Stepping Stones ...Walking the Path set before you.

Isa 40:31

But those who wait on the LORD Shall renew [their] strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.

My Apologies to all of you first as I have not written in this for some time.  I feel the season for a renewal of the vision of this blog is coming forth. It is truly living out what I am talking about in this entry.  I started this blog as step forward in what I felt the Lord was sharing with me. Then life found a way to cause it not to be something for that season of my life.  Now I am feeling the stirring in my heart to write again.  I am hopeful that the timing is right and this will truly become the blessing to encourage others on their journey also. 


We live in a microwave society.  We have fast food and play games like "The Need For Speed".  Everything around us says we need to go faster or be in a hurry.  God does not see it that way.  He asks us to wait upon Him.  He tells us that when we wait there are things he will give to us such as strength and power.  So why are we always in such a hurry to do something.  We need to slow down and listen and obey what we hear.  We don't need to do this at breakneck speed. There is a reason they use the term breakneck.  Because the speed is so fast it can harm you.  The Lord tells us to "Be Still and know he is God" Psam 46:10.  If we are always running and moving how do we get to know Him? 


We need to slowdown and let the Lord lead us.  The bible tells us to be lead by the Spirit not to be pushed by him. It is my desire to do just that, to walk in the Spirit and to be guided by Him in such a way that I end up in the place He was guiding me to and not tripped up.  I am reminded of the time I was at "Fires Creek".  On that day the Lord had moved on my heart that He want me to take some time to be still with Him.  It was a cool summer morning and it was still early in the day so I sat at the park in my truck alone reading a book I had brought with me.  I felt a nudging from the Lord to get up and go to the other side of the creek there.  This was not a shallow creek. It had shallow parts in it but it also had some parts that were 3 to 5 feet deep.  It was a spring fed stream so the water was very cold (46 degrees year round).  So you can imagine I was not desiring to get in the water.  Now you have to know a little about me.  I am not graceful when it comes to walking on rocks.  So it is prudent to take my time and make sure that I had a FIRM footing before I move on to the next step. So the way over to the other side was smooth and went well and I made it with no mishaps.  On the return trip though it was a different story.  Why because I allowed fear to creep in and I felt the need to rush back (I was no longer alone in the park two men came and I felt vulnerable by myself).  All that did for me was to get me a surprising dunk in some very cold water.  I was also very embarrassed as well.  The Lord has used that time to teach me some valuable lessons.  He will set before us stepping stones.  As He shows us that stepping stone we need to take a step and make sure our footing is sure in that place before we take the next step.  We should not allow fear to creep in to this place.  Fear it what trips us up and caused us to make bad choices.  It is from a heart that is ground in love and trust that we are guided.  


Having a husband with cancer has taught me a great deal of patience.   If you thought that the Military was the king of hurry up and wait you should try the Medical profession.  They will make you wait on test, wait on fluids, wait on beds, wait on paperwork, wait on surgeries and wait on results.  There is so much to wait on it is better to learn to wait and trust, than to wait and fear what will happen next.  Will things turn out the way you want them to?  I don't know.  What I do know is that when we learn to wait and trust the Lord.  He is there to give me the next stone in the journey to step on and He gives me the strength to walk it.  Is it always easy. No it is not.  We are human and we can't stop being human.  We will always have our bad days.  It is my hope that we will have many more good days than bad ones. When we wait on Him he gives us the sure footing we need to carry us through the journey.  


I have found what is effective for me is to choose to make sometime each day to sit, talk and listen.  I will sit in a quite place in my home. It does not need to be the same place each day.  Where ever you find the greatest peace for that day.  It can be at a desk, on a treadmill or even in a big chair.  You need to find the place where you are comfortable. Then you talk with Him.  You can do this in many ways.  You need to find what works best for you.  Just talk, pray, write in a journal or type on your computer.  It is best to find a way that you can best express your heart to the Lord.  Be real with Him.  He knows you heart but He does like to hear your heart.  Then listen.  Hear either that still small random thought that is encouraging and gives direction or open your bible and hear Him through the Word.  Most of the time I listen for both.  Sometimes it is even a random song that speaks to my heart that day.  Anything you do hear through as random though is best to check and make sure it is not something that would cause you to to go down a wrong path.  The best way to avoid that is to check with one or two friends you trust in the Lord that can help you weigh the things you are hearing.  That is wise counsel and it is best you check with them often. Then as He tells me something I take a step and watch for fruit from that step. If there is no fruit I lay it down.  I do not desire to walk on a path that has no fruit in it.  So slow down and wait on the Lord.  Trust that he has a path to guide you on and He has a reason He is taking you there.  Walk the Journey with Him. 

