Thursday, January 15, 2009

More Great learnings from Joyce Meyers

Yesterday was interesting. I had a roller coaster day of emotions early on but then thankfully I settled in to a peaceful harmony. Walking in love has been a focus of mine since I started this blog and I have talked about it often. Stress has created some tension in the family and my kids get on each other's nerves more too and walking in love the way Jesus meant has been harder lately not easier. Don't get me wrong, we are a huggy kissy family. We are usually cuddling and we tell each other we love each other a hundred times a day. We say thank you and help each other out and stuff. I am talking about the person who is stressing and snaps at somebody type thing. Which happens a lot lately so we hear sorry a lot too around the house. So after I read the first couple of chapters of Joyce Meyers book Living without Conflict I was really confused as I have posted a few times this past week and I have asked God to convict me when I am having or giving strife in my family life. WOW. Has He ever shown me how bad we have become. I mean just for me, my stress level has caused me to be panicky and highly unable to deal with chaos and noise. So I have been astounded by how many times I have heard myself yelling Please stop to my kids or waving my hands in the air saying stop stop stop because I am overloading. Or just freaking out in general because we are at the Chick Fil A drive thru and I can't find my wallet in the car and the entire car goes into stress panic mode before mommy blows. Sheesh, I should be ashamed to admit it but hey, maybe some other nice Christian soul who lives a defeated life can come here and identify you know? If I ever get out of this my little blog can be a road map maybe. Hopefully not like the road map to peace in Israel , what a joke that one was!! Anyway, Joyce in chapters 3 and 4 which I read last night continues to give more insight on how living in strife especially in your home will keep you from receiving the power and blessings of God. She said the power of God cannot be just claimed. I had to stop there because I have heard that it is ours but we just have to have the faith to use it. I have had a HUGE problem with that because I myself and others who have great faith don't have the "power" of God behind them. I have always thought there was something more to it. You know, I really think Joyce may have something there. Which brings me to the prayer of Unity. I may have even blogged about this once, my pastor at my old Church did a big sermon on Wednesday about the prayer of Unity. Where 2 or more gather together in my name there I will be and whatsoever they ask shall be given unto them. Did I quote that right? If I wasn't in a hurry to finish packing I would look it up. Anyhoo, there are scriptures in and around it that say the people have to be in UNITY for this to work and then Joyce goes on in the book to explain how we must be at peace with our families, our friends, our co workers, our fellow church mates, etc. We must not only be in UNITY with the prayer or the person we are praying with but we must be in UNITY period. The Bible gets translated a little funny so sometimes a little digging is required to get the full meaning of a word's intent you know? (For instance where Jesus says on the cross "It is finished." Was really a term that the merchants would say to the person paying there debt when they had paid in full. They would say to them, the debt is paid and that is what Jesus did and that is what he truly said. Sometimes translations loose the whole meaning." ) So what she is saying is that we must be living in harmony with our fellow man, but especially in our home. God is not pleased with a home filled with strife. She defines strife in the book, I will come back tomorrow and explain all of that I think. But strife is not only not getting along but an UNDERCURRANT of anger or resentment is strife. This is unpleasing to God and according to the Word Joyce is presenting in the book it is also keeping us from the unity required to acquire the true blessings and power of God AND unable to receive the fullness of answered prayer due to our lack of unity with those we connect with. Remember the part of the Bible too (THIS IS HUGE!!!!!!) that says if you come before God with your sacrifice and you have anything against your brother leave your sacrifice there and go and make things right with him. THEN (HUGE!!!!!) come back and present your sacrifice to God so that it will be pleasing to him. HOLY COW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ha, I just made a funny, sacrifice, cow, holy, get it? Anyway, that Joyce sure is anointed. Wowser. That is really huge, why after reading that scripture a bizillion times did that not ring a ding dong in my head? So if we have a feeling of anger or unforgiveness or a relationship not in harmony our sacrifice is not pleasing to God. My how we have skipped over that one. So I am really trying hard not to yell at anybody, to stay calm, etc. Even the 2 year old was screaming and crying all morning and hitting us and I managed not to yell once. Hurray for me. Obviously I have a huge problem in this arena. I took my 3 oldest kids and read several parts of Living with out Conflict to them and told them we had a problem as a family and we needed to fix this. I can't do this one on my own. My hubby thinks Joyce is fully of poop on this one but he is just really stressed right now so I give him a pass. If we start doing better maybe he will join in and see there is something to it. So, I guess I really need prayer for help creating unity and harmony within my family. She does give several examples of families including her own who after having the realizations that their constant problems were directly related to their strife in their family and Church family and once the corrections were made, the blessings came and the fullness of the joyful life God wants to give us were available to them. Unity in a family of 6 plus 2 parents and a terrible 2 year old with lots of added stresses of being sued, closing a business, trying to grow a business directly related to home building/remodeling won't be an easy task. So I ask for prayer and Lord knows this won't be an overnight accomplishment but I am going to say that I am going to give it my best. If that isn't good enough, then I don't know what else to do. I can't control everybody, but I can pray for help and I can ask others to pray for help. Lord knows we need it, and after all, I'm Still Learning.

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