Category: Faith

Posted in Faith

Like Walking THROUGH Water

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

air-bubbles-230014_640

I believe:

  • God will work all things to the good for me.
  • I am never alone because I have accepted Christ as my Savior.
  • The LORD is my shepherd, my rock, my soft place in the Valley of the Shadow.
  • (As writer Charles Martin puts it:) The promise of His Word is truer than my fear.

I believe all of these wonderful things about our God in Heaven, and yet, like the man who proclaimed to Jesus, “I believe; help me with my unbelief,” I struggle daily.

 

When God parted the Red Sea for the Israelites to escape the Egyptians, He created a metaphor for a daily walk in this Fallen world, especially for a person like me who struggles with an anxiety disorder.

For example, living with anxiety is like walking between those two walls of parted water, having to believe that I will not drown, that the only way I will get wet is from the spray that is inevitable when that amount of water is being held back only by the invisible hand of a mighty God.

Just as the Israelites had to step through that muddy surface that must have been the bottom of a sea now exposed, I often feel that every step I try to take forward, I am being held back by the mire.  Besides slowing me down, my anxiety is like constantly looking back to make sure that I haven’t left a shoe in the mud.

When you are constantly anticipating how things in your life can go wrong, it’s also like feeling the breath of the enemies’ chariot horses snorting behind me as I hurry to reach my goal of the other side of a sea I shouldn’t even be able to walk across.

On really bad days, even breathing as I strain to see the other side of the sea proves difficult. Most of the time, I don’t even realize that my breathing has been shallow until the end of the day when my shoulders really scream at me.

And then there are the days when I am not even really able to see my goal.  On these days, only my sense of responsibility and the learned discipline of a lifetime of this anxiety battle help me put one step in front of the other.

But what would it look like if I could go through all of that and really live my belief?  What if I would fully trust that God is holding the water back until I reach the other side of my challenges?   What if I fully embraced the knowledge that God works to the good all things for those who trust in Him, as Paul writes in his letter to the Romans?

Someday, hopefully sooner than later, I will know what a walk across a parted sea looks like on a daily basis instead of the fragmented moments I can claim this day.  Until that day, I will continue to study His word, pray to Him, fellowship with other believers, and consciously seek to be saved from my unbelief.

“To learn strong faith is to endure great trials. I have learned my faith by standing firm amid severe testings.” ~ George Mueller

Posted in Christian Living, Faith

Get Off the Political Bandwagon

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

In God We Trust

In these past weeks of Supreme Court rulings and inexcusable church burnings, I have been disappointed but not astounded, disenchanted but not disenfranchised.  Like many, I have purposely refrained from a knee-jerk reaction and have instead taken these days to reflect and pray.

As one who longs to live a life worthy of the me Christ’s grace has already made possible, I am obligated to approach all the craziness of this world with two overriding principles:

  1. To make God the first and greatest priority in my life.  Everything else comes second.
  2. To love everyone else the way I too want to be loved.

If I make God the first priority in my life, that means I spend time in His Word, and that time means that I will be able to test what others say against what the Bible actually proclaims.  I will not agree with whatever the media says is OK or all my “friends” think is right without first testing the correctness of a stance against what God’s Word actually has to say about it.

In order to do that well, I have to be regularly and often in the Word.  I also have to understand that Word in its totality, not just pick and choose the verses that best serve my own interests.  For example, I need to understand that many of the verses that speak out against homosexuality also are against any form of sexual immorality.  That includes sex outside of marriage and people who are married to spouses who were not Biblically divorced.  In other words, the Bible is against a slew of activities no one has been too riled up about for far too long.

In his letter to the Galatians, Paul gives a focus for what the Christian church should concentrate on not doing as well as doing:

When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God. But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things! (Galatians 5:19-23 NLT)

Notice that, to God, any and all of this comprehensive list of “don’ts” are on equal footing.  We humans want to put sin on a sliding scale, but God does not.  In other words, if I really take Christ’s admonition to take care of the moat in my own eye before worrying about the speck in anybody else’s, I have much too much to worry about improving in my own behavior to get into the business of anybody else’s.

This concept doesn’t mean I consider any behavior by someone else OK.  From a truly Christian perspective, there is no “live and let live.”  If I am not acting in alignment with the Word of God, I want my fellow Christians to gently point this out to me.  I want them to go so far as to shut me out of the community for a time if that is necessary in order to potentially bring me back into alignment with God’s Word.  I want them to pray for me unceasingly.