	Prov 3:5-6	Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding;
		In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.

Finding "Your Garden"

 Genesis 3:8

And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.

Psalm 107: 4-7

 4 They wandered in the wilderness in a desolate way;

         They found no city to dwell in.

 5 Hungry and thirsty,

         Their soul fainted in them.

 6 Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble,

         And He delivered them out of their distresses.

 7 And He led them forth by the right way,

         That they might go to a city for a dwelling place.

It all started in a Garden with a fall.  It has been thousands of years since Adam and Eve were in 'The Garden" and they hid themselves from the Lord because of the choice they made to taste of the fruit from the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  I have reflected on this many a times. In the scripture above they hear the sound of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day.  I can't help but think that if they knew and recognized the sound of the Lord walking in the Garden they must have been familiar with that. They had to have times of walking in the cool of the day with the Lord before the fall.  Before the time of disobedience  there was a time of dwelling with the Lord in the cool of the day "in the Garden."

I mentioned before of a morning while I was going to college and I awoke one morning almost startled awake to the realization that Jesus died on the cross to RESTORE our relationship with the Lord.  What limits us from having a close fellowship time with the Lord. I mean if we have truly been restored can't we have what Adam and Eve had before the fall?  I think YES!  I wanted that and began seeking a dwelling place to be with Him. That was almost ten years ago.  I would like to say the journey to finding "My Garden"  was an easy one.  It seems that everything in this life seems to come with a struggle.  I will say that it has been worth the struggle.  I do not want anyone to think that I have the answers because I do not.  I am only sharing my experiences and praying that they may be a guide to you.  It is like when you have never been to a place before you are cautious going there, but if you had someone who had been there before guiding you, the journey is much easier.  I am by no means an authority on anything.  So what does "My Garden" look like?

"My Garden" as I said has taken many years to come to understand.  It has taken on many shapes and places. Lately it has become the place where the Lord has lead me to both cast my cares, hear His voice, be in His embrace, and dwell with Him in the secret place of the most high.  I shared before how there was a time when the Lord beckoned me away for the day.  There have been times like that where I went and I was bless highly with many valuable lessons learned in that day and then there have been times where it seemed more a struggle.  I know what He has been teaching me lately is that as we allow ourselves to have a "listening and obedient heart"  He will meet us in that place.  As we listen for that still small voice that speaks in our thought's that at times seems like a random thought and dare to follow the path it leads us on. These thoughts seem to be filled with a great sense of wisdom and at times does not make sense to us.  I am not saying to go off on some wild goose chase.  What I am saying is he who has ears to hear let them hear.   I dared to take one "time" and two "to listen" and three to "obey" and four "a place or places to be". Simply put, the fall came from our disobedience, and our restoration comes from obedience. 

