by donyadunlap | Aug 16, 2012 | The Spiritual Life
“I’m overwhelmed.” “I have so much to do.” “I don’t have enough money.” “How is this ever going to work?”
Sound familiar?
There are times in my life (like today) when these questions and a dozen more crowd my mind and make it hard to breathe. If I allow myself to play these thoughts in my mind, by the end of the day I am completely overwhelmed, frustrated, discouraged and have accomplished nothing. Why? Because all of my energy was wasted on worry.
David understood this very thing. In Psalm 61 he prays to God and confesses that he is completely overwhelmed. He requests help to remember that he had a higher power, a shelter, a strength that was greater than himself and his problems. We need to do the same.
Hear my cry, O God; attend unto my prayer. From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I. – Psalm 61:1-2
We have a Rock to run to for protection from the storms and for safe haven from the rushing waters that threaten to overcome us. We can choose to stay where we are and drown in our emotions, or we can cry out for help. We can’t climb the cliff ourselves, but when we call on the Lord to rescue us, He is quick to reach out and lift us to safety.
Your circumstances may not change. You may still have a to-do list a mile long and a list of bills to equal it. What will change is your heart. You will have peace that no matter what happens, Christ has a hold on you. You aren’t going to fall to your death. You will be able to take one step at a time with a mind free of worry because you have given your fears over to the only one that can really do anything about them.
Sometimes I think we women tend to worry and fret and plan and manipulate as a way to control the situation. We feel that handing our fears to God is giving up. We think that if we let Him work out the details that things won’t happen the way we want them to. But what we fail to realize is that we aren’t in control no matter how much we try to be. The only thing we are doing when we hold on to our worries is adding sin to our already difficult situation. This pulls us away from God instead of drawing us to Him.
So the next time you are tempted to push play on the recording labeled “What am I going to do?” push pause instead. Take a moment, or several if necessary, and take your concerns to God. Let Him know what the problem is and ask for Him to intervene. Ask Him for the peace needed to think clearly, the grace to leave the problem in His hands and the wisdom to know what to do when the time is right to act.
Do you have a special verse that you turn to when you feel overwhelmed? I would love for you to share it with us in the comments section. It may be just the thing that someone needs to hear today to take courage in the trial they are facing.
by donyadunlap | Aug 3, 2012 | Guest Posts, Making a Difference
Susie Finney is a full time missionary with Youth With A Mission in Tyler, TX, working with the School of the Bible. When she’s not busy teaching or hanging out with her Bible students, she blogs, reads, and goes to as many Christian concerts as possible. I am thrilled to have her share her story of how God changed her heart and life with us today as part of our release week party for Wrecked: When a Broken World Slams into Your Comfortable Life. You can follow Susie on her blog or on Twitter:
Twitter: @missionsgirl
Nepal – Photo by Karna Deshar
It was July 2009, and I was very, very far from home.
They sometimes walked for miles to come to our seminar. Men and women who had experienced the challenges of living in a predominantly Hindu country, where the Christian population was very small. I met men and women in Nepal who had done jail time for the “crime” of being Christians. People who had been beaten and exiled from their village for their faith. And here I was, an American girl in her late twenties, looking and feeling very out of place in Nepal. I’d never experienced persecution beyond maybe someone rolling their eyes at me. I’d certainly never been kicked out of town for my beliefs.
The one statement that has always stuck with me from my Nepal outreach was during the last day of our second Bible seminar, held in the city of Pokhera. They asked some of the seminar participants to share feedback from the week-long seminar. One man stood up and started to speak through an interpreter. “I became a believer five years ago, but always wondered whether or not I was following the true God, and now I know.”
The theme verse of our seminar was John 17:3 “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”, but his statement was significant not only for that, but because he came from a Hindu background and culture of millions of gods and goddesses. Why should someone choose to follow Jesus and Jesus alone? What made him unique and to be worshiped rather than all the other options available at the shrines we saw at virtually every corner?
