Faith – Page 12 – goodchristianfiction

Do You Live Like You Believe It?

Posted on May 20, 2012May 20, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

This little pool of water may not seem like much, but at different points in time, it has actually served as the site where some were baptized into the family of Jesus. We all remember the moment when we ourselves were baptized and those fledgling years of our Christianity when everything was just a little brighter, when our zest for God fairly glowed.

But life has a way of catching up to us. If the race we are running were an easy one, it would really not be worth the effort of putting one foot in front of another. The glow of our early years of Christian faith can begin to tarnish with the cares of this world. We start to hold on to what is right in front of us instead of offering up the cares of this world to the Ruler of the next one. We let worry creep in, no matter what Christ told us about worrying, no matter that the Creator of everything knows the number of hairs on our very heads. We cling to treasures on this earth under the auspices of security, like the rich young man unable to sell all and follow the Son of Man.

Many years ago, my father-in-law asked a series of questions to a younger person he was counseling. This person was facing several family crises, depression, and budget woes. Knowing that she believed in Christ, my father-in-law began by asking her about her belief. When she strongly proclaimed her faith in God, my father-in-law asked her to consider if she were living like she believed Christ died for her and rose again.

How about you? How about me? What does it mean to live like I believe it? In the past several years, it has come to mean my spending more time doing and less time wringing my hands wondering if where I am and what I am up to is what God wants from me. I don’t mean that I have quit praying to God about His purpose for my life, or that I have quit aligning my actions to the principles of the Bible as best as I can. What I have started to do is to give my actions over into God’s hands, where they have really been all along. Now, however, my mind is recognizing God’s authority. If He wants me somewhere else or doing something else, I have to live like I believe and step forward in the faith that He will get me where He wants me to be.

This process is not easy, like all growing pains, but through the gift of the Spirit that God has granted us believers, we can make it through life’s challenges aided by the One and Only, proof positive that “His burden is light.” Living like we believe involves prayer time, worship time, helping others, and doing instead of worrying. The more I can live like I believe, the more God’s light will shine through me. And what more could any of us want than that?

Christian Living, Faith, Living

Every Moment Blessings

Posted on May 17, 2012May 17, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

This past Mother’s Day weekend, I got a real opportunity to stop and smell the roses. Well, since I was on some acreage in Shep, Texas, (which is outside of Abilene, for those who don’t know) it was more like the opportunity to smell the cacti flowers and wildflowers I couldn’t identify.

Still, roses or Indian brush, the ability to be out in nature among bright blue skies, fluffly, white clouds overhead, only the sounds of our feet crunching in the dry grass and the insects buzzing, was a rare opportunity that I truly relished. Even though the creek on the property where we were walking was still quite dry, it still offered tranquil moments as it gurgled. With the family gathered around me, it was truly a wonderful day.

God’s blessings sneak up on us just like my lazy Sunday. I didn’t really plan to get to walk around on land that once was the site of a Butterfield Stage route stop, viewing carvings in rock from the late 1800s where travelers literally left a mark on their ways further West. Looking at dead trees lying crumpled in pieces, wild grasses re-claiming them, at fully-canopied trees reaching out over the water, casting shadows that promised a cool breeze away from the bright sun, my whole world was condensed into each, full breath. For that moment, at least, all was peace.

How often am I too busy to take those full breaths in my day-to-day life? And yet, God’s blessings are there for me to notice and enjoy every day–in the smile of a stranger, in the good news from the doctor, in the door being held open for me, in the call from a good friend. Sometimes, those blessings are more like the ability to remain standing when life presents you with some devastating news or the near-miss in your car that keeps you out of an accident.

Regardless, God’s blessings come so hard and fast that we really should take time each day to stop and count them. Some people do this through a thankfulness journal at the end of each day. Others do it through prayer. But what if we faced each day living every moment in full awareness of God’s current blessing? Would we be cocooned like I felt on that homestead in Winters, regardless of the challenges of day-to-day living? Think about what wonderful things we might accomplish for Him surrounded by such awareness.

This state of being is easier said than done, but anything worth doing takes great effort. And, of course, we can be assured that God will help us in the doing as well. Just another every moment blessing!

Christian Living, Faith, Living, Love

A New Meaning For Carpe Diem

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

He may be one of our greatest Christian writers ever, but I have to admit that I am late to the game when it comes to reading C.S. Lewis. Maybe that’s just God’s timing so that my Spirit and mind are actually prepared for the depths of what Lewis has to say.

