What’s in your coffee?
Yesterday morning I enjoyed a cup of coffee as I prayed in my prayer room. I usually share this room and my morning prayer time with one of my cats who is on a special diet. Although he’s humungous, he’s the youngest and my smaller male pulls rank every time and barges right in, gobbling down that inticingly forbidden special food. To avoid that, my prayer room doubles as a private feline cafe.
As I was finishing my time with the Lord, I drained the last gulp or two from my coffee mug. Something with the texture of a crumbled dunked cookie flowed into my mouth with the last slurp. That’s odd, I thought; I didn’t dunk anything.
I spit out the remaining liquid and crumbly stuff into a napkin over the sink. And there, right before my eyes, were small chunks of cat food. Yikes! And contrary to the label, it did not taste like chicken.
As I spit and rinsed, spit and rinsed, and spit and rinsed again, I wondered how it happened to find its way into my coffee. Earlier in the morning, I had dished out the chow for my cats while simultaneously making my coffee. Evidently, something went terribly wrong in the preparation.
And two thoughts came to me.
1. In our own lives as we go about our daily routines, things can get misdirected, lines might get crossed by accident, and we end up with less than pure intake. In fact, at times we eat “cat food” in life without even knowing it. Things may not seem quite right with what you’re hearing; the input from others may seem funny to the taste, but on you roll at the speed of light without giving it a second thought.
This is why it’s so important for you, in your busy life, to test all of your intake with the Spirit of God and His Word. If something doesn’t “taste”, “smell” or “feel” right to you, lift up a quick prayer and ask God to sort it out for you. Then later, if the Lord hasn’t brought clarity to you yet, spend some more time in prayer and look into the Word to find out what God says about it.
A man of God I highly respect used to say that when we listen to sermons or read Christian literature, we were to “have as much sense as an old cow; eat the hay and spit out the stubble.” I would add, this pertains to everyday life as well.
There’s a lot of cat food out there and there’s a lot of stubble. That’s why you need to be spiritually alert. Know what you’re hearing; know what you’re receiving as “the way it is”.
2. You will survive with cat food in your stomach; you will survive some stubble. You just won’t receive the pure nutrients of the Word of God by consuming these things, and therefore, you’re not going to be nearly as strong as you could be in your walk with God.
If you go to church and find that you’ve been fed some stubble with your hay, just spit it out; don’t blast the messenger as a false teacher. Does Flossie the cow start an email campaign alerting the other cattle that Farmer Smith is a false farmer because she found some stubble in her hay last week? No, she eats her hay and spits out the stubble.
There’s a difference between stubble and poison. There’s a difference between cat food accidentally dropped in a cup of coffee and the intentional twisting of doctrine. You’re not only responsible to train your senses to discern between true food and stubble or cat food; but you also need to train your senses to discern between stubble and poison, cat food and toxins. The differences may seem subtle to you, but to God the differences are huge—as different as human misunderstanding versus the purposeful twisting of truth.
You are accountable every day you mature in Christ to develop discernment and to walk in it. When you are presented with stubble in your hay–or cat food in your coffee–spit it out! However, if you are fed a constant diet of stubble or cat food, you may want to find another place to dine.
On the other hand, don’t make the mistake of labeling those who have served some stubble or cat food in their messages as false prophets or teachers, or as those who preach “another Jesus”. Maybe they just had a bad week or a rough year. If you spend some time praying for them in love, you just might be blessed to learn how powerfully on-target they can preach.
It is my conviction that, as Christians, we need to refrain from labeling ministers and other believers in a knee-jerk reaction. Yes, we are to discern what we hear, but not everything that contains some stubble or bits of cat food is heresy; and not everyone out there who is labeled as false is, indeed, false.
And if you drop by my house for coffee, I’ll do my best to give you the straight stuff, cat food-free.
Dorothy
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Disregard
Part Four
Simmering under the surface in many marriages is a disregard and lack of appreciation, one spouse for the other. Every evening, sitcoms use this underlying disrespect as fodder for laughs as couples (married or not, heterosexual or not) battle it out with witty insults. And the unspoken message is that the winner is the one with the most dehumanizing, ourageous put downs.
