How to Deal

So I think I’m a little bit tipsy.  I had a few drinks at work after I got off.  It’s martini monday, and martinis are four dollars.

I only meant to have two drinks, but a third one was somehow ordered, so I drank most of it anyway.  Yeah, so now at least I know what’s it like to be slightly impaired.  So apparently, 3 drinks on a mostly empty stomach is not so good.  I had Chick Fil A at like 5:30, then egg rolls with my martinis.  Yep, no more, she says.

The first week of summer school is over.  I missed my class today because I slept in late.  I woke up, snoozed my alarm, then woke up again at 8:20.  I went back and forth: go to class, don’t go to class, go to class, don’t go to class.  Then it was 8:49 and entirely too late to get started, take a shower, and head to my 8:30 class.

So I sent the professor an email, praying for grace.  I just want somebody to say that it okay that things are tough with now, and that they see greatness in me.  And he did.  He said I was bright and was always a joy to have in class.

So I will press on.

Because there is greatness there.

Someone believes in me.

Things to learn from the book of Psalms (from Prayer, by Yancey):

• Work out animosity toward enemies not by gossip or hostility, but by informing God of their injustice and asking God to set things right.
• It’s all right o express impatience to God, asking for a speeded-up answer to prayer – and even to spell out God’s own interests in achieving the desired results. 
• Prayer sometimes involves talking to yourself (“Do not fret . . . Trust in the Lord, be still.), saying aloud what you know to be healthy but have a hard time putting into practice.
• Focus not just on the unfairness and problems of life, but also on all that does not turn out well.  Review the good things of the past, and don’t forget in the darkness what you learned in the light.
• Project yourself into the future as a changed person.  Behavioral psychologist would call this the “act as if” principle.

Genesis 18:23

Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city?  Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it?  Far be it from you to do such a thing – to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike.  Far be it from you!  Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?

The Lord said, ‘If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”

The Abraham spoke up again, ‘ Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty?  Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five people?’

‘If I find forty-five there,’ he said, ‘I will not destroy it.’

Once again he spoke to him, ‘What if only forty are found there?’

He said, ‘For the sake of forty, I will not do it.’

Then he said, ‘May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?’

He answered, ‘I will not do it if I find thirty there.’

Abraham said, ‘ Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?’

He said, ‘ For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it.’

Then he said, ‘May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more.  What if only ten can be found there?’

He answered, ‘For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.’

When the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home.

Should we continually ask and seek God about the same things, or is just once enough?

It’s not like God forgets what we asked for the first time.   But should we really be like the persistant widow in Luke who keeps pestering the judge? 

Are we pestering God by asking and seeking for answers that we’ve already approached Him with?

In Romans 1:9, Paul says he “constantly” remembers the believers in Rome in his prayers. 

I just want to point out verse 26 of the same chapter.  Who says homosexuality is not addressed in the bible:

“Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts.  Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.  In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another.  Men committed shameful acts with other men, and recieved in themselves the due penalty for their error.”

I wonder if the “due penalty” refers to sexually transmitted diseases.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

Interesting to me is a footnote (TNIV Bible).  Apparently, the word “fool” in the Olrd Testament usually denotes a person who is morally deficient.  Did not know that . . .

The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide, by some guy with a Jewish name.

Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis

The Power of Intention, by Dr. Wayne Dyer

Facing your Giants, by Max Lucado

Wild at Heart and Waking the Dead, by John Eldredge

Boundaries, by Henry Cloud and John Townsend

John Bevere books

A Closer Walk, Catherine Marshall

Velvet Elvis

to be continued . . .

The next reading was from John Henry Newman and guess what that was about?  Fasting.

“Newman sees fasting as an accompanying means to the work of prayer; that is to say prayer is the overarching category under which fasting functions.  Often our renewed interest in fasting has a tendency to exalt it beyond all scripture and reason.  No, fasting has a vital but always subordinate function in the ongoing life of prayer.”

Today I read out of the spiritual classics book.  The first excerpt I read was from Catherine Marshall.  I don’t know much about her except what was in the little biography section.  I would like to read her book A Closer Walk.

The excerpt I read was her personal account of fasting from critical-ness.  Through her fast God showed her:

1) A critical spirit focuses on ourselves and makes us unhappy.  We lose perspective and humor.

2) A critical spirit blocks the positive creative thoughts God longs to give us.

3) A critical spirit can prevent good relationships between individuals and often produces retaliatory critical-ness.

4) Criticalness blocks the work of the Spirit of God: love, good will, mercy.

5) Wheneveer we see something genuinely wrong in another person’s behaivor, rather than cirticize him or her directly, or far worse, gripe about him behind his back, we should ask the Sprit of God to do the correction needed.

Her prayer (and mine) was this:

“Lord, I repent of this sin of judgement.  I am deeply sorry for having committed so gross an offense against you and against myself so contiunally.  I claim your promise of forgiveness and seek a new beginning.”

Why do the nations rage, and the people plot a vain thing?  The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against His anointed, saying, “Let us break Their bond in pieces and cast away Their cords from us.” 

He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; The Lord shall hold them in derision.  Then he shall speak to them in His wrath, and distress them in His deep displeasure; “Yet I have set My King on My holy hill of Zion.”

” I will declare the decree: the Lord has said to Me, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten You.  Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for Your possession.  You shall break them with a rod of iron; You shall dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.’”

Now therefore, be wise, O kings; Be instucted, you judges of the earth.  Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.  Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish in the way,  when His wrath is kindled but a little.  Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him.

So don’t understand this at all. 

I recognize the well used verse, “Ask of me and I will give you the nations  . . . .”

But who is the speaker here?  The NKJ captalizes personal pronouns.  So is God speaking to Jesus here? 

What is going on?

“The thought of memorizing prayers seems an artifical and stilted way to restore something as vital as spiritual hunger.  But consider what Rabbi Abraham Heschel said to the members of his synagogue who complained that the words of the liturgy did not express what they felt.  He told them that it was not that the liturgy should express what they feel, but that they should learn to feel what the liturgy expressed. Recited faithfully, great thougths put into great words can do that for us . . . Memorization can be to our hunger for God what practicing a musical instrement is for performance.  It can be the singing of the scales of the soul.”

- Ben Patterson.