At any rate, I have just begun “The Screwtape Letters,” a collection of correspondence between Screwtape, an Undersecretary of the Devil, and his nephew, Wormwood, who also happens to be new to the job of making sure the people he’s been assigned stay on the devil’s side instead of God’s.

Early on in the correspondence, Screwtape reminds Wormwood that “He [God] wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.”

At first glance, the two parts of this statement may not seem that different, but actually they are worlds apart. If I am worried about what will happen to me, several bad consequences occur. First, I am centered on myself instead of paying attention to other people. Even if my worries about my future are about other people, making me think I am being altruistic, they are ultimately self-centered.

When I concentrate on future what-ifs, I am wasting my time as well as God’s. Didn’t Jesus tell us to concern ourselves only with this day, as it has enough problems of its own? Did He not also tell us not to worry because God takes care of us?

Thinking about what will happen to us usually also makes us focus on more materialistic things. Worry traps us into what we can see, feel and touch. The more we are drawn to the things of this world, the further away we are from God. “Where your treasure is,” Christ told us, “there will your heart be also.”

On the flipside, if we are concerned about what we do, we are smack dab in the middle of the only thing we truly have, which is this moment. To seize the day in this way, by thinking about our current actions, means we can be free to think outward.

Thinking outside ourselves means seeing the real needs of others and doing something about it. It means realizing the immediate effects of our actions. It means we have the opportunity to stop ourselves from sinning before we get caught up in it.

Doing instead of fretting is an even bigger challenge in our modern world. With telephones, television and the internet, we can go for ages without physically interacting with anyone. We can go our whole lives without meeting our neighbors face-to-face. And what we don’t actually see in person is very easy to push aside. Hasn’t watching television news footage our whole lives desensitized us to what we see on the screen, making it seem somehow not real?

In the moment, doing and interacting with our fellow wanderers, these are the times when we are on the same page with God. When we concentrate on what we are doing instead of worrying about what might be, we come the closest to loving others as God loves us.

Now, if I can just carpe diem God’s way every time I catch myself fretting instead of paying attention to what I am doing, I will already have learned a wonderful lesson from “The Screwtape Letters,” even though I’ve only just begun reading them.

Christian Living, Christianity, Faith, Living

What Does God Need From You?

Posted on May 6, 2012May 6, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Let’s face it. When it comes to our relationship with God, from His perspective it has to often seem like a one-way street, where we are constantly seen with our hands out, often calling to Him in times of great need when He may not have heard from us for so long, He doesn’t quite recognize us at first.

Of course, God always recognizes us, knows what we’re up to, and HAS A PLAN for whatever is happening in our lives, no matter how helpless we currently feel or how bleak our present outlook. In Bible class today, we discussed some of the really crisis moments different members had faced, moments so terrifying that they were forced to look to God in a complete realization of just how helpless we human beings are. In those moments, these people truly experience the all-encompassing power that is God.

More importantly, they learned a key lesson that they have taken away from their experiences: God is not through with them yet! He has plans for them in this world that they are yet to achieve. He has journeys for them for which that crisis may have been the first step or for which they have not yet taken a step at all.

As I listened to these shared stories, I was struck by the realization that God has a plan for us even when the crises in our lives are entirely of our own making. What if your crisis is spending more money than you can afford to pay or choosing to go out with someone you know your parents wouldn’t approve of, much less God? Now, because of those decisions, you live in fear of phone calls from debt collectors or have wound up married to a non-believer who may be abusive to you.

God has a plan for that. This fact does not mean that He wanted the bad things to happen to us. We live in a fallen world. Bad things are going to happen. But God has a plan for your life that includes bringing to the good something for you, for your family, or for others in this broken world from the ashes that are the destruction crisis may have punched into your life.

Does this mean that we might as well sin, or even live a sinful lifestyle and just expect God to make something good out of it? Of course not! Whenever Jesus reached out loving arms to sinners, He always loved the sinner but hated the sin. He never let them part from Him without warning them or entreating them to turn from the ways they knew were wrong.

The Bible offers us example after example of people who looked to God for their deliverance but who also kept doing what was in their power to do to move that deliverance along. The woman at the well knew that her current live-in was not her husband in God’s eyes and that she would have to end that relationship. The disciples fished. Paul made tents to earn his living as he spread the gospel. Instead of being greedy and holding out hands that have not tried to help themselves, these believers did what they could and looked to God to fill in all the gaps only He is able to fill.