For those who do not walk with Christ, I can disagree without condemning.  I can hold to the Truth without leaving a feeling of hatred in the hearer.  But I can only do these things if I am actively seeking to see the non-believers around me through the eyes of my loving God.  Just as Jesus held those around Him to God’s truth through compassion and a firmness for that truth, I too can seek to do the same.

 

If Christ is our Savior, then we strive to be loving, patient, joyful, kind, good, faithful.  We also strive to stay away from the behaviors that displease God, from lying and being jealous to hating and being sexually immoral.  These times we live in are challenging, which means that now, more than ever, we Christians must live our faith.  And if we are really doing that, we will be much too busy to get caught up in the political machinations of this world that detract us from what is truly important–the potential relationship with the Savior of the world each one of us has the right to claim.

Posted in Christianity, Faith

Enough Foolishness Already

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Heart picmonkey

(I hope you enjoy this “reading” of the first half of Paul’s letter to the Romans.  The verses quoted are from the New Living Translation.)

If the only record of our culture for the future to see were limited to what they show on television, what kind of people would we appear to be?  Almost every show has “lowered the morality bar.”  Sex is casual.  Language is vulgar. Reality TV makes us all appear to be gossips who don’t mind talking behind other people’s backs, but also embrace a “live and let live” philosophy that is diametrically opposed to a life that leans on God.  As my grandparents would have said, “It’s all just a bunch of foolishness.”

Paul wrote about the same kind of foolishness in his letter to the church in Rome:

Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, He abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done. . . . They know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too (Romans 1:28, 32).

Just because we exist in a culture that wants to say everything is OK because that culture doesn’t have any solid base on which to stand does not mean that we as Christians should back down from the truths of living a life in the Spirit. Paul makes it clear that we are meant to follow the law of God’s Spirit, especially because we have that Spirit to guide us as part of the gift of Jesus’ sacrifice for us:

“For merely listening to the law doesn’t make us right with God. It is obeying the law that makes us right in his sight” (Romans 2:13).  “For no one can ever be made right with God by doing what the law commands. The law simply shows us how sinful we are” (Romans 3:20). “Can we boast, then, that we have done anything to be accepted by God? No, because our acquittal is not based on obeying the law. It is based on faith” (Romans 3:27).  “Well then, if we emphasize faith, does this mean that we can forget about the law? Of course not! In fact, only when we have faith do we truly fulfill the law” (Romans 3:31). “Now [that you have accepted Christ as your Savior] you do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life” (Romans 6:22b). “Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit” (Romans 7:6b).

As sinners, if we received from God what we actually deserve for our behavior, we would have no hope.  Instead, as Paul writes, “Can’t you see that His kindness [in giving us the opportunity to accept the grace of Christ] is intended to turn you from your sin?” (Romans 2:4b)  The discipline to choose the Spirit over the flesh every day of our lives is tantamount to a life, not of foolishness, but of faith:

“Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey?” (Romans 6:16a) “Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit” (Romans 8: 5). “And a person with a changed heart seeks praise from God, not from people” (Romans 2:29b).

What kind of world would it be if we Christians determined to really live the law of the Spirit and not just read about it? Would we have such a high divorce rate? Would we have so many single parents or abandoned children? Would our headlines be filled with information people could really use, or with political agendas that try to convince us that what is true is actually contrary to what is found in the word of God?

Maybe the world isn’t any better or worse than it has ever been. Maybe in a world where we exist in information overload, we just know too much about everything, including what was once kept secret–except no life is secret from the eyes of an omnipresent God:

“And this is the message I proclaim–that the day is coming when God, through Christ Jesus, will judge everyone’s secret life” (Romans 2:16).

We can live a life that needs no secrets if we will only embrace the promise of our living God.  My goal is to live the Word and not just read it. And to stop my foolishness!

 

 

Posted in Christian Living, Faith

These “Short” Verses Say Everything

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

PhotoFunia-footsteps in sand book

The shortest verse in the English translation of the Bible is found in John 11:35, which reads, “Jesus wept.”

