Category: Discernment

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Sorting it out

Reading Job with the four schoolies. Skipped a pretty massive section as a) I was getting weary of all the hot air and fine sounding words of Jobs buddies b) 2/4 kids felt the same and c) I want to have time to do Genesis before Mr Nearly 17 finishes school in a few months time.

Jobs buddies do waffle on. And they do say some worthwhile things in amongst the waffle, it’s the unscrambling that makes me impatient. Like this morning we read across a chapter where Eliphaz must tell Job half a dozen times to shut up and listen but also to speak up if he’s got anything to say. We did get a laugh out of that but basically I just want to cut to the chase. What does God say?

That’s the point that really matters – anywhere, anytime, but particularly when reading and trying to apply the book of Job!

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Multiple choice

Choose the correct answer. Then choose the one most likely for you to do.

And when they heard that The Lord was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they

a) bowed down and worshipped… (Exodus 4:31) … or

b) sat down and spat it big time saying “if you were real you’d never let anything bad happen and I’d be happy all the time therefore you’re not real” – never realising the madness of actually addressing such a figment of imagination. (Extrapolations 1:1)

Important Note:  Extrapolations is not an actual book of the Bible.  🙂

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So you don’t always know what to do eh?

One particular time a few years back when I was major-league stressed about something, I was driving along a road close to home thinking over and over “I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do” – when I came upon a traffic jam where I could neither see the problem nor where I needed to go.

My cry of “I don’t know what to do” was immediately applied to the road situation where visibility was so bad.

This turned out to be one of those amazing moments when God spoke so clearly through the circumstance at hand to show me something much bigger and which I will never forget. I felt the words “the way will become clear” somewhere deep inside and as I inched forward through a messy convergence of truck and traffic and narrow road and road works, bit by bit I could see what I needed to do next.

So many times in life we are faced with new, difficult, stressy things that if we wait, and watch, and follow the way marked out bit by bit, we’ll get to the other side of the thing and see we did Ok. And more importantly, that we were Helped.

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Feelings locate us

One of my mentors (Elaine McGrath) once said “Feelings are good because they locate you but you don’t have to stay where your feelings tell you you are”.

This remark has become so much a part of me now, I have found it invaluable. Years ago I had an idea of turning the concept into a kind of children’s board ‘game’/teaching resource… with a map and coordinates to better feelings and how to get there. Every time I applied myself to thinking how it could be done, it became too complicated so it never did eventuate. I’m glad it hasn’t in a way as I’d do it so differently now to when I first thought about it.

Feelings can be an accurate reflection of truth. Such as grief after a death. The depth of grief being a reflection of the love. Completely the ‘right’ emotion.

Feelings can tell us lies. Such as worthlessness and self loathing. These feelings tell us we are in one place while the truth would show us another. One of the hardest things to do is to lift oneself out of these feelings and return to truth. One of the scariest things I know of is the action people can take based on the feelings that have lied to them. Sometimes revealing the lie is easy (such as recalling you have PMS and are not to be trusted!), but sometimes seemingly impossible.

Sometimes feelings tell us everything is alright, when really they are not but our quest to feel only the good perpetuates the deception.

We all live lives somewhat at the mercy of our feelings… am still in the process of taking a step ‘outside’ myself and learning to think more, react less. Learning.

I’m LEARNING!

Thankyou God for allowing me to meet Elaine.
“Feelings are good because they locate you but you don’t have to stay where your feelings tell you you are”.

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When is a question not a question?

When is a question not a question?

a. When it is sarcasm.
b. when it is a challenge.
c. When it is a platform (like this one).

On the surface I’ve had this idea that questions are enquiries- which is a bit silly when experience tells otherwise.

The first time I learned it wasn’t safe to answer every question posed was as a child in grade one and I got the answer wrong. That kept my hand down for about the next 12 years.

Children are masters in the art of the question challenge… “Why should I” for example. And dramatic, melancholic, martyrish parents (hehem) perhaps once or twice in their lives known to employ the sarcasm question tactic. Once attending a seminar I ventured an answer the speaker didn’t want… It was too soon and he had an hours worth of material leading to that point. He wasn’t enquiring, he was planning to illustrate nobody knew what he was leading up to. I’ve since been on the other side of that and it was really hard but I learned from that NOT to ask a question I didn’t want the answer to or if my goal is participation/interaction more than information, then different words are needed.

Sarcasm, challenges and platforms posed as questions mostly dont welcome new or additional information or ideas… They are boxes designed to confine.

Questions used as thought prompts might be different in a true teaching setting… Parent and child, teacher and learner, Master and friend, kitchen, classroom, mountainside, heart – where the end point is truth. The tricky part is being sure to distinguish between truth and/or understanding revealed and a tasty sequential trail of cookie crumbs.

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Truth or truth?

A lovely older friend of mine says “we all choose our own experts”. I have thought about this often as I consider opposing points of view and the origin of my own.

What do you make of this statement?

VSP 🙂