There's someone who'll always let you in... God

Some quotes that I read today that have REALLY impacted me! In ways that I'm still struggling through, but taking one step closer to the truth is as much as I can hope for right now!

He wants you to know He loves you whether or not you believe in Him."

"Never forget, when you have lost your faith, when God is no longer real to you... go back. Go back to the last place you saw Him. He will be waiting for you there."

"Anyone can give up, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone would understand if you fell apart, that's true strength."

"It's not something in your genes like your mother's eyes or your grandmother's nose.  No, faith is something you gotta work out for yourself and it doesn't happen in the good times."

"God has a plan and just because you don't understand it does not mean God doesn't understand it."

"God never gives up on us, baby, even though sometimes people do."

"God has many names, you know.  Jehovah, Almighty, Everlasting Father, Alpha and Omega...  But do you know what He calls Himself?  'I Am.'  Ask God who He is, and that is what He'll tell you.  'I Am.'  Not 'I was' or 'I'm going to be.'  But "I am.'  'I am here for you now because that's where you need Me.'  And if God is here, right here, right now, what is there to fear?" 

"When we ignore the truth, we ignore God, because God is truth.  And what isn't true, He doesn't want any part of.  He can't.  It's just not who He is."

"You'll be wrapped in God's love no matter what happens today or tomorrow or ever."

"You're not alone.  God is here and the fastest car in the world can't outrun Him and the toughest heart in the world can't ignore Him because wherever you go God will be there ahead of you, waiting for you with a miracle."

“Imagine that you are locked in a closet for years…  Now, uh, during this incarceration, you have a baby…  Now, you hope to get out, right, but you don’t know.  So you start drawing pictures of, uh, birds and, um, trees and dogs, you know, to show this baby of yours, who has never seen what life is like out in the real world.  So, imagine that, uh, one day this baby comes and says, ‘You know, uh gee, houses and birds and trees and dogs are all pretty small and, um, flat, aren’t they?'  And you realize that no matter how hard you try to draw these pictures, you can never get this baby of yours to ever imagine what reality looks like.  Never.  Not until he sees it for himself.  So in the meantime you tell this child that you love him and you ask him to trust you."

 

 

 

"You put up a wall to block out your pain and your fear. But a wall works two ways. Yes, it keeps things in, but it also keeps things out; like joy, trust, hope."

5+6= in need of good weather

"Life must go on."
"I don't know that it MUST, but it does."

Life here has gone on... and on... and... on!

Babysitting six other kids on top of the five that already exist in our home... well... I sure can count to eleven quite well!

Mom has organized everyone into teams. Team A is the youngest 5 with me leading :) And team B is pretty self sufficient. The one qurestion I get alot is, "Why can't we do what Team B is?" Or "Team B got to!"

Everything is done with time and quantity in mind. Lunch... hot dogs (we bought 2 packages of 24) and well... it went great. I think the record for hot dogs was J. with 5 of them eaten. :) Needless to say, he didnt eat much for dinner. Dinner consisted of chicken strips and fries. Again... quick and easy to cook in quantity!

Trips to the park are second nature. I think yesterday we were there five times.... one time for more than three hours. Taking 8 of the 11 with me alone to the park was QUITE an adventure. Deciding to try a new park turned out to be QUITE a major decision! Crossing at least three majorly busy roads... well, I've never seen so many people staring as we crossed :)

Bath time was, well, rather wet. Tonight shall be intersting.... everyone needs a bath for tomorrow :) And tomorrow should be rather interesting.

~Me

Curl up and Cry

Have you ever lost all ambition? All drive?

Have you ever wanted to curl up in a corner and do nothing but cry?

Get up, and muddle through your day. Do what you have to do.

And curl up and cry when you can.

Eventually… well, I can't see eventually. All I see is now.

But…

The pain now is part of the happiness then.

Viewing God

Perspective does not change essence; rather it changes the depth of the perspective.

Humans will have problems with this phrase. How do I know they will have problems? There are two reasons: either they will attribute wrong definitions to the words, or they will achieve the right definitions and disagree with the truth encapsulated in the statement. To save from the first, I will endeavor to define the statement into understandable references.

What do I mean by perspective? I mean outlook. How one looks at something. If someone said, “You just have wrong perspective,” you would take offence, not from the fact that he called you wrong, but the fact that he doesn’t view your perspective in the way you do. He doesn’t look at it the way you would, did, or could.