The weeping of this verse is not bawling, but the gentle rolling of uncontrolled tears as Jesus encounters the pain Mary and Martha feel over the loss of their brother Lazarus.  Even though Jesus knows He is about to raise Lazarus from the dead, He still feels and empathizes with the pain of death that is part of the fallen world He has come to save.

The implications of the concept of a God who weeps should not be underestimated.  Naysayers and non-believers like to say that a God who truly loved us would not let anything bad happen to us.  But we who believe understand that because we are born into sin, bad things are going to happen.  “Healthy people don’t need a doctor,” Jesus tells His followers. “Sick people do.  I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners” (Mark 2:17 NLT–emphasis added).  The difference between the bad that happens to those in Christ as opposed to those who do not believe is that we know that God has our back in every situation we face.

Jesus wept.  God cares for us.  He loves us enough to die for us, and His sacrifice was not something He did easily.  In my New Living Translation Bible, Jesus explains it this way:

“I have come to set the world on fire, and I wish it were already burning! I have a terrible baptism of suffering ahead of me, and I am under a heavy burden until it is accomplished” (Luke 12:49-50).

Thankfully for us, Christ lay down His life so that we have the promise of eternal life.  That truth brings us to the shortest verse in the original Greek of the Bible, which is 1 Thessalonians 5:16–Rejoice always. No matter how many bad things happen to us, we still have reason to rejoice, to be thankful that we have God to lean on.

God’s love is unconditional.  Even though we are sinners, He died for us.  We can repent of our sins against Him, and He will forgive us.  We have every reason to rejoice, even through our tears.

Because we have a God who wept, we rejoice!  The two shortest verses in the Bible encompass the entire message of the truth of Christ.

No wonder gratitude journals are so popular.  When we face each day with an attitude of rejoicing, we find that smiles come more easily, being forgiving of others becomes second nature, and loving God first and others as we ourselves wish to be loved defines our days.

 

Posted in Christianity, Faith

Reliable Mercy

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Mustard seed faith

I have never been a parent, unless you want to count my cat.  He is a true tomcat who prefers to watch you from a good five-foot distance.  He does not want my bids for affection unless they involve some fish-flavored kibble or tuna flakes.  Despite the claw and tooth scars I have to prove his need for independence, I continue to try to figure out ways to cuddle him and still respect his “space.”  He has trained me to turn the tub faucet on at his command.  I have learned to “punish” him with unwanted hugs even when I might want to knock him across the room instead.

If I, being human, can go through all of this for a furry “child,” how much more must my parents feel for me, how much more any parent must feel for his/her child, no matter how rebellious that child sometimes becomes.  Even when a child goes against what his parents want him to do, I can understand how much the parent must long for the child to return to the roots of his raising again, or themselves struggle with trying to understand the world from their child’s perspective to find a place of restorative peace.

This Sunday, we are geared up to celebrate the most merciful “parent” of all time–our living God!  His mercy is always present, always available, and always ours alone to lose because He has given us the free will to choose the gift of His grace which was His sacrifice on the Cross to bring us back into relationship with Him.

You will read a lot of Scripture from the New Testament this week if you are studying about Easter, but I want you to consider a passage from the Old Testament instead: the story of Jonah.  When the reluctant prophet decides to do the job he didn’t want to take from God, the LORD doesn’t immediately destroy the people who don’t want to listen to Jonah’s message from God.

So, Jonah does what any of us humans would do at times like this.  He pouts.  He goes and sits at a distance from the town of Nineveh and waits for God to drop down the punishment God made Jonah go talk about.  Instead of destroying the city, however, God has a plant grow over Jonah, offering the pouting prophet shade from the unrelenting sun.  However, almost as quickly as it grew, the plant gets infected by a worm, withers and dies, leaving Jonah exposed to the elements again and ready to himself die:

 Then God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry because the plant died?”

“Yes,” Jonah retorted, “even angry enough to die!”

Then the Lord said, “You feel sorry about the plant, though you did nothing to put it there. It came quickly and died quickly. But Nineveh has more than 120,000 people living in spiritual darkness, not to mention all the animals. Shouldn’t I feel sorry for such a great city?” (Jonah 4:9-11)

You might be tempted to read the Old Testament and think that God is a judgmental, even brutal, Creator.  But, the Old Testament is as full of His merciful attitude as the New.  Think about all the times that the people God talks to often argue with Him.  There is more than one instance when a prophet will repetitively ask God, will you save the city if you can find 50 good people? 40 people? 20 people? 10?  God patiently agrees each time.  He tolerates a created thing that deigns to argue with its Creator!  He wants to save not only the people of Nineveh, but the animals as well.

