Spiritual Identity Theft?

I’ve been uber busy people!  – pre-holiday cleaning for the burglars, post-holiday laundry, grocery shopping, trips home to visit my sister who’s poorly and a son going off to collage not to mention all the ‘church stuff’… yep it’s buzzzzzzy. Trying to get time with God has been a real challenge over this summer; our God time is often the first thing to go when life is squeezed isn’t it? As my role changes (I’ve now an empty nest) I’ve become acutely aware of my need for God to remind me who I am because without Him I’m not really, well… me! I posit there is a link between who we are after spending time with God and our identity. And I’m not the only one look at Moses after spending time with God his face shone…

We like to be shiny… we all have a public presentable ‘identity’ but God is after the real you. At the end of your life He won’t ask ‘why couldn’t you have been more like Mother Teresa’? There’s a great bumper sticker which reads ‘be yourself everyone else is taken’ and that’s the point. God made you – you for a purpose. Your temperament, your ethnicity, your gifts and limitations, your parenting even, was all thought through for a reason. Nevertheless we need to get smart our enemy is a great liar; if he can deceive you about who you are you’ll live an unfulfilled life. Do you ever find you to live to please people, or live through the distorting filter of comparison? Do you feel the pressure to be something or someone you’re not? Do you forget your royal position? These are all evidence of his handiwork and why we need regular Holy Spirit infilling.

I’m speaking to myself here but we can snooze into apathy and indifference to who we are and what we’re meant to be doing on this earth. We can easily be distracted robbing us of our identity and our part in the greatest show on earth! We need to pursue what God values; we need to know our ‘role’ so we can keep our focus passionate. You see our values and convictions shape our choices which shape our lives.  I’m a wobbly person deeply flawed and often wrong. I need my saviour to whisper who He says I am when the world says I’m useless; conversely I need Him to humble me when I forget without Him I’m nothing. Get with God today and ask Him to remind you who you are…

Hugs Ruth x

Makin ma Plans...

photo courtesy of  - www.stockfreeimages.com

I'm a planner, I love lists! I love setting goals and I love ticking boxes, I love completion. I love the feeling of drawing a line under what I'd hoped to accomplish so that particular 'box' can be set back on the shelf. Do you know it actually causes me stress to leave things unfinished! To me there is no greater joy than seeing, as Hannibal from the A team used to say, 'a plan come together'. For those of us box tickers I think there a sense of productivity or perhaps a need for fine detail in this process? We work well within structure, and are often creative as we work through. For this personality type evaluating how a project went and how it could be improved upon for the future will be totally satisfying. However if we were all like this teams wouldn't work. I have a friend who finds great joy in starting a project, growing a team and handing it over long before it's completed. He has started so many visionary projects which have born great fruit but has rarely been involved in their completion. He works in big broad brush strokes leaving the (for him dull) aspects of fine detail to others. Our Father in His wisdom has designed us to negotiate each other, to experience and work out what it is to do in team as modelled by the Godhead for His glory; to bring each of our gifts, idiosyncrasies, our 'us - ness' to the table for His glory.

This is all well and good but unless we act on our plans big or small they are well, useless... 2 Cor 8:11  Message version - encourages, 'The best thing you can do right now is to finish what you started last year and not let those good intentions grow stale. You're heart has been in the right place all along. You've got what it takes to finish it up, so go to it'. You see guys; the devil loves to distract us, so that we're big on good intention but small on doing. He will throw fear, doubt, discouragement anything he can, to stop us taking that first step from plan to purpose. But hear this this sweet cheeks, our gracious God takes the pressure off by the caveat found in proverbs ~ 16:9 which tells us 'we make our plans but the Lord positions our steps'. Isn't that fab? All God requires of us is to keep a pure heart get off our butts and He will sculpt His purpose out of the clay of our lives. 

• So what do you need to do to move from plan to purpose?
• When are you gonna do it (date/time)?
• Will you let me know how you get on?

see ya next week thanks for reading 

Hugs Ruth x