“How sweet are Your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! I gain understanding from Your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path.” Ps.119:104
Hard times are going to happen. And as the saying goes, they’ll either make us better or make us bitter. Well, none of us desires “bitter”, so just how do we experience “better”?
We believe it starts with a determination to draw close to our Creator. Draw close to God through prayer and studying His word, not out of duty, but out of a desire to know Him. Not merely know about Him in a cognitive sense, but intimately know Him…in a guttural sense.
Transparently speaking, God is working on me in an area of my life where I already know what truth is and what is lie. I cognitively know what I should think, do and say…but I’m shocked how often I forget these cognitive truths, as real-life challenges abruptly present themselves in this weak area of my life!
Sometimes it’s like I am standing back watching myself in third person, waving my hands, trying to get my own attention to see the truth AND the absurdity of the matter: “Yo, Betsy, dumb butt, you know better. God has shown you this over and over and over! Why are you choosing to think in your flesh and get all insecure in your skin? You know what’s truth and what’s ‘truth with a twist’, Betsy! Get it together girl.”
Well thankfully I am learning to listen to that “level-headed self” more and more frequently (which is actually the Spirit within me). For as I choose to nourish this voice, its (His) volume actually gets louder inside my head. Cognitive truths are becoming my guttural truths!
In other words, what I know in my head to be true when I’m calm, cool and collected, are now becoming spiritual realities deep in my heart, which in turn manifest themselves in my words and actions when I am…well let’s say…”unguarded and passionate”.
So, back to the bitter or better equation at the top of the page; my Shaun and I don’t know the details of your circumstances, challenges, vices, or mental wars, but we do know Someone who does. David tells us in Ps. 139:1-4, “O Lord, You have searched me and You know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; You perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; You are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, You know it completely, O Lord.” And God beckons us to, “Come now, let us reason together…” Ps. 1:18.
We are here for you too, so feel free to call; we’ll love to pray with you.
God bless you this week!
Shaun and Betsy