Don’t be surprised, then, when you discover that the God whose shoulders are big enough to take every complaint you have to hurl in His direction still loves you enough to die for you.  He wants a relationship with YOU.  And He is patient about waiting for you.

The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9)

I can’t rely on my cat for anything except his desire to be fed on a regular basis.  Even my husband of twenty years sometimes gets angry with me.  But God is the only ONE in my life who is reliably merciful.  Read His word from beginning to end, forwards and backwards, and what you will discover is a God just waiting to show His love for you.

As you celebrate the risen Christ this Easter, don’t forget to celebrate His reliable mercy as well.  He is waiting and much more ready to show you love than the anger we all deserve.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)

Posted in Faith

This Walk By Faith

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Footsteps_in_the_south_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1655352

Watching a video on early church history with my life group, I was struck by one of the biographies of early church leaders.  I believe it was John Wesley who was so zealous for God that he had even been to America to mission there.  On the return trip home, Wesley was caught in a great storm at sea and found himself falling way short in the faith department as he faced possible death.

I wondered why someone who had enough belief to go out and share God’s word would be so quick to fall from faith (or at least blame himself for falling).  Then, the documentary continued to explain the most important next step of Wesley’s faith story.  The man who would go on to lay the foundations for the Methodist movement learned the difference between a salvation that is earned and one that is freely given.  Wesley learned to embrace grace. 

As Paul teaches in many of his letters, our salvation is not earned.  We are saved from the damnation we deserve only because Jesus chose to die on the cross for our sins, make us right with God once and for all, and send the Holy Spirit to dwell in us and pull us toward the kind of living that reflects the kind of loving life Jesus lived.

When we have asked Jesus to be our Saviour and admitted our need for His offer of salvation, we are saved.  Even in the face of our most immediate, physical dangers, we can take comfort in knowing that our souls are safe.  We will join Jesus in heaven.  We will see God.  We will know that eternal place where there is no fear, no pain, no doubt.

When you release the need to earn salvation, you are free to embrace the humanness we all share.  You are free to love the way that God intended us to love.  You know that you cannot be proud since none of us are good enough because of anything we’ve done.  We are only good enough because God made us all equally “good enough” by dying on the cross for us.

What a different experience John Wesley would have had on that scary boat ride if he already understood that his faith was enough to ensure his salvation through grace!  He would not have feared his future thinking he had not yet sown enough fruit for God to be saved.  Instead, he might have felt that “peace which surpasses understanding,” knowing that whatever happened, it would be God’s will.

None of us know for sure how we will react to life-and-death moments until we have actually experienced them.  But all of us can practice living out our faith by doing what Jesus commanded:  “‘AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.’ “The second is this, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”… (Mark 12:30-31).

When we truly have faith, we act out our faith through our deeds.  We actively seek to shine the Light of God.  We study His word.  We seek relationship with Him in prayer.  We seek fellowship with other believers.  We do things for even strangers that we would appreciate being done to us.

I’m gonna walk by faith, an’ not by sight
‘Cause I can’t see straight in the broad daylight
I’m gonna walk by faith, an’ not by fear
‘Cause I believe in the one who brought me here

“Walk by Faith,” by Out of the Grey–Read more at http://www.songlyrics.com/out-of-the-grey/walk-by-faith-lyrics/#kPBrrx4vIIO2CioE.99

 

Posted in Christian Living, Faith

The Bucket Theory

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

water into bucket

Working in the office earlier this week, I handed our office phone to one of our younger employees to have her call our store.  She dialed the main number and then called to me, handing me the phone as if the landline were not working.  I put the phone to my ear, heard a busy signal, and hung up the phone.  After getting the employee an alternate number to call, I assured her the phone was working and went back to my part of the office.

In the back of my mind, I realized what had just happened.  I rounded the corner and asked her, “Was that the first time you have ever heard a busy signal?”  She shyly admitted that it was.

