Dulles Family Life Church

     Why is that some people never seem to come out of their personal wilderness or desert?  It certainly can’t be because they’ve not asked the Lord to lead them out.  Nor can it be that they really want to be there.  They desire to come out.  They desire, from their hearts, to be out.  They call on God to make a way, yet no way opens up.  Why?  Does God not care, or worse, can’t He do it?

     In their book, “God Will Make A Way,” Dr’s Henry Cloud and John Townsend make this strong and challenging statement.  “God will make a way for us to the extent that we make a way for Him.”  What could they mean?  Is this about us working to bring about our own deliverance?  Not at all.  I said that people desire from their hearts to come out of their personal wilderness.  It comes from their heart, but all of their heart may not be in it.

     Most of the desert places we find ourselves in tend to be about much more than our immediate surroundings.  These places may be places of fear, anxiety, stress, woundedness, anger, and so on.  They are intense, and we are suffering there.  We call on Him to make a way for us out of them, yet our wandering in them goes on and on.  Why?  Where is God?  Why won’t He help?  Why won’t He deliver us?  Why won’t He make a way?  As the good Dr’s, say, He’s waiting for us to make a way for Him.  A way to the root of the need, and cause of the wilderness.  If it’s fear, He desires that we know the fear, own it, and conquer it.  Without that, any deliverance is temporary, and before long, we will return to that desert place again.  It’s the same with the wilderness of anger, or worry, or woundedness.  The cry of our heart may be, “Lead me out of here!,” but until we allow Him to make a way “to us,” to our hearts, and ALL that is to be found there, the way out will continue to lead back to that very wilderness.

     Author Larry Crabb says, “We tend to recognize only those problems we can handle.”  That includes problems in and of the heart.  We don’t want to go there.  We don’t care to see what’s going on there.  It’s easier to distance ourselves from it, and just not deal with it.  The problem is that it’s this attitude that always seems to lead to the desert.  We call on Him to make a way out for us, , but His answer will always be that we must first allow Him to make a way in us.  A way to our hearts, and the deepest needs, wounds, and troubles that are found there.  Many people have not been willing to do this.  You may not be willing.  It’s a scary place to go, but until we “make a way for Him,” which we do by yielding our hearts, and all this found there to HIm, the wilderness goes on.  When we do, we will find, as the chorus says, that He does make a way where there seems to be no way.

     Are you ready for that way to be made for you?  Are you ready to make a way for Him?  A way to all of your heart and all it contains?  This is the way out of the wilderness, and into His wholeness.  God will make a way for you, as you make a way for Him.  Make way for the Lord.

Blessings,

Pastor O

Tags: Heart Thoughts by oshell
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     Very likely you’re familiar with the saying, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”  It has more truth than many of us would care to admit.  More power in our lives as well.  We certainly can become creatures of habit, establishing patterns in our lives, and this can be a good thing at times.  Everyone needs structure, and there does need to be consistency to our lives.  However, too often, our patterns, habits, and behaviors, continue to cause us pain and sorrow, even destruction.  The circumstances and conditions of our lives may change, but the results remain the same.  We’re trapped in prison cells that the enemy may have constructed for us, but in which we’ve consented to live.  we can be free of these patterns of destruction, but it’ll require believing in 3 mighty words spoken by Jesus from the cross.  His last words, and also, I think, His greatest.  “It is finished.”

     In our lives, so much never seems to be finished at all.  The pain and heartache of our past continues to haunt us.  We may know we’re forgiven, but we don’t feel forgiven.  The memories of our failures, or the failures of others, continue to gnaw at our spirits, continue to cripple present and threaten our future.  They infect all that is happening in our lives.  Relationships, job dynamics, self image, our ideas about the Father, how we follow Christ, everything.  We keep making the same terrible choices with the same disastrous results.  The people involved may change, and the scenery may change, but our actions and the consequences of them remain very much the same.  Nothing ever really changes.  Nothing is ever “finished.”  Yet, on the cross, He said it was.  Why isn’t it so for us?  When will it be finished for us?

     It will be finished when we begin to grasp and experience the power of what Christ did for us on the cross and in His resurrection.  He conquered death and all of its consequences.  As the old hymn says, “not in part, but the whole.”  He conquered it as it pertains to our past, our present, and our future.  He did it fully, and He did it completely.  Everything that was needed for the fullness of His salvation in our lives was done there, and done to the fullest extent.  It was finished, and therefore, the power of death in our lives was finished as well, but for it to be a reality in our lives, we must face that death at our own cross.  At the cross, the things that haunt us, cripple us, torment us, imprison us, must be dealt with, once and for all.  They must be “finished” in our lives.  Are we ready, are you ready, for them to be so?