Time is something many of us struggle with.  I recently started working again and thought that with my schedule my relationship with the Lord would be worse than when I had all the time in the world to sit an dwell with Him.  Oh, how I would love to have that time back now.  I have had to make the choice to make the time to sit and pray and listen to the Lord.  I try most of the time to always keep my thoughts close to the Lord but with the demands of the day sometimes that is hard.  So I have purposed that I would rise up in the cool of the day and take the time to first write in my journal or walk my treadmill.  Recently my pastor gave a sermon on "foot washing"  John 13 one of my favorite chapters in the bible.  Where Jesus washed the feet of the disciples just before they betrayed him. I can't say exactly what it was that helped me see this but I heard a random thought that said "as you meet me in your dwelling place I come and wash your feet"  at the time the picture I got was of me sitting in my chair in the front room of my house.  That was "my Garden" at the time.  Now my places of casting my cares is different.  The treadmill became the place where I "walked in the Garden".  Outside is not climate controlled.  So it is hard to walk often.  The weather plays such a great factor in that.  I did not want that to happen.  I also was doing what I could to lose weight a second benefit to this.  I awoke one morning and was very stressed and needed a place to cast my cares to the Lord.  I went down to my treadmill and turned on my IPod with some kicking warfare worship and just walked and cried. I cast every care I had that day on Him.  Within a few hours I saw great fruit from those prayers.  So I found something that worked and I am surely not walking away from that.  So that is when I started getting up an hour earlier each day and taking "the time"  to dwell with the Lord.  I do not spend hours with Him but the time I have is both precious and fruitful.

Some of the fruitfulness has come from what I have hear during those times I have set aside to dwell with the Lord.  Listening is the second thing I have been learning that helps us find our garden.  The Lord took me to a scripture about Solomon.  Where the Lord asked Solomon what he wanted from the Lord.  There are two scriptures that refer to this event.  As a kid we were always told that he asked for wisdom.  But I was drawn to the 1Kings 3 scripture where I noticed that what Solomon asked for was different.  He asked for and Understanding heart.  The word there in the Hebrew has a deeper meaning.  It means a listening and obedient heart.

So the Lord emphasized to me that this is something he wanted from me in this place of meeting with Him.  When I started working at this job that was given to me it seemed as if it was taking me on a path further away from the Lord.  Instead it has cause me to go deeper with Him. He has made it clear to me in many ways that this IS  a place for me in this season of my life.  Trust me the easier path would be to quit the job and go back to doing what I was before.  But then I am face with a dilemma.  If I quit this job and it is the Lord's path for me I am then being disobedient to His path and not dwelling with Him.  So I am walking then on Adam and Eve's path and hiding myself from him.  I need to Listen and obey.  As I have been faithful to that HE has met me in this place and is guiding me on the path.  Find the "place" where he wants you to go and he will guide you steps along that path.  When we follow our own path we will be wandering in a wilderness wondering where to go. 

The place I have found is different than what you might find.  It is not so much about finding a special place so much as it is an attitude of your heart.  Our willingness to follow is the key.  My place varies from my treadmill, to my car, to sitting at my desk,  in that big chair , or even in a real garden.  Most of all it is a place where I "Listen" and "Obey " what I hear. There is another thing I do need to mention so as to keep you from wild goose trails.  It is always important that you have at least two people that you share what you are hearing with and check with them to make sure you are not on some wild kooky journey.  Wise council is key to walking a true path with the Lord.  Do not just hear and run of and do the first thing you hear.  The Lord will not tell you to go somewhere he has not equipped you for or provided for you to go.  Will the journey always be smooth. Nope I can attest to that.  Remember I could quit the job and go back to the life of ease. But, if I did that I would not be on the right path.  Often the path in the Garden he has for you to walk will be a refining path that tests your character and helps you grow.  I have been reminded of that while listening to one of my life books "Hinds Feet in High Places"  that our journey doe not always come with great ease but through the many challenges we face that help us pretty much stumble obediently along our way to where He wants us to be . Then on that day we open our eyes and we suddenly are in the place he wanted us to be with a new look, a new heart and a new name. 

  

I pray that this is an aide to you finding "Your Garden"

My Garden Journeys: Trust in the Lord...

My Garden Journeys: Trust in the Lord...: "Proverbs 3:5-6 (New King James Version) 5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your ..."

Trust in the Lord...

Proverbs 3:5-6 (New King James Version)

5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart,

       And lean not on your own understanding;

 6 In all your ways acknowledge Him,

       And He shall direct[a] your paths.

