Pausing and taking a break

More than anything, I want to be known in heaven as a lover of Jesus.  I want to look back on my life and see that my decisions were made on loving Jesus well.  

You may have noticed that I haven’t written much on my blog recently.  I have half a dozen unfinished blogposts of things I am mulling over but never felt fully able to finish and there are two reasons for that: 

1. Life is so busy and I am trying to be faithful in loving God and my family before doing other things. 

2. I am feeling a wall of discouragement against me in terms of writing and I am trying to discern if that is a sign to push through with writing here on the blog or if it is actually right for me to shift my writing focus for a while. 

God is speaking to me about writing on the pilgrimage of motherhood.  Slowly I am working through several posts / chapters, and they are taking much of my writing time.  And perhaps, I just need to realise that that is okay.  Perhaps my writing focus at this time needs to be in more of a hidden place.  

But I would love you to pray for me. 

Would you pray firstly that I would hear God clearly on His timing and will for my writing? 

Would you pray that if it is His will, I would find a writing mentor, who I can be accountable with and thrash out ideas / get wisdom from? 

Would you pray that writing would never become a distraction from seeking Him.  My heart’s desire is to be faithful always to Him, and to serve Him as a demonstration of my love to him.  

Thank you for your prayers, friendships and encouragements.   If you come back here and I still haven’t posted anything new, perhaps you would keep praying for me about the next steps? 

Love, 

Anna 

When faced with fear: how protection looks more like deliverance

Image found here

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” 

- Nelson Mandela

This week I had a night with three nightmares/dreams.  I’m not sure which.  You see, they all started out as nightmares - with people stealing all our things or entering our house by force, but every time they did I confronted them and starting telling them about their need for Jesus.  Even when in one dream where I came home and everything in my house was gone, we found the culprits to share with them about Jesus.  They all ended peacefully. 

I wish those fears were not a possible reality, but the truth is, I have had to face armed thieves emptying our car of their electrics.  And we do hear of stories of people coming home here and EVERYTHING in their house emptied out.  It may not be very often, but it happens. And I know very few missionaries here who have not had something stolen from their car, homes or person. 

But living in that reality means you have to face up to the fact that it might just happen to you.  Again.  And that doesn’t mean that God is not the Protector.  

I grew up believing that faith for protection was believing that I would never face anything fearful.  But now when I read Psalm 91 I realise God’s protection actually looks more like sure deliverance.  

I am continually learning to look at those fears straight in the face. When I feel scared I am realising that that does not need to be debilitating, and that I am not weak - I am human.  (I checked with my seemingly fearless husband - he described feelings of being ‘nervous’ rather than fear, but that is probably just because he is well trained in being courageous!)  We all fear things.  We all have paralyzing waves hit us at times, or wobbly-stomached nervousness.  

But the difference comes when we decide to face those things head on. 

I may fear another mother’s response if I go to her and apologise for my child’s behaviour. 

I may fear my teammate’s response if I go to him and apologise for my snide remark. 

I may fear going to the bathroom in the night in case I hear noises I don’t want to. (Okay, so I am still not doing well on this fear because that was how I found the thieves emptying out the car, but pray I will!) 

I may fear sharing my heart with my husband unless he is showing me he is in the mood to listen. 

I may fear allowing others to look after my children for an afternoon so I can spend an afternoon with Mark. 

But when I do choose to be brave, in spite of my fears, I find a connection that happens with others and with God.  And that is always worth it.  

And I know too, that so often fear is a signpost to oncoming deliverance because it is the enemy’s tactic to try and stop us from entering our promised land, because he knows his time is potentially short.  Sometimes, as the priest was called to remind Israel before every battle, we just need a little reminder: 

When you are about to go into battle, the priest shall come forward and address the army. He (shall say: ‘Hear, Israel: today you are going into battle against your enemies. Do not be faint-hearted or afraid; do not panic or be terrified by them. For the Lord your God is the one who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to give you victory.’ 

- Deut 20:2-4 

Related post: Overcoming Fear 

Fighting Discouragement with Feedback

One of the things I wrote on a post on People Everywhere: Things that Transcend Culture, is that everyone has a need for positive feedback.  It has something I have been thinking about a lot ever since I have come back from the jungle in April.  

I found leading a group of Shipibo women hard.  Mainly because they are not very forthcoming when it comes to feedback and also because it is obviously difficult to have conversations when the other party doesn’t feel comfortable conversing in Spanish.  I left the jungle wondering if it had been worth the sacrifice of leaving my oldest two at home, plus another week away from home after a transient month with a team.  I needed to hear that my presence there made a difference. 

I had three important conversations: 

1) Mark - he reminded me that just me being there was an encouragement to the women, and spoke of my desire to feed into them - that they as women were valued.  He told me that it also showed them that discipling others wasn’t just for the men, it was something women could and should be a part of too.  

