Tag: alone

What is Your God Plus?

On By sashakatzIn FemmeFuel by Sasha Katz1 Comment

The past few weeks, God has been giving me a chance to really see where my security rests.  He is causing me to ask myself, Do I trust in Him or do I trust in the things He has given to me?  That’s a hard question when what you expect is not exactly what you see.  Do I trust in the fact that He gives me the ability to work?  Financial security?  Or do I trust that the Giver provides exactly what I need?  In His timing.  These are the things I ask myself as I move through a season of change.  As I move through what feels uncomfortable to me.  From the past, I know that God is always faithful to me.  What I don’t know is what that looks like from season to season.

Looking back in time, I see that my God shaped hole has to do with being afraid.  And, the biggest part of my afraid is going somewhere alone.  I have no idea where I would be going that God would not go with me.  But, when I am stretched, when I feel limited, when I feel weak, my fear is that this is the point in which God is going to send me off for a run on my own.  The fear is in part abandonment.  The fear is in part a question of His love.  That God shaped hole, that He filled so long ago.  I admit that God is using this short season to fill in the tiny leaking crevices.  In that God shaped hole.

When I look deep inside my soul, I see that I trust God.  But, I also have the fear that He just might make me go alone.  Although that is alternative to every Word our God speaks, I fear alone when life puts me in a pressure cooker.  If I really think about it.  If I believe it’s God who is allowing the pressure cooking.  If I believe He is the Master of All.  If I believe He is the bottom line for how much pressure He will allow.  If He’s the one flipping the on button, picking the temperature and choosing the time.  If He’s the one who is locking the top and putting us in there together.  He’s the one who is with me.  If I believe He is the Master of All.  If I believe He is who He says He is, I can’t be alone.  In the pressure cooker. Or ever.

Inside the locked top, He is the one who knows what causes me to grow.  He is the one who is letting the heat burn off my self security.  He is the one who tells me that He is my Helper.  He is the one who calls me to give sacrificially to Him under all circumstances.  The primary reason I don’t want to be inside the pressure cooker is my fear that I will find myself alone.  With no power or tools or faith to make it through the short season.  And that my whole life and all of my efforts will burn up in the cooker.

And, now the smile is rising up in me.  Now, I catch the wisdom of the Lord.  Yes, all that He really wants is for me to live like my whole life and all of my efforts are burned up in the pressure cooker.  He wants me to live my life welcoming the crashing waves as they pull out the sand from the shore.  He wants me to live my life welcoming the pulling out of my self security.  He wants me to live in anticipation of what He places within me after He pulls out something from the flesh in me.

I pray that you would ask yourself today where your security rests.  I pray that you would examine what you think sustains you in this life.  I pray that you don’t look surfacely and conclude you don’t have any secret requirements.  We all have a tendency to love God with all our hearts, minds and souls and then add something to that . . .  that looks and feels more secure than God alone.

What is your God plus?  Look into the eyes of God and ask Him to take it.  He is who He says He is.  His intimacy, power, love and goodness stand higher, deeper and stronger than whatever you are limiting Him by.  Sister, whatever you have decided to give up today, please do share so that we can all be strengthened by the deep wisdom and power of our God.

FF Dec 7

Part 3: Confidence that Gives

On By sashakatzIn FemmeFeatures by Sasha Katz, Love3 Comments

By AbbyA

You have been through a lot.  So much you can hardly recall.  You have experienced many revisions of yourself.  As the revisions color over top of one another, you have become quite beautiful.  In the making of woman, you have become gifted and full of treasure.  You are her now.  

You have walked to where you are supposed to be.  Many good miles in your shoes.  Paths, trails and routes under your belt, and in these shoes.  But your feet don’t hurt.  You are pleasantly quenched and the light unto your path warms and directs you as you walk.  The magic of your condition and of this course is that you seem both to attract and seek out souls to cross paths with.  Beauty doesn’t walk alone and treasures are worthless unless shared.

You are her now.  You hold treasures in your trinkets that are hidden in your colorful character.  You have gifts tucked away in the layers of the fabric of your life.  You see into the lives of the souls put before you.  You pass messages of encouragement and share bits of your journey in the right proportion.  You breathe life into what otherwise may have been dead.  The depth of your exchange resonates deep and wide.  For the good of others.

You could have chosen to keep your beauty to yourself or close the box that holds your remarkable worth.  You could have.  But then you would cease to be her.  You would slowly lose your luster.  Your layers would become limp, faded and unattractive.  You would find yourself selectively remembering the should haves, was nots and wishes for different.  Sadly, you may even find yourself alone on an island.  Loneliness lends itself to thirst and exhaustion, and depression.  This is no place for a woman of your quality.  No place for a woman who has walked good miles in her shoes.  No place for her. 

You are made of long lasting fabric.  The kind that holds up over space and time.  The kind that warms souls and quenches thirsty hearts.  The kind that transforms itself by loving, giving and growing.  She has so much to offer.  Explode into her.  She has become you.