Category Archives: Inspiration

The Day Road Signs Excited Me

Bible, Emotions, Excited, Freedom, God, Inspiration, Joy, Love, Spiritual, , , , , ,

 

Speed Limit Sign3In my early 20s I was given the opportunity to preach at my local church. I was excited. Unlike many people who fear public speaking, I love it. I wanted to bring a good smacking sermon. Something with some punch and grit. I decided to speak on obedience.

I presented my great idea to the Holy Spirit, but felt like he said, ‘no – love and obedience’. I didn’t like that answer, so I tried again. Maybe I had heard wrong. But I got the same answer. So I let it be and kept thinking about my sermon on obedience. But I had no peace about it. I kept remembering about love and obedience. But I was miserable about this because I felt that the inclusion of love was going to make my sermon fluffy and nice, with a lack of punch. It reminded me of Sunday school and being good and being nice. All sweet, but I wanted PUNCH! To be honest, I had no heart revelation.

As time was running out I started to feel desperate. And I felt miserable. I was not passionate about the topic and I couldn’t bear to preach without being passionate. I couldn’t fake it! So I earnestly pleaded with God, ‘if you want me to preach on ‘love and obedience’ then you have to give me a revelation!’

I don’t know how much later, but I remember being in my loungeroom in front of the gas heater, in Boronia, Melbourne. I was in the presence of God. I can’t remember how it happened, but I remember that it was incredibly intense. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay in His presence forever. It was so incredibly wonderful, like nothing one can experience in any other possible way. I felt his love SO strong. This was so long ago, but I cry so much just writing this. It was so deeply profound and life changing.

The biggest thing I remember was feeling like I couldn’t wait to be tested on an area of sin, no matter how small, so I could OBEY God. Because I LOVED him! I just couldn’t wait to obey Him so I could express this LOVE. The next day I knew I would be driving to work at Northside Christian College. Haha now I remember what year it was – 2000. I couldn’t wait to get in my car and stick to the speed limit… because I LOVED GOD and I didn’t want to break the road rules – even a little bit. Normally I reluctantly kept to the speed limit, because I knew it was right – but I would push it a bit. I like a bit of adrenalin and a bit of racing and winning. So my driving was to speed off at the lights and beat the other cars, then slow down when I got just over the speed limit, cos I knew 3km over was safe to not get fined. But not this time. I was going to delight in sticking to the speed limit, finding joy in every step of the journey, every practice of patience. It was not a burden, it was an absolute joy! I can’t tell you how much I thoroughly enjoyed this.

The ecstasy of this revelation did not remain at this intense level, but dissipated to a lower level over time. But I have never ever ever forgotten this revelation. It has been written into the core of my heart. When I do what God tells me to do, it is with pleasure and trust, because I love Him. The energy to obey is so different. The gritting one’s teeth is not like it was. It can be hard, it can be tough, but when I think of who is asking, my heart is so, so much quicker to respond and with joy. I love Him so much. This changed my life and the way I view life and sin and reading the Bible. Everything!

I’m not as loving a driver as I was that first day, but I’m still long-term transformed.

Jesus said, “if you love me, keep my commands” (John 14:15) and “Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me” (John 14:21) and “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching.” (John 14:23). Jesus repeated this over and over to make sure his disciples ‘got it’.

John who recorded these words must have ‘got it’, because in his subsequent letter of 1 John, he writes “in fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome,” (1 John 5:3) and then from another angle, “Those who keep his commands live in him, and he in them.” (1 John 3:24)

My Happy Place

Anxiety, Autism, Emotions, Exhaustion, Freedom, God, Inspiration, Joy, Mental health, Microcephaly, Peace, Special Needs, , , , , , , , ,

Rest chairThe stress and exhaustion got to the point, where wise advice from someone really close, was to put our middle child Summer in a home for six months, so that my husband and I could recover and focus on the other children. Summer has microcephaly, a moderate intellectual disability and autism. Challenging behaviour has been part of the package.

Anxiety medication for our daughter was always a last resort, and so we thought this would be the time to try it. Better than giving her up for six months.

But another dear lady, in a two hour soul emergency phone call, urged me to rest in Jesus. She also had had an adrenal crash one year prior, and had gone deep with Jesus. I caught the vision.