With our advances in technology, I suppose this isn’t as crazy at it seems, that a young woman of 19 might never have heard a busy signal before.  Most people have cell phones or voice mail, so that if you call them and they are already on the phone, you are sent to another voice, not exposed to the braaat, braaat that we older folk recognize as the signal to call again later.

The experience of feeling how quickly the world around us is changing (this 19-year-old could literally be the age of my own child if I had one) reminded me of an analogy my father-in-law has often shared with me, especially when I am taking myself too seriously (which is way more often than I would like to admit)–an analogy I like to refer to as “the bucket theory.”

Think of a bucket with water in it. If you stick your hand in, you become part of the bucket of water. But, if you remove your hand, rather than leaving a hole where your hand had been, the water rushes in to fill your vacated space, rather like you had never been there at all.

In this fallen world we humans call reality, “life” works just like a hand being placed in and out of a bucket. If you think your workplace won’t be able to function without you there, think again. Somehow, life finds a way. People figure out how to fill in the gaps your absence creates. Even when we lose those closest to us, life must eventually move forward.

Most fortunately for us, God’s reality is completely opposite to the idea that each one of us is replaceable. For God, every drop of water matters. In God’s bucket, there are many holes between the molecules where hands once had been because every person matters to God:

“For the son of man has come to save that which was lost,” [Jesus tells his followers]. “What do you think? If any man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go and search for the one that is straying? If it turns out that he finds it, truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine which have not gone astray. So it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones perish. (Matthew 18:11-14 NASB)

Several times in the gospels, Christ compels us not to worry. God has our back. He takes care of the smallest sparrow. He clothes the grasses of the meadow in splendor. In her great song, I Am, Nicole Nordemann puts the joy God takes in each one of us this way:

When life had begun, I was woven and spun/ You let the angels dance around the throne. / And who can say when, but they’ll dance again/ when I am free and finally headed home. . . .

I love these lines because they remind me to feel the complete awe of God’s love for me.  Imagine the angels of heaven actually celebrating my beginning, the time when I came to earth to begin my journey of growth that will prepare me for the rewards of our true home, and then celebrating again when I actually am there.

Earlier last week, I was having a rather bad morning after a disappointing day before.  My Bible reading took me to Isaiah.  The verses I read about God’s power to save His people spoke to me about the power He has to help me with my own problems, as long as I wholly put my trust in Him:

What sorrow for those who are wise in their own eyes and think themselves so clever. . . . Unless your faith is firm, I cannot make you stand firm.  (Isaiah 5:21/ 7:9b)

In Isaiah, besides God’s speaking through this prophet to assure the Israelites that there would come a time when the enemies who had oppressed the Jews would be defeated, there are also many promises about the coming of Christ, our ultimate source of salvation and personal relationship with God.

I was particularly struck by God’s admonition for us to:

Make the LORD of Heaven’s Armies holy in your life.  (Isaiah 8:13)

In a time when I most needed it, I was reminded how powerful it is to really place my problems in God’s hands.  I was particularly struck by the recognition that even as God was speaking the words to Isaiah that were speaking to me as I read that morning, He knew that I would need those words on that day as well!

In other words, we are all so important to God, that He knows what we will do and what we will need, even though we have the freedom of choice.  And His power is so awesome, that He knew all the things there are to know about me even as He spoke the universe into existence.

With an omnipotent, loving God, there is no bucket theory.  He wants and needs every molecule in His unlimited bucket.  The angels dance for us!  We should put every molecule in us into praising Him and growing our relationship with Him.  As Jesus once said:

“I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”  (Luke 19:40)

What if we truly treated each other like we want ourselves to be treated?  In a world where the water fills in the gaps left by a hand removed, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we were still made to feel important for the role we had played in the bucket in the first place?  We could and should do that for each other.

But, most importantly, God does it for us everyday, and He already knows the days we will need Him most.

Don’t let the “bucket moments” of this life get you down.  It’s time to realize that when we put our faith in God to see us through our challenges, the angels dance!

 

 

Posted in Christianity, Faith

Is Your God Big Enough?

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

God is Big Enough

Ayiesha Woods’ song, Big Enough, asks us why we ever doubt the help that an uncreated God who created everything out of nothing can offer us:

You turned water into wine – how extraordinary
Gave sight to the blind – and still I carry
My own load when you told me
To take your yoke ’cause yours is easy

And I don’t wanna box you in
You’ve been doing big things since the world began
Sometimes I just don’t wanna believe
That you’re big enough – but you’re big enough yeah!