Synonyms for the word disregard are: ignore, take no notice of, discount, pay no attention to, forget about, and disrespect. Do you ignore your spouse? Do you take no notice of her or pay no attention to him? Do you discount him or forget about her? Does your attitude and your behavior expose an underlying disrespect for your spouse?
I’m no marriage counselor, but I have caught myself in dismissive, bitter, and disrespectful attitudes, conversations, and behaviors toward others in my life. Try as I might to get God to fix the offending one for me, He wouldn’t budge! And then I realized it—God’s concern with me is what I do about my part, not how He and I can fix someone else! That bothered me a lot; I wanted the other person to feel how much they hurt me; I would have liked for them to get hit over the head with how wrong they were!
Go figure—God made me repent about my attitude toward my offenders! But along with the adjustment in attitude He directed me to make, He also showed me that wrong behavior is wrong behavior, and He doesn’t endorse it in anyone.
What works for me may work for you, too, when you find yourself in strife. I pull aside, allow myself to focus on the Lord, and acknowledge that He made both of us—myself and my human antagonist. I thank Him that He loves both of us and that Jesus died for both of us. And if the one who offended me is a believer, I trust that the God who dwells in me dwells in him, as well. I forgive him and then tell God, “If the veil was torn away, and he (she) could see clearly how hurt I was by his [words, actions, attitude, snubbing, etc.], I know that he (she) would fall to the ground, cry, tear his garment, and beat his hands and feet on the ground in sorrow over the pain he caused me.” Then compassion for his (her) agony of repentance rises up in me and I am able to forgive him cleanly, whether I see the fruit of it yet or not. If unforgiveness raises its ugly head within me again, I just pray the same way again and watch it flee from me. (After I’ve prayed such prayers and have truly forgiven people from the heart, I’ve experienced the softening of attitudes toward me as well as apologies given—more than once.)
Sometimes, however, the One you are ignoring, paying no attention to, or disrespecting is God Himself.
Romans 1:20-21 states the case that humans, from antiquity on, have known God; since creation His invisible qualities and divine nature have been clearly seen and are understood through simple observation of all that He has made.
Our generation fits this description every bit as much as those alive in Bible times: “For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened” (Romans 1:21).
Of all the undermining behaviors I’ve written about this week—role-reversal, control, and passivity—I believe that disregard for God is at the root of all of them. You know God; do you honor Him as God? You see the majesty of God in nature; do you give Him the thanks He deserves?
When you honor and thank God as a way of life, your heart and mind are guarded in Christ Jesus (see Philippians 4:6-7). This gives the act of thanking God a protective edge. When you acknowledge Him, when you give Him praise, when you thank Him in your life—especially on an ongoing basis—your human tendencies toward role-reversal, control, nagging, or passivity are less likely to dominate your personality. As you make it your business to acknowledge God with a thankful heart everyday, the deceptive, seductive, degrading suggestions by the culture and the enemy cannot find a foothold in your life. When you disregard the practice of thanking and acknowledging God, you are more likely to fall into the mindsets and behaviors described in the rest of Romans 1.
The take away from all of this is to tackle every thought, suggestion, mindset, emotion, offense, and worldview that comes your way with an eye toward the Word of God, acknowledging God as God, and thanking Him for being your God.
Keep yourself on firm footing by refusing to disregard God or His Word in your life any longer. He is God, and as you acknowledge Him as God and give Him the ongoing thanks He deserves, you will find yourself growing in wisdom and clarity about the world around you and His will for you in it.
Thanksgiving is a force that will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus.
Be bold in your acknowledgement of Him and stay thankful,
Dorothy
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Passivity
Part Three
Passivity. I almost didn’t write about this topic because I just didn’t feel like it; I was thinking if I kept putting it off, you would do it for me.
The primary complaint concerning passivity in marriage comes from women whose husbands who have laid aside the leadership role in the household. Although he tends to lead everywhere else, she laments, he doesn’t do so at home. There are many underlying reasons for this, but passivity on the part of a man toward his God-given responsibility can be extremely harmful to a healthy marriage. For an excellent outline about this, I am including a link at the end of today’s blog.
