Still Becoming- 03.10.2024

Cheri shares deliberately learning to trust in Him
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Pursuing … the Heart of God

Passionately Pursuing. The heart of God.  The  journey of a lifetime.  And we don’t do it all alone.

In reality God’s love for us is so great that it actually draws us to pursue Him.  As we journey we are distracted and pulled off course by so many things.  At least I am.

I get sidetracked by exhaustion.  And truthfully that exhaustion comes because I’ve put my energies in the wrong places.  I’ve spent my time on things that drain me.  I’ve said YES when I should have said NO … and I’ve said NO when I should have aid YES.

Sometimes I’m just lazy in my pursuit.

I spend  my time worrying and trying to fix things … or change things … to figure it all out on my own instead of trusting God.

Because I am a perfectionist I many times find myself waiting for the perfect time … the perfect moment … the perfect circumstances … the perfect life.  And that never comes so I find myself stuck in my journey.

And then there is time management.  How much time do I waste on the trivial such as Facebook or TV?  I know that in managing my time well that I spend more time with Him in this journey to his heart.  Yet, I still struggle.

Some days I wonder if I’m making much progress in this journey.  And then I feel defeated.

So this week I began the process of making changes in my journey.  And I will fail some days and I will succeed some days.  But I will keep journeying to passionately pursue His heart because His love for me is like a magnet drawing me … pulling me to pursue Him.  So I will … I will pursue Him … I am determined.

 A.W. Tozer said, “The impulse to pursue God originates with God, but the outworking of that impulse is our following hard after Him.  All the time we are pursuing after Him we are already in His hand.”

My and your desire to pursue God starts with God.  That is so cool!  It IS His love that is pulling us to pursue Him.

But it doesn’t stop there.  It then becomes our daily choice to follow after Him.

 “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up His cross DAILY and follow Him”  Luke 9:23

It is a daily choice to pursue Him … to continue this journey to pursue the  heart of God.

The original meaning of journey was a march of just ONE day.  So our journey to the heart of God is one day at a time.  Each day my choices dictate my journey.

 “My journey to the heart of God does not begin tomorrow;  the choices I make today determine whether I move toward Him, or toward self and the world.”  -Cynthia Heald

This journey is a process.  Each day …. Each choice is a part of the process.  Today.  At this very moment.  Choose to pursue the heart of God.

 “It is easy to imagine that we will get to a place where we are complete and ready, but preparation is not suddenly accomplished.  It is a process steadily maintained.”  -Oswald Chambers

Pursing the heart of God is the process of knowing Him more, loving Him greater, becoming more like Him up to the time we are completed.  The journey complete in His presence.

Daily,  Choosing.  The Journey.  To Pursue.  The heart of God.

Disappointment Comes

Disappointment comes in everyone’s life and usually in every area, multiple times.  And with it can come hopelessness and we many times lose our joy and energy for life.  At times seasons of disappointment are long and exhausting and we just want to give up.  Is this just me or do you struggle with seasons of disappointment?

We find ourselves disappointed in our jobs, and our churches, and our families, and our children, and our marriages.  We even find ourselves disappointed in God at times.  Now if you are one of those highly spiritual people that can’t handle that statement I’m sorry…but this is raw honesty.

I have found myself disappointed in God.  Why?  Because He didn’t do things the way I thought He should.  There, I said it!  I have thought of this song often in my times of disappointment and sang it to the top of my lungs with tears streaming, ” I thought by now You would have come down and washed my tears away, stepped in and saved the day.But once again I say Amen and it’s still raining.”

I stood on His Word.  I confessed His Word.  I confessed my sins.  I did my best to pursue Him.  In all this the circumstances remained the same.  And I struggled not to be disappointed.

It is easy when things are going great and we are blessed and prospering to read Job’s life story and think we could say like Job, “Yet if He slay me, still I will trust Him”.  It is a totally different story when we are going through hell.  And in this hell we live in a cushy, bless me Christian world where no one believes that God doesn’t let us live in a rose garden with no thorns all the time.  Where you learn that those you thought were friends couldn’t  hang on and walk with you through the tough times … just like Job’s friends.  We have experienced the kind of friends that Job had and you have too. They only want to hang when heaven is open and God’s blessings are chasing you down.  We’ve also learned that friendships are proven through time and that what you say is worth nothing if not followed by what you do.  If we’ve learned anything I hope it is to be the kind of friend that will walk through heaven and hell on earth with others!

