God is Always With You

Accomplishments and successes in this life can lead some to believe that they have no need of God. In Proverbs Chapter 18, verses 10-11 it says:  The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous runs into it and is safe. A rich man’s wealth is his strong city, and like a high wall in his own imagination. [NASB BIBLE]

Money and self-sufficiency can create the illusion that you can handle everything without God. Perhaps you’ve never come up against a problem that you couldn’t solve yourself. Maybe you take pride in how strong you are, how well you cope, how much you’re able to do on your own. Depending on yourself–and being good at it–can be an obstacle to knowing God.

God wants to be our strength. He wants us to go to Him with our whole lives, good and bad. In Proverbs Chapter 3, verses 5 and 6 it says: Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. [NASB Bible] We may feel pretty on top of our lives, but only God knows what we don’t. He knows all about our relationships, our future challenges, the situations we’re in. He knows our strengths and our weaknesses. There is no substitute for the wisdom and knowledge of God. The counsel of God is superior to any human help we seek because He sees the entire picture from every angle. And, He loves us unconditionally, so He’s willing to forgive our mistakes and give us second and third and fourth and fifth chances….Just look at this blog, for example. It’s been over 2 weeks since I last posted, and ironically, my last post was about how I hadn’t posted in 2 weeks! I wrote about feeling guilty for neglecting this blog, and here I am again in the same situation! 🙂 So I’m getting back up on the horse, hoping that I haven’t let anyone down with my lack of self-discipline. But this much I know is true–God wants me to talk about Him to other people through this blog, so I have to keep coming back, doing my best to do better. 🙂

It’s been 2 weeks since I’ve posted, and I feel guilty. I know my good reasons, but I also want to be able to push through the obstacles that interfere with this blog. But I won’t let feeling guilty ruin my ability to talk to you about God.

One of my favorite Bible verses is found in Romans Chapter 7, verse 15:  I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. {NIV Bible] Boom! This verse is good stuff! It’s real. How many times do we try to change ourselves for the better, but end up back where we started, feeling guilty.

Paul was the writer of the above verse. He was an intensely devoted believer who wrote a large part of the “epistles” of the New Testament The epistles are the letters written to the earliest Christian churches, giving them guidance, encouragement and instruction.

Paul became a believer only after an encounter with Jesus Himself. In my section, “Paul, an unlikely convert,” Paul’s dramatic conversion to Christianity is detailed, so feel free to check that out to learn more about who Paul was and how God was able to use him and change him. Or, better yet, look it up in your Bible in the book of Acts in chapter 9.

So back to the point I was making about this awesome verse. 🙂 If Paul, handpicked by God to spread the saving message of the Gospel had trouble doing what he knew he should do then we truly are all in this together. We’re all weak sometimes. When we disappoint ourselves with our lack of discipline or willpower it makes us feel guilty. But I say to reject that guilt and try again. There’s nothing satan likes more than to condemn us for our shortcomings. He wants us to feel so badly about ourselves that we give up trying to do good things.

That’s why it’s so important to start again. We can’t turn back the clock, so now is the time to ask God for forgiveness and consider it behind us. Don’t nurture guilt or encourage it to continue because you think you deserve to feel badly about yourself. Accept God’s forgiveness and ask for His help to do (or not do) something important to you.

Starting to read the Bible can be intimidating. There are difficult pronunciations, detailed genealogies, and a myriad of different cultures represented in the Bible. It is true that the Bible is a challenging read, but you needn’t do it alone. Pray to the Holy Spirit, asking Him to teach you about God through Scripture, and ask Him to lead you to verses that speak to you and your situation.

The most important part of starting to read the Bible is simply to do it. Pray before you start, asking God to make the Scriptures understandable. If there is a particular book of the Bible that you feel led to start in, make that your starting point. When I became a saved Christian, the first book of the Bible I read was the gospel of John. I was drawn to the way Jesus is so thoroughly explained, both who He is and what He did. In particular, I loved reading about the way Jesus healed people with diseases that were often lifelong and seemingly impossible to be cured. People who couldn’t speak, people who were blind, people who were paralyzed, people with leprosy, people with seizures, people with internal bleeding were all cured by Jesus while He was here with us on Earth.