The thing that cemented this man’s faith was digging in to the scriptures and seeing what they said about what God is like-His nature and character, always trustworthy and true. It wasn’t based on feelings or an arbitrary view of an unstable god who could change on a whim.
Three years have come and gone since my trip to Nepal. I haven’t been out of the U.S. since then, and have spent most of my time at the YWAM base here in Tyler, TX. But I will never forget the people I met during my month in Nepal. My perspective changed after meeting people who had suffered for their faith, and people who came from a very different perspective than my own, yet we were bound together by love of the same Lord.
At the moment I don’t get out and travel much, but I am still a missionary. My time in Nepal was simply another confirmation of the power of God’s Word, and the privilege of getting to teach it and watch as people’s lives change never gets old, whether here in the States or halfway across the world. It is so vital to understand what scripture says about God, about Who He really is. I guess you could say that that trip reoriented my perspective on the world in that way.
How about you? What is one experience you’ve had that has changed the way you view the world around you and what is most important to you?
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by donyadunlap | May 22, 2012 | The Spiritual Life
Have you ever prayed a prayer that was “too big for your britches?” Some time ago I asked God to allow me to live a life that was so far beyond my natural abilities that others would look at me and know without a doubt that it was all of God. This sounded rather Christ-honoring and noble and all together super-Christian-hero-like in my mind until God started to answer my request.
God began to prod me in certain directions, answer prayers, and stir up things in my life that needed to be removed so that He might have His way with me. That is when reality walked off the classroom chalkboard of my mind and slapped me upside the head. Reality said, “Get real, Donya. That life you imagine is NEVER going to happen. Those goals you want to accomplish are too big for someone like you. Who do you think you are?” My dreams were big, but I quickly found that my faith was very, very small. Thankfully, I have found that God can work with that.
In Matthew 17 the disciples had a reality check similar to mine. They had attempted to cast out a demon from a boy and were unable to do so. The boy’s father brought him to Jesus who healed the child. Afterwards the disciples pulled Jesus aside and asked why they weren’t able to heal the child. Jesus responded,
Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.
This was quite a rebuke! All the disciples needed was just a teeny tiny bit of faith, no bigger than a mustard seed, and they could have done what seemed impossible to them. “Tsk, tsk” we say to the disciples, but what about us?
If we are to live the kind of lives God is pleased with, we must walk by faith. Of the nine times the word “impossible” is mentioned in Scripture, five passages tell us that we can do anything through the power of God, one says that without faith it is impossible to please Him and one says that it is impossible for Him to lie. When you add all of that up, we are left without any excuse at all to remain in our comfort zones and hide from God’s calling. Is it scary to walk by faith? Absolutely. Terrifying. Eleanor Roosevelt once said,
We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face… we must do that which we think we cannot.
It isn’t Scripture, but what she says is true. God grows our faith by putting us in situations that we don’t understand and have no idea how to handle so that we have to go to Him for the answers. We have to walk in the Spirit, because without Him we couldn’t get out of bed. But through His power, His courage and His strength, we can face our fears and overcome them. Through the Holy Spirit working in us we can accomplish our impossible dreams.
Right now I am looking at situations that I cannot imagine overcoming, but God didn’t say I have to have it all figured out. He just said that I have to keep walking towards the goal and to keep trusting Him to take care of everything.
My idea of the impossible dream was for God to enable me to do great things. God’s idea for my impossible dream was for me to allow Him to do great things through me. In my own strength, my dreams will never happen. In God’s strength, nothing can stop me because nothing can stop Him. So even though most of my prayers start with “God, I don’t see how…” I have to believe that He is going to grow my mustard seed size faith into a beautiful, fruit bearing tree. I have to believe, because He promised He would…and it is impossible for Him to lie.
So what about you? What impossible dream are you dreaming today? Are you loafing in your fear or are you baby-stepping it in faith? Tell me about the journey God has called you to. I’d love to hear from you.
For with God nothing shall be impossible. – Luke 1:37
Photo Credit: Debbie Borrmann – Graphic Embellishments
