Temper tantrums, Vengeance and God

How amazing is God? This amazing!!

He takes arrogant, openly rebellious, messed-up, broken, weird, quirky and imperfect people like me and uses then to accomplish his purposes.

Just recently I was registrar for a men's weekend retreat come convention in a little place about an hours drive from my home.

Being Registrar can be very stressful and seeing as how it was my second time round in the job I went into with my eyes open. I certainly don't mean to generalise but  it can be quite humorous working with a bunch of men, so unlike the very organised womanhood I have had the privilege to work with on previous occasions.

With men it is an entirely different situation, I received application forms with no payment - I received payment with no application form and had no idea who it was from - I had guys ringing me promising they would come but couldn't afford the asking price and me doing deals. I had other guys determined to come and then at the last moment pulling out and vice versa with guys turning up who I had no idea was coming at all.

Overall it was just a bit of laugh really and we all got there in the end - with God working miracles at every turn.

Dealing with the convention site was altogether another story - the volunteer person had taken a HUGE dose of rude pills and became a really hard person to deal with. The guys themselves were more than happy to come along but the person involved made my life as registrar a bit miserable to say the least.

That's when my temper tantrums, and feeling of vengeance reared their heads and I found myself fuming and planning all sorts of counter attacks - I found myself taking the same rude pills as my friend at the convention centre yet God worked in my life in spectacular and awesome ways.

The fact that God is able to work despite our flaws doesn't men we should adopt a "no big deal" view of sin.

I was certainly humbled at the weekend when God drew my attention to my behaviour and the could-have-been consequences of my actions. If I had had my way there would have been a 'show-down' of sorts with the booking clerk - pistols at dawn would have been nothing compared to what I had in mind.

But God had other plans for me!

Dragging me into his love and compassion, his patience and long-suffering made me focus more on His power and grace and far less on my own short-comings. temper and calls for vengeance, which were running rampant through my head most of the weekend away.

I don't know about you but I want to be a strong person, able to handle anything, to be a brick and not show any weaknesses at all. But deep down I know it's all an act.

Only God can handle everything. What is more amazing is that when we are really pushing it - our nerves and inner beings cry out for vengeance and when we are really under the gun and we feel we have no resources left, God is there - He is PURE STRENGTH with a HUGE capital "S"

I had to come to a VERY big decision over that weekend - when everything was crying out to me in the midst of my temper tantrum  to get back at this person, after all look what they said and did??

A decision that made me take a long hard look at how I was reacting - did I prefer to call my own shots? Was I confident in my own strength? Was I prepared to really hand it over to God?

I'm praising God that I was spared not only the embarrassment of maybe making a scene and ruining the weekend for myself but I could have stopped the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of some of the men attending the weekend.

How about you? Are you letting your temper run away with you?Are you letting your past failures dictate to you on how you are reacting to your present situations?

One of the things I learned the hard way over this weekend was not to let my weakness, bad temper and feeling of vengeance interfere with the work God wanted to do in and through me.

In 2 Corinthians 12: 9 it says "God's power is made perfect in our weakness" something that I learned a lot of over that weekend and something I hope to take on board as I try to keep walking in His footsteps.

Let God replace your weaknesses and inabilities today and with His divine power resolve in your own heart to move powerfully ahead with Jesus by your side. This is a mighty promise to men of faith by God Himself.

Even when we are weak we can be strong in Jesus.

Two left feet? Keep on dancing

Listening just recently to the Aussie group "For King and Country", I was again hit by the magnitude of what following Jesus and indeed Christianity is all about. Loved their song LONG LIVE and listening, was taken again on just how important it is to keep on following and pressing on toward the goal that was given to us when we became one with Christ.

I have included the link to their song and I guess you will work out for yourselves exactly what I mean. In short, what I took out of that song is just keep pressing on with Jesus.

No matter what is happening in our lives we can still be followers of Jesus and praising His name through the most horrendous times in our lives. This is something, as Christians, we can do to keep in touch with our Lord and Saviour

When those dreams of ours come crashing down and we feel we are really up against it and our hopes for the future are shattered by some unexpected turn of events we can, so often, be ready to just throw in the towel and give up.

Often in times like this our faith is tested beyond what we even thought possible. It is then that we may stop praising God and stop worshipping with other believers. We can exclude ourselves and get to the point of believing that we are not worthy or that God doesn't care about our own personal situations.

In the Bible in Hosea 6:3 he implores us to do just this - I love the way the New English version says it.
"Let us acknowledge the Lord; let us PRESS ON to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth."

YES! He does know, he does understand and he pleads with us to just keep going ~ through our doubts, through our trials, through our uncertainty and through our grief.

Appearances can be deceiving. Have you ever seen the morning fog hanging low in a valley? It may look impressive, but in a few hours in the sun, will make it completely disappear.

The same can sometimes be true for us. It's easy to appear devoted to God on Sundays, but what happens during the rest of the week when we face temptations, doubts and struggles?

Do we fade away like the fog or will we have the encouragement and support of Christian friends? We actually should start being that kind of friend to others and we may find the reciprocal support we are indeed looking for ourselves.

Often we do need a great big dose of courage and boldness to keep following Jesus - He himself said it wasn't going to be easy following after Him. We need to count the cost of our discipleship before we embark on the journey of our lifetime. YES! Often it will cost us perseverance and energy, dignity and even stubbornness to keep following our Lord, but with Jesus as our example we can do this.

When Stephen was being stoned to death for his faith in Christ, what did he do? He looked to heaven - he didn't backpedal, throw his hands in the air and plead innocence. I'm sure he could have and walked away without a scratch.  He didn't try to soften the blow that was coming.

Stephen looked beyond his immediate circumstances to what lay ahead. That's what gave him courage to endure.

When our moment of truth comes, when the waves that crash upon us are SO HUGE that we really can't see how we could possibly get over this one, will we be able to face it with the courage and faithfulness of Stephen?

Recently a dear friend of mine passed away with Motor Neurone Disease. Better known in some countries as Lou Gehrig's Disease. David was such a great friend, his faith was amazing and he never gave up. he faced his death boldly and courageously knowing that he was in the safe hands of the Father.

He wrote a book of his journey through MND called COMING TO LIFE. At the time of writing he could barely move and wrote most of it with his left ring finger, the only one that would work with some dexterity, pounding away at his computer. I was so privileged to be part of his life through his journey and I learnt so much of what it actually MEANT to REALLY follow Christ.

He, like so many others, faced his problems with boldness and courage. Sure he had his doubts, his tribulations and his failings but he PRESSED on with his Lord and Jesus never left his side through it all.

Along with the title of his book, he included that this "was a journey of emotional and spiritual awakening through terminal illness." David faced his trial and pressed on with his Lord. Maybe he stumbled and fell many times BUT he kept going. Like Stephen he saw the goal and he was striven hard to make it to the finish line.

So where does that leave us? I titled this blog as TWO LEFT FEET? KEEP ON DANCING. That's exactly how we should be travelling with God - even though we may often think we are overwhelmed by life and we couldn't possibly go on - we can! Even with our two left feet we can still dance and keep pressing on to the conclusion holding tightly onto Jesus our Lord and God.

Here is the link performed by fellow Aussies  FOR KING AND COUNTRY called Long Live - hope and trust it touches your heart as it did mine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7LT3vJQEmQ

God bless you this week as you press on with Jesus.