Since passive people, due to their characteristic avoidance of conflict and submissive demeanor, don’t create waves, you might think that passivity is a key to godliness. However, passivity toward God-given responsibility is a primary cause of ineffectiveness and unfruitfulness in Christian life.
For example, you probably eat three square meals a day without giving a second thought to the big bites of your time that eating consumes. However, have you ever thought that feeding your spirit with God’s Word was too time-consuming? When you can’t spare five or ten minutes sometime during the day to read or meditate on the Bible, you just might be spiritually passive.
“Seven days without prayer makes one weak” flash signs in front of many churches. Corny? Yes. True? Yes, again. But when you can’t seem to find the time to communicate with God, you just might be spiritually passive.
Jesus called you, His disciple, the salt and light of the world. The salt in you was not meant to rest forever in the shaker; your light was never meant to sit permanently idle under a barrel. No matter how thrilling it is to hear testimonies of souls won, lives changed, and prayers answered, those miracles didn’t occur without the salt being poured out first or with the light still turned off. In every case, someone rose up out of passivity and lived boldly, spoke freely, or prayed fervently. God used someone’s salt and light to perform His wonders.
With the world squeezing in against you from every direction, you can’t afford to live a passive life. You will never be able to address the persistent twisting and distortion of truth in our generation effectively with bland passivity or wishy-washy conviction. As the old saying goes, “If you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything.” Only by soaking up the nutrients of the Bible and by spending time in fellowship with your God on a daily basis will you find the ongoing strength, wisdom, and power to face off with the assignments that God will send your way.
Wishing the world would straighten up on its own won’t make it happen. Wishing the rapture would just take place now won’t make that happen, either. You are salt and you are light, and since the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He Himself will quicken and empower you to do all that He’s calling you to do. But He cannot do these things in you without your active cooperation.
“‘Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’ Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.” Ephesians 5:14-17, NIV
Stay salty and shine brightly,
Dorothy
For an outline from bible.org on the origins and effects of passivity in marriage, see https://bible.org/seriespage/passive-men-wild-women-part-1-genesis-31-5
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Control
Part Two
Among the most destructive attitudes in marriage according to my pastor’s wife is the drive—whether you are the husband or the wife—to always get your way, to win arguments at any cost, or to control your spouse. She teaches that both partners are accountable to fight for the marriage, not to dominate it. If not dealt with, this mindset will erode and destroy the foundation of what could be a good, solid, and satisfying lifelong relationship for both individuals.
The quest to control a relationship, however, is not unique to husbands and wives. While I was a teacher, I had a ringside seat to the human drive for dominance over others. During my thirty-two years as an educator, I watched as boys, girls, and teens positioned and maneuvered for control over their peers (and sometimes their teachers!) in every grade I taught, from second through ninth.
Winners and losers in the power game unfortunately continue to emerge—without anyone giving it a second thought—throughout society, with both genders, at every age, among all races and ethnicities, and indeed, even among Christians. This desire to be right, to be better than others, to be top dog, is so prevalent that we don’t even blink an eye when we observe it. Strategies are employed to ensure that “I” come out on top and that “I” craft a winning persona. Little thought is ever given to the ones who may be hurt or destroyed so that “I” can secure “my” rightful place as the best, the brightest, the prettiest, the funniest, or the most powerful of all.
And here’s where it gets really weird. We can sometimes cop the same attitude with God! Have you ever caught yourself viewing Him as an accessory to your own success? OUCH! Have you ever spent time in prayer declaring to God how you will become the most anointed, most beloved, most amazing, most prosperous person this generation (or church) has seen? These attitudes very likely originate from the same place that playground “pecking orders” come—from the drive to rise above others so you can get the recognition and success you feel you so “rightfully deserve”.
Such desires are not birthed by the Holy Spirit and are not in accordance with the heart of God. That’s why when such praying is not actualized, it is due to God’s love for the one seeking the “bump up”. It’s His will to form Christ within all of us—in our thinking, attitudes, desires, and behaviors. He refuses to undermine His supreme purpose for our lives by handing out superficial success—like a genie—to anyone who craves or demands it.