2) Huddle (online leadership group call)- there I was also reminded of the importance of being there and encouraging other women with my presence, and given helpful ideas for ‘next time’. 

3) God - I asked Him to give me a picture of what was going on.  He showed me seeds in the ground and small saplings coming through. He told me that our time in the jungle was not about fruit this time, but about seeds and saplings, and that we were going to see very little in the physical realm this time that looked significant, but growth was happening. 

Helpful feedback is really important: 

1. It hopefully helps us see things from a larger perspective
2. It gives us connection with other people - what we all need and crave
3. It helps us to assess, dream and plan the next steps and helps create momentum to the next things God is sharing with us.  
4. It stops discouragement and isolation (which the enemy is keen for us to feel) when we have just stepped forward. 

You would perhaps be surprised that only about 2% of people ever respond or comment on a blogpost or a newsletter we send out.  (That is a true statistic in general.) Everyone assumes that everyone else is commenting, giving, connecting, but the truth is that only a very low percentage of people ever give feedback or reach out to connect.  

Realising the human need we all have to receive helpful feedback has made me think about where I should be offering more feedback.  Recently I have tried to be intentional about sending quick emails or catching a quick conversation with one of our team when I get a chance and not leaving it to later never.  I have been making more of an effort to comment on photos or statuses I see where before I have preferred to hide behind cyberspace scared what people might think of me or read into what I had said. I have also tried to be honest with others when I need some feedback and encouragement, when my temptation is to not want to show need for others.  

I need to hear from those around me who are also running the race of motherhood, or leadership, or being human, (and of course, also make time to listen to God’s perspective too) that I am doing okay. That what I am doing makes a difference where it matters most.  And I expect you do too.  

So what about you? Where can you offer more feedback to those around you? 
Who can you catch up with this week and encourage? Will you take that quick moment to comment on someone’s status or photo? Will you take a moment to email and spur on a discouraged friend? Don’t assume someone else is. 

Therefore encourage one another and build each other up 

- 1 Thessalonians 5:11

I am enjoying reading Daring Greatly by Brené Brown at the moment.  In that book (which is I would highly recommend - truly life changing for me), she mentions about the need for feedback and how we should filter it, especially when we are vulnerable and daring greatly.  Many of the ideas in this post have come as a result of chewing over her material.  

Fighting for my baby

I started to feel like I was going into labour.  I was surprised because I did not even know I was pregnant.  A midwife led me to a bed and scanned my tummy and told me that the baby had not survived.  I did not believe her and after a few pushes, out came a smaller-than-newborn, but good-sized baby boy.  He wasn’t moving, but I knew he was not dead.  I breathed on him and he started breathing.  Precious, surprising, awe-inspiring life. I had so much certainty that that little life was going to be.  I could feel my mother instinct-faith rising up, and there was no way anyone was going to tell me otherwise.  I was fighting for that child, and although obviously premature, that baby was going to be fine, and there was no way anyone else was going to take him away from me. 

Shortly after giving birth I was handed another baby to adopt.  I looked at the baby and did not recognize it.  I could see the boy had already had the newborn vaccines as a little band-aid covered his shoulder, and he had clearly already been cared for in the nursery.  I was asked if I would accept this baby.  I said I would.  Because who else would take it?  Because I could. Because I was willing.  But I felt no connection with this baby. If someone else had shown up at that moment and offered to take the baby, I probably would not have minded.  

That was the dream I had on Thursday morning around dawn.  

And it made me reflect on the importance of the spiritual birthing process.  

How often do I want a breakthrough without the pain? How often do I want the product without the process? 

But it is the pain of the process, the fighting, the endurance that grows our faith, gives us perspective and makes us take responsibility for the breakthrough.  The adopted baby I was offered, I knew I could love.  Logically, practically I could do it.  But I didn’t have the same feelings of ownership and responsibility for that child.  I wasn’t willing to fight for him like I was for the one I had birthed.  Even though I did not even know about him before I birthed him, and even though I was first told about him when he was supposedly already dead, I refused to let go.  I refused to accept anything but life from that body.  That baby had been given to me and I was going to take full responsibility for him.  In the dream I knew that if God had given me that child, he was going to live. 

If we don’t go through a birthing process for our breakthroughs, then maybe we are less willing to fight in prayer for them when things look bleak.  If we have no assurance that God has given us responsibility for a gift, talent, breakthrough, change in direction, etc, then when the enemy comes against us, how willing are we to fight? How much more quickly does doubt about God’s will come? How much more quickly are we willing to let things go? If the adopted baby had started looking unhealthy, I would honestly probably had felt relief a lot more quickly, not having taken on the responsibility in my heart for that child. 

