Saturday, April 5, 2008

Like a Child...

10:06 PM by Christi Bowman

I was listening to a sermon delivered by Andrew Shearman entitled "Hell No". In it he states that "the more he becomes like Christ the more Andrew he becomes." In other words the more that I become like Christ the more TRULY Christi I become. This struck a HUGE chord with me. Since I have had my blinders removed, I have had GREAT remorse for the YEARS I have lost. I have felt like I have been reconnected with myself as a little girl, and all the years in between, then and now, I have not been true to the true me at all. I used to say that those years and those mistakes made me who I am...and so I was o.k. with what I had done. I don't believe this anymore. I was who I was created to be...who I am now, as a little girl. When I was little I felt God, I heard God, I LOVED God...I KNEW GOD. Not because I was "saved" at a young age by a sinners prayer or baptized before the age of accountability, I just remember feeling a STRONG sense of God at a very young age. Since the blinders have come off, I have renewed passion...I say renewed, and not new...because this passion is familiar to me...and the reason it is familiar is because I KNOW I have had it before...this CLEAR vision...I felt it when I was a child.

Jesus says unless you become like a little child you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. In light of the paragraph above this makes perfect sense to me now. The age of accountability does too. I believe that although we are born with a fallen nature, we are innocent before God until we realize we are sinners. I think God does an awful lot of calling, pulling, and speaking into little children. I have witnessed this in Ella. She is not even 7, and she has told us a countless number of times that she feels God...and is ready for God. I am going to test this out when I get home. I am going to intentionally practice listening prayer with my little girl. I am going to sit down with her, and we are going to ask God some questions together, and I am going to sit with her for a while and ask her to listen to what God is telling her. I believe I will hear some AMAZING things through her. I believe God uses this time to pull people to Him...because He knows what we are going to encounter. He knows sin is going to take us FAR away from Him...and He wants to leave a pathway back. I think, without knowing it, that is why we, as a society, view crimes against children as so heinous...and these atrocities are committed against orphans EVERYDAY. It pushes children out of their innocence, before God, to early...maybe before they establish this pathway with God. Never is it to late, but it makes the journey SO much harder for them. I am also thinking about the orphans here too. It is the church's responsibility to protect these children, and we aren't doing a good job. There are thousands of children who have there innocence stolen EVERYDAY. How will they ever connect to God through child likeness if they never get to experience childhood? I now see my parenting role with a much greater responsibility. My Children were born depraved, and with God's grace they will reach the age of accountability, and they will be sinners and in need of God's grace. However, if I can, as their parent, speak life into them during their period of innocence, and then keep reminding them of the pathway they have established with their maker, maybe they won't experience the pain I am about to talk about, and their journey to empowerment, through the Holy Spirit, won't be so difficult...like mine was.

I think that God CONSTANTLY uses pain to redeem our innocent child within us, and bring us back to Him...whether we are believers or non believers. If you are a non believer God uses pain to call you to Himself, and if you are a believer God uses pain to remove your blinders, and EMPOWER you. Sin causes pain. Pain can also be caused by life circumstances, or God forcing you in a direction you don't wish to go. Satan, through sin, causes the pain that God wants to use to redeem you. I think this is where free will comes in. We can choose as believers and non believers to rage against God, and shake our fist at Him. I believe a little of this is o.k., but I do believe that the longer you do it, the longer the process takes. I also think that if you get mad at God and quit letting God take you through whatever pain you are facing, if you do not choose dependence on God, you give Satan a stronghold in your life, and you allow him to start telling you lies. That is where I think addictions start. If you self soothe your pain, and rely on yourself to ease your suffering, whatever you use to get you through, becomes an addiction, a stronghold, a lie of Satan. When you rely on something else to get you through pain, then you convince yourself that that thing...whatever it was...that brought you happiness is what you need more than God. And next time it becomes so much easier to depend on that item. I believe that is why I had SO many addictions/strongholds in my life. Each time I experienced pain I self soothed. At first, when the pain started...I raged at God...and when He didn't come through, I didn't trust Him, or depend on Him, I made myself feel better with a shopping trip...or angry music...once Satan had me with those, he got me using drugs, sex, alcohol...whatever it took to get me deeper in bondage. I think whatever you use, no matter what it is...they are all just as bad as anyone else's self soother...because everything that you rely on more than God to bring you happiness is a LIE. To God it all looks the same...and it renders us all incapable of TRULY being about our Father's business.

In conclusion...if we want to be EMPOWERED by the Holy Spirit...CHURCH, if we TRULY want to be effective...then I believe we have GOT to understand pain and the role it plays in our relationship with our FATHER. We all have pain. If you don't feel empowered...but you don't feel like you have any pain...ask God to reveal it to you...and take you through it. We ALL have baggage...no matter who we are. We have got to bring it out into the open...out into the light...and trust God to get us through it. We have got to stop raging...we have GOT to start trusting...we have got to start depending on God to take us through. I am here to testify...that once He takes us through the pain...once we trust Him to get us there...once we stop self soothing there is freedom on the other side...EMPOWERMENT...TRUE GREATNESS in Christ. If Christ...being the ultimate example...took on pain...our pain...and trusted God to get Him through it...EVEN UNTO DEATH...then why do we think we don't have pain? We all have our pain too. It happened once to Christ...but it keeps happening to us. We have to die to ourselves everyday...let go of our pain...and let God happen. I think God keeps allowing pain into our lives to refine us. We get the opportunity to be more like Jesus every time we trust God with our pain. And if being more like Jesus, makes us more like who we were always intended to be...then we will know TRUE happiness...true fulfillment...and then we will be FREE. Free to enter into other people's pain...and help them find freedom...and isn't that what it is all about.

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