What do I mean by essence? I’ll degrade for the benefit of arriving at the same conclusion in the end. I, along with many readers, have washed my hair with a shampoo that claims to be made up entirely of herbs. Herbal Essence. You are hopefully not cringing in disgust, wondering how I could clean my scalp with herbs, are you? Nor are you thanking your lucky stars that I’m not sitting next to you, smelling of stomach-turning herbs. No. All essence means in the shampoo is that the fundamental nature of the liquid is one of healthy, benefiting herbs. Essence: the fundamental nature.

What do I mean by depth? Think of a swimming pool (this is NOT going to be a discussion on benefits versus hindrances of swimming. Just follow my logic here, please!) Imagine with me the largest pool in the world, consisting of extensive areas of play for all ages. Olympic size lap swim for the proficient swimmers. Tens of hundreds of slides of all shapes and sizes. Water toys that all children would drool over. And imagine on top of this, mothers, that it was pre-supervised, a free – babysitting service, prepared with references from extensively important insurance companies, guarantying the safety of your children. What would you say if as you were walking through the facilities you saw that the “kiddy pool” had a depth measurement of ten, not feet, but yards? You would say, “I don’t care what references there are, it cannot POSSIBLY be safe for my two year old to be playing in that large amount of water.” Why? Because you didn’t learn your conversion factors in elementary school and have a personal grudge against the unit of measurement? No! Because the amount of water compared to your two year old is entirely un-proportional. You knew it was TOO deep. That’s what I mean by depth.

Now, although I am sure I have lost some of you, I wish to move on. Let me rephrase the previous phrase in different, but equal terms.

How a human views the fundamental nature of something does not change that fundamental nature, but rather changes the amount that is allotted to be understood from that perspective.

I have probably succeeded in confusing you, because, as I write this, I agree that the first statement is less confusing than the latter; but, don’t get lost. Follow me with this one.

In Israel, there are some roofs that are flat. Like flat. (Must I define this too?) With no angles of inclination or declination. Flat. Picture yourself lying flat (the SAME definition) on the roof. Those of the readers who value their dignity, they might want to imagine someone else lying flat on the flat roof in Jerusalem. Anyway… here’s where the dignity goes out the window. Now, consider that you stick your neck off the balcony while lying flat on the flat roof in Israel, creating a ninety degree angle with the wall that extends to the ground. This is important, so stay with me.
Moving on… as you stare down toward the ground with embarrassment reddening your cheeks, you notice something right beneath you. As an American, you KNOW that you KNOW that you KNOW what you are looking at. The greatest comfort food: a Hershey chocolate bar.

Now, speaking entirely from what you see, all you see is the chocolate bar. It looks great. But, you begin to wonder, what size is this WONDERFUL treat? All you can see is the fact that it IS a chocolate bar. You know the dimensions of it – it is so long by so wide. Yet, as your stomach begins to growl, you wonder what the volume is? Or, how THICK is it? From this perspective, thickness cannot be measured. Does that mean it really IS as flat as it looks to be?

Your curiosity is screaming. It is then that you notice a ladder extending down the wall. You climb down the first two rungs, look down, and… what? You see that the candy bar isn't flat, but has a thickness to it

It has changed with your perspective. Right? Think about it. Did it CHANGE its thickness because your perspective moved? Get real! No! Did the fact that it is a chocolate bar change because your view changed? No! Your perception of the depth of the chocolate bar changed, not the fundamental nature of the chocolate bar.

Right now, one or both of two things are happening. Your stomach is GROWLING yearning for that chocolate bar. Or, you are scratching your head and asking, “Thanks for the geometry lesson, but what on earth does this have to do with LIFE?” Well….

The mind of finite man as he views God from the roof takes into account all he can see. But, when we climb down the ladder and see that there is more than what we originally saw, has God changed? No. Perspective does not change essence, but rather changes the depth. At salvation, we were looking down from the roof so to speak. God, from our point of view, was. He existed, and interacted with us to the extent that we realized our need for salvation. But, as we begin to build a relationship with Him, we realize that there is more to God than just the aerial view. He is God. But there is SO much we didn’t understand. Does that mean he is MORE than He was in the past? Perspective does not change the essence. He is still the same he was before, but now we are beginning to see THE EXTENT that He is.

Taking it a step further. Did the chocolate bar CHANGE as we stepped down the ladder? Our perspective, or the place from where we viewed the chocolate bar, changed, but the chocolate bar didn’t grow thicker as we gradually walked down the ladder. It was as it was. God doesn’t change as our relationship with Him expands. He was as He was. He is as He is. Our perspective did the changing, not God.