I find this truth that God is working His plan for me even when it doesn’t feel like it a key to throwing away a lot of the anxieties I have put on myself when it comes to what I think He wants from me. First of all, whatever happens in my life is going to happen on God’s time, not mine. Secondly, I have made decisions in my life about what jobs to take, whom to marry, what kind of schooling to get, and I am not the only one living with those decisions. God is too. He knew what I was going to decide before I decided it, and He also knew how He was going to use those decisions in my life to do something good for Him, if I will only keep tuned in to His frequency.

So, what am I worrying about all the time? The little things, material things, things that have more to do with my pride in skills God gave me in the first place that I shouldn’t be taking pride in but giving to the glory of God. If I must put thought to something (and the thoughts shouldn’t be worrisome; Jesus told us not to worry), shouldn’t it be how I can love God more in my life, how I can reach out to other people in love, how I can line up my actions with the instructions so clearly laid out in God’s word?

What does God need from me? My faith in His truth, my devotion to His word, my love for Him and the other humans around me holding our hands out, crying out rightfully to the sky but sometimes forgetting the good those hands can do grounded back on earth in fellowship and as God’s helping hands for others around us.

What will God “work to the good” (Romans 8) for you this week? Can He get some of what He needs instead of being the One giving?

Christian Living, Christianity, Faith, Living

Is Your Truth THE Truth?

Posted on April 15, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Like a winding set of stairs (especially like the stairs in the “Harry Potter” films that change on a whim), when you define truth according to your own rules, by what you think is right or, even more deadly, what feels right, you start upon the journey of a very slippery slope that can only land you in the world of self-delusion.

Self-delusion is a favored land for popular culture. “I’m OK, you’re OK” is the slogan here. In popular culture, there are segments of society against which nothing bad should be said and other segments against which any barb is OK. This reality is nothing new. The Romans did an awesome job of persecuting Christians while allowing a variety of cultures to continue in religions which were in opposition to popular Roman thought.

But reality doesn’t equal truth. Think about this. Just because something IS does not make that something TRUE. When truth is actually TRUTH, it is also RIGHT. And who claims sovereignty over right? For us Christians, the answer to that question is easy–God. And the reference for TRUTH is not what we think or feel, but what is written in the Bible. But not just the parts of the Bible you’d like to pay attention to. The TRUTH comes from understanding the Bible in its totality.

I had a Sunday school teacher when I was young who explained that the Bible is so wonderful in part because it is at the same time simple enough for the most challenged of minds to understand and yet so complex that even a genius has difficulty deciphering all of it. Without a strong knowledge of the Bible, think how easy it would be for someone to pick and choose the parts they needed to convince you of something that is actually the opposite of what God really says. That is exactly how we have wound up in a world where more than half of marriages end in divorce and a shocking percentage of teenagers have already lost their virginity outside of wedlock.

Francine Rivers wrote a wonderful novel on just this premise: The Last Sin Eater. In this novel, a prominent individual convinces an entire community that a sacrifice for the dead other than the sacrifice Christ made for us all is needed for each departed soul. In the novel, the people have lost connection to the Bible and its TRUTH. It takes hearing the Word and the bravery of just a few characters to believe that Word to begin to heal that community and teach them who the last sin eater truly is.

Is your truth the TRUTH? Can you hold it up to the guidelines of unconditional love of God and your fellow humans that is laid out in the Holy Word? And how many things do you hold as true that aren’t actually in line with what the Bible says? Do you think you are too far gone to be redeemed, for example? God never says that in the Bible. In fact, Christ even accepted the confession of the robber who died on the cross with Him! Talk about getting in by the skin of one’s teeth.

Because TRUTH is more often than not more ugly than truth, it becomes so easy to fall into the popular culture sense of what is right. I’m ashamed to admit that, despite the time I spend studying the Bible and theology books and Christian fiction, I still spend more time watching television. How many lies have I let slip into my definition of truth from this bad habit? How many more so for those who only interact with popular culture without understanding the TRUTH that is God?

I’ve constructed a visual STOP sign in my mind for this week, and I plan to use it whenever I think, feel, or say anything that is truth as opposed to TRUTH. I challenge you to do the same.

God bless.

