DIFFICULTIES

FEAR & DISCOURAGEMENT

Boyd Bailey and his "Wisdom Hunters" online devotionals has had a significant impact on my life. His posts are truly filled with wisdom and solid, practical advice. I am constantly amazed at the remarkable relevance that his posts have for the circumstances of my life, divinely inspired and directed I believe. I submit below yet another of his posts received recently and which was and is so pertinent to where I find myself. I therefore acknowledge Boyd and his "Wisdom Hunters" devotionals in full for the post below.

Fear discourages. It discourages you from obedience to God. It discourages you from trusting God. It discourages you from enjoying God’s blessing. Fear is the great discourager. Discouragement resides in the back pocket of fear. They thrive on one another. You cannot have one without the other.

Your fear will lead you to discouragement, and your discouragement will lead you to fear. It is a vicious cycle of discontentment. The fearful love to recruit others to their side. Somehow this justifies their fearfulness. The fearful people in your life are normally the loudest. Their fears drive them to spread fear like wildfire. They tend to whip others into a fearful frenzy.

However, before you join their bandwagon of bad reports, check out their story. Make sure the facts support their fear. Indeed, fear is one of Satan’s most effective strategies. He is a promoter of fear. His goal is to preoccupy you in fear so that you do not face the realities of God’s peace and protection. God is with you. There is no need to fear.

In fact, if you continue in your fears, you are rebelling against the Lord. Your chronic state of fear is closing God out of your circumstances. God cannot be boxed out. He is with you whether you acknowledge Him or not. So, rise up from your fearful state and put on your confidence in Christ. His grace is sufficient.

He is working out all things for His purposes. Stay fixed on Him and your fears will subside. Be consumed with Christ and your cares will grow faint without fear. Do not feed fear. Starve it until it shrivels and dies. God has given you this vision. It is His gift to you. It is yours for the taking. Do not be discouraged over the timing of its culmination.

Your God-given vision may be dormant for now, but a dormant vision is not a dead vision. You may be experiencing a momentary pause for the sake of preparation. There are other people and resources that need cultivation and development. Your own maturity and capacity for responsibility needs expansion.

It is now that God is preparing you to handle the next steps of His vision for your life. Use this time of uncertainty to grow your faith and to drown your fears. There are two choices that invite you to decide daily. One is fear and the other is faith. Faith will trump fear if you let it. Faith is the heat that melts the cold, icy grip of fear. Faith in God frees you from the inertia of fear.

Fear discourages. Faith encourages. Fear flees. Faith stays. Fear gives up. Faith digs in. Fear questions. Faith trusts. Fear sees obstacles. Faith sees opportunities. Fear weakens. Faith strengthens. Use this test of your faith to go deeper with Christ. Untested faith weakens, but tested faith strengthens. Be encouraged. Fear is overrated. Faith in Christ is underrated. He is your confidence. In the face of fear He can be trusted!

NO EXCUSES!

PEACEFUL TRUST

“You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord, is the Rock eternal. Isaiah 26:3-4 

Peace and trust are best friends. Normally we do not see one, without the other. Where peace resides trust is close by, and where trust abounds there is peace. Their goal is to stamp out fear and doubt. The mind can play tricks on us. We can talk ourselves into almost anything, but the mind is God’s gateway to shape wise beliefs and right behaviors.

Our mind can cause us to well up with courage, because our focus is on God. Or, our mind can cause us to wilt in the face of adversity, because our focus is on our circumstances. Peace melts away in the heat of distrust and trust shutters in the face of fear. So, as we trust the Lord, He gives us peace that passes all understanding. Trust leads to peace. 

 “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:17). 

Thus, fill your mind with the truth of God and let it lodge in your unconsciousness. Truth releases peace and trust when you are pressured. Your mind is a school for study, so make sure your faculty members flow from the character of God. If you are preoccupied with the faulty teachers of fear and pride you will wallow in sideways energy of worry. What you think about Christ’s capabilities determines your level of peace and trust.

Your thoughts, perceptions, emotions, will, memory and imagination are all wrapped up in your human consciousness called the mind. This is why your mind is like the rudder of your life. Wherever your mind takes you, your behavior will follow.

“For as he thinks in his heart, so is he…” (Proverbs 23:7 NKJV).