I spent three days with my primary focus as sitting in my super comfy lounge recliner. Resting in Jesus. I knew I had to do this. Even if the medication helped Summer, I was too wrecked to even look after five normal kids, let alone two with special needs. I needed a personal breakthrough.

I sat in my super comfy chair and I didn’t want to get up.

OK I have to do this quick aside… It’s about the chair… In the week prior, I was watching a Facebook page where local people sell stuff, often cheap and occasionally for free. Well there was a 3 seater couch and 2 recliners up for sale. $500 cos it needed to go the next day. Originally bought for $4000. I really wanted it, to replace our uncomfortable stained 3 seater and 2 one seaters, but hey – $500 wasn’t growing on trees in our place. But then the next morning, the guy put ‘free to a good home’, cos he had to empty his place that day as he was moving. Well I was the first person to respond and boy did I write SOLD. My husband picked them up with the guys help that afternoon. And I tell you the whole thing was immaculate and the most comfortable lounge suite I have ever sat on in my life!

I can’t tell you how excited and pleased and thrilled and totally hap-hap-happy I was! Joy spilling all over. I sat in that recliner chair and I did NOT want to get up!

So… fast forward to resting in Jesus. God set me up to want to stay in that chair. So stay I did. And I sat there and thought about praying. But then I thought – no – I have to rest. Praying is work. Good work, but that’s not my job at the moment. And I didn’t want to just rest. I’ve done that a lot in the past 11 months trying to recover from the adrenal crash. I needed to rest in Jesus. How do I do that?

So I laid back in the recliner and with a sigh of relief, rested my inner being, as if I was just leaning right into Jesus. God must have given me grace to do this, because as I took on an inner posture of relief and relaxing into Jesus, I started to laugh, which made me cry. And then I laughed and cried out loud for ages. Friends of mine call this craughing! Love that word! When I stopped laughing, I would redo the relaxing in Jesus posture and it would set me off again.

When I thought to pray, it wasn’t restful, so then I would just relax into Jesus again. He became my place of rest, my place of safety and no striving and absolute freedom. No judgment, no stress, no weights. I can’t help crying writing this. It was absolutely wonderful. And my gut started to feel peaceful and rested. I don’t remember ever feeling my gut being rested. It always felt uptight. I would tell the psychologist that I’ve been seeing, since my crash last year, that I could feel constant uptightness in my gut. It wasn’t relaxing, but just a present reality that I didn’t know how to get rid of.

So then I felt immensely grateful and relieved to have this new feeling of rest deep within my gut. The best way to describe it was like having rivers of living water flowing within me. I laughed, because this is in the Bible (John 7:38). But I’d never experienced it quite like this.

Then on the third day of resting in Jesus, I hadn’t started Summer on the medication yet and I didn’t have carers helping me that afternoon or my husband. So I was bracing myself for having the five kids on my own, after a very tough prior weekend with Summer. I remember the kids all coming in the door after school and milling around. I was expecting them to bubble manically around me, but as soon as they came near, it was like they bounced into my peace and dissolved. They were calm. I watched their energy diffuse without me saying a word. The whole afternoon and evening was so much easier. I was OK. I was peaceful. I can’t tell you how good that was.

The next day I didn’t want to start Summer on the medication cos I wanted to see if this new inner peace impact could continue. My friend cautioned me not to use up all my new God energy on Summer. She wanted me to recover quicker. The next morning I woke up with clarity. I thought God will get the glory in the end. We can tackle this from a multi-faceted way. I started her on the medication, which we were told would have no positive impact until two weeks after starting. Summer has been consistently calmer for five weeks now, starting from two days before we started the medication.

Since then my peace and rest has been up and down, as I spend less time resting in Jesus. I can’t stay in the chair all day, as I have stuff that needs doing. So I am practicing negotiating the balance between resting in Jesus and also living life. I want to grow in this rest. God showed me what is possible with extra grace in those first three days and now I want to grow in this and practice it. I believe the medication is helping Summer continue this calm, while I am still practicing and it is helping her personally wherever she is.

I love how God shows me what is possible and then helps me journey to grow into it!