Praying to show mercy to the merciless

Now this is the test. This is the time to show who a real Christian is. You find out a lot about a person when you put them in a heated situation. I suppose that is where God has put me. They are consequences for my sin that I now have to deal with. This is one of the things I hate most about being a Christian is that when it comes to defining yourself in situations like this where you were also wrong or made a mistake, I can't say, "well at least I don't act like *insert name*" because as Christians the only one we compare ourselves to is Christ and Christ endured a lot of heat from people. I am tempted to get angry and lash back, I'm tempted to act coldly, but neither one of those extremes is helpful. They are all driven by Satan. Even though it hurts to be treated with anger and as a human my first defense is to shout right back, Christ's defense is to turn the other cheek, to fight with your spiritual sword the Bible. This is not a human warfare I am in, this is a spiritual warfare I am in. A human being may be the physical visual I see in this war, but it all has to deal with the soul and who is attacking it. Get behind me Satan. He's tempting me a lot, I gotta mortify this sin before it takes control. I feel the burden on my heart right now.

I think the Sabbatical I took for the past three days was extremely helpful for me, because now I'm on the battlefield. I don't know what God is doing, maybe He's saying to me, "I've trained you enough, you need to start fighting now and not hiding" I know His hand is beside me, but how can He help me if I don't do anything about it? How can God give a hand when I won't even start? It is time to start, it is time to have faith and go out and continue on the journey He has placed in my life, I just pray that I am not being deceived by the evil one as I make my decisions. I just pray God will grant me peace through this time though.

It is armor of God time...

7/19/09 draft...

These past three days I went on a Sabbatical because I just haven't felt God speak in such a long time. I felt a spiritual drought and I neglected him to do other things. I felt it on Sunday after church when I was at home trying to read my Bible and prepare myself before I went into work. I seriously felt like I was going to have a mental breakdown. It wasn't necessarily because I was doing too much, but more so that I was doing to much without God's hand in my life. I felt like I hadn't rested in His presence in months. So I took my Sabbatical starting Monday. What's hard about the first day of really digging into your heart before God is that sin really exposes itself. I've experienced this before, actually this is my life story. I neglect God, need to get back with him, and I see ugliness of my sin set before me. The worst part about it though is that it affected my whole day. Normally when I have a good quiet time with God I am in a good mood, but when it has been a while your sin just oozes out of you all day. Not a fun experience but it has to happen so that God can cleanse you. Tuesday was much better, and today was a good day as well, at least between me and God. I read through the whole book of Exodus today, it took me about two hours. I tell you, if you have never done that, I recommend it immensely. I got so into it, and I just felt the presence of God in a wonderfully trembling way. At the end of reading it I just fell on my knees before God and prayed for His mercy on my sinful soul.

When I was younger I use to wonder how Israel could forget God so easily and be such ungrateful brats towards Him. When people said they could relate to Israel in that I way I didn't understand. I understand now. I find myself worse than Israel, I can have a great quiet time with Him in the morning and totally forget about him by lunch time. I am so thankful for His amazing love, that when I am faithless He remains faithful.