Further. Did the ingredients of the chocolate bar change as we walked down the ladder? Do the attributes of God change as we grow in our relationship with Him? Is this making sense to you?

I can hear screaming! “Compare God to a chocolate bar? How sacrilegious! Shame on you.” I want to make one thing QUITE clear. I am not COMPARING GOD to a chocolate bar, but rather using it as a metaphor (and my English teacher would supplement the RIGHT literary term here ) God supplied human beings with finite minds, with the ability to only think in what WE can understand or what has been revealed to us. Our finite minds cannot wrap itself around the fact that God is not encapsulated in a body like ours, nor is He just a ghost that walks through walls like a white sheet. But yet God says we, man, are made in “the image of God.” God compares HIMSELF in terms of His creation, so that we might be able to grasp just a sliver of the concept.

Here is something interesting. Suppose someone, thinking that God wanted him to go to a particular college, enrolled, packed up, moved many miles from home, and settled into college life. After a short time, he realized that he had mistaken what God had wanted for him, and spent the rest of the semester with this knowledge. God subjected His perfect will to the imperfect thinking of His creation. Doesn’t this fact limit God’s working in our lives? God limited himself to this imperfect thing He created. But God can't be limited, right? But He limited. Thus contradicting the very NATURE of God. Right? Stepping away from this “problem,” I would like to take another step in our illustration. Straining from your perch on the third or fourth rung down, your fingernails are able to pick up a sliver of chocolate, which you immediately drop onto your tongue. Picked up by your taste buds, the bitter taste of dark chocolate invades your senses. With this, you make the ASSUMPTION that the chocolate bar is, in its entirety, dark chocolate. But, un-known to your “finite” mind, the bar is filled with syrup, white-chocolate, and milk chocolate throughout its entirety. Does your assumption that it is dark chocolate all the way through change the fact that it’s not? Your THOUGHT matters nothing in the COMPOSITION of the chocolate bar. Just as our THOUGHTS about God CHANGE nothing in the very Being that God is. We make mistakes – he misread the will of God – does that mean that God’s will for that semester of college was WRONG? Absolutely NOT!

In conclusion, I’ll restate the facts.
1. As we grow closer to God, He doesn’t change, our PERSPECTIVE does.
2. As we grow closer to God, He is still the same He as He was before – we just begin to see more of the picture.
3. The character of God remains the same, no matter how we view Him.

Jack: - You happy? -
Joy: Yes.
Jack: - What kind of happy? -
Joy: Just happy.
Jack- You know my kind of happy? -
Joy: How stupid. I forget. When you ask a question, it means you have the answer waiting.  So go ahead, tell me.- Come on. -
Jack:I'm not telling you now.
Joy: What do I have to do, go to the lecture?
Jack: Yes. Buy the book.  You know, I don't want to be somewhere else anymore.
I'm not waiting for anything new to happen... not looking around the next corner and over the next hill. I'm here now. That's enough.
Joy: - That's your kind of happy, isn't it? -
Jack: Yes. Yes, it is.

"When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him you will be - or so it feels - welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence."

 

By the end of A Grief Observed, Lewis has come to terms with his suffering, although his pain is obviously still raw.

"Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly," he wrote.

"Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand."

My Background to My Computer

Joy Davidman Gresham Lewis

A nominal deist will say : "Yes, of course there must be some sort of Force that created the galaxy. But it's childish to imagine that It has any personal relation to me!" In that belief atheism exists as an undiagnosed disease. The man who says, "One God," and does not care, is an atheist in his heart. The man who speaks of God and will not recognize the presence of God burning in his mind as Moses recognized him in the burning bushthat man is an atheist, though he speak with the tongues of men or angels, and appear in his pew every Sunday, and make large contributions to the church.

~J. Gresham Lewis, Smoke on the Mountain

Quotes

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be? We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. "

~Marianne Williamson

From A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis



And all this time I may, once more, be building with cards. And if I am He will once more knock the building flat. He will knock it down as often as proves necessary. Unless I have to be finally given up as hopeless, and left building pasteboard palaces in Hell forever; "free among the dead."

Am I, for instance, just sidling back to God because I know that if there's any road to Joy, it runs through Him? But then of course, I know perfectly well that He cant be used as a road. If you're approaching Him not as the goal but as a means, you're not really approaching Him at all. That's what was really wrong with all those popular pictures of happy reunions "on the further shore;" not the simple-minded and very earthly images, but the fact that they make an End of what we can get only as a by-product if the true End.

