The next session on being a spiritual sacrifice which I listened to on my damp trot around the golf course took all my thinking a step further. Being in the wind and rain really seems to concentrate the mind. It’s the teaching that you have to give up all that’s you if you want to find out what is God’s will. No I don’t mean chucking in the day job. It’s a surrender, allowing him to correct our course, even as far as putting your shopping trolley back in the right place and waiting patiently in traffic!
It’s a me being prepared to give up writing -though I have said to him that while he gets me sorted I’ll go on other wise I’ll go spare with boredom! being open to what ever he has for me. I’ve been so aware since coming into our new fellowship that I’m just gagging to do more than the children’s ministry but not necessarily being in charge. I’ve changed over the past few years to being quite happy to being told what to do (yikes).
Of course, there’s fourteen years of frustration in me as well after the living in the spiritual desert of Austria!
I lay it all aside and however he spells this out to me, whenever he considers I’m usable, I’m at peace for that time
Having spent the summer struggling with Erna and stress at the Burg and having finally got the point God was making to me about forgiveness and living in peace (Thanks Andrew Wommack and Joyce Meyer too!) , and knowing that at in one sense at least I’m on the right path, attack was perhaps inevitable. To quote, I may have not got there but I’m moving on and I’m not where I was, and praising God for it. So was it God using a Christian to test me or that other being?- really it doesn’t matter because God has the glory. Enough blither, I’ll begin.
When we first saw our cellar, we were told it as ours and that we allowed our neighbour to share it. each flat has its own space along with areas in the loft. It had electricity in it to. As we got to know Paggy -who as usual had an axe to grind with her over something to do with his mother, insisted the cellar was all ours and we should kick her out. He even cut the electricity off because it was actually on his meter, he had installed it as a favour to the Gautsches, the previous owners of our flat. We didn’t see it as a problem as we could use a torch. Our neighbour insisted that the Council or the Gemeinde had divided the space up, and so that all was equal, they gave her this share, but we don’t know if this was before or after the Gautsches bought the flat. We just left the issue. We do use the cellar to store our root vegetables, marrows, apples, jam and geraniums.
Then a couple of weeks ago Paggy said something about our neighbour asking him to reinstate the electricity as she was finding it all too dark (she is 70 odd!) . Then blow me down if yesterday there was an electrician putting in new wiring to the cellar. I’m afraid I lost it. I went and saw her and said, oi (well in German) as far as we’re aware you’re a tenant in our cellar. She got cross and repeated what she had said previously. I calmed a bit but I think what really got me was that she hadn’t said a word and it is our cellar too. She’d been a bit offhand the previous week, and maybe this was the reason, she knew I’d react, or does know it really is our cellar. But if she’d talked to us we’d have shared the costs. Dave and I checked our sale contract and as our German is now better it does actually say Cellar share. I was going out later and saw her from the corner of me eye as I got in the car. Suddenly she came over and shouted something about not looking at her rudely and other things I fortunately didnt understand and we could use the light. So I laughed and apologised and she calmed and I left.
I then realised I had a choice with all this. I could track down more deeds, I could go back to the estate agent, we could have a huge argument and be not speaking to a neighbour. I could endlessly let it go around in my head and let it eat away at me. Or I could let it go, completely, never find out who owns the cellar and have my peace restored. I could see our neighbour’s side. So I did, and immediately the weight lifted and God’s peace filled me. I later bought her an apologetic pressy and we went out together to House Group in our earlier accord. Finished. Trouble is writing this down has brought it all back, darn I’m going to have to put it back at the foot of the cross again, but if what I have written helps just one person, what the heck!
So after all I had been listening to, I was experiencing a renewal. My doubts about the path we’re on here were gone and I now needed to take more steps and explore the way.A teaching of Andrew’s talked about using your imagination to see God’s will and plan, and that positive imagination is HOPE. Together with my renewal of using toungues I decided to battle with that wall.
I had been reading about Jesus being the shepherd (John 10 v 1-7) and how he goes into the sheep pen collects his sheep and then leads them out into pasture, funny I’ve only just understood this picture of practical sheep keeping! So I sat and saw this wall, and could see a brick wall with some trees behind. So I began tearing down bricks, and some had names on them, self, arrogance, family, Erna, horses, disbelief, self pity (I’m good at that!) and I could see them lying on the ground. The wall grew neither smaller or shorter although now 30 brick were on the ground. So I decided to give it another go and went back to reading.
