Seasons of Grief

My new twitter friend @Lifeverse wrote this stunning article that she gave me permission to share with you. If you are on twitter follow her. If you haven't followed me on Twitter my username is @MikeWilkinson5.

By Free Encouragement Guest Blogger -- Christine
 Originally Published on December 28, 2009

We’re completing week five of the 10th Anniversary Edition of Breaking Free by Beth Moore. Our lesson today is about seasons of grief as Beth Moore shares her own personal story of loss. What makes this women’s bible study so effective when we turn to our own life story and find similarities. On page 121 in the study, she shares testimony on how God “opened my eyes to see that grief was not inappropriate. Each of (her) experiences represented a kind of death.”
I’d just like to raise my hand in praise and stand beside Beth as I look back at my own season of grief. During today’s lesson, I found myself listing events of 2001 that deeply wounded me, such as:

• Family member admits alcohol addiction and starts recovery
• Family dog bites pregnant mom and is put to sleep
• Family member spends next two weeks in ICU for rare blood disease
• Family member (age 2) hospitalized for two weeks in ICU, diagnosed with juvenile diabetes
• Terror attacks of Sept. 11
• Second daughter is born by repeat C-section, not breathing, and needs constant assistance for several hours
• Best friend has affair, abandons her 3 year old son and husband
• Spouse laid off from job
• Return to work while caring for newborn baby
• Friend’s husband dies suddenly, assist her family in selling home
• Sell home we designed (new construction)
• Moving day, car dies and must buy new one. Mold found in former home. Cost: $15,000 the day we move
• Spouse loses job again, one month after moving to new home
• Friend’s daughter (age 2) diagnosed with leukemia

After I created my list in the margin of my workbook, I then took a different look at it: what kind of death did these experiences represent. How refreshing to look at the individual hardships and season of grief, through the eyes of faith.  My season of grief became:

• Death of trust and security
• Death of being kind to animals
• Death of healthy body
• Death of sibling’s happiness
• Death of national security
• Death of healthy pregnancy
• Death of friendship
• Death of financial security
• Death of staying home to care for children
• Death of a father loved by his wife and two children
• Death of a dream we designed together
• Death of financial peace
• Death of dependable income from spouse
• Death of health

During my grief, I found God and became dependent on Him after a 20 year absence. He began to reveal Himself in very powerful ways, calling me closer. It wasn’t a fast run into the arms of a loving father, it was a slow walk through a season of grief that brought me into my current relationship with Him. A relationship of trust and love and powerful faith which I would not have found if I did not go through this painful season of death and grief. He’s not done with me yet and He has begun a good work in me.
Prayer Requests
Complete these verses by inserting your name:

• And we know that in all things God works for the good of those (your name) who has been called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28
• He who began a good work in (your name)  will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1:6

Beth Moore Quotes

• The most deliberating loss for a Christian is the loss of faith-Beth Moore
• Christ desires to raise you from the LIVING dead-Beth Moore
• The life of a Christian is never about sameness. It’s always about change-Beth Moore
• When our hearts are hemorrhaging with grief and loss, never forget that Christ binds and compresses with a nail-scarred hand-Beth Moore

Today’s Scripture Verses
For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. 2 Corinthians 4:11
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.” John 11:25
Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” John 11:40
Group Discussion
How do you think a loss of faith can turn into bondage? Have you experienced a season of grief?

The Destructiveness of Knowledge-please check out retraction

Ever had something blow up in your face?

It's not pretty. I can go figuratively or literally with this statement. Being that I am not in a gorey mood, I will go figuratively. Half of you are happy with the direction I am going the other half wanted me to go into some story with firecrackers involved.

It can seem that no matter how much we know about a situation something can go a rye. We may have every meticulous little detail worked out, all our ducks in the row--And FAIL.

There was that one thing we missed. That slight miscalculation that ruins everything--"Oh didn't think about that." Please check out the retraction on the blog before.I apologize and did not want to mislead anyone.
Every leader makes mistakes, but it is wise to admit things when your wrong. I once heard a story about a mistake a famous pastor made with an article on whether pastors should have a Christmas Service. He made it not a big deal putting him on the wrong side of the argument which he did not take sides with; later realizing his mistake he tried to show his real side.

Bigger ministries that have the media's attention deal with the attacks of Satan. Even slandering ministries. Billy Graham had a staff that kept him accountable so he wouldn't fall into a situation that the media could twist. Such as people who hate the Christian message to set someone in up for money or publicity. Sometimes the media is just out to make a profit and sale a story. We have to take the truth from the media with a grain of salt.