(http://www.lyricsmania.com/big_enough_lyrics_ayiesha_woods.html)

Jesus proclaims the definitive surety of our safety in the hands of an almighty God:

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?
Matthew 6:26

Still, we humans find it difficult not to worry when we are waiting for test results in a doctor’s office or watching serious weather bear down on us.  We even often get so caught up in worrying about our personal issues that we often forget to look outward, failing to help others because we are so busy trying to take care of our own problems that we suffer from a tunnel vision that keeps us from even seeing anybody else.

Besides keeping us from truly loving others because we are too busy worrying about ourselves, failing to trust that God is “big enough” also keeps us further away from Him.

In his series, “Amazing Place,” preacher Rick Atchley points out that besides worry, another thing that keeps us from fully trusting God is having too small a vision of what His promise of eternity really means.  If your idea of heaven is small, then what you manage to learn in this life in your preparation for the next one inevitably suffers.

But instead, if you embrace the infinite power and possibilities that our Creator God IS, then how you live moves towards the goal of His perfectness:

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen  (Jude 1:24-25)

So, what does having a big enough God look like?  How about putting the needs of other people before your own, even people you do not know?  Or what about having the courage or gumption to help out at a local food bank, even though doing that is out of your comfort zone?  Maybe it looks like waking up in the morning feeling anxious and immediately saying a prayer that gives that anxiousness to God, that asks for the insight during the day to see the lessons He wants you to learn, that thanks Him for times in the past when He has proven that He will see you through tough situations.

God doesn’t lie.  People make mistakes.  People get zealous and condemn before learning all the facts.  People fail to keep their promises.  But God doesn’t lie.

And God has promised through His Son to save us from ourselves, to forgive us for every sin we profess as long as we are willing to accept Christ as our Savior.  But that forgiveness is the promise of more than just escaping eternal damnation.  It is the reality of an eternal existence that is so awesome, that even the apostle whom Christ most loved found it difficult to describe the vision he was given of it:

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.  I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”  (Revelation 21:1-4)

God is big enough.

Posted in Christian Living, Faith

6 Lessons from 2014

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

2014

Truthfully, 2014 was a long year for me.  In fact, there’s a Mac Davis song about our shared hometown in which he laments, “I thought happiness was Lubbock, Texas in my rearview mirror . . . .”  When I think about this past year, I feel like happiness is 2014 in my rearview mirror.

But, just as Davis concludes that “happiness is Lubbock, Texas growing nearer and dearer,” I suppose there are actually quite a few lessons I have learned along the bumpy road that was this past year that I should carry forward into 2015.  For what the thoughts are worth, here they are:

Lesson 1: This isn’t a contest–life is hard for everybody.

I have been battling a lot of muscle pain that just keeps getting worse over the last several years.  I take supplements, go to alternative therapies, and have even resorted to prescription medications.  Finally, this year I ruled out everything except what it turned out to be, which is fibromyalgia.  This diagnosis goes along nicely with my hypothyroidism, polycystic ovary syndrome, generalized anxiety disorder, and clinical depression.

Despite facing physical and mental difficulties most of my life, I have always proceeded under the reality that I don’t have to look very far to find somebody who is facing something even more difficult.  Two of my relatives are currently under treatment for cancer.  A number of people in my Bible class lost loved ones after long illnesses and even unexpectedly this past year.

But this year, I had to learn to quit looking at life as a contest.  In other words, I had to go ahead and admit that I had my own problems to face, and it was OK to feel a little sorry for myself about that every once in a while.  I gave myself permission to have a bad day now and then instead of comparing myself to how other people seem to be handling their challenges and berating myself for not doing more.

I don’t mean that I took this lesson as an excuse to be lazy.  After all, God wants us to take pleasure in the work that we do.  He wants us to face life’s challenges to learn perseverance and build our character and relationship with Him. But I am learning to pay more attention to what I feel like, both physically and mentally, before I decide the next thing to do each day.

Lesson 2: Learning that cliches can be true hurts

Starting in June of 2013, my female Maine Coon began to have issues.  After an expensive visit or two to the vet, we discovered that she was suffering from an enlarged colon, apparently a pretty common problem for a 14-year-old cat of her type.

