Learn from the Roses

So I'm out doing my morning ritual; checking my garden for ripe tomatoes & checking my rose bushes for blooms to bring into the house...This is one of my FAVORITE things to do...I ABSOLUTELY love fresh roses. They smell fantastic and quite simply they put a smile on my face EVERY TIME!!! The yummy fragrance turns my thoughts toward my Heavenly Father and His wonderful creation, and my mind cannot fathom; it cannot FULLY comprehend His Greatness, His Love, or His Grace...He is TRULY amazing and words cannot describe him!!!!!! Awwwwww! Okay, now for my lesson from the roses...as you know, roses have thorns, so I wear protective gloves to protect me from getting pricked by the thorns. But today, one of the roses had HUGE thorns and one "got me"...it poked through the thick rubbery part of my gloves and made my thumb start to bleed! OUCHY! As I regain consciousness...hee hee...not really, but as I recovered from the initial shock of the prickly pain, I thought, "No matter what you do to protect yourself from pain or hurt, pain or hurt still happens. It's just part of the wonderful thing we call life. So suck it up! Lean on God and the help of His Holy Spirit to pull you through the pain/hurt, learn something positive from it and move on. If you run or hide from the hurt/pain, you will cut yourself off from the Magnificent beauty of the rose (life)!"

Life happens! We don't have control over what or how it happens. We do have control of the choices we make and HOW we REACT to the pains and hurts that come our way. We can try to protect ourselves...and we all have a bajillion ways of "trying" to protect ourselves (i.e. hangin' out with certain people, not hangin' out with people, shopping, eating, talking, sleeping, hiding, reading, escaping, you know what your protection plan of action is...). Sometimes in order to protect ourselves, we try to build high protective walls around us only to find that we've blocked out everyone INCLUDING God, and even with the high wall of protection around our hearts, the hurt and pain of loneliness and rejection scale the wall and invade our "protected" place.

When I finished cutting all the roses I wanted, I brought them inside to prepare them for the vase. I pulled off the extra leaves that would be in the way, and I broke off the thorns, so they would fit nicely in the vase. In order to break the thorns off I placed my thumb on the side of the thorn and gently pushed and presto they fell off! We can learn from the roses that life has it's thorns and sometimes they are big, hurtful, and scary, but we can do all things through Christ Who strengthens us (Philippians 4:13). We don't have to run away and hide from life and let hurts/pains rob us of the incomprehensible, unfathomable, fragrant, beauty of abundant life in Christ.

Take time to smell the roses!!

In Him,
Jana

Who's in Control?

During my morning workout, I listened to one of my favorite Podcasts, and the speaker's words began to sink deep into my heart...and frankly, rocked my world a bit! :) I think I have a 2X4 mark between my eyes... Emotions!!!! We all have them...Are they controlling us or do we have our emotions under control?!? With fear and trepidation I must confess that my emotions get out of control sometimes (okay a lot of times!!!) and they tend to control me; my reaction to situations; my tone with my kids and hubby; my perception of what/how someone said "something" to me; my offense-o-meter is red-lining more often than not! (Can I get a witness, somebody?)

Now, emotions were given to us by our Creator. They let us know when we are happy, sad, angry, hurt, tired, excited, over-joyed...you get the picture. But we need to be good stewards of what we have been given...that doesn’t just apply when we’re talking about money and material things! If we're not careful we can make our "feelings" our god, because we choose to bow down to them and obey what our "feelings" tell us to do! We have to CHOOSE to obey God and what He tells us to do in His Word...the Bible. Galatians 5:22-23 (Amplified), "But the fruit of the [Holy] Spirit [the work which His presence within accomplishes] is love, joy (gladness), peace, patience (an even temper, forbearance), kindness, goodness (benevolence), faithfulness, gentleness (meekness, humility), self-control (self-restraint, continence). Against such things there is no law [that can bring a charge]." When someone hurts our feelings or offends us, what are we supposed to do? Romans 12:21 (NLT) says, "Don't let evil conquer you, but conquer evil by doing good." Hear what Jesus has to say in Luke 6:27, 28 (and you may want to curl your toes up, so they won't get stepped on too badly...mine are throbbing), "But I say to you who are listening now to Me; [in order to heed, make it a practice to] love your enemies, treat well (do good to, act nobly toward) those who detest you and pursue you with hatred, invoke blessings upon and pray for the happiness of those who curse you, implore God's blessing (favor) upon those who abuse you [who revile, reproach, disparage, and high-handedly misuse you]." And finally, Ephesians 6:12 (NLT), "For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places."

Okay, so I've thrown a lot of scripture your way, so let me summarize where I heading with all this info:

1. Self-control
2. Overcome evil with good
• Pray for our enemies
• Our real enemy is the evil ruler of this world (we'll call him “Satan”…in your best SNL Church-Chat-Lady voice)

So, when the "evil ruler" uses someone's mouth/actions to hurt or offend us, we are supposed to pray for them and BLESS them (implore God’s blessing on them). That means that we have to choose to tell our feelings "NO!", because you and I both know that we would rather call our good friends and tattle on the "mean" person that dared to say hurtful things to us or about us. We'd just love to call our small group attendees and "share" a prayer request about sister so-and-so or our kids or our spouse (not to be confused with true prayer requests and needs)! We'd want to defend ourselves and justify our "hurt" feelings, but the Bible is very clear what our action steps should be. When we pray for and bless our enemies, we are overcoming evil with good. Ultimately we are making our "true" enemy (evil ruler of this world) tuck-tail and run away and we are showing love toward the person who offended us. Now, I'm not saying that we have to buddy-buddy up with the person that has intentionally tried to destroy us, but we can show love by praying for them everyday. If you tell me that you CAN'T pray for them, then I would have to tell you that you are bowing down to your little "g" god...feelings/emotions and not letting the big "G" God of this universe work in and through you. It's okay to "feel" our emotions and even acknowledge the reality of their presence, but we MUST CHOOSE to not allow them to rule us, ruin our day, or ruin our lives. Make wise choices today, and tune in next time for more of "Jana's Thoughts".

Have a FABULOUS Day,

Jana