This is an example of how exciting it is to read the Bible. There are so many awesome truths we can find in our Bibles. We can learn about human nature, we can witness God’s unconditional love, we can see others like ourselves who lean on God to get through the trials of this life.

Looking for good, practical advice? Try Proverbs, a book of the Bible that was written by King Solomon (the son of King David). One of my recent favorites in Proverbs is found in Chapter 19, verse 11: A man’s wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense. [NIV Bible] This verse is the perfect example of how different God’s ways are from our ways. In God’s eyes, it is better to display mercy when someone offends us. Showing mercy to someone who otherwise deserved our anger is a sign that the Holy Spirit is gaining strength inside of us as we listen to His inner promptings. The more you read the Bible, the more you will see the truth in it!

God has recently taught me an important lesson that is changing my life. I’ve lived a large part of my life tiptoeing around various fears and expecting the worst. I’ve been a lifelong pessimist, always afraid to really want something lest it be snatched away. The future has always seemed threatening to me, because I don’t know what might happen or how I’ll be able to cope.

God has shown me that my fear builds when I try to control people and situations. He’s told me plainly that when I try to control something or someone, I am accepting responsibility for how it turns out. And I will admit that there are a fair amount of things I worry about that I have no control over. I try to control them by anticipating them and preparing to be disappointed (or devastated). Mainly I don’t want to be caught off guard, so I have to be on guard, which leaves little room for calm.

When God gives you His wisdom, you know it’s right. It’s so obviously true, there’s no doubting it. And what God was saying to me was that I would have to stop trying to control everything if I wanted peace. I release anxiety when I accept that some situations/people/circumstances can’t be foreseen, changed or controlled. I am not personally responsible for making sure that people won’t hurt or disappoint me, because they are making their own decisions, and I can’t control what they do or don’t do. I can’t predict the future, so I don’t know what lies ahead, and I can’t condemn myself for that!

This revelation has helped me in two ways–I’m starting to see the harm I bring on myself by trying to control things that are outside of my control, and I can let myself off the hook for not anticipating every scenario that could cause trouble. Letting go of my rigid hypervigilance is giving me much-needed relief from the feeling that I’ve got to make sure everything turns out okay. God is truly blessing me with these truths He has given me, because they have made an immediate difference. And each time I resist the desire to dictate and control, I get a little more peace as a reward. 🙂

The more you pray and read the Bible, the closer you will get to God. He will start to speak to you. He may speak to you through a Bible verse that will address your situation. He may give wisdom to people around you to guide you toward right choices. He may also speak to you through the “still, small voice” of the Holy Spirit.

When you are a saved Christian, the Holy Spirit dwells inside your spirit. In this way, you can be directed by the Holy Spirit from within. He will strike your conscience when you consider doing something that will hinder you. He will bring knowledge to you directly by speaking to you in that still, small voice. Basically, that means that you hear His voice in your heart, soul and mind. It just comes. His voice is different from your own thoughts. The reason it is referred to as the still, small voice is because the words of the Holy Spirit can be easily never heard if you aren’t close enough to God to realize it’s Him, or if you dismiss His voice as your own thoughts.

Hearing God’s voice takes practice and time. You have to decipher between your own thoughts and the words of God. One way to do this is to ask yourself, “would I have known this on my own? Is this a different approach than one I would usually take?”  Over time, God will help you to discern between your own thoughts and the voice of the Holy Spirit.

It has been my experience that when I make an effort to get to know God by studying the Bible and praying regularly, I hear the voice of the Holy Spirit more clearly and more often. God will reward your efforts to know Him better.

We get to know God by communicating with Him. When we pray, we are going straight to God in our own voice and our own words. There’s no need to recite or memorize anything,   just be yourself! God already knows everything about you. He knows what you sound like and who you are.