Knowledge from the world can not be the center of our trust.

Earthly knowledge can be used to (control everything, we cannot turn power into an idol), instead we must trust God completely letting the Holy Spirit lead towards everlasting change.


We can try everything in our power to work things out the way we want it and things crumble.

It stinks sometimes when things don't go as planned. But we shouldn't go into self-pity about it. We just need to move on.

I think we do this a lot with our beliefs: we do things in our own power instead of relying on God's power to do things for the best way.

What is the best way in handling our knowledge so that we do not have things blow up in our face?

Real wisdom-must be held in the Lord's hands for us to be given by him instead of us trying to make something of ourselves without him.

We must grow in our belief by holding ourselves to who we believe in, so we are able to conquer the great feats.

Trust must be the way we survive in our walk in the Lord. It isn't the talents or gifts of so and so in our congregation.  We cannot compromise with this trust. We compromise by trying to grab our own knowledge instead of asking him to provide for that knowledge.

So many times we compromise by adding something to the mix to survive: money,people,stuff,a business, Trust in God leads us to true betterment, not what is bought and sold.

It is hard for many people to understand being informed on something than relishing on knowledge for knowledge sake.

I think this relishing on knowledge can be a way we can build ourselves up-A.K.A pride.

We sometimes then use knowledge to show that we are better than others when we are not.

We can not be prideful and test God in our discernment either. This is a hard statement to understand.

Pray these things my friends to God: Show me God what trust looks like to you and may I recognize it. Please help me walk in this. May God reveal these things to you over the next few days. I think this is the best way to understand.

Prime Time with God

I subscribe to this newsletter for a couple of years now and I have to say it is one of the strongest builders of my faith. Here is one I just read.

Today's Prayer
Dear God, Thank You for Your Word; Your Word that is like honey to my lips and balm to my soul. I pray that the words that go forth out of my mouth shall be "pleasant words, like a honeycomb," to the people around me. I want my words to be like "sweetness to the soul and health to the bones," so that I may encourage others, build them up, and point them to You. If I may share just an inkling of the love and sweetness You give to me...I will be blessed and will be a blessing. In Jesus' name I pray, amen.


Developing Our Heart for God
TGIF Today God Is First Volume 1, by Os Hillman
03-01-2010

"I will rouse your sons, O Zion, against your sons, O Greece, and make you like a warrior's sword." - Zechariah 9:13b

In the third and fourth centuries followers of Socratic teaching and other Greek scholars began to influence the Church in ways that were different from the Hebraic roots of the early Church. The Greek influence appeals more to the intellect, whereas the early-Church Hebraic model appealed to the heart. The Greek influence resulted in more emphasis on oratory skills and cognitive knowledge of God. Over the many centuries, this influence has shown itself in a more programmatic approach to the gospel rather than a process of living out our faith. So why is it important for us to understand this?

I realized in my own life that I was a product of this Greek system. My walk with Christ focused more on what I knew rather than on an intimate and powerful walk with God. Knowledge without power to express the life within is of little value. The more programmatic the focus, the less emphasis we place on building deep and caring relationships that result in changed lives. Our early Church fathers knew there was a cost to living out the Word of God, not simply giving mental assent to it.

Are you walking with God today in an intimate fellowship? Or, are you only involved in programs and activities designed to do good things? Reflect on Proverbs 23:12: "Apply your heart to instruction and your ears to words of knowledge." We must listen and respond with the heart. Whatever service we give to God should be a result of our relationship with our heavenly Father, not an end unto itself.

You can subscribe to it here.

Why does a loving God send people to hell? [With Retraction]

Last time I wrote a blog mentioning judgment.

Many people who deal with the question: Why does a loving God send people to hell?

{Retraction notice} The Retraction will be on talked about in the next two blogs.Best explained in this one.

Before I start the article, I want to apologize if I mislead anyone when I put this blog up particularly when dealing with justification. Justification-how one is made right in the eyes of God and how he judges accordingly to sin, preferably in this case with the time manner of justification. People only have this life to accept Jesus or reject Jesus. I want to make that clear.We are made righteous by God calling us righteous, through an except through believe in the Jesus' power that he conquered death in the resurrection. This may be a hard pill for some to swallow, but if you don't love and respect someone why would want you around them?    

