May - 2012
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
03:43 pm It saddens me sometimes when things fall to my right and/or to my left around me. I should be encouraged that it does not draw nigh my dwelling. I should rejoice that the Lord sustains me, He keeps me, even though I have fallen short with Him. I cannot fully appreciate that the Lord had brought me to a standing posture instead of a position of lowliness, no... not until I can stand also and help a brother come up and out of it also. I cannot find contentment in my "state" if some of those that fall to my right and/or left might be one of my brothers or one of my friends.
There is just something unsettling about seeing a friend have a bad day. It's not easy to accept when it becomes obvious what your brother or friend things about who you are, even just by the way he or she behaves near me or talks to me. It's easy to see the distinction between the behavior toward a different person in what seems to he or she a higher stature. I am very easily and very commonly misunderstood.
All that might not make any sense at all yet. What I mean to say is that I am NOT of a lower stature as any of those people who are being respected and held in high regard. I do not desire that anyone behave that way toward or about me, but I will not allow the very appearance of that evil to settle into my belief system. I seen its path and I ain't on that. I can't permit my good to be evil spoken of. I qualify for far more than what I accept for myself in my life. I do this because I need to be here, on this level. It is my comfort zone. It is where I do my very best. I have the best times of my life reaching out to people on this level, from this level. I am home here.
This is not to say I will never be successful or achieve. I will succeed as much as is necessary for the goal, and the maintaining of that goal. I don't want to arrive at an achievement, just to allow it to go unattended shortly thereafter. Instead, I want to be able to maintain what I have established. I want to be able to maintain it permanently. Not to let it go. I can pass things on to other people, that I have achieved with my very own hands. I have no problem with that because I know clearly that God gave this to me, and I can have it back at any time. All I have to do is reach over and take one (whatever "one" might be in the readers' life).
When I have a solid strategy for this goal and its arrival, I will also have a strategy for its maintenance. At which point, I can graft it into my daily system, and begin another goal. This is how it works for me. I'm sure there are many ways it works for many people. I try with effort to never compare me with anyone else. I make effort to not adhere to any sort of influence such as fads, styles, whatever. I have two or things that are a part of my life that will become apart from my life. They began because of an impression it gave me so many years ago. I suppose that before it became an addiction, and some time after, I assumed I, too was making that impression on others.... but why? I ask now because it seems so silly to me now. I'm chemically dependent on whatever all is in tobacco.
In addition to that, I still do some things that my spirit and my will don't do. Further, I don't do some of the things that my spirit and my will want to do. The Bible says that Paul had this situation in his life. Some people clearly do have this situation in their lives. Probably even everybody to some point or other. The point I mean to make is that I want to reform that. I want to be restored totally.
Instead of me making excuses for what I have done and haven't done, I will choose to turn aside from that thought altogether for now and focus on the Word of God in me. I want to re-direct my current thinking and think on these things... (Philippians. 4). Even that chapter isn't all the results that come from renewing my mind. Even more comes. I receive direction and instruction. I receive understanding. I receive joy in his presence, and peace in His shadow.
I claim Philippians 4 on my life now, in Jesus' name! I will now begin to think, act, and believe that my peace and joy unspeakable is current in me and all around me. Anyone who needs blesses will be, even if its only to keep this peace active. If for no other reason than I have peace right now, one should come and effort to burn a barn or something, it cannot come to pass. Though thousands fall at my side, tens of thousands at my right hand, it shall not draw nigh my dwelling. It is finished.
G. Neil Armstrong
Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 4:12pm