This is how it all began for me.  This was one of the first scriptures I memorized when the Lord first touch my life and transformed it back in Sept 94.  The word journey was chosen because you don't just take a walk when you journey there is a purpose to the journey.  Everything that happens to us in life happens for a reason.  My journey has taken me down many paths of the unknown. The unknown is a dark place that is often a great source of fear in our lives.  We must choose the opposite though.  Trusting does not come naturally.  It comes by making a conscious choice.  Trusting does not "just happen".  We must choose to not only let the Lord's perfect love in to cast out our fear, but to also "choose" to walk the path we are given to walk know there is a greater purpose to be served in that path.  Once recently in the last few years I told my mom this "We don't choose the path we are given to walk, But we choose to walk the path before us".  I picked the picture because it reminded me of one of the days I had ventured away with the Lord, and how he deepened the meaning of this scripture to me.

It was a beautiful late summer day in the NC Mountains.  I had taken a day away to spend some quite time with the Lord. I did not realize that day how many incredible lessons he would teach me from trusting Him and following the whisper to come away with Him for a day.  One of them was the road less traveled.  I jumped in my truck after I had, had an unexpected dunk in the creek. Luckily I had brought a sweat shirt with me so I could get warm after my plunge.  As I entered the truck I sensed the Lord urging me to follow the road up the mountain.  This is fine when you know the road and you have traveled it before. This was a road I was not familiar with and I could feel the fear rising in the back of my throat.  Yet in the same sense I could hear the whisper of the Lord in my ear beckoning me to go up this path. He assured me there was a purpose in this journey.  I also felt the embrace of the Lord surrounding me encouraging me to "Trust Him". 

As I began the dirt road was clearly marked and it was easy traveling.  As I continued  the road began to narrow at first, then it became two wheel ruts.  About this time I began asking the Lord should I continue because it was getting harder to take this path.  He continued to assure me that I was to keep going even though the path was getting harder to distinguish.  I continued on the path and I watched the path shrink smaller and the weeds started creeping over the path making it harder to distinguish.   Again I queried the Lord should I continue, his response was "trust Me".  So I continued until I finally made it to a large opening in the trees where I could make a safe turn and go back.  When I arrived at the top I expected to see a sight like did when I traveled in the Rocky Mountains while I live there.  When you would go to the top of the Rocky Mountains you would see for mile and miles…there were no trees to hinder your view. There is a reason they call them the Rocky Mountains. There is nothing but rocks on top. In the NC Mountains they still have trees covering their tops and the view is not so grand you just see trees that is about it.  Not what I had expected. Then the Lord began to speak more and said that He was going to take me on a path that not many would travel.  That at times it would not be clear where the path was going and that when I got to where I was going that it would not be what I expected.  Trust me if you would have said to me then I would be writing like this,  I would have said no way or that I would be traveling an hour and a half from one town to another to get my college degree or that I would be reaching a point in my marriage where I thought we were going to enjoy the best years of our life only to have a non-curable cancer strike my husband. We are not sure we know if we have two years or twenty together.  I would have told you, you we crazy! So God has taken me on some paths the not many would take. The irony of it is that the yearbook theme I got that year at college was "The Road Less Traveled".  It seems at every point I travel in this journey the Lord keeps giving me a new place to walk that asks me that question over and over "trust Me?"  It requires me to engage a deeper part of my heart each time turning it over to Him.  Many times it does not look the way I expect.  I keep walking the path though trusting Him each step of the way. 

So I am choosing to write this journal to share something that was birthed in a college dorm room one early morning when I awoke to a realization that Jesus died on the cross to restore our relationship with God after "the fall"  So what keeps us from walking in the cool of the morning with God like Adam and Eve experienced??  We do.. First we must except Jesus as our Lord and Savior ...believe in our hearts that he died and rose again to redeem us from our sin.  Then we must be willing to choose differently in our life.  Choosing to trust in places of our hearts where trust was broken and allowing the Lord to bring us to restoration.    We must choose to be in fellowship with other believers so we may develop strong encouraging relationships in our lives.  To find someone you can be accountable too and to most of all find "YOUR" garden.  I have found my garden and the Lord is meeting me in this place.  He has been for years and in this is a place I hope to share some of the fruit of the whispers I hear as I walk with Him in My Garden.  I pray that the Lord will help you find a garden to walk with him on your own journey also.