Christian Living, Christianity, Faith, Self-Help

To Know What He Knows

Posted on April 1, 2012April 1, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Annie Dilliard writes about the experience of going to church and being caught up in the wonder of God’s sense of humor, for what else would account for His tolerance of the off-key voices and humanly-limited actions that we call a worship service? Doesn’t He deserve so much more than we could ever offer, and yet He puts up with our best attempts, and we deign to think these attempts at worship might be called good.
It is a fundamental flaw, really, to think that a human mind could ever really know God, and yet our perception of Him is constrained by just that, our very limited minds. The simple reality of our situation leaves us in a bit of a pickle. We can try to understand God through His word, but even that is limited to our own ability to understand and interpret.
Some of the biggest mistakes we ever make are done in full knowledge about what God has to say about our actions, wrapped inside a bubble of what we have convinced ourselves He really meant. How many times have you heard a cheating spouse OK her actions by claiming that God wants her to be happy? How many people explain their religion to you according to what “feels right?”
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord,” in Isaiah 55:8. God does not think like us nor act like us. So, why are we always trying to reason out what God is up to as if He was the keeps-to-himself neighbor in the creepy house at the corner of the street? Why do we think He would ever want us to do something that goes against what He has said, like loving Him above all else rather than putting fancy jewelry or cars before the work of feeding widows and orphaned children just because we are trying to “feel good,” and wouldn’t God want that?
The Spirit of truth can only speak to us if we are constantly in preparation for hearing what that Spirit has to say, even the words we least want to hear. God does things in His own time and in His own way, and we will not understand it, no matter how many words we write, or inspired movies we create, or lies we tell ourselves are real.
The Greeks envisioned the gods as superheroes who shared the same emotions as us humans, but amped to the ninth power. These gods were jealous, wrathful, petty, capricious. Only when the Jews claimed one, true and only God, did mankind begin to conceive of a God above the emotions of man, a God who was constant, consistent, and true.
We have used our understanding of God to validate wars, affairs of the heart, and our own plain meanness of spirit. Yet, His ways are not our ways, His thoughts not our thoughts. Ultimately, we understand what He wants us to understand, know what He wants us to know. If we do not test our knowledge of God through extensive Bible study, sincere prayers, and the validation of our thought processes through sharing with fellow Christians, then what we know is not only not what God knows, it is less than nothing.

Christian Living, Faith

Keeping Your Eye On The Prize

Posted on March 25, 2012March 25, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

We know God in the quiet places, on sunny, Spring afternoons near creeks that bubble with birds singing and a gentle breeze gliding over us.
We know Him in the dark of our closets, on bended knees, our needs expressed without words, our oneness with the Spirit wrapped in our breath.
We know God in the morning, when we wake to yet another day and thank Him for the grace of that present, the only gift, besides our salvation, for which we can be truly thankful.
We know Him when the world that changes rocks us to our very core, and we are floundered but for the safety of His wings.
“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18).

Christian Living, Faith, Living, Self-Help

Choose Life to the Full

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

“I have come,” Christ tells us, “that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). Sitting in Sunday service and hearing this verse read to me, a verse surely I have myself read more than a dozen times, I was struck by a sort of ‘ah-ha’ moment. As I have mentioned before, I am a person who struggles with high anxiety and perfectionism, both of which rob me of a life to the full. Let me clarify that. I allow these issues to rob me of life to the full. But hearing this verse from John that Sunday morning, I really heard that Christ does not want me to have a life limited by my mental issues, but a life to the full.

As always, when I come to a conclusion based on a Bible verse, I know that I cannot jump to too many conclusions without first sitting that verse up against the entire context of God’s word. In this case, that approach meant starting a search for how God defines a life to the full, for we know that a definition based on human desire would include things that are not important to God, like a better car or Egyptian cotton sheets.

I started my search in Proverbs, where I know that the writer propounds on what makes a wise life and found instruction such as maintaining prudent behavior and doing what is right and fair. I pretty quickly zoomed over to the Sermon on the Mount, where I found many insights into Christ’s version of life to the full. The Beatitudes tell us what comes from a life to the full: comfort, mercy, filling, and belonging to God and His kingdom. Life to the full glorifies God through good deeds, forgives and does not hold onto anger, understands that God alone is in control of what will happen, gives when asked, and follows the Golden Rule. Life to the full does not include worry, but leans on God and knows to live in this day, which has troubles and challenges enough to fill it.

My life to the full means not allowing worry or anxiety to keep me from helping others, from glorifying God by enjoying a bright day, or from doing what is right according to God’s rules. I am finding that when I give myself credit for times when I have shown courage in dealing with situations that make me anxious, I can become better at handling future situations. My new mantra is I have courage. It sounds silly, but if I really say this to myself enough times during a tough situation, I find that I really do feel better.