Lord, are these your real terms? Can I meet Joy again only if I learned to love you so much that I don't care whether I meet here or not? Consider, Lord, how it looks to us. What would anyone think of me if I said to the boys, "No toffee no. But when you've grown up and don't really want toffee you shall have as much of it as you choose."

If I knew that to be eternally divided from Joy and eternally forgotten by here would add a greater joy and splendor to her being, of course I'd say, "Fire ahead." Just as if, on earth, I could have cured her cancer by never seeing her again, I'd have arranged never to see her again. I'd have had to. Any decent person would. But that's not the situation I'm in.

When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of "No answer." It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook Hos head not is refusal but waiving the question. Like, "Peace, child; you don't understand."

Can a mortal ask question which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask - half out great theological and metaphysical problems - are like that.

C S Lewis on Pain

Theology and Faith of a Great Man

“Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers any more. Only the life I have lived.

Twice in that life I've been given the choice: as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety,

 the man chooses suffering.
The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal.”

~from Shadowlands, a movie based on the part of life when Lewis meets and marries Joy Gresham.

Believing

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen-not only because I see it,

 but because by it I see everything else."

~C.S. Lewis

Book Excerpts.

This excerpt from So Much More comes from chapter 10 "Fathers, Daughters, and the Highest Education."

*

An education can be defined as the training and shaping of the heart, soul, mind, and strength. An education consists not only in the learning of facts and skills, but also in the developing of affections and worldview. Our worldview is how we see and judge our culture and the world around us. Anything which affects our worldview and affections - in fact, anything which influences our hearts, soul, minds, or strength - is educational, whether for good or for evil. And this means that all education is inescapably religious.

Many girls have never thought of an alternative for the bright, gifted girl. Some think that an environment of debauchery is a necessary initiation for real life. Well, occasional brushes with danger do tend to strengthen character, but long-term immersion in an environment of false religious ideas can destroy good character and does corrupt morality.

What kind of education are you saying is important?

We are referring to the kind of education that makes us useful to God, in contrast to the schooling that makes a pupil useful to the State. In the mind 1800's a loving father William B. Sprague explained the essence of the "right" education to his daughter. "I would have you, then, in the first pace, bear in mind that the great object of your education is to enable you to bring into exercise the powers which God has given you in such a manner as shall contribute most to his glory. For all the noble faculties with which you are gifted, you are indebted to the same Being who gave you your existence: on Him also you are dependent for their preservation; and it is a first dictate of reason that they should be employed in His service... the object of education then is twofold: to develop the faculties and to direct them; to bring out the energies of the soul, and to bring them to operate to the Glory of the Creator. In other words, it is to render you useful to the extent of your ability."

Godly education is purpose driven. Because our purpose as young Christian women should be to glorify God and obey Him, our educations need to be our tools in this task. As the great scholar R.J. Rushdoony points out, "...the purpose of Christian education is not academic: it is religious and practical." Therefore the kind of education we need to pursue first is the training and shaping that will equip us to do His work comprehensibly.

The line is drawn between the two competing types of educational priorities at the very beginning of the Bible. As Tom Eldredge points out in Safely Home, "The first conflict in recorded history was a battle over education." He explains that Adan and Eve were given a choice between knowing God and walking with Him, gradually discovering more and more of His truth and wisdom; or a shortcut to instant knowledge - to eat the fruit and know everything, good and evil. These two education philosophies - the empty, shallow knowledge centered around man, and the wisdom of God, which comes only through knowing and fearing God - are still at war today. According to Eldredge: "[the humanist philosophy] emphasizes the autonomous reason of man and his eternal quest of personal philosophy, on the one hand, and social utility as defined by the State, on the other. [ The Christian philosophy] emphasizes obedience before God, a key component of which is the development of wisdom and godly relationships."

We live in an age where even Christians don't question the importance of pursuing trivia, nonsense, political correctness and credentials, and view these as the educational priorities. In a culture devoted to the pursuit of wealth, pleasure, comfort and entertainment, shallow, man centered education is now higher education. Academic "qualifications" have become a goal that has nothing to do with learning or wisdom.

We know families who skipped the "college experience" whose lives are filled with joy and excitement - even professional fulfilment. Family business can be not only fun but successful. We know daughters who work with their fathers and fathers who work with their daughters. These are stories of happiness because the families broke out of the enslaving mentality that "success is impossible without a college degree."