And so that lead me to look at the areas where there are growing pains, birthing pains going on at the moment in my life: an overflowing, overwhelming house; my personal struggles for joy and gratitude; struggles in our team with sickness; our bank balance struggling to provide for the extra costs a growing household requires. What if we used those difficulties to alert us to that breakthrough is coming? What if we took hold of those struggles by the collar and looked at them straight and began thanking God for the life that is coming?  That we began to allow those birthing cries to be lifted up to God and call out to Him for things to come into alignment.  If we begin to trust that those pains are not indigestion but birthing pains.  That the baby is not dead, despite what others may say, but that our belief, our holding fast to the promise God has given us, will be rewarded and that the more intense the pain, the nearer the breakthrough. 

So I am asking God to show me His perspective this week.  I am asking Him to tell me about the babies we are birthing, the gifts He is releasing, the transitions He is orchestrating, the shifts that are happening, the areas where the enemy is getting nervous and acting out and kicking and screaming because he knows his time is short.  If only we will hold on.  Persevere.  Pray.  Hold on fast to Him.  If only we will stand on the Rock and trust that what He promised will be.  

So where are the struggles in your life this week? Be encouraged.  Breakthrough is coming.  If you will only hold on.  And cry out to Him. 

I waited patiently for the Lord;
    he turned to me and heard my cry.

He lifted me out of the slimy pit,
    out of the mud and mire;
he set my feet on a rock
    and gave me a firm place to stand.

He put a new song in my mouth,
    a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear the Lord
    and put their trust in him.

- Psalm 40

Fighting into the Promised Land

I wrote this post a few weeks ago, when I was really fighting for joy... Thankfully, the dark cloud has now lifted, but I still wanted to share this post with you, because I know it will ring true for some, and also I, personally, need to be reminded...! 

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My peach tree – the one I planted three years ago in my new garden in my new house – this year it bloomed and blossomed and hundreds of peaches fell and swelled on the branches and the tree began to fall forward under the weight of the fruit.

I tied it to a nail in the wall. 

After a few days, the nail fell out.

But I now notice that the tree is no longer falling forward.  The trunk is firm.  The support is no longer needed.

Right now, I am being tugged and weighed down and I am stooped over.  My roots are too shallow and they gasp for water, shaken and helpless against the wind. 

And what is my support? My husband, caring, listening, stopping to ask how I am doing today.  Doing really well at showing interest in things he does not care too much about. My community bringing hugs and smiles and prayers and not expecting everything to be perfect. 

But the growth is going on at the roots.  I can feel them wrestling against the rocks, searching desperately for firm, saturated ground.  Unseen refreshment.

I have been promised some Promised Land.  But I am struggling having to fight to get there.

Remembering that the Promised Land wasn’t entered into without a fight.

But also that that fight was more about faith than it was about weapons.

So I fight forward.  Remember the things I have learned along the way – that the fight for joy starts step by step with thankfulness.  Thankfulness spoken out.   Spoken thankfulness is the hardest right now.  I feel fuzzy and overcome and like hell is doing everything to stick my lips together.

The fight for joy is ushered in by my music, and worship and declaration of who You are.  First listening, praying, leaning on You; crying out for You inside and hoping so much that I will be able to speak it out loud.

Jesus never promised a calm lake. Wasn’t it into the wind and waves that Peter stepped into Jesus’ path? Isn’t He calling me too to step into the storm – in faith – and keep my eyes fixed on Him?

Why am I so scared of drowning, if I know He will pick me up?

And although I'm scared, I know that the supernatural happens so often when the choice is life or death and I choose life.  And You prefer that I try and begin to sink than not get out of the boat at all.  

I will give thanks to you, Lord, with all my heart; 

I will tell of all your wonderful deeds. 

-Psalm 9:1

Do not be discouraged!

What do you struggle most with as a leader?

For me, one of the things I struggle with most leading with my husband our ministry here in Peru is discouragement. 

God speaks to us, we act, we encourage others, others are initially enthusiastic and then we get tired.  We are tempted to be led by how others are feeling instead of looking to God and remembering the vision He has given us.  It gets hard.  We get discouraged.

Recently, God has spoken to me through Deuteronomy 31.  Moses is about to hand his leadership onto Joshua, and he is to lead the unfaithful, emotion-led Israelites into the Promised Land. 

When the Israelites were faced with the promised land, God said more or less the same things to Israel and to Joshua through Moses, but with some important differences:

Compare these two passages and see the differences:

To the Israelites: ^‘The Lord will deliver them to you, and you must do to them all that I have commanded you.  Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.’

To Joshua: ‘Be strong and courageous, for you must go with this people into the land that the Lord swore to their ancestors to give them, and you must divide it among them as their inheritance. The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.’

