I Have a Friend

I know it’s only October but it was 41 degrees this morning

Happy Wednesday! Here we are middle of the week. How was yesterday? If you read Tuesday’s post you know I confessed that I was having a tough day mentally. I texted a friend this asking her to pray for me, “Prayer request for me today. I’m struggling today with just tons of negative thoughts & don’t want to stay there. Got to let go and let God.” I sent that text a little before noon and then drove to Carlsbad to run some errands. As soon as I got in the car I was alone with my thoughts again. I immediately thought who can I call to talk this through or pray this away or just get out of my own head. My mind went through the list of people that would be available to talk at that time when all of a sudden the thought occurred to me, “I should just look to God. I should cry to Him, listen to worship songs and give Him this moment. Focus on Jesus.” So that’s what I did. I just turned on a radio station, I think it was 92.1 and songs were playing that had me just thanking God for that moment. I was thanking Him for the fact that I have a friend in Jesus. It’s not that we don’t need people around us, but sometimes the very best thing to do with our heavy hearts is to worship God and thank Him for the very fact that we are never ever alone. He is with us every second of every day. He loves us.

After a long day I told Mario about my afternoon car worship session with the Lord. I told him I was going to write a blog post about it today and title it, “Don’t Call A Friend, Call God!” He suggested another title, the one I ended up using because it is the lyrics to one of our favorite songs by Chandler Moore called He Understands https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N97fDmYKrE

The last part of my day was participating in a Womens Bible Study where I was reminded that we are to yield to the separation that God has us in right now. If this season feels like loss to you in any way…loss of the known, the comfort, the friendships, the identity, the job, the place, then this post is for you. We have a Friend, and He understands. Lean in today. Don’t give in to pressure to reach out to the “known comforts/habits” that usually give you the out you want. Lean into the uncomfortable new place where God has you. God knows. He knows how hard it is. He is near and holding you close. This is growth, friend. Let go of the control and lean into His strength.

Leaning in,

Sonia

Are You a Fighter?

Here we go, Tuesday! Right now I have this song playing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpuUlPfx0Ow I am doing my very best not to throw this laptop off my lap, leap off the couch and twirl around the living singing, “This is how I fight my battles!” I am praying that these words bless you today as you battle whatever is going on in your life.

Little secret, or maybe not so secret for those of you who know me, I am in therapy. I meet every two weeks with a counselor for lots of reasons, and it has helped me in ways I am probably not even aware of. My therapist is a Christian counselor and before you start judging the qualifications because of the Christian aspect, I must tell you that this counselor is a Doctor of Psychology – and a great one, at that! I am thankful for the balanced approach for my therapy.

So last week I had an appointment (even though I wanted to cancel – this usually happens when something good is coming my way, like a breakthrough or something) and mentioned a big issue I am dealing with. This issue literally makes my blood boil. I feel like I need to come out swinging on this one, and during my appointment I said something like, “Well, God didn’t make me a fighter for nothing.” To which my doctor replied, “Well, actually God does the fighting for you.” I stayed quiet. I mean, I know that God fights for me. There are verses all over the Bible that talk about how He defends, protects and fights seen and unseen battles on our behalf, but I don’t think I have settled into the fact that just because I see myself as a fighter doesn’t mean that I truly understand what that really, REALLY means.

As I was typing that last sentence in the previous paragraph I had these verses pop in my head from Joshua chapter 5:

¹³ And then this, while Joshua was there near Jericho: He looked up and saw right in front of him a man standing, holding his drawn sword. Joshua stepped up to him and said, “Whose side are you on—ours or our enemies’?”

¹⁴ He said, “Neither. I’m commander of God’s army. I’ve just arrived.” Joshua fell, face to the ground, and worshiped. He asked, “What orders does my Master have for his servant?”

You can study more about the meaning behind these verses here: https://www.bible-studys.org/Bible%20Books/Joshua/Joshua%20Chapter%205.html

I honed in on this excerpt from the link above: “Christians want to marshal God’s allegiance for their cause, when they should simply submit and follow wherever He leads. Once Joshua understood this, he fell “on his face” in worship.” (emphasis mine).

I heard someone in prayer recently say, “God works both sides,” and I took that to mean that He sees everything, not just my side or their side. He sees it all and can judge rightly. He fights for us based on truth. We sometimes (maybe even most times) fight for our cause, our rights, our egos, our agenda. When we look at the way Joshua responded it is apparent that he is a born warrior for God’s kingdom, prepared for battle, but He had to do it God’s way and that started with worship.

How do you worship when you are “seeing red” over something, your adrenaline is just pumping and you are primed for a fight? How do you worship then? I am seriously asking here. I guess we have to define worship first, right!? I just typed it into my search engine here and found these words that made sense to me from worshipdeeper.com :

Put simply, worship is declaring the greatness of someone or something. It is the act of giving up your own glory to make sure everyone knows that the thing being worshiped is pretty awesome. To put it even more succinctly, worship is bowing down to lift up.“

For me today, I guess it comes down to shifting my focus, quieting my mind, breathing, taking time to allow the heat of the moment to pass and to look to the greatness of God instead of the issue at hand. I know I am a like Joshua in that I don’t back down from a fight, but I want to also be like Joshua in that I will worship before taking one more step! (I also want to put the disclaimer in here that I am not talking about when you are in physical danger – when you are being threatened with bodily arm, fight, my sister, fight! What I am talking about in this case are those issues that come up in work, friendships, family junk, rude customer service people, wacky church things, etc.).

That’s all the time I have for today. I put this song here for us because the lyrics for the chorus are, “I’m gonna see a victory. I’m gonna see a victory for the battle belongs to You, Lord!” And yes, it does. Stay victorious, my friend. I am singing right there with you!

With all my heart, Sonia