Think I'm Having Stress~~~~~~~Let go and Let God

Life was getting rough, several times I heard people tell me to just let go and let God. I had heard it so much that I vowed if I heard it again I was going to scream. Let go and let God! It was like they thought I loved holding on to the pain I was experiencing and unwilling to let it go and trust in God. I trusted God or so I thought.

 

One day as I was reading my Bible and praying God stopped me in my tracks long enough to show me the handprints on the situations I was holding on to were mine. Displayed in front of me were my knuckles shining in white from clenching on so tightly. “God, did I really not trust you to take care of things? Lord, was I that afraid to let go thinking it would be the final move in my life that sent me drowning in a bottomless pit of despair, pain and anguish?”

 

All He needed to say was, “Karen…” and I knew instantly the answers to my questions. My fear was greater than my faith. My friends who told me to “let go and let God” were trying to keep me from drowning by my own actions not cause to me to be submerged.

 

The next person telling me to “let go and let God” was I and indeed I wanted to scream. Not because someone was aggravating me but because I had taken so long to wake up to the fact that I was doing the opposite of what I needed to do.

 

Truly we hold too tightly on to things and not tight enough to Jesus. We get into bad situations, have horrible experiences and we hold on to these times as if they were some kind of life preserver instead of the thing that tends to drown us. How crazy is that? We need to let go of that and hang on to Jesus. It is Him we need to lean on instead of clutching tightly to the bad times. We need to have a yard sale or heart sale and get rid of all the old things we think we can’t let go of.

 

When you prepare for a yard sale you gather all that needs to go, the things that have no value, and things that are just cluttering up your life. Believe it or not I’ve never had a yard sale but labeled by my family a “pack rat” my daughter thinks we’d be rich if I did. That was just counting the things I had stored in our attic!

Our spiritual life is no different. If we would just get rid of the things that need to go, the things of no value to us that are just cluttering up our lives we’d be rich. Eternally rich in God, rich in His love, mercy, grace, and blessings that never end.

 

Don’t scream but instead, let go and let God. Let Him do all He is able to do by giving up our right to hold on to the junk that needs to go. Letting go doesn’t mean abandoning people or some things it means allowing God the control needed to operate without us slowing down the process of trying to hold on and do it ourselves.

 

© 2013 Karen J. Gillett @ Pencil Marks and Recipes Publishing for COCWF

 

DEES funny~~~~~~~There's a Train Coming!

One day as my husband and I were on our way home I was feeling a little tired from our journey. Sitting there quietly in my seat giving up my position as the “back seat driver” I drifted in and out of sleep. Once when I was half awake I noticed my husband acting like a train was coming that he failed to see before starting across the multiple tracks crisscrossing the road. At the sign of his nervousness I began to be a little fearful myself out of fear of being hurt. Next thing I knew I heard the sound of the tracks below us rattle. Sure enough we weren’t the only ones on the tracks and we were about to be hit. However, the impact didn’t happen. Instead what happened was a car full of impatient teenagers passing us on the tracks using the shoulder of the road. I was relieved it wasn’t a train but wow did that scare me!

 

 LESSON: Often in life’s journey we feel like the light at the end of the tunnel just has to be a train. Fearful of what we anticipate happening we feel like at any time we expect to be hit and sent flying into orbit. We become scared as our imagination soars. However, what we think is a train coming could be just someone else crossing the tracks we are on in the journey of life. Something that causes a chain reaction that rattles the tracks below us momentarily. We need to remember that we are not the only ones on the road and we need to rely on God and His driving to see us through our journeys. Later after our railroad incident I found out my husband wasn’t acting “nervous” as he knew there wasn’t a train coming. No, what he was doing was paying attention to the herd of deer in the nearby field. I needed to trust his driving skills and go back to sleep and get some rest.

 

Same thing in our spiritual life, we need sit back and get some rest as we put our trust in God’s driving skills. No matter the length of the journey, the rattling of the tracks, the delays we encounter we can have confidence in our chauffeur, Jesus Christ. Our part is to make sure we allow Him to be the one in charge of driving us to where we need to be. He sees the trains, He’s not afraid of the tracks, and He knows where He’s going. You can’t get any better than that.

 

Suddenly it’s no longer “There’s a train coming!” but its “Jesus is driving, I am safe.”

 

© 2013 Karen J. Gillett @ Pencil Marks and Recipes Publishing         Funny DEES

I Think I'm Having Stress ~~~~~ Don't Worry

Mt 6:25, 27, 32, 33,34 Therefore I say to you do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, or what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? For your heavenly Father knows you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be add to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

 

It has been said if you are going to worry then don’t pray and if you are going to pray then don’t worry. Like anything else we can’t have it both ways. We can’t have our cake and eat it too as they say. When God tells us to not worry about tomorrow then we shouldn’t worry about tomorrow.

 

The hard part about not worrying is not worrying. That makes a lot of sense doesn’t it? But it’s true. From a person who has the tendency to worry it’s hard not to when you have been in situations before and you know what is coming. For example, the wife waiting for her drunk husband to come home. She knows his abusive behavior and therefore anticipates what is to come. She worries about what degree of cruelty his behavior will be that particular night.

 

In such a case it’s hard not to worry. To her I guess you’d have to say, “just trust in the Lord. That no matter what degree of severity your husband’s behavior is the Lord will be watching over you.” You could also look at it in the aspect that worrying is not going to change what is to come. Worrying about how he will behave won’t change his behavior. We can anticipate perhaps what is to come but keep our eyes on Jesus instead of what we fear are approaching.