God wants me to have a life to the full, but that doesn’t mean I am off the hook. It doesn’t just get handed to me. I need to live a Christ-like life, and I need to do my best to conquer my demons. Knowing God has plans for me to live to the full helps in the daily battle that is living. I pray it helps you, too.

Christian Living, Faith, Living

De-coding our prayers

Posted on February 10, 2012February 10, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

In the good old days when I taught English composition to reluctant classes of grumbling college freshmen, I used a core concept to try to explain the importance of detail in writing which I called the “code word.”
Code words are those general ideas or phrases that we say all the time that carry much more meaning for us than just the word alone implies. Think of it like Hemingway’s iceberg theory, where the reader only sees the tip when the bulk of meaning is beneath the surface. Of course, the method of minimalism works just fine for a brilliant writer like Hemingway. In the hands of an untutored writer, a code word is just a general idea with no foundation or substance at all. Think of sentences like, “the book was really cool and made me think” with nothing else there to back these conclusions up.
To help my students understand a bit better what I meant by this concept, I would use the example of our prayers. In our prayers, we use codes, or shortcuts, all the time. God is, after all, omnipotent. He, at least, knows what we mean when we say “take care of Timmy,” or “keep us safe.”
As I reminisced about this practice earlier this week, I began to wonder if our own code words in prayer really serve us well at all. Do you find yourself repeating the same phrases each time you pray? Didn’t Jesus once scold those around Him who relied on meaningless repetition in prayer, which only keeps us further away from a meaningful relationship with God? After a while, do your own coded prayers really mean anything to you at all, or are they just good luck rituals, mantras with a seemingly positive meaning but very little power?
De-coding our own prayers can be just as difficult as writing more specifically always seemed to be for my students. You can’t just hit the highlights and move on, assuming God knows it all anyway. That strategy works in certain moments when we are so anguished all we can manage is a cry of “Abba,” but what about our day-to-day discussions with the Almighty?
If we take the time to spell out our hopes, fears, desires, and needs, will we not discover more about ourselves? In the end, what exactly do we want to be kept safe from? What dangers should we ourselves be looking out for? If we find ourselves only coming up with material wishes when we pray with specifics instead of codes, what does that tell us about our own need for spiritual growth?
At the same time, don’t you think that a God who goes to such great lengths to know and be known by His children would want to hear us take the time and effort to verbalize as specifically as possible what we want to say to Him? Are code words really the best we can do? Since God only deserves our best, I think we should take it to that next level.
So, it’s time to de-code, step up to the challenge and speak to God like we really believe He is there and listening. You may just be surprised what you learn about yourself and your prayer life if you do.
And you’ll write a killer college essay, should the need ever arise.

Christian Living, Christianity, Faith

Time to Grow

Posted on January 29, 2012January 29, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

How many times do you make a big decision in your life and only remember to pray about it afterwards? Even when you pray about big decisions you are trying to make, how much of the “answers” you receive are really just a reflection of what you wanted all along? How do we know that we’ve gotten any kind of true answer at all?
I think about these issues when I am faced with life’s big questions–new house, new job, relationships, big expenditures–but what about the everyday decisions I make so quickly, I wonder if I thought at all? Do daily prayers that include generalized statements like, “Your will be done,” really cover the bases?
Sometimes, I envy those who lived in the time of the ancients when signs from God were an actual occurrence for the truly faithful, like dew on fleece or the discernible whisper in the wind. I do not envy those living in the four hundred years of silence between Malachi and the arrival of Christ. How desolate life must have been when God kept Himself from even the prophets, especially in a world not yet saved by the blood of Christ.
But in a world where we have daily access to the great Intercessor, how human of us to take that great gift for granted. Jeremiah 17:9 reminds us that “the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” How many times do we hear an answer from God that our heart has actually given us instead? If we do not temper our decisions with a strong foundation in the actual word of God, peacefully studied throughout life so that when moments of upheaval which call for decisions to be made actually come we are duly prepared, we will be more than vulnerable to the trap of thinking with our heart and not the Spirit that should truly guide us. Those who think with the heart believe they are validated in hurting others when they too are miserable, jumping out of marriages, for example, because God would want them to be happy. As Philip Yancey has pointed out, among other great Christian writers I am sure, God is not interested in our happiness so much as our salvation. The narrow road is often much less happy than the wide path, but much more peaceful in the end, and full of wonder.
Growth in life cannot come without pain, for how would we really understand joy if we had not also experienced loss? But growth also cannot come without being wholly committed to God, everyday, with every decision, in thankfulness for the Holy One.