I find myself exhausted in the midst of struggles.  And I’m wondering where God is in the midst of all this!  Yet, I still have hope.  I still have dreams and visions of things I believe God wants us to do. But I feel stuck at times in Job’s world.  And then God reminds me that this is a journey … a process of redemption and completion.  And none of it catches God by surprise.  That He is at work in our lives.

And even as I am completing this God reminded that He is working out His purposes and plans in and through our lives.  And that includes valleys and trials and injustice and pain.  He is working out HIS plans.  We still have some big dreams to equip, encourage and restore pastors and leaders here and abroad.  Dreams to knit Oasis (the untraditional church we pastor) into the very fabric of our community as influencers.  Dreams to bring healing and wholeness to the hurt and wounded.  Dreams to put coffee shops in communities as a safe place for the community and a place of life and relationships that effects change.

I realize again how large the vision is … Much bigger than the two of us.  It is a God  sized vision and will only be realized as He makes it happen.  We are His submitted vessels.  So I know that everything in our lives to this point has been preparing us for this moment in time … whatever that ends of looking like is up to God.   We submit our dreams to Him … to His vision and His plan.

And  in it all these are the things I KNOW:

I KNOW He loves me with an unfailing love that endures forever

I KNOW Whom I believe in and He is able

I KNOW that He is utterly trustworthy

I KNOW He has my best interest at heart

I KNOW that His ways are higher than my ways

I KNOW that His plans for me are good

I KNOW in Him I have a future and a hope

I KNOW in Him I am an overcomer

I KNOW He is completing me and He never gives up on me

I KNOW He is jealous for me

So, I choose each day and EVERY day…

To trust Him

To strive toward contentment

To love Him

To forgive

To live forgiven

To pursue Him

To love my husband and children and grandchildren

To humble myself

To live grateful

To NEVER give up

To pursue His purposes and plans…HIS vision.

And I KNOW He’s still working on me, to make me what I ought to be.  It took Him just a week to make the moon and the stars, the sun and the earth and Jupiter and Mars.  How LOVING and PATIENT He must be.  Because He is STILL working on me.

“For I know the one in whom I trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him[a]until the day of his return.” 2 Timothy 1:12b

Trusting in the God I KNOW…

God … You Choose

This journey to know God more … to love Him with all my heart and soul and mind and strength … to submit to His completion process … to be a woman after His heart is not what I thought it would be.  It is a lot harder.  There are times it is filled with pain and uncertainty.  And God continues to remind me that everything He brings into my life or allows to touch me is a part of His journey for me … and His ultimate goal is to redeem me.

He reminds me of this again … and again … and again.  I submit to Him knowing that He knows best … even when I can’t see it and I don’t understand it.  Some days this is extremely hard and some days it is easier.  I have to keep choosing to submit to His journey for me.

I choose to trust Him.  It is a choice.  I choose to walk by faith and not by sight.  This too is harder than it sounds in church.  I read this quote by Oswald Chambers today in my time with God…

“God allows you to get into a place where your own welfare would be the right and proper thing to consider if you were not living a life of faith;  but if you are, you will joyfully waive your right and leave God to choose for you.”

I can make choices that seem like good and wise choices by what I see and understand … looking out for my own welfare.  But I want to choose to live by faith … not by sight.  By sight is so much easier but what we see is temporary and many times the glitter is on the outside of something dead.

Think about Lot.  He chose what looked like the best land …. fertile and well watered.  But hidden behind the beauty and provision of the land was wickedness and perversion.  I don’t know if you have ever made a decision by what you see and then find something totally different on the other side of the decision.  I have and there are always consequences.

My decision for today and with God’s help every day for the rest of my life is to waive my right to choose by what I see and leave God to choose for me.  To choose His journey.  And I do this with joy because I trust Him.

Lord, I submit to You … to Your journey … to Your plan.  You choose.  I will walk by faith … not by sight.