 

Perhaps together we can figure out what we can do to avoid worrying about something like this and prepare ourselves in a better way. We may not know what we should be doing but we definitely know what we shouldn’t do and that is 1) worry 2) Get mad 3) run from it 4) Hide from it 5) Give in. Just making up our minds before the return of the alcoholic spouse that we are not going to do any of these things gets us ahead on the behavior we are after in Christ.

 

Have you ever heard, “I’m sorry I can’t help but worry about it?” Often we look at worrying as our sacred right or duty. That if we don’t worry about something then we don’t care. These are lies from Satan we need to stay away from. It takes us out of the healthy balance we need to maintain in our lives.

 

We may worry about our child who is driving over the mountain pass for the first time or about grandma who was diagnosed with cancer. These are things that are natural for us to worry about or be concerned over. It’s when we take it too far and stop trusting in Jesus as we try to borrow from tomorrow even more worries then we’ve gone too far. We just need to make up our minds that we are going to pray and leave it all in the hands of the Lord and trust Him to deal with it as He sees fit.

 

“Well what if my alcoholic husband hits me or grandma’s cancer gets worse?” We still are required to trust. Worry about these situations will not change them one bit but trusting God will. God may not see fit to stop the alcoholic husband or cure the cancerous grandma but we need to know in our hearts He knows best. Being concerned is great but worrying beyond our ability to trust in God is not a good thing.

 

We need to exercise our faith instead of allowing our worries to flop us around like a flag whipping in the wind that becomes tattered and torn. Worry doesn’t add anything to the situation but usually more trouble and each day has enough trouble of its own! Amen? Amen!!

 

 

**When I had epilepsy and had to deal with my stress seizures I couldn’t worry about anything without having a seizure. If I wanted to overcome my stress seizures and possibly be cured of my seizures I couldn’t worry about nothing. Everything had to go straight into the hands of God without me playing with it first for days and weeks on end. I had to immediately hand it over to God and allow Him to take care of things. It took five years of practice but I managed to get it done and the cure for my epilepsy came as a reward for my efforts.

 

© 2012 Karen J. Gillett @ Pencil Marks and Recipes Publishing for COCWF

Message from God

As I stood in church enjoying the morning worship music my physical body finally gave in long before my spirit was ready to sit down. Edging myself down to the seat I placed my Bible on my lap and proceeded to sing with the crowd around me. In the middle of the song my Bible vibrated as if it was my cellphone telling me a message had come in.

 

For a split second I thought maybe I did have my phone sitting under my Bible causing it to vibrate. Looking around I found my phone in my purse on the floor near my feet. Several times the Bible vibrated before I finally figured out what it was. Due to the sound system in the church and the volume in which they were running it, whenever they started to sing it created a vibration in my Bible.

 

The more I thought about it the more I looked down at the Bible in my hand. There it was before me larger than my cellphone smaller than my computer loaded with more messages than either of the other two could ever handle. As a smile came upon my face my imagination took flight as I thought about what it would be like if it too vibrated every time it had a message to send. It would never stop as it would be set on permanent vibrate.

 

The sad difference between the Bible and the cellphone and computer is our response to them. Whenever our phone goes off we instantly reach for it to check what the message would be. We excuse ourselves from the table, we leave the office room, and we stop in the middle of a conversation just to check our messages. We can't seem to get to them quick enough. We panic when we can’t find our phone; we need it beside us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. When there is a pause in life we instantly bring out our phones to check or send messages, to play games, or to entertain us in some ways.

 

However, with our Bible we don't respond that quickly at all. We ignore all messages. We don't carry it around with us in our hip pocket like we do our phone. The chances of us “butt dialing” someone thru it is rare. We seem to be able to live without it on a daily basis. It’s the last thing we think about when we have a pause in life. It’s something that collects dust on the shelf quicker than the family photo. A necessity in life that isn’t needed 24/7 but on Sunday’s only if that. You will never see someone panic that they “can’t find their Bible!”

 

Bringing my imagination back to the scene of the crime I began to wonder what message God had for me today. Was I going to sit there and stare at my cellphone or was I going to open up God’s word and hear what He had to say. I opened God’s word. Often opening up your Bible and randomly letting your eyes fall where they may doesn’t always work but it works enough to give us our messages from God.

 

For this Sunday morning the message that had come in thru my Bible was the message the Preacher was talking about that very day. He talked about the various reasons why people just don’t get the message of God. His reasons were totally different than my cellphone analogy but we were both pretty much traveling down the same path.

 

His reasons were: 1) the lack of information 2) a hard heart 3) lack of desire to hear and learn 4) Unwilling to accept a new reality 5) Fear of “if I let go of my truth how do I know God’s truth will save me.” 6) The fact that we love our sin more than we do the thought of a “new life” without it.

 

 

The message of the day was to believe. Believing is something we do and keep on doing. It’s a choice that is involved in all other choices. Believing that God will see us thru anything in life, whether it is cancer, troubled relationships, work, our daily desires and passions, grandchildren issues, or anything else we need to believe.

 

We need to put our trust in the one that has everything in control. As much as it doesn’t feel like that in certain moments we come upon it’s the truth and it’s what we have to hold on to. Our message, our strength, our guiding light in a darken world. It’s time to take our Bibles off “vibrate” and turn the volume up in order to hear, listen to, and learn. When we let the dust settle on our Bibles we allow it to settle in our hearts as well.

 

1 John 4:4 “You are of God, little children, and have overcome them (the spirit of the Antichrist), because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.”

 

There’s our message. There’s our truth.

 

 

© 2012 Karen J. Gillett at Pencil Marks and Recipes         for  COCWF