Two
books helped me this morning, first Dan Walsh's,“Perfect Peace: in Imperfect Times,” a
devotional that I am rereading. Day 6 about tearing down imaginary walls
focusing on 2 Corinthians 10:4-5(ESV) was awesome.
“For the weapons of our warfare are not of the
flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion
raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey
Christ,” This is a verse that I already used in prayer every morning for years
concerning my family.
Day
7 called The Slippery Slope of Anxious Thoughts also spoke to me as it starts
out “Negative thoughts can be quite powerful if they hit you at just the right
time.” (Dan Walsh)
He
talks about the pattern of our thoughts, where they may or may not come from,
and the armor needed to combat them.
Sometimes,
I feel that when there has been hurt, pain, lack of affirmation it may suddenly
flavor a reaction we have to a small thing and then unless we have put on the
armor of God, a blow-up may occur.
I
also love this from Mary DeMuth’s book, “Not Marked,” her take on something she
calls, The Next.
An
Epic to Anticipate
Pastor
Mark Buchanan sat with a woman like me who had a similar story. After he heard it,
he threw a desperate prayer heavenward, not knowing what to say. “And then God
slipped me an insight, timely as manna dropped from the sky. He showed that her
past was beyond repair, at least on my watch. If there was any good thing there
was to salvage, I knew not how. But in the same instant God showed me she still
had her future. And it was vast,
unbroken, pristine, radiant. Her past was a tragedy to lament. But her future
was an epic to anticipate.”
That’s
our story too. We cannot alter the past, but we have the power, through Jesus,
to anticipate The Next.
Have
you ever felt like sexual abuse is your exile? That it’s set you in a place
you’d rather not be? A place not of your choosing? A mindset that haunts you?
God spoke to the Israelites in their exile, encouraging those exiles to change
their thinking or they would miss the great thing He planned to do. If we stay
locked in the isolation of our minds, always rehashing the old, story,
preferring the place of exile, we will not be able to perceive or see the cool
thing God will do.
I
am proof that God hews rivers in dry riverbeds, pathways through thorny
thickets. He does the impossible. (Mary DeMuth from Not Marked, Pg.160)
When
times are hard and the mind is a battlefield, I find that focusing on some good
words from good books is a real help.
Happy Sunday, pray the words, sing the words and keep singing.
Words from a friend that struck my heart this week:
Elaine Creasman's blog
