
Funny, how we want instant, and we beg God for months to fix something, maybe even years we beg and then in "one instant" it's fixed, healed, taken care of.
Until the next challenge that is....
Seriously, we are going to go through trials, over and over and over. When we go through them they certainly seem like strongholds and mountains don't they?
I've been struggling...hence the lack of passion to write. I'm an encourager, and the worse thing you can do to an encourager is put them in a negative environment that screams YOU ARE A FAILURE...because after awhile we will start to believe it, if our focus is on the distraction, instead of truth.
And it happens....
Encouragers are destroyed every day by negative. The world needs them, I need them. Do you ever get down on yourself, and blame yourself for all that goes on in your life? Well I do. Typically I have a "bad guy" in my situations, but in the end, I never seem to blame the "bad guy" I always blame myself with would have's, should have's and could have's. If I would have only behaved like this...if I would have only said this...if I only could have been this...
That comes from an abusive and unstable past...
Today on Praise FM they talked about the difference between "discipline" and "punishment". Boy they might have just stopped time for me in that very moment. Every single bad guy that ever came into my life and every single mentor that ever came into my life all stood front and center at my attention. The words I remember were "the difference between Discipline and Punishment. Discipline is brought about through trust, and Punishment is brought about through fear. If I were being disciplined it would be because I was trusted and the disciplinarian would want to see me succeed. If I were being punished it would be out of fear in hopes that I would fail."
It's all about perspective, not about excuses....
In that moment, I was able to sort between those "bad guys" who I placed on the left of Christ, and those "mentors" who I placed on the right of Christ.
And the TRUTH set me free.