If thoughts take you toward the rocks of fear, you will act fearful. If they take you toward the shore of peace, you will act calm.  But, a mind, latched onto the Lord, trusts Him when circumstances beg for you to cower in fear. Thus, keep your perspective on the horizon of heaven. Like a ship cascading through the open sea, you have the wind of the Holy Spirit moving you forward, with the compass of truth leading you toward the ultimate destination of God’s will.

Make peace and trust a staple of your spiritual diet, as they nourish your soul like food and water invigorates your body. Like a security detail, they will escort you through good and bad times. They will protect you from lashing out in anger when you have been deeply hurt. A steadfast mind is one that stays focused on Jesus and His expectations.

Cultivate your brain for more creative ways to apply His peace and trust. Do not analyze God out of the equation. Rather, draw Him into your conclusions. A steadfast mind on the Lord will erupt like a volcano in perfect peace. Trust Him today and enjoy the lava of His hot love and His warm embrace. A peaceful trust comes from our perfect God!

Jesus said, "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

With acknowledgement: Boyd Bailey who is the author of Wisdom Hunters daily devotionals

Passion!

IF YOUR SAILS AREN'T FILLED WITH PASSION,

YOUR SHIP WILL NEVER LEAVE PORT.

(Obie Oberholzer)

Marshmellows in the Wilderness!

The wilderness is one of my favourite places. It's spacious wildness provides solitude and sensory richness beyond words. It's a place of unique spiritual connection with the bush and its inhabitants and, through this connection, to worship the Creator of such magnificence. We all need wilderness experiences, a stripping bare of the soul and times of introspection and reassessment far away from the bustle of life in the fast lane.

Life has wilderness experiences that are not of our choosing! They are thrust upon us and our comfortable worlds like unwelcome intruders. How we handle these times depends largely on our attitude and our belief system. For me, as a child of God and my loving Father, it's not about survival skills...hanging in by the skin of your teeth...barely coping. It is rather about abundant living...restoring all that is of lasting value...digging deep creatively...greater reliance...greater dependency on our Father who knows us more intimately than anyone else. It's truly living life to the full, on the edge yes, but step by step trusting in His perfect timing and living in excited anticipation of the next part of the trail. Scary? Yes of course! Desperate? To be honest... many moments of desperate cries for understanding. Abandoned? Never!

There are times when we don't see any rhyme in our life. That's because you're in the middle of the verse. If you're in circumstances that you don't understand, you may be just two words away from a rhyme. Only you can't see that right now.

We will continue to react out of self-pity and negativity when life dishes up lemons until we realise the one all-important truth: If my life is truly under the control of the Almighty God, then my future is in His hands and He most definitely has a plan. And whatever "setback" I face is part of that plan!

Failures are not final. God's plan is bigger than our failures. Our failures are not bigger than His plan! If you are seeking Him, you are not on the shelf, and your best days are not behind you. The best days are ahead of you. Your life is not futile.

When you are in the depths, and the pressure of hopelessness and despair is crushing you, there are four things you must do to make sense out of your life:

• You cry out
• You wait
• You watch
• You hope

Waiting is tough! It goes against our nature. But waiting is a big part of life on the trail that winds through the years. The problem with waiting is that when we wait, we think that nothing is happening. The truth is that if we are waiting on God, all kinds of things are happening. We just can't see what He's doing because we're submerged in the depths.

When you're in the depths and waiting,, don't forget to watch for the goodness of God.
When you're in over your head, you're going to fight hopelessness now and then. The only way to beat it is to immerse yourself in the Word of God.....allow His promises, encouragement and hope to lift you and provide new strength and perspective. Only the Word of God can fill your tank with the daily supply of high-octane hope that will keep you going as you wait for God to work and bring you out of the depths.

If you're never in the depths, you can never find the pearls!....When you surface  from the depths, you won't be empty-handed. God has something for you in the depths that you never could find on the surface.

Faith is a refusal to panic!

When those feelings of anxiety and fear suddently have us in their grip, we can remember that faith is a refusal to panic. Whatever the situation, no matter how deep or threatening it is, I don't have to panic because I know that the Shepherd has everything under His complete control. Knowing that is the antidote to panic.

Are you resting, or are you panicking? Are you worshiping, or are you worrying? You can't worship and worry at the same time. The antidote to worry is worship of the Great Shepherd. Worship always brings rest and refreshment.

With acknowledgment to Steve Farrar and his book "Gettin' There" 

Creating yourself