Matthew 7, v 13-14, and John 10, v 7
I don’t need to destroy the wall, I have a gate, Jesus, I just need to find the small and narrow gate in all that undergrowth!
When you have God’s will and you are meeting his in your heart, there’s a peace. It’s difficult to describe and I can only say that by having re found it, I’m now so aware of how I had lost it. I was so eaten away by bitterness at the Erna at work situation and I was causing strife in my mind because I was just letting my damaged pride eat away at me, when we live in strife the devil has a foothold (Thanks Joyce Meyer)
So I’ve been back to praying and reading, and come to a realisation that I need a daily realignment in my thinking and actions. I wanted to care for those at work, even Erna. When she started the ignoring me, I thought (and this didn’t come from me), dear Erna, she is a sister in Christ and I’ll be with her in eternity (HELP!!!!!!) and the following sensation was sweet. Driving up the hill to the Burg one morning after an early shower, the sun caught the rain drops and golden light filtered through, and I was overwhelmed with the beauty of his creation, and was filled with joy. I haven’t had a moment like that for ages.
I’ve been wary of fasting for a while, for those who say that you get closer to God and have new insights. But surely isn’t that just the effect of having low blood sugar and other chemical changes in the blood? This moment in a way proved it to me, I was happily well fed and untired when this happened. I think fasting should be a discipline for the body, God I don’t think loves you more because you’re hungry –someone comment?
For several days following this I was filled with this Holy sweetness and the light around me on the plants and trees gave them a new beauty. The supernatural is so close but we fail to perceive it.
My perceptions changed too, when Edith suggested we work with the disabled people, my heart leapt – mainly because it is financially viable for them which we had thought not. I thought this way was blocked since I left the FCRT, but maybe it was there all along, after all, seeing the Lebenshilfe workstation was one of the key moments in deciding us for here, although I later failed two interviews – my timing not Gods?
I was still yearning my alone time, but began to see the element of self in it. I also had another bout of the unexplained sadness – it during when I was trying to deal with Erna at work and then Edith rang and I snapped at her. Maybe it’s the Holy Spirit being grieved in me. I have felt there’s a contraction in being told not to follow our feelings, but sadness/grief etc are part of them. Maybe its in the sense of knowing.
Holy Spirit has pointed some stuff out to me, and its been a duh, as in Homer Simpson, how could I be so stupid not to see this before type thing, moment quite often lately!
Driving back from the Asylum seekers, I thought well at least I’ve done ‘something’ today, my day has had some worth. Then it was pointed out to me – who’s worth? God doesn’t value your deeds, although faith must have actions, he wont love you more because you’ve done this, he loves you full stop –duh!
Likewise thinking about tithing and I do it but Dave needs to up his bit a bit. Feeling well, I’m getting good at doing this with a generous heart, and loving God. So where is my prosperity? Of course I don’t need to do it for him to love me. Answer, who said it was with money?? Just look at how rich your life it……duh!
And finally. Prayer and worship, I’d grasped that we don’t need intercessors, Mary or the Saints, and that we don’t need to spend hours like hypocrites bending God’s ear with wordy prayers. We need to leave quiet for a reply. We can spend time chatting and worshiping and thanking.
Now the worship bit I’ve always had a problem with. What sort of God has an ego that needs to be smoothed with our pathetic praise? Why does he need us fawning at his feet. It was cleaning the shower rooms I got it. God is love, pure simple love. He wants first from us a reciprocal relationship, where we walk together in the cool of the day. Its like a love affair. When you fall for someone, you want to be with them and you want to give and love. Our father created us to make a pure reciprocal relationship, and we bogged it up. In pure love he died to restore the balance. We can now enjoy the purest, eternal love affair (I’m talking asexual here, both couple love and familial love) with God, and when you love them, you want to be with them and love them back. Eternity and the universe based on the purest form of energy, pure love. Its not egotistical, its love –duh!
So where's the snow? 