Are there ever and circumstances that might make college attendance, on campus, a legitimate option for young women?"

The Bible never says college is off limits to girls, and we are trying very hard in this book to advance only those ideas that can be defended exegetically. We are attempting to raise a simple question that is too rarely asked by our generation:

If a young woman was determined to think and act biblically, how would she live?

She would rediscover God's design for virtuous womanhood for every stage of her life and try to conform her service to God to that plan. Central to that plan is a virtuous heart, a pure mind, the right education, a strong father-daughter relationship, a wisely contracted marriage, and a wise, God-fearing descendants.

The role of the Proverbs 31 wife and mother is not a role that can be:slipped into" easily. In fact, to do it really well takes a lifetime of training. What are out priorities? Learning to survive" can teach girls attitudes of independence. Hardness, authoritativeness, cynicism. Can this be wise or godly if it damages our ability to become Proverbs 31 woman?

We should be bending all of our energies toward making God's ideal a reality in our lives, pursuing the best-case scenario will all our might. Settling for the status quo will not help pull out society up out of the mire, but choosing the better course can.

                                            *

These truths have made a major impact on my life. Learning to submit to my father's wishes. and make his priorities concerning higher education mine. I hope this had been as much of a blessing to you as it has to me.

I encourage every unmarried woman to get a copy of this book.

The Reason For Our Faith

"God didn't put you and me here to save the world.

 He already did that."

~Anonymous

Reaching the World should be our goal. But, we as Christians MUST realize that without Christ and His finished work on the cross, everything we tell people wouldn't matter.

We MUST look to Christ as THE reason we can have the hope of eternal life. Focusing on reaching the world is wonderful, but if we forget the Reason we are evangelizing we aren't in victory, nor are we going to see God's power manifested in the lives of those we are witnessing to.

"Looking unto JESUS..."

Book Review 1

"Nowhere in Scripture does it even hint that a woman has a duty to provide for herself. Even in a worst-case scenario, our Heavenly Father has arranged for masculine protection for needy women.

"Here is an interesting perspective. Throughout history, men have had to bear only the curse God gave directly to them. They work hard to provide for and protect their families. They don't bear children. In our society, women are freely embracing a double curse - the curse of the man (difficulty in providing) in addition to the curse of the woman (pain in childbirth.)"
~page106

"God has a lot to say on the subject of how women are to view and relate to those in authority over them. In most biblical instruction directed at women, we are commanded to reverence or respect the authorities over us: '...and the the wife see that she reverence her husband.' Ephesians 5:33). This same kind of respect is required for sons and daughters to their parents ('Honor you father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise; that it may be will with you and you may live long on the earth' Ephesians 6:1).
~Page 38

If an authority commands you to do something God has commanded you not to do, or if an authority commands you not to do something God has commanded you to do, you have a moral duty to obey God rather than man. You will need to study Scripture carefully to know what God's commands really are and what would constitute disobedience it Him. We also need to be able to discern the difference between God's real commands and the interpretations of our own imaginations. We must not assume that God is leading us through our hearts and passions, which are 'decietful above all things, and desperately wicked.' (Jeremiah 17:9, see also Ezekiel 13:2-9.17) but only through His infallible Word.'
~page 57

Please read this book - it will really encourage you and build you up to a place of reverence for your father and God in a wonderful way!
Be ready for more soon, and I would LOVE to have your thoughts on the excerpts!
~Rae

Book Reviews

For all those who don't know this about me, I love reading. From the time I was four, I could read. My parents encouraged us kids to read, and there is never a shortage of books to read. (but always a want for ones I hadn't read.) So, on my thirteenth birthday, I wasn't surprised when my parents gave me a book. But I found out as I read the book, that it wasn't just A book. My mom had read through the book, writing special notes to me and underlining key phrases. This last week, I was again reminded about the book, and I decided to pull it out and read it.

And I thought I would post somethings that stood out to me, or that I think would be a blessing, encouragement, or challenge to others.

The book, So Much More, by Anna Sophia and Elizabeth Botkin, is a wonderful book for every unmarried girl out there.

Me - not a fun topic :)

Hey! Things have been busy around here! Let me bring you up to date - my Mom's blog best describes it - and yes, I did ask to post a link - I'm not plagarizing!
http://highnotes.blogspot.com/

And, I want you to know that I'll be trying to post more - with more pictures - you dont want to hear about me :)
Holed up at home - Rachel