This is a choice I must make daily.   Are you living by what you see … Or by faith?

Choosing His Process…

Choices … that is what this journey to His heart is all about.  Each day we choose.  And the outcome of our journey depends on our daily choices.

We want to be closer to God’s heart.  We want to grow in Him.  We want our lives to please Him.  We want to be used by Him.  But many times we want to control the journey … to choose the route … for God to follow our way instead of us following His way.   In this journey to His heart we much choose to trust Him and to trust the process He chooses for us on the journey.   Even when it makes NO sense to us!  Look at what Jesus says…

“Then he told them what they could expect for themselves: “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat—I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you?” Luke 9:23-25 MSG

Each day we must choose to let God lead … to keep Him in the driver’s seat.  It won’t look like we think it should most of the time but as we follow Him in this journey to His heart we will find our true, real selves … the person He sees in us right now, the person He is processing.

Trusting God and His process in my journey today!  How about you?

He gives … He takes away …

No matter what comes or what goes … I WILL hope in Him!

I’ve thought a lot about the Biblical character Job lately and all that was taken from him. His life experience doesn’t really fit in our “Christian” thoughts today of being blessed and protected and favored. 

God allowed Job to be tested by the enemy. He was tested through loss, sickness, disease, and ill-comforting friends. He lost his children. His wife turned on him and on God. His friends were far from loving and supporting. He lost all he had. Yet, Job stayed true to God. Job 13:15 is one of those amazing life challenging scriptures… “Though He slay me, I will hope in Him …” (NAS).

I WILL hope in Him!

Almost 31 years ago I was tested. Our beautiful five-month old little girl, Amber Hope, woke one morning not acting herself and quickly became very sick. We ended up in the Emergency Room with her that evening. We started hearing words like meningitis and other life-threatening illnesses.When our pediatrician arrived she quickly diagnosed her with intussusception.

Intussusception occurs when one portion of the bowel slides into the next, much like the pieces of a telescope. When this occurs, it can create a blockage in the bowel, with the walls of the intestines pressing against one another. This, in turn leads to swelling, inflammation, and decreased blood flow to the part of the intestines involved. Complications can include irreversible tissue damage, perforation of the bowel, infection, and death.

Our pediatrician immediately called in a pediatric surgeon. After examination, he informed us that Amber was extremely weak but needed surgery right away. He said that she might be too weak for surgery but without it she definitely would not live. We were also told that if she made it, she would very likely have at least a partial colostomy.

And I remember them rolling my baby away, the door closing separating her from me and I didn’t know if she would make it back out alive.

Jim and I were put in a room alone to wait to hear from the surgeon. It seemed like forever. We made a few calls for people to pray. Then we prayed and waited … and prayed and waited.

As I prayed, the Lord asked me this question … “If your baby dies will you still love me? Will you still trust me? Will you still serve me?” I didn’t realize it at the moment but I was in a heart-wrenching time of testing. If God didn’t step in and end this the way I wanted it to end, would I still love Him? Would I still trust Him? In the midst of the pain and the possibility of losing what was most precious to me, I finally came to the conclusion .. .and it was a heart searching decision … as I talked this out with God.

Yes, Lord. Whatever the outcome I will still love You, I will still trust You. I have no where else to run but to You. With that decision came peace even though we still waited to hear from the surgeon.

Our Amber Hope

If you know our family at all you know that we still have our Amber Hope. The outcome of her surgery was a miracle.

For the past 16 months I have faced maybe the hardest of all tests … definitely the longest. Can I say that even if all I have is taken from me I will STILL hope in Him? Or will I question Him? Will I question His love? Will I throw in the towel?

To hope in Him amidst trials and loss is a choice! It is a choice of faith. It is a choice to put my hope and faith in His trustworthiness … in His character. Trusting His promise to work it all together for my good and His purpose.

So, I choose to trust Him even when I don’t understand … even in loss … even in pain … even when the pain comes from those who are called to stand with you and care for you. I choose to love Him and serve Him with all I am and with all I have. I choose to stay in this completion process and finish strong!

“The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.” Job 1:21

I WILL hope in Him!

Cheri