Rest

Seeing the Signs

/ Jana / Leave a comment

The Lord often stretches my listening skills. I think you know what I mean. He wants to know if our antennae are up and active. Are our ears tuned to hear and move with Him? I shared about our recent refining fire and wanted to tell you the next step in that journey, as well as a fun game with the Lord. 

After I released  the very tender story about Trust and Joy, God provided quite miraculously. From completely unexpected places. It’s not all magical and wonderful now, like a cheap sitcom. But It is a beautiful next step in our faith and His care. I can’t help but  wonder if the two are connected—the vulnerable blog and His provision. Was God waiting for us to hit bottom and be honest about it, so He could blow our mind? 

I mean— money is a raw topic. Like sex and politics, it is booby-trapped with shame and judgement and oughts. Yet, God is so above all that. He is ever, always, and perfectly leading us into more and more of His love and wisdom. The pursuit of more is why we share about of all of life, even the ugly, messy, parts, because there is no area that God is not with us. 

Here is one takeaway from our present journey.
Miracles come into the weakest places. 

If you or I have it handled, we don’t need God.
He is re-writing my hard drive about dependence on Him. Again. 

Sometimes what mankind calls failure, God calls freedom.

Now, on a lighter note, when I was first learning to hear from God outside of the Bible, He highlighted billboards. Literally as I was going down the road, a billboard would catch my eye, or I would feel pulled toward a phrase. 

We haven’t played that game in years, but as we were driving to and from Knoxville, including in my own Gulf Breeze area, God started pinging me with billboards. The following is a beautiful message. You literally can’t make this sh#t up. He is so funny.

Grow with us
We’re here for you
Shelter strong
That’s gold.

Best gift is time together
Search. Book. Go.

Because your foundation is cracked
Rest your wings
Three spaces. One powerful experience

Become a history maker
You are bigger than this moment

Redefine your staycation
Window world, We’ll get you ready
We see you dream chaser

Jesus is Lord
Small steps. Big change.

We see you and we’ve got you
Building dreams, Sustaining waters

This is loaded with meaning for me, it corresponds to words, scriptures and prayers. I love not only that He is with us but that He TALKS with us any way He chooses. Listen for Him. He has a lot on His mind. 

He is already planning for your 2025. So listen as He shares His heart with you.

Losing or Leveling Up?

/ Jana / Leave a comment

Surrender. Come on, be honest. Did the word make you cringe? I’ve always equated surrender with a white flag, admitting defeat. Losing the battle, game, or ahem, argument. But the other day the Lord gave me a new meaning of why surrender is the pathway to more fullness, more…Life.

 

Me and the Lord have this game we play.  He likes to show me the meaning under the meaning in words. One morning, I was praying with Chuck and a picture just popped into my mind.

Sur render. 

Surrender? I asked.

No. Sur render.

He was trying to redefine the word for me. I had to go look up what the Lord was hinting at.

At the most recent Yes and Amen retreat we talked about how God leads us through a process of transformations. We made a whole list of worldly mindsets we take off and Kingdom mindsets we put on. One of those was Self-sufficiency transformed into Surrender.

When I got home, He kept unpacking this. A weak view of surrender feels like resignation or quitting, or worse, losing. So from that mindset, if we “surrender to God,” it doesn’t always zing in our spirit. But look, there’s more:

Sur means “to be over, above, beyond, in addition.”

Think sur-plus, sur-charge, sur-prise, sur-name .

Render means in artistic terms to “to cause to become.” With this upgrade, Jesus is inviting us to give Him our situation, fear, need, or dream on the understanding that He is above and beyond our skill and pay grade and He wants to create more for us than we can do all by ourselves.

I don’t know about you, but that zings my spirit.

I am not quitting on me or my plans. I am leveling up. With Jesus.

Self-sufficiency to Sur render means we give our plans to Someone who is over and beyond us and then He causes something even better to become. Sure, we can do it. But He can and wants to do it better with us. 

Try it His way. You might like it. Besides, self-sufficiency is exhausting anyway. 

Is Grace Enough?

/ Jana

My 92-year-old dad’s health is rapidly declining. My dog just had surgery and we are awaiting test results to see if it’s cancer. My kids are each going through their own wrenching challenges. My husband’s job has been erratic. And on and on it goes. What’s your list look like?

This is just the obvious stuff. The next layer is even more tender. There’s the grief of losing my mom and the anticipated grief of losing my dad soon. The fear and helplessness of not being able to influence my children can take my breath away. The decision fatigue of managing so many things at the same time sometimes leaves me wanting to run away at best, or zone out and binge a show at worst.

And underneath all of this is my love for God. And the love from God.
I have to stop and pause. I have to stop and remember. He is the way maker.

More than a great song lyric, He really is the one who makes rough places smooth. His light leads through the darkness. He takes me on well-worn paths and to uncharted trails. He guides me through the fire, through the flood. He sets me high upon a rock.

He leads me to green pasture. To rest. To settle. To focus again.

Since I know that nothing is a surprise to Him,
since I know He plans ahead for me,
since I know that He is always with me,
I can turn to Him, see His face, hear His voice, and understand what He wants to show me in these very harried moments.

Today, He says that life is a gift. Don’t waste it by complaining about what is wrong but look for the good, His goodness in the moments.

Today He says that my faith in His provision is my gift to Him. Regardless of the swirl, He has already provided for me and I “get to” watch and anticipate His movement in my life.

