When I say "vision" we all automatically think of natural sight. I want to look at the other kind of vision. The kind that has nothing to do with natural sight. In fact, it can sometimes ignore natural sight completely! How absurd is that? This vision that I want to explore is deeply impacted by the brushstrokes of our words. I have a beautiful family. Amazingly beautiful. 3 Daughters, 1 son, 1 son on the way and a Jesus loving husband. We live in a quiet town somewhat in the country. We have a small piece of land and a sufficient house. There is laughter, joy, happiness, togetherness, love and hope that abide here. God is our provider, our peace, our strength. Sounds like a dream, right? In reality it is. It is beautiful to be able to experience it every day, and I'm honored God chose this for us. So, let's take a mental photo of this scenario. The beauty I speak of is quite evident to the natural eye. So what is wrong with this vision? Nothing at all. Nothing, that is, until "life" starts to happen. I'm willingly using my family as an example hoping that you can identify with us. Life happened to us last year. Nothing truly abnormal, but a lot of things just piled on top of each other tends to create a mountain. We know that our walk was/is a walk of faith and that God has used this time to re-shape us, teach us, set us up and put us down a path he created for us. So, some of these "life things": a long period of unemployment, stress about bills, stress about our future. A fractured femur in a 2 year old boy that led to 6 weeks of carrying him around in a body cast. The loss of all but one of our goats. The loss of 2/3 of our chickens. The hope of new jobs followed by the disappointment of rejection time after time after time. I'm sure there are plenty of things I've left out, but these were just the highlights of our past year. Now, let's take a mental photo of this scenario. While walking through this my vision began to change. Why? Because before 2013, my life was beautiful to my mind. There were no big issues. It was easy to speak faith and profess God as the center of everything. When the first few bumps occurred, I was able to maintain my good outlook, but as events, disappointments, setbacks etc all started piling on top of one another instead of focusing on the good, all I could see was the mountain of doom forming in front of me. It seems to be a law of human nature that we speak of what we see more than we speak of what we know. I began to speak on the bad. A lot. Vocally or mentally, my words all carried the doom of feeling like life was falling apart and feeling abandoned by the God that was supposed to love me. My vision was changing. With every negative spoken word, a brushstroke of grey took the place of something beautiful that I should have been seeing. I was painting over the beautiful image of what God had given me and reshaping what I saw. The beautiful still existed in our lives--it was there daily, begging to be noticed. The beautiful daughters and son and husband and life still existed. Laughter still occurred, joy was still present and togetherness was a constant scenario. God still loved us, still smiled upon us, still provided for us and was still with us. The things available to natural sight still remained. Feelings and emotions started painting their own "vision" of what my life was. The result of that "vision" was that my words gave more emphasis to what I perceived as being "wrong". I should have spent more time praying than reacting. Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life. Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies See, prayers are words too. Spoken or unspoken God hears them and so do you. I've found that even if I am angry with the situation God has me in and I voice my anger to him, that he allows me that time. He allows me to get that out of me and then starts the slideshow of the beautiful before my eyes. My frustration, fear and anger turn to praise and thanksgiving...He is painting over the gray's that have warped my beautiful vision. He's restoring it. Not only that, He is making it more beautiful.
The point of this is that it so vitally important to look at the mountains before us and demolish them with the words of the existing beauty. Our circumstances were real. They were hard to deal with. They shook my faith. They were temporary. I allowed the temporary to overshadow the permanent. I allowed my fears and thoughts to turn into words that took the beauty out of my vision. We have the power within our mouths to keep the vision beautiful or destroy it. I'm thankful for a God who loves and understands me. He knows that you and I are human and we will sometimes stumble in faith. He is ALWAYS there to pick us up, allow us to see through His eyes long enough to restore the beautiful picture that is our goal and set us back on the path He has set before us. We felt like we were dying in that time and sometimes still wonder why we had to endure it all, but as we step into 2014 we see what He was doing. He knew what he was doing all along. He just had to get us to where He wanted us to move us forward. ~Michelle
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AuthorsThoughts and ideas inspired by the Holy Spirit, delivered to you courtesy of Chris or Michelle Cooper. We hope you enjoy our posts and would love to hear your feedback! Archives
February 2014
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