Your prayers are welcome! Pray in your mind, pray out loud, and remember that you can go directly to God in prayer at any time. You don’t have to have a specific prayer to pray, you can just talk to Him about what is going on in your life. I tell God when I’m irritable, when my feelings are hurt, when I’m in pain. I talk to God about the things I’m trying to improve on. I thank God for the help He gives me, and how He loves me and gives me second (and third and fourth…) chances. God is a wonderful counselor–He is patient and loving, He’s never too busy to talk with you, and He won’t lose interest or forget what you talk about! There is a wonderful feeling of freedom when you talk to God, because everything is already on the table, and He wants to be there! Pray in your own voice, be your authentic self, and He will draw close to you.

Our lives are exposed in a way like never before. Cell phones can be used to collect pictures and videos,and many people don’t even realize they have been recorded. There is also the modern day paper trail, in the form of cell phone bills, or even by snooping in someone’s phone.

In these ways, our world is in the midst of major change. It was a whole lot easier to conduct an adulterous affair twenty years ago than it is today. Pictute a couple eating at restaurant, but they don’t notice an acquaintance sitting nearby who knows who they are. The cell phone comes out, a button is pushed, and the image can be emailed directly to the betrayed spouse. Or perhaps the pics or video would be uploaded to Facebook, to start a landslide of public humiliation, stress and shame.

The Internet is essentially lawless. Invasions of the privacy of regular people like you and me are very common. Consider how your friends, acquaintances, coworkers and family can upload your picture without permission, and “tag” it with your name, giving anyone with an interest your name.

I don’t agree with the multitude of ways a person’s privacy (and in some cases, their dignity) can be invaded over the Internet. If an embarassing video makes it to YouTube, hundreds of thousands of people could see it. Some video get “hits” that go into the tens of millions of views.

Emails and text messges have been the downfall of many marriages. Facebook is also culpable by facilitating the rekindling of decades old romances. It is ironic that the same social media and tech advances that have helped us can also hurt us. It is very important to consider the consequences before we have text communications that our spouse doesn’t know about.

Cell phones and the Internet create a major vulnerability to those who are doing things they don’t want others to know. Because we are human and we will make mistakes, forgiveness is desperately needed to offset the evils of online slander and secrets that are revealed in a most public manner.

In Matthew, Chapter 18 verses 21-22, it says: Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” [NIV Bible]

Revenge is much more seductive than forgiveness. It can be so difficult to really listen to the other side when we’ve been betrayed. But Jesus gave us these instructions for a reason. When you show people mercy, you are giving them a gift. Your mercy may rub off on them, and they may pass it along to someone in their lives who needs forgiveness as well. The bottom line is this–the more transparent all of the details of our lives become, the more often we will be in need of forgiveness.

As I get older, I have begun to realize how much people hurt themselves with self criticism. I think it’s a much bigger problem than conceit. Of course people will always battle with vanity, hypocrisy, selfishness,etc. But I believe that many of us treat ourselves very harshly in our inner lives. The part of us that no one knows about unless we tell them.

God knows. He knows all about our foibles and wrong decisions, beliefs, and actions. But His mercy is far greater than ours. He can love us when we do wrong. He is willing to forgive and forget, and let us make a new start.

In Psalms Chapter 103, verses 11-14, it says: For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His love for those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him; for He knows how we are formed, He remembers that we are dust. [NIV Bible]

This is one of the greatest blessings that God gives us when we believe in Him. Even when we can’t–or won’t–forgive ourselves, God forgives us. All we have to do is tell Him we’re sorry. I tell God my regrets. I tell Him when I feel guilty and wrong. I am learning how to let God heal me from that inner pain that no one else knows about. I am learning how not to stand in judgment of myself (especially my younger self!). It’s taken a long time, and it’s still difficult for me to forgive myself when I hurt someone’s feelings or when I feel anger rise up inside of me. I sin in my thoughts and my words and my actions. My hands are not clean, except through the shed blood of Jesus. The only righteousness I have is through the Son of God. The only true relief from that voice of accusation inside of us is God. He is the remedy for the way we punish ourselves for our faults. Believe He is who He says He is, and allow Him to do a work inside of you that you can’t do for yourself! God will pick you up, and He won’t stop loving you!