Think about this: when one partner in a marriage refuses to be a doormat to the other—while at the same time remaining faithful to his or her vows to love, honor, and cherish—the lust for control is met head on. Despite the accusations of the demanding partner to the contrary, the husband or wife who lovingly refuses to be manipulated or controlled is actually walking the love walk.
In my Christian walk, if I do not yield my frustration and anger to God when things don’t go my way and allow Him to redirect me, then I just might strike out in vengeful self-righteousness at anyone who I perceive as standing in my way. In my desire to be in control, I may stop at nothing—including ruining the reputation of others—to justify my indignation at not getting my way.
When God does not help me to fulfill my driving desire to have my way, however, it is truly a wonderful opportunity for me to reassess my personal motives and methods. He doesn’t condemn me for being a control freak; instead, He lovingly reproves, corrects, and redirects me. At this point, if I yield to His grace and seek His will (not mine), I can patiently anticipate rising up in His timing to fulfill all that He has ordained for me to fulfill.
Neither bullying control nor nagging harping are endorsed by the Word of God for marriage—not for husbands, nor for wives. And when it comes to my relationship with God, I have a choice to make. Will I yield to Him and joyfully embrace and take part in His precepts and purposes for my life OR will I petulantly insist on my own plan and nag Him incessantly to do what I think He should do throughout the rest of my time on this planet?
The choice is up to each individual.
- It is dangerous and it will turn out badly for you to keep kicking against the goad [to offer vain and perilous resistance]. Acts 9:5b, Amplified Bible
- I call Heaven and Earth to witness against you today: I place before you Life and Death, Blessing and Curse. Choose life so that you and your children will live. Deuteronomy 30:19, Message Bible
- …in order to live the remaining time in the flesh, no longer for human desires, but for God’s will. 1 Peter 4:2, Holman Christian Standard Bible
May God bless and help you as you daily yield control of your life and will to God.
Dorothy
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Role-reversal
Part One
I’ve never married, but I go to a church that is very family-oriented, and I’ve heard many messages on healthy relationships and how to keep the balance within marriage partnerships.
I’ve also lived a lot of life and have observed the whole gamut of marriages, from the best to the worst, both among Bible-believing couples and those with less interest in Christ. And working with singles, I have prayed and cried with more than one devastated soul as they attempted to crawl out from under the wreckage of a marriage or relationship they once thought was rock-solid.
One thing central to each marriage mess up, I’ve observed, is a blurring of personal boundaries within those relationships and an accumulated disrespect of partners over time for the value and distinct personhood of the other. Whether it’s overstepping boundaries in the marriage covenant or a passive-aggressive refusal to do one’s part to grow the relationship, lines of courtesy are crossed and the human value of someone once cherished is cheaply discarded.
And again, as someone who has not been married one day of her life, I’ve just given you the full extent of my wisdom on marriage. However, as a human who has had a 38-year ongoing relationship with God, the mistakes we make with Him are strikingly similar to some of the undermining behaviors in marriage. This week, I want to write about four of them: role-reversal, control/nagging, passive inactivity, and lack of appreciation and regard.
Our culture delights in role-reversal; as a teacher in public school, I was instructed by the “PC police” to display boys and girls in non-traditional roles, whether I chose posters for the wall or wrote word problems for math. As a believer, however, I was sensitive to each child’s strengths and weaknesses, and sought to empower each one—including boys interested in more “masculine” pursuits and girls interested in more “feminine” pursuits. Why re-engineer what God had set in motion and viewed as “very good”?
Similarly, one of the greatest destabilizing challenges that you as a Christian may deal with in your relationship with God is that of “role-reversal”.
Simply put, God is God and you are you. He is not you; you are not Him. Many believers can spot a woman who is attempting to take over her husband’s role from miles away. And yet, there is an almost epidemic phobia rampant in the Church in regard to acknowledging your own humanity and vulnerability. Why is this? I think it’s because of a skewed concept of what being a new creation in Christ is all about.
You’d better believe that in Christ your sins are washed away; in Christ you are a new creation and you have been made the righteousness of God in Him (see 2 Cor. 5:17, 21). As you embrace these truths, you are liberated into a new freedom in your walk with God. Just as a young woman is liberated to experience the full-range of emotions and joy in her new marriage covenant with her husband, so too is the new believer free to walk in the grace, righteousness, and power of God.
