Hey everyone! Sorry I haven’t been keeping up with my blogs. Things have gotten a little crazy around here since I’ve been back. Life is kind of returning back to normal for me but the thing is I don’t like it… I don’t like the normality my life once was. My life continues to crave something more… an adventure, my adventure…
As much as I’ve tried its been hard to do quiet time in my house (tryin’ to live with 3 other adults and 4 kids under the age of 9 is harder in my house than it use to be). I’ve realized now that before this trip my mind, my emotions and more so my relationship with God became numb, unimportant, lacking. All I focused on day in and day out is if I did all my chores and did them well enough so that I could go out and hang out with my friends if I wanted to. Now I see that the lack of focus on advancing in life and the urge to persue after the necessities that I should have been going after all this time in order to do the one thing I’ve always wanted to do in life, missions… I shut it all out. All because of one thing… fear. Its true! Fear controlled my life in so many different ways from the littlest of things like the kind of music I should listen because I was AFRAID my friends would think I’m not Christian enough or I’m not cool enough to the biggest things in life like considering whether or not to pursue after missions all because I was AFRAID of what my family, my parents especially, would think of me and how they would treat me. But you know what’s interesting about all this? None of this is the enemy’s fault…. its all mine! The only thing he did was try and plant the simplest of ideas into my head and after that… it was a domino reaction. He had me in his hand and I was doing exactly what he wanted me to do.. become weaker and weaker in my relationship and knowledge of Christ.
BUT! God had something else up his sleeve… one day as I was doing my quiet time earlier this year God put it on my heart and mind to do a word study about the words “fear” and “anxious”. And you know what I found out? You can’t describe one without the other. Look…
Anxious->characterized by extreme uneasiness of mind or brooding FEAR about some contingency
Fear->an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger; ANXIOUS concern
So I started digging a bit more and realize that it all starts with a thought (from the enemy no less) that triggers the anxiety in us. So I turned to scripture and this is what I found in Luke 12:22:
“… Therefore I say unto you, Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.“
The original word for “anxious” in this verse is the greek word “merimnao” which means to care, be anxious, troubled, to take thought, used in an absolute sense. But watch as you actually break down this word and find the root meaning to it all:
merimnao: to care, be anxious, troubled, to take thought, used in an absolute sense ->
merimna: distraction ->
meridzo: to part, disunite ->
meros (primary root word): a division
Interesting huh? When anxiety and fear and worry enter into our minds a division begins. Not just seperation from other parts of our mind and our heart but from God too. And that’s EXACTLY what the enemy wants. Just the like the old saying goes: United we stand, divided we fall. I’ve begun to realize that more and more not just being on this missions trip, on this adventure but at home as well. All I ask right now from you, my dear friends and siblings in Christ, pray that I might be able to learn how to cut the enemy off the second he begins to place the thoughts into my head again.
Another interesting thing: as I have begun to think of ways to change all this, of finding some courage maybe, I can’t help but think of what C.S. Lewis stated in his book, The Screwtape Letters: “Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.” So we’ll see…
~Jeanne 😉
