/05/3-things-i-learned-from-flipping-over-a-750lb-tire/

Grace and peace.

It’s Confusing Out There

02 Thursday May 2013

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Tim Tebow is berated for his Christian beliefs and planning to speak at a church that speaks out against homosexuality.

Jason Collins is praised as courageous and a hero for publicly saying he is homosexual.

Those who are supposed to be so inclusive, the GLBT community, or very inclusive to those who agree with them and profit from them.  They are pretty exclusive when it comes to Christians who simply state their belief of what the Bible says.

Then there are Christians bashing those who call Collins courageous.  Well, he is.  It’s hard to admit a secret.  I have had to admit some secrets and it was VERY hard.  They were secrets that disappointed some.  That played a role in destroying a family.  That today has some Christians still talking about me and treating me like a lesser human.  Collins admission isn’t that much different other than he is admitting it in a society where many will praise him for his action.  Still, it takes courage.

It seems what many from both sides are missing is love.  Fortunately, I have had many, many people who have surrounded me with love.  My life is full of pain but it is modified by the people who are living out the call of Christ to love me.  Christ-followers need to love Collins and the GLBT community.  Those are all children of God who are under the same attacker as I am.  The GLBT community needs to love those who disagree with them and who want to love them even though we think their lifestyle is in opposition to God’s desire.  We all have desires that tempt us.  God doesn’t want me to have sex with a woman I’m not married to just because I think I love her anymore than he wants two people of the same sex having sex because they think that is who they love.

I do believe this…our society will reap what it sows.  When we celebrate the things that are not from God and when we celebrate the things we have decided to OK in God’s image, we will get what we are asking for.

Please Lord, open our eyes and our hearts to your desire.  Fill us with love that we may overflow with it to all we meet.  Our world doesn’t need more rules, just more of you.  We don’t need more legislation, just more of you.  We don’t need more churches or programs, just more of you.  Lord, lead us to yearn for more of you.

Grace and peace.

Quotes

01 Wednesday May 2013

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I’ve read a couple of things yesterday that I want to post and have to go back to.

“The hardest thing in the world is to be where we are.” – Rowan Williams 

How true is this?  I want to be somewhere else most of the time.  When I had a job, I wanted to be somewhere else.  Now that I’m looking for a job, I want to be somewhere else.  I’m learning a lot about living in the present moment…and APPRECIATING the present moment for what it is and what God wants to reveal in it.  It reminds me of something a friend said to me not long ago, “the grass is greenest where we water it.”

I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;
    apart from you I have no good thing.” – Psalms 16:2 

All that I have can disappear in a flash.  My house.  My stuff.  My relationships.  Oh, how I fear losing those things but what do they mean if I’m not walking with God in this present moment?  My struggle today is that I feel like I am putting my full trust and faith in God and may still end up losing some of these things but they are not important in the long term.  My relationship and faith in God is, however.

“This is where you are meant to live – in the present; it is the place where I always await you.  Awareness of your inadequacy is a rich blessing, training you to rely wholeheartedly on Me.” – Jesus Calling by Sarah Young 

Interesting that I read this on the same day I was reading Psalms 16.  Does God want me to get something through my head?  The challenge is that I believe I am living more and more in that dependency but I keep expecting to see answers to my prayers in that living.  Maybe I’m not fully dependent yet?  Or maybe I’m still in training.  I don’t know.  What I do know is that I want to live more like a disciple of Christ but, man, it is hard for me to do much of the time.

“Rejection is the most painful wound you will ever receive because it is the most painful wound God ever experienced.” ~Robert Morris -Gateway Church

Rejection.  Wow.  Rejection by employers.  Rejection by friends.  Rejection by spouses.  Rejection of ideas and hopes and dreams.  I like to tell myself I handle rejection well but I just bottle it up and put it on a shelf.  Then, when a situation comes up that reminds me of the old wound, I go open the bottle and drink from it so I can build walls and protect myself from the possibility of more rejection.  I’m so thankful God doesn’t deal with rejection like I do.  I pray I can begin to deal with rejection more like God does.

I’m learning to live a different life.  I’m learning to see things differently.  I wish I knew where it was all headed.  I’m impatient.  An old friend, Jerry Meade, once told me that God is slow…at least in our version of time.  One more thing for me to accept and work out in my own life.  Be patient.  Have faith.  Quit trying to fit God in my box of how things should look.  Tough stuff.  And yet, hope and faith are all I have right now.  All I have is hope in Him and His power to do great things through me.  Let that be enough for today.

Another friend gave me one of those rubber bracelets once that said “MY GOD IS BIG ENOUGH.”  I wish I still had that bracelet.  Instead, I will try to keep that thought in my head all day today.

Grace and peace.