Today He says that grace is a reality for me to pull on, to expect, to stand on. It is a divine presence in every situation. I can bank on it.

Last year, God gave me this beautiful revelation about the word grace as represented in Hebrew letters. Hebrew letters are pictures that reveal a much deeper meaning. The word “grace” is literally the letters that mean “beautiful camp.”

The Israelites were a nomadic people so they would travel and then set up tents in a circle close to each other. They would overlap the tent cords on the outside circle of the tents to form a barricade from animals and invaders. Then they would open up their tents to the inside of the circle so that they could freely visit, the children would play safely inside the tent circle. More on this later.  However, God gave me the phrases:

Protection from without.
Provision from within.

That is what I can expect and hope and trust and rely on when I say I need grace. His grace.

God’s protection from without. God’s provision from within. He’s got me, and you, fully covered in grace. I truly am in good hands. And so are you.

Decision Fatigue and Other Wiley Rascals

/ Jana

I know it’s not just me. The devil would have me think it is just me, that I am the crazy one, the unstable one. Or worse, the dreaded curse of most women, I am “the over sensitive one.” Yeah, I’m gonna just slide the bullshit card right across the table to all of those lies. I DO know that what is happening for all of us, in different degrees, is the onslaught of “all the things.” Your things may not look like mine, but they hurt the same, they confound the same, they take your breath away all the same as mine.

I told my friend who reached out this morning that I was drowning in decision fatigue. I was spent from deciding so many things at the same time, and, handling the emotional fallout of those decisions.

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Welcome to Leadership 101, right?

Cry me a river, right?

Listen, this isn’t a pity party invitation, this is a shout out from the Front Line.

Why, oh why, is the assault against our rest, our peace, our very efforts to do good?

Let me bottom line this — so we will quit.

Quit trying to do good.

Quit trying to find our footing for peace.

Quit trying to solve problems so we can finally rest.

Quit listening for His whisper and kisses.

Quit believing what He has said.

Quit letting faith rise in dead of night.

Quit God.

So now what?

S-T-O-P

Say what you need to say.

For me, sometimes getting it all out is the cure. To clear the air of my mind and heart. Go write it all down. Go speak it out while you are driving, yelling out loud while driving is also acceptable. Pray it out. Cuss it out. Cry it out. But get it out. Why? Because the mere release of your words is an act of faith that Someone is listening. And He cares. He is not bothered by your pretty speech as much as He is moved by your hurting heart.

Truth silences the mind assault.

At 1 a.m. this morning I knew I needed to hear Truth. Tired and half asleep, I opened up the Verse of the Day on my phone. I felt like that was cheating, but God spoke loud and clear anyway. “When you are joined with me and I with you, intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant.”

Intimate and organic.

Ah yes. Relationship is always first. Not to-do lists.

Abundant harvests are His doing, not my endless efforts.

“But if you make yourselves at home with me and my words at home in you, you can be sure that whatever you ask will be listened to and acted upon.” (John 15: 5-8, The Message)

Make myself at home with Him.

His words at home in me.

Listened to and acted upon.

The devil is a freaking liar.

Trying to tell me I am alone. Trying to tell me no one cares. Trying to tell me that it’s all on me.

Open your hands in surrender and be filled

Also at 1 a.m., after I read that scripture, I sat in the dark and opened my hands to the Lord again.

Again. How many times have I surrendered my needs, dreams, desires? How many times have I confessed my attachment to my rights and preferences? How many times have I asked Him to remind me one more time about who I am?

Again—He held me until peace came.

Again—He sang the song that just sits in my spirit these days,

“Jireh, you are enough.

More than enough.

I’m already loved

I’m already chosen

I know who I am

I know what You’ve spoken.”

Nothing and no one in this world can create peace like the Prince of Peace.

Praise him before, during, and after the assault.

There are two scenes from The Chosen series that make me cry every time. One is the scene where Jesus meets Nathaniel. He has just told Nathaniel that He saw him “when he was sitting under the fig tree.” You can visibly see that Nathaniel is shaken and wrestling. He keeps looking to Phillip and Jesus says, “Don’t look at him, look at me.” Nathaniel peers into the face of Jesus. Intently. And then his expression of confusion turns to recognition of the One. Jesus laughs and says, “Ah, there it is.”

FAITH. You can see the Faith rise up in Nathaniel and peace was quick to follow. But EVEN more is Jesus’ delight in Nathaniel’s faith.

Have you ever considered it?? That your faith would cause Jesus, the Most High God, to smile?

Oh my soul. Yes, Lord. I delight to bring you joy.

The second scene is just as chilling. It is where the begrudging, and unbelieving, father of Ramah is giving Jesus the intense older man to younger man “this-is-nonsense” talking to. The father challenges Jesus that what he was asking of his follower was extreme. To which Jesus replied, “It is true. I ask a lot of those who follow Me. But I ask little of those who do not.”

Gasp. All for Jesus. How do we hold on to all He has said? How do we stay in step with all He is doing among us? Praise. Before, during, and after. Letting our spirit recite the same songs that Holy Spirit is singing over us. You’ve heard it before, worship is our greatest weapon.

Listen this isn’t a one and done routine. We STOP over and over. This morning at 7 a.m., only mildly more awake, the Lord said, “You need to go sit by the water until you see clearly again.”

He is so worth it. Actually, so is my peace.