Topic: God things
Charles is helping to begin a ministry for single adults at church, so he asked me to help him lead a Bible study group for them on Sunday mornings. These are singles who are 'median' adults, so he chose a Bible study on stress. Older singles face many challenges like parenting, financial burdens and dealing with crisis like home repairs or illness by themselves, so he thought it would be a meaningful study for them. What I didn't realize is that it would be a meaningful study for me. Yesterday, for an opening activity, we did a stress test. No, not on treadmills, but on paper. We were to circle the stressful life events on the list that have happened in your life in the past year, then add the numbers assigned to that event. It said you don't want to 'hit the bell of 150 points'. Mine was 232...... As we went around and shared our point totals, my husband said, "wow, are you feeling that stressed?" and tears immediately wanted to pour out of my eyes.
I don't usually take time to internalize things like I should. I am an extrovert and my inner life is not very well processed most of the time. Things like my dad's recent death, taking on a mortgage this year for the first time and the financial challenges it causes, plus moving from a community and climate I loved, and now facing this surgery I'm having tomorrow morning are things I would rather not think about. I tend to try to be pragmatic about things like those and deal with them and move on. Only moving on is not easy when it is a life changing event....you have to process.
I don't have time for things like that....I like to move on...
Our passage to study yesterday was on Psalm 139.
you have laid your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,"
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
Nothing can seperate me from God's guiding hand which hems me in.
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake,
I am still with you.
God knows my days, every one of them, and I am constantly in His thoughts.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
Even though I make mistakes and get frustrated, anxious and despairing, He knows. And all I have to do is take one step, put my trust once more in Him and not in myself. As hard as this is to actually do, sometimes He just stops us in our tracks and gives us a revelation of His presence and care. He makes it easy in that one split second to trust Him and lay our burdens down. The Holy Spirit, drawing our thoughts in an instant like that is a miracle....it is a healing for the mind.
My offense is sometimes my own mind. I don't deal with anxious thoughts during the day and they haunt me at night when I am not set to busyness. In the dark hours of the night, I relive my dad's death, I 'pre-live' all the things that could go wrong with my surgery tomorrow, or with our finances. My mind races with struggling thoughts and I don't sleep well, which causes more stress on the old mind....just like the demotivator at the right.
Then, just when you think madness might take over, God amazes you with a revelation of His care. And it was there all along.....I just wasn't keeping my mind stayed on His Word.
3 You will keep in perfect peace
him whose mind is steadfast,
because he trusts in you.
4 Trust in the LORD forever,
for the LORD, the LORD, is the Rock eternal.
Photos from: My sometimes sarcastic little sense of humor loves the demotivators over at despair.com.