What the people needed to hear was different from what the leader needed to hear in a couple of important ways.  The crowd needed to hear that God was with them, that He would never leave them.  Joshua need to hear something different to empower him.  He need to hear God would go ahead of him as well as with him.  And He needed to be told not to be discouraged. 

I didn’t even realize discouragement was a key strategy of the enemy in my life until I started reflecting on it.  But Moses’ words to Joshua empower me.

I have a role in not being discouraged.  I don’t have to just accept it.  I can and am encouraged to face it head on.  When it rears its lying head, I can look to the Lord and ask Him to remind me of the vision.  I can ask Him to bring the breakthrough for the moment.  I can seek him for a word to move forward.  I don’t have to just accept it or even worse, agree with it. 

This post has been a couple of months in the writing.  I have had over a month in the last two months without free time to write with Mark being away, but honestly, I think in part I have also been discouraged.  I wonder if what I have to say is worth the time it takes to invest in writing a post.  I wonder if other things are more important.  Perhaps they are sometimes.  But I also know that God wants to use my writing, and so isn’t the enemy trying to discourage that just another subtle strategy of his?

Generally I find a post just flows and at the moment, it is not, and that makes me want to give up, but wisdom tells me that the biggest obstacles come just before a breakthrough! So even if this post comes out jagged and hindered, I am choosing to post it – knowing that sometimes just moving forward means one step closer to breakthrough!

I am choosing not to be discouraged because now I know that more often than not, it is the enemy trying to discourage me rather than God trying to slow me down.  His promptings to slow down always come in the form of encouragements to seek Him more, not just to give up!

So for those of you who are leaders today:

 

‘Be strong and courageous, for you must go with this people into the land that the Lord swore to their ancestors to give them, and you must divide it among them as their inheritance. The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.’

Tempted to give up

Sometimes I look at a bad situation and I start praying.  

And that is the right response.  

A broken bank balance, a defiant child, a crying heart once again failing to change herself.  Prayer is always the right response. 

But what sort of prayer?

A deep desperate helpless cry,

or

a submitted, authoritative, listening prayer?

What if I also allowed the situation to show me a larger perspective.  What if God had already responded and set His will forward and the opposite I see is just a temporary spiritual kick back? What if the intensity is a sign that breakthrough, not devastation is near?

All I know is that before we receive a financial gift that is going to change our hopeless bank balance, we regularly have a financial attack.  A broken water tank meaning jug showers out of pots and pans has become this week’s norm – too normal that we complain not, struggling forward not to cope with another thing wrong, but to carry a pan full without overflowing the brim. 

All I know is that before my child steps forward in leaps and bounds in character, I often spend days wondering if he will ever listen to me, if it is too late, if I had only stepped down harder, if he will forever write on the walls, already condemning him in my mind to be a graffiti artist, and he has not yet reached 6?

All I know is my own struggle with sin – this week striving to respect my husband in all I say, and realizing instead all the complaints that flow far too quickly off my tongue – do I have faith that the Holy Spirit will empower my words and I too will change?

And then I remember that the struggle points to heaven’s momentum to bring change – it is precisely because I am about to be empowered to speak and encourage my husband that I am struggling now to do so – if I am just willing to submit to God and accept my powerlessness to change me. 

And it is precisely because my prayer for depth of character and sincerity has been answered that my child is still sticking in his heels, until we sit, heads bowed on his bed, him asking the Holy Spirit to change him and give him self-control, and all of a sudden his impulse to label everything directly turns into everything being labeled by post-it notes instead.

And it is precisely because we know there is an enabling gift flying through the imaginary bank transfer lines from their bank to ours that I just smile and tell Satan to get behind me when the water tank fails – does he think a few financial attacks are going to stop us trusting that God will send enough to cover it and to pay for the things he has destined the money for?   

You see, I am reminded, that it is all about perspective.

And perspective shifts the way we pray.

Thank you for your provision for us daily, thank you for hot water, and stoves for heating water and for jugs, and thank you for the gifts you are sending to provide for all our needs.

Thank you for my child and his heart, already won by you, and that you are showing him how to humbly come to you for help.  Help him always to know he can’t but you can.  Help him to hear your voice louder than the devil’s temptations.

Thank you for your transforming enabling Spirit on my words.  Thank you that I am going to be known as an encourager and defender of my husband, not a loose tongued wife.  Thank you that you want to use me to show others how you enable us to be more like you in our marriage – oh that I would never think it was in my own strength, but recognize it is only through you that I am sanctified and enabled.

It is all about heaven’s perspective.  Where do you need to know it? You know He is waiting to tell you, don’t you? Just draw close and listen to that whisper. 

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 

 – 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18