Okay

Well, wow. How about 65 pages to catch up? How about 65 days or years? Where do I begin?

I just spent a week in a residential week at my MBA program. OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Respectfully of course)!!! It was hard and challenging. I survived, like I knew that I would I suppose, but afterwards was harder. That was this morning, the harder part, because it was like everything was hitting me.

They call the week “boot camp.” Night after night of inadequate time to sleep, timelines, outlines and deadlines, presentations, public speaking, skit performances, too much to read with no time to read, vague instructions and forced teams that have to work together or fail….Teachers that utilize the Socrates method and have it perfected to a grilling science. I kept looking for the “reality TV cameras,” figuring that they had to be around somewhere. It was harder than I can get you to understand, and it was hard for everybody, not just me.

So today after class ended I had about two hours to sit before the Lord. I imagined God the Father in a chair before me and Jesus the Son at His right hand in the chair next to Him and I spoke with Him about my problems and concerns. The Lord is our Friend and He is there. I prayed about Psalm 100 (the first verse I ever read as a Christian that the Lord freaked me out with – “Know that the Lord Himself is God. It is He that has made us and not we ourselves.”) Luke 5 and Ephesians 5, “Trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.” When I couldn’t find a Christian radio station, then the Lord found it for me and three songs played on it that the Lord knew were for me. “Cry out to Jesus,” “Reign in me,” and “He reigns.”

I have issues and I have concerns. I have things that I have prioritized for many years and are now very established habits and I still care about those things and don’t want to lose them. I have things that I want to do over these next two years, including surviving to tell about it with my family, loved ones and friends. I have a new opportunity. Western Seminary asked me to teach psychopharmacology to their Bible Counseling (MFT) students and I really want to do that. What a wonderful blessing. But is that crazy trying to do that also? (Six evenings in the winter is all).

I have thoughts in my mind that I don’t think anyone could really understand, but that is okay. They are real and right and true and the best so I will live by them. The just shall live by their faith.

God hasn’t taken off anything on my platter but I would have expected Him to by now. I’ve given them to Him. God is continuing to sustain. I don’t want to work hard to spin in a cycle like a washing machine. I want to work hard in my quest for running hard after the things of God. I want to influence things because I feel that I am called to do so. I feel that my current arena of work and family and home is God’s place that He has put me in to strengthen me and prepare me for what He wants to do in my life and for the world around me.

Currently, I am really tired and need sleep, but by the morning I will feel refreshed. I pray the Lord would enable me to stand and do whatever He wants with and for me and remove anything that is not of Him. “And having done everything to stand, stand therefore under the mighty hand of God.”

This morning I checked all the people in my life that I really am dependent upon that they are all there with me still. They know that I need them, and need their help. There are things that I need to learn and to accept. I need to let myself receive from God the help of other people and not to try and do everything myself. I need to allow myself to carry the role that I am called to carry, not for myself and not keeping my eyes on myself but by keeping my eyes on the Lord and doing it because it helps other people and it is God’s will for me. I enjoyed focusing this week on how if I do my best, how it lifts all the students. I prayed for them as they were tired and for their presentations. I need to do more praying for them. Btw, the first day I met my fellow student who is a doctor who is a Christian and does Bible Study in her home on Tuesday evenings. She was late the first day of class because she was praying with a patient and her family at the hospital and led someone to Christ during the prayer. She said, “Well, I just said, ‘this is more important.’” That was a blessing. But later in the week she flat out lied to the teacher about something and my heart just sank.

It was weird when I went to my class the first day this week. The students were supposed to post their bios on the web site. My husband did that for me, and did it way early and so it turned out a lot knew me already. (I don’t even know how to get on the web site actually. My husband has taken care of everything I need administratively.) I felt like I was esteemed then it only got “worse.” I know that the Lord establishes things like this, when He has me to be seen favorably before people. Then it came time to do things like the presentations and answer the questions and I had to decide if I was going to do these things in the power and strength of the Lord or stand behind the podium and mumble. So I did what I was supposed to do, because God has prepared beforehand for me certain works that I should walk in and I am going to do them because I really don’t have a choice. The hosts of heaven are watching. It is important. Spiritual battles rage and what to do? I will depend upon the Lord who goes with me and will give me what I need as I wait upon Him and depend upon Him and look to Him.

My verse for the week that I kept reading was, “I, a prisoner, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called (Eph 4:1ish).”

I don’t understand everything, of course. But think with me about something. God is sovereign and controls all things at all times. Yet at the same time He establishes that individuals are responsible for their own deeds and go to hell because they are accountable if they refuse God’s grace. Both of these things are true at the same time. My mind can not conceive them because they are too wonderful for me. So the Lord can do two seemingly opposing things at the same time. He controls what appears to be overlapping spheres completely independently from one another.

Likewise, is it not true that God looks at each person individually and what that person will need in his or her life to carry out His will? Is it not reasonable that God, if He only looked at the perspective of me, could put everything in place in the world because of how it would affect me for His will in my life? Because He is great, He does this for everybody together. But if there were no other people on the face of the planet, or they were all zombies, because He was working in my life, today He would have put the hotel I was staying at in its place, my city, state and the USA, all for me to accomplish what He wants to do in my life.

Kind of a weird thought. (I know that wasn’t well explained, but I don’t know if I especially want to be clear.) I don’t know why I thought of this today or why it seems relevant especially. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lard Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places (Eph 1:3).” With that perspective, what is a hotel? What is any earthly thing before God? It is almost blasphemy to look at some earthly thing and see it as a limitation in any way before an Almighty God. I guess there are allowances because we are mere dust and our faith is weak. However, how frustrated was Jesus with our lack of faith while He was on earth? “How long have I been with you and still you are so slow to believe?” Hebrews speaks of God not being pleased when we shrink back in unbelief. Unbelief is sin, the Bible says.

If God has instituted everything in its place so I can carry out His will, and I want to carry out His will, then what stands in the way of carrying out His will?

Gen 3:1, “Has God really said?” Has God really said? Are you really standing in the will of God? Does God really want that purpose for your life?

When I look back over the years, my biggest recurring struggle and battle has been believing that God wants me to be a doctor and that I am in His will. It is easier for me to do something else, like be a home school mother or adopt a needy child and sit with him, or be perhaps be tortured in another country for the sake of Christ (okay, maybe not), than to believe that God has called me to be a professional doctor, and now a leader in a hospital (and more, because He is going to use His investment). That He is calling me to work harder than I have ever worked before, with uncertain rewards (because I don’t fully know why I am working, the rewards are with Him primarily). So the enemy whispers things to cause me to doubt what God has called me to do. He did this with Jesus, “If You really are the Son of God…”

Here is a great line from a song, “It’s not about me, as if You should do things my way, You alone are God, and I surrender.”

Don’t forget to pray for me and my family.

I feel stronger, but not very strong. I do not feel very strong in faith at this time. “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the Word of the Lord.” I need some more God! This spoke to me, from above and I pray to assimilate it:

What is any earthly thing before God? It is almost blasphemy to look at some earthly thing and see it as a limitation in any way before an Almighty God. I guess there are allowances because we are mere dust and our faith is weak. However, how frustrated was Jesus with our lack of faith while He was on earth? “How long have I been with you and still you are so slow to believe?” Hebrews speaks of God not being pleased when we shrink back in unbelief. Unbelief is sin, the Bible says.

The only problem that I have is human tasks that I am to do. That really isn’t a big deal. It is step by step. It is taking hold by faith and He will do the rest, that is, whatever He wants. It is sitting in uncertainty and deciding whether or not to believe. It is believing for the next moment, and then the next.

His face. My future before Him.