We changed her diet, added probiotics and other supplements to her daily routine, put up with smells no one wants to know about, and started having to place adult diaper pads in special places all over the house.  One evening in March, it became apparent that we were keeping our little darling alive for ourselves more than for the cat.  The next morning, the vet agreed.  I held her as the needle went in.

Now, if you know me, you know that I do a lot of complaining about the trouble it is to have my cats and how I was looking forward to not having to do all this work for such little payback (cats are not cuddlers, at least not mine).  In my defense, I always qualified my grumbling by saying I loved my cats.

But, it wasn’t until I had to say goodbye to Mitzi, the one cat who actually would sit in my lap, that I realized what it means when people warn you not to take things for granted.  I have taken the rest of this year to get over it.  I’ve bought a half dozen stuffed animal “replacements.”  I’m just a little ashamed to admit that I even take one of them with me on long drives.  Somehow, holding the stuffed animal seems to help a little bit.

I still have one male cat to care for.  He sometimes deigns to sleep between my legs at night so I can’t move.  He will even sit in the middle of the living room floor to keep an eye on me during the evening hours.  But he is my husband’s cat.

In case you want to tell me to just get it over with and go find another cat or dog, I am determined not to do so.  It took a while for me to adjust to even having animals.  Being an anxious person, I worried about the silliest things.  What my cats have taught me is another post-worth of lessons.  But, I do not intend to repeat the experience again for a long, long while.

Lesson 3: Even if it’s only a small thing that seems like nothing, still do something when it comes to your relationships with other people

As I mentioned earlier, a couple of my relatives have been in major battles against cancer this year.  Both of them live far away, and I have quite a few responsibilities of my own, as well as my health issues, so there really wasn’t much that I could physically do for them.

Of course, I pray and also have added them to my Bible class and Life Group’s prayer lists.  But another thing I knew I could do was send cards on a semi-regular basis.  Since I am a writer, it is a fun challenge for me to write something entertaining, caring, or hopeful in a card and send it off.

Because I had decided to do this, I added my 91-year-old Grandma to my card list.  (Being related to me, she isn’t much for talking on the phone.)  While I was at it, I dropped cards in the mail to people from church who were having difficult times.

Maybe I’ve only sent out a little over a dozen cards in total (I haven’t kept count), but each person has thanked me.  Being a post office kid, I know as well as anyone how much fun it can be to get a piece of mail that isn’t a bill or bad news.

My little something had another effect.  It made me feel better about myself during a year when I wasn’t feeling too swift about much of anything.

Lesson 4:  Learn when to say when

Especially now that I know I have fibromyalgia, I understand the importance of trying to pay attention to what my body is telling me.  Some days, I may need to do less than I do on other days.  If I get better at this, hopefully I will be in less pain.

Learning to say when will also help me get more control over my anxiety instead of having to rely on prescription medication.  The when here is knowing when to stop the obsessive thinking about problems that are not problems, business that isn’t my business, and negative thoughts about myself and others that are incorrect or not my place to have.

Lesson 5: Everyone has a perspective

One of the good things that occurred this past year was the improvement in my ability to understand that everyone has a different perspective on what happens in their world.  Trying to see things through the eyes of somebody else is one of my most difficult challenges.

Still, I think that I am getting better at just listening to what other people have to say without trying to think up an argument against their ideas.  Hopefully, I am making more room in my brain for these different ways of looking at the world.

When you have to slow down because your body is refusing to cooperate with where your mind wants to go, it is surprising how many real possibilities finally get to stand out in your brain.  There is room for God to get His message through to you when you give Him more silences in a day.

Lesson 6: Problems eventually work themselves out

Here’s the lesson I keep having to learn over and over and over again.  Did I mention I am a natural at worrying?  That means I am actively looking for problems that need solving all of the time.  It is exhausting work, and a job that no one has given me except myself.

Even God doesn’t want this burden for me.  Over and over in my life, He proves to me that He is in control.  Over and over I go back to acting as if that somehow makes no difference.  I will come up with a solution, even if it means I tie myself up in knots trying to think my way out of the box I have placed myself in!

This past year, I had a leak on a fairly new roof (one of my big fears).  It got fixed.  The year before that, I had a termite infestation.  Again, it did no discernible damage, and I now have treatment baits all over my house to guard against future attacks.  When I first moved into my house more than a dozen years ago, it took less than six months for the foundation to shift (another of my biggest fears).  A dozen years later, the latest checks on the foundation show that it is still doing well.

