I had someone recently ask me, “How is your soul doing?” Wow! That’s a hard question. Kind of like, How’s your heart doing? I’ve struggled in my life answering those questions in my restless driven state of hurry. It requires processing deep, where exactly do I go within myself to find that answer?
John Orberg said, “The soul is never satisfied, always yearning and craving satisfaction.” He described the soul as, “longing or wanting or desiring or striving.” The Bible describes the soul as being hungry and thirsty, or hollow or empty, and not satisfied.
Ortberg goes on to say, “When the will has become enslaved by its need, when the mind has become obsessed with the object of its desire, when the appetite of the body has become master rather than servant, the soul is disordered.”
Dallas Willard said, “If you want your soul to rest pray that others around you will be more outstanding, more praised, and more used of God than yourself.” He goes on to say, “When you die to yourself, your soul comes alive.”
If you ever travel that deep, you will experience death, but then discover a New Normal. Reminds me of the story in Exodus 2 where a Hebrew baby named Moses, is lifted out of the water and exposed to a Palace. Educated, shaped and taught a new language through victories, failures and suffering. God needed to replace his smallness with boldness, so that one day he’d have a voice to say with authority, “Let my people go!”
Maybe you’ve questioned God with the way your life has gone. If you’re like me, you hate pain and suffering. Is it possible that your normal needs upgraded? It’s remembering that God never creates an Eagle to run with the Chickens.
When God exposes you to any struggle, He’s reaching down inside to draw something great out of you! In that struggle you discover who you are and slowly begin to understand a New Normal.
Moses kills, but God doesn’t let failure stop him. People might write you off because you made a mistake. But the same Grace that picked up Moses will pick you up! Why? We serve a God who loves us, has a plan and gives us second chances.
Ever wonder why God tells Moses to throw his rod down and is surprised when it turns into a snake? When the water turns to blood? When his hand comes out of his shirt with leprosy? But the miracle was the snake becomes his rod again, blood water, and his hand normal. This Mighty God gave Moses back his strength and empowered him to walk into a New Normal! What happened to him in private goes Public!
If you relate to this story, then it’s possible that it’s time for you to step out of your normal process of logic and into your Faith and Calling, and learn the miracles of a New Normal!
Time has arrived and our Culture needs to see Miracles! It’s the very same demonstration of the Holy Spirit and Power the Early Church had to shift the hearts of unbelievers to Jesus.
It’s time! It’s Your time for Business and Ministry to speak to the demons that have stolen holding this Culture captive, for you to say, “Let My People Go!”
This is very true. I hated pain & suffering. But then, I have been in chronic pain since 2011. And through the years it become a teacher to me. Now I have learned to embrace pain. Physical pain, and of late, relational/emotional pain.
ReplyDeleteRom. 5:3-4 says “we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”
It is in this, my 34th year as a Christ follower that I finally am learning to grasp that God’s Grace is bigger than anything I could have ever imagined. Victory in the Christian life is not earned, it’s a gift freely given. I can stop striving! God doesn’t want me to work for Him. He doesn’t need me to work for Him. He has called me to rest in Him. When we stop TRYING & just start RESTING in His presence, we truly experience a new normal. A peace that surpasses understanding, An eternal hope and a joy that is beyond measure.
Thank you, good doctor, for faithfully sharing the truths of our Redeemer.