(Beginning of the article.)
Hell is a place where people are outside of God's relational presence. Only in God's presence can we thrive. We can seek his presence here on earth, that is how we grow spiritually. Growing spiritually isn't just a learning thing. Spiritual growth is a corrupt body being transformed to call on God instead of sin. We invite God into our life to spend time with us in some form or fashion. Prayer, Reading his Word, Seeking him out and listening for his call; the ways we can spend time with God goes on and on. Inviting God to spend time with us is easier than people think it is just the way he is spending time with us that we have to see.

God's justice is important and there are many in the world that long for justice against the wicked of the world. God's justice is harder to accept here than the third world where as God's love can be hard to accept sometimes. So how people feel about his judgment here in the United States is not the universal truth. The same goes for how some people feel about his love in oppressed places. Oppression is the result of disobedience against God and God needs to bring these things to justice. God is perfect, he cannot change himself to be for sin in anyway.

In hell, God's relational presence does not exist. God does not live in hell relationally; God doesn't pay Satan a visit. God rules everything, even hell only his wrath lives in hell and people are under the full weight of the law. Christians do not have a God of Good, Jesus and God of Evil Satan. I think we feel this way too often. We have one God and one rebel. The rebel has no power.

If someone were to call the name of the Lord in hell, I think God would answer them and take them to heaven because of his eternal promise.  Although the pain of hell would make you only think about the pain. So everyone is stuck at a lost. 

Text that show differently.
Revelation 20:11-15

Those that have receive Jesus receive grace, they do not deal with the sinful titles of the sins they committed. because Jesus has taken away every believers bad reputation taking our shame with him to the cross.  Romans 10:11

[RETRACTION]
The reason for strike-throughs in these sentences after looking  biblically. I can't say that those who do not know Jesus will want him, or lead them towards trust. Our bodies are transformed into bodies of destruction because our sin is attached to us or if our sin in put on cross by a relationship with him then we have bodies of glory. I made a mistake and I hope I did not mislead anyone. The Holy Spirit must change people. Everyone has a sort of spiritual common sense however many are not looking. Tribes all over the world have been found that know Jesus without any outside contact. It says in Romans 1:20

Bill Weise wrote a book on a vision of Hell,90 minutes in Hell in the vision he did not know Jesus as Lord. Then God allowed him to remember him and he was sent to heaven. Soon after Weise woke up to deal with the trauma he had remembered in hell. It led him to a year of therapy and then later wrote a book on hell. I have met people who claimed they had a near death experience and have gone both to heaven and hell. The things I have read have been really consistent to each other.

[Retraction Cont..]
After looking at this again after posting this last week, with more discernment and council of others I can see that the account is not accurate. I see it as a demonic dream misprotraying God. (Some do not believe in demonic dreams being there is not much biblical evidence and may declare this as an extrabiblical statement.)

I do have to say that we must make sure we do not discern based on a lens of fear.  We can just shrug these issues off because we are afraid of them. I say this for I see referrance to God-dreams and we have flesh dreams. Flesh dreams count for nothing. I hear of God-lead dreams in foreign countries.

We have to see the difference all between stuff written in the bible-- stuff that is the Holy Spirit,(this doesn't mean that everything the Holy Spirit says is supposed to go into the bible) and something that is extra-biblical that directly goes against scripture.

(I hope this does not leave to disunity between readers or between them and me.) I am more than willing to answer questions if someone has them. (I'm not as busy as you may think)

[Back to the article]
However, there is not thriving in hell but destruction. It is a place where people become lost by their own paranoia and selfishness. People become consumed with a fully corrupted flesh leading to ever-increasing destruction.

Experiential evidence is strong for both places. As well as the death and resurrection of Christ if someone was to look at the validity of these things. If they look culturally at the accounts themselves, then look at the deep evidence of his definite death and resurrection. I think they would reconsider a few things in their life. They would not take the payment to take our sins away as one to be rejected or taken lightly.

People have the assumption that hell will be one big party, which is a huge deception. It is the worst place; no one would really want to go there if they knew what it was like. People will decide as C.S. Lewis says people who do not accept God will walk away from God. Many will go away towards hell, to go to the "party" instead of hanging out with a "Goodie-two-shoes God".It pains God to send people to hell.It pains him deeply in his heart, but he can not have his house wrecked in heaven.God is righteous and has right to send judge the world for its sins. Those that have the Holy Spirit will not be judged but counted as righteous.

Those that reject him will long to have the stuff of heaven but not the creator of heaven. The gospel is not about getting to heaven it is about being with Jesus. In the presence of Jesus Christ are supreme joy and everlasting growth in God.We must follow with the Holy Spirit and stick by God, through his Holy Spirit we can give him satisfaction to be in his kingdom.