The past few days, I’ve been fighting a battle in my own mind. I’ve not been feeling well lately, with nausea and abdominal pain, coupled with uncontrolled anxiety. I’ve had IBS since I was five, but lately it’s been worse than usual, with the new addition of persistent nausea and a loss of appetite. It’s been really hard, and I found myself very upset yesterday, wondering how long this fresh hell would last. I had an appointment this morning that I really wanted to keep, and yesterday it was looking likely I would have to cancel.

I’ve also been suffering emotionally lately, with painful thoughts of regret, fear of losing people I love and fear of being seriously ill. I was on my last leg with all of this yesterday, and I felt I couldn’t endue this double assault on my mind and my body. I prayed furiously and desperately to God, and He showed up!

I was at His feet. I told Him I was tired and scared. I told Him I was frustrated and I wanted to be blessed. And I told Him I knew He could help me. He picked me up and carried me. He created in me a strength to keep going. The Holy Spirit took hold of me and comforted me.

Today, I am grateful and humbled by the way He has lifted me up. In Isaiah Chapter 41, verse 10, God says: “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.” [NIV Bible] I felt Him pick me up! I could feel His presence with me, and I knew that He truly understood everything that was hurting me. I was dismayed and afraid, and He soothed me and helped me release the nervousness that had me in a vice grip.

Today, my nausea is gone. I was able to keep my appointment, and He is guarding my thoughts to keep me from a downward spiral. He has prompted me to proclaim my faith that He wants to bless me and heal me again and again in my mind. He set up a hedge between me and the awful thoughts that were consuming me, and I am so grateful! I praise You, Lord, because You are so good to me! Thank You for loving me and blessing me! Thank You for guarding me heart and my mind! Thank You for upholding me in Your righteous right hand!

God can and will do the same thing for you. Come to Him and tell Him how much you hurt. Tell Him you’re angry and tired and desperate. Tell Him you’re frustrated and afraid. Tell Him you want to be blessed by Him! Have faith that He will help you and keep proclaiming your faith that He will act on your behalf. He will show up!

We all make mistakes. And all of us have regrets. I’ve hurt people, not even realizing the extent of my wrongs until many years later. I am a kind and loving person, but that hasn’t kept me from making bad choices that affected other people. I am truly humbled when I look back at my younger years and see the wreckage I’ve been responsible for.

The weight of guilt is very heavy. It’s a ball and chain. When I was younger, it was easier for me to distract myself from uncomfortable truths. I was on to the next thing. I didn’t understand the pain I caused, and I wasn’t honest with myself about how it must have felt to be on the receiving end. I didn’t truly see the other side until years later, and then I felt very guilty.

Before I knew God, there was nothing I could do about my guilt except live with it. It wasn’t until I confessed my sins to God and asked Him to come into my life that I felt forgiveness. God knew everything I had done, and yet He still welcomed me. He knew every embarassing, tawdry detail and He still loved me.

God’s love is durable. God is strong enough to know the dirty truth and not turn away. He is loving enough to love me despite the unlovely things I’ve done. I’ve been a saved Christian since 2001. Over the years, God has revealed important truths to me about how my behavior has affected other people. He does it gently, with love, and He invites me to ask for forgiveness. There is no better remedy for guilt than the forgiveness of God.

In John Chapter 8, verses 3-12, it is written: The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery.They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing Him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning Him, He straightened up and said to them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again He stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away, one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you, Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” [NIV Bible]

Even when we make big mistakes, God has mercy on us. Our part is to confess our sins and ask for His forgiveness. We can’t always make it right with the people we’ve hurt. Sometimes they won’t forgive us or even hear us out. Other times we can’t approach them with our apologies because it would cause distress for them or their families. But we can always bring our guilt to God, and we can feel the relief of knowing that He knows that we’re sorry.