However, if that same young woman determined that by virtue of marriage, she was now the husband, himself, you would advise her to see a counselor or shrink, post-haste!
And yet, have you experienced a subtle pressure to portray that you have it all together because of your relationship with Christ? I know I have in my Christian walk, and those are the times I’ve been the most miserable. I’m telling you, that pressure does not come from God! You’re in relationship with Him, but you’re not Him. All the blessings and promises that He has poured out on you are not competitive devices by which He expects you to prove yourself to the rest of the Church or the world. No! What He pours on you and into you is due to His great love for you and for those to whom He sends you. You’re not in a God-apprenticeship, so stop expecting yourself to become Him!
When I learned to embrace my role as the human in my relationship with God is when I stopped yielding to the pressure to “be” God. I don’t have to have it all together because I know the One who does. I don’t have to have all the answers because I am deeply loved by the One who understands everything. Being the human in my relationship with God has given me the courage to face the chaotic flow of national and world events because I know I don’t have to figure them out or fix them. I just know that in my role as human, I have the right and responsibility to ask my God to intervene. And as a human, I then listen for Him, my God, to instruct me as to my part in bringing about solutions. Then I do my part, and leave the results to Him.
If you are under pressure to “perform” in your Christian walk, then possibly you have entered into role-reversal without knowing it. I challenge you: step back, delight in God as God, and fully enjoy the fact that you are the human in this relationship. It will set you free.
Dorothy the Human
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There Your hand will lead me
With many believers taking time off this summer to travel to other lands for the purpose of sharing their faith through word, song, medicine, hammer and nail, or fresh water and food, I felt impressed to share some tales of God’s grace and deliverance in my life during two different summer mission trips to the tiny island of Grenada.
It was 1987. I had just experienced another heart-rending breakup with a young man I thought might be “the one”. Devastated, but refusing to abandon my convictions to pursue rebound possibilities coming my way, I decided I needed to flee the hemisphere to clear my head. I searched out mission possibilities and chose a short-term trip to Sauteurs, Grenada, to live and minister with YWAM missionaries there. Although this island was still in the northern hemisphere, it was merely an island or two away from South America, and I felt that was far enough.
The YWAM team in Sauteurs owned two homes. I stayed in the remote, former plantation house my first summer and walked daily through the jungle to the road into the village to join the other missionaries for outreach to the village children.
My first morning there I awoke early and explored the land. I sat on a rock under a sprawling Caribbean tree to view the mountains and valleys before me. I read Psalm 139:9-10 as I sat there in the morning breeze coming from the sea. “If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will lay hold of me.” I was nearly out of the hemisphere, but here I was, still safe in the hand of God. Healing was already flowing into my broken heart.
Most of the time I spent there was in outreach to the children of the village, laughing, eating mangoes ripe off the trees, and joining the American and Canadian missionaries on countless jaunts to the beach, followed by our ever-present, teeming entourage of smiling, friendly village children.
Etched in my memory forever are the cheerful cries of those precious black young ones as they screeched in the beautiful Caribbean waves, “Dear Jesus, Please send a BIG wave!” and then, as they dove into the big wave He invariably sent, “Miss Dor-tee! Watch this!”
One morning on a walk into the village and before I was out of the jungle, an old, wizened man, wearing little but a cloth around his waist, confronted me.
“What is your mission here?” he demanded.
“I’m here to learn about the mission in Sauteurs,” I replied.
He cradled the machete he was holding. “I hate Christians,” he told me. “I have a license to kill all Christians.”
“Oh, that’s interesting,” I said, and then I heard the roar of a motorbike coming down the trail from the road. It was one of the YWAMers. He saw the two of us, eyed the machete, and asked if I needed a ride.
I hopped on the back of the bike and we motored out of there and into town.
That morning was the only time I saw the little old man with the machete. Interestingly, it was also the only time I was ever met on my jungle walk by one of the YWAMers on a motorcycle.
Although I was in what seemed to be the remotest part of the sea, even there God’s hand led me and His right hand laid hold of me. And as I left Grenada that summer, I knew I would return at least once more.
Tomorrow: The hand of God during Carnival-Sauteurs, 1988.
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