In other words, just like my Dad has been telling me since I was knee-high to a grasshopper–85% of the things I worry about never happen, and the 15% that do are never as bad as I think they will be.

2014 was one of those years that proved that bad things could happen, and I could survive anyway–not because of anything special about me, but because God is on my side.  Just as He gave His only begotten Son for me, He did the same for you.

And He is always there for ALL of us.  We just need to ask.

Here’s to a less challenging 2015.  I could do with a little fewer lessons in perseverance, but I will lean on God and accept, as always, that His will be done.

In Christ,
Ramona

 

Posted in Christian Living, Christianity, Faith

This Road to Love

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

road-61904_640

3 By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. 4 And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires.

5 In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, 7 and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone.

8 The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1: 3-8 NLT)

I have read these words from 2 Peter on many occasions, but they never cease to strike me as a clear roadmap to the kind of life that truly reflects a belief in Christ.  Still, no matter how clear this roadmap is, it also involves steps that we can only survive if we take them knowing we need God every step of the way.

So, let’s begin by spelling out the steps on the road to “love for everyone” that should be the end goal of every Christian.  As Peter makes clear, each step on the path to love leads to the next, as skills build upon skills to reach the greatest skill of all.  Here, then,  is the list of these skills:

  • Faith
  • Moral Excellence
  • Knowledge
  • Self-Control
  • Patient Endurance
  • Godliness
  • Brotherly Affection
  • Love for everyone

I just completed a trip to Disney World that proved my secret plan to spend the last decade or so of my life as a missionary in some country where my paltry retirement might actually keep me just above poverty level went up in smoke about as quickly as you can sing the Mickey Mouse Club theme.  Besides having no physical stamina, I ran out of patient endurance after the first three hours in an overcrowded theme park.  Self-control drifted skyward as I sighted the first Mickey sandwich ice cream trolley.  The only love I had for everyone was the kind where I would have loved for no one else to be in the park!

So, how do we achieve the seemingly unachievable?  Peter tells us we are able because of God’s promises to us: These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires (2 Peter 1:4).  Becoming a Christian is as easy as admitting to God that you are a sinner who needs redeemed.  Becoming Christ-like is a daily, conscious practice of making one’s Christianity not a mantle to be put on and off, but the very act of being.

Because of faith, I seek moral excellence.  I want to say only what is uplifting and/or holy.  I strive to do what is right always.  As I grow in my ability to be right more than I am wrong, I gain a kind of knowledge that can’t be found in a book, the knowledge of ways to act in belief and the knowledge of the superior path of righteousness over worldliness.  As we realize that doing right feels better than doing wrong, we increase our ability to control the self.  When we can control ourselves so that we do not give in to the human desires that lead us further from the ways of God, we are more likely to actively be patient with our circumstances and with others.

A Godly person reflects the daily practice of sowing seeds of righteousness in good soil.  When we join like-minded people in our enthusiasm for living a Godly life, we approach the brotherly affection to which Peter refers.  Our brothers include all those who believe in Christ like we do (including, of course, our sisters as well).

When we can love those who think as we think (which is the easiest way to love), we may just be ready to step out in faith to love even those who do not believe what we believe.  Loving everyone else means turning the other cheek, as Christ instructs.  The Golden Rule is Golden because, not only does it make this world more bearable, it stores up for us the treasures in heaven that Jesus says are our end goal instead of the treasures on this earth where moth and rust can and will destroy.

Like the Fruit of the Spirit of Galatians 5:22, the steps to love of everyone in 2 Peter is your roadmap to a healthier relationship with Jesus, our Lord.  Remembering that our relationship with God must be on the right track for our relationship with other people to have a chance of growing is especially important.

As we enter the busiest time of our holiday season, I hope to bring to mind the lessons of 2 Peter as I wrangle through the increased traffic and crowds.  I will begin by remembering why we have this holiday in the first place: because our loving Creator chose to sacrifice a piece of Himself for the sins of all of us so that we all have the opportunity to grasp with both hands the promise of eternal life.

Now, that’s a road to love that I will gladly travel.  I look forward to seeing you on the journey.