     Revelation 1:8 reads, “I am the Alpha and Omega-the beginning and the end,” says the Lord God, “I am the One who is, who always was, and who is still to come, the Almighty One.”  The Almighty One.  Almighty over all that concerns your life now.  Over all that was, that has been your life before, and over all that is yet to come in the days and years ahead.  The Almighty One has finished the work, and it is now for us to embrace it.  We embrace by facing the patterns of destruction, owning them, taking responsibility where needed, and bringing them to the cross.  Jesus finished it all there.  Let it now be finished for you.  Let God make a way past the past, through the present, and into the future for you, and for me.  It is finished.  Not in part, but the whole.

Blessings,

Pastor O

Tags: Heart Thoughts by oshell
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     I’ve been reading a wonderful book by Dr’s Henry Cloud and John Townsend, titled, “God Will Make A Way.”  While reading it, His Spirit spoke to my heart concerning the way we so often approach Him in prayer and attitude, and that was that we pray for more, but are most often satisfied with less.   We are too many times, even most times, satisfied with the beginnings of His answer to us, but never press on to the fullness of His answer for us.  We sing songs like, “More Love, More Power,” but seem very content with little of either.

     There’s a very powerful and convicting story found in II Kings 13:14-19.  Elisha the prophet is dying, and a grieving King Jehoash of Israel comes to visit him.  Elisha instructs the king to get a bow and some arrows, and orders him to shoot an arrow through a nearby open window.  He does so, and Elisha proclaims that, “This is the Lord’s arrow, full of victory over Aram for you will fully conquer the Arameans at Aphek.”  He then tells him to pick up the remaining arrows and strike them on the ground.  The king does so….3 times.  That would seem enough to most of us.  It certainly seemed so to Jehoash.  It was not enough for Elisha and certainly not for the Father.  Elisha angrily tells him, “You should have struck the ground 5 or 6 times.  Then you would have beaten Aram until they were entirely destroyed.  Now you’ll be victorious only 3 times.”  God is a God of complete victory, not partial ones, yet so often, we are very ok with the partial, and never enter into the fullness of His life of victory, abundance, and wholness.  We stop short, and therefore, fall short.  Despite our words to the contrary, we end up with less, not more.

     I believe our tendency, when we find ourselves in the midst of very difficult and dark situations, as did Jehoash with the soon passing of Elisha, and the threat of the Aramean’s, is to seek the Lord with a desperation.  We cry out for deliverance.  There are times when the deliverance is immediate and full, but more often, it can come in stages.  When this happens in our lives, the first stages tend to bring relief, not fully, but some.  With the lessening of the pressure, comes a lessening of our fervor.  Things are better, not so dark, and not so threatening.  We can almost live with the situation.  We’ve “struck the ground” 3 times instead of 6.  We are satisfied with less, instead of more.  How much of “you” is found in “we?”

     For you and I, He has complete and full victory and deliverance.  He has more, not less.  What will you and I have?  Will we press on for the fullness of His answer, or will we, like Jehoash, content ourselves with half the victory?  Half of the answer?  Half of the life He has promised us?  You may be in that place of desperation and need.  His answers will come.  In His time, they’ll come.  Don’t mistake the beginnings for the finish.  Don’t make do with less.  Hold on for His “more.”  God will make a way, and His way is complete, whole, and to the finish.  Hold on till the end.

Blessings,

Pastor O

Tags: Heart Thoughts by oshell
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     Larry Crabb, in his book, “Shattered Dreams,” says, “We’re more prone to maneuver our way through life than abandoning ourselves to Him.”  Not so you say?  I wonder.  In my own life, I can think of too many times when, faced with a pressing problem or need, my first response was to try to “figure a way out of it.”  What could be wrong with this?  Didn’t He give us minds to think and wisdom to  make choices?  He did.  Our problem is, we tend to do these things apart, far apart, from Him.  His involvement, at most, seems to be as a “somewhat interested observer.”  Though we may do this, we do so at great risk.  Beth Moore says that, “Whatever parts of our lives are not invaded by Him, we invite the enemy to wreak havoc in.”  Many of us have experienced this, yet we continue our maneuvering.  Why?  Crabb gives a chilling answer, saying, “Churches are filled with “worshippers” who have reached the conclusion that there’s no real help in God.  He has left them to make it on their own, as best they can.”

     How can people arrive at such a conclusion?  Maybe it’s because we are looking at Him as some kind of vending machine, that if we put in the proper “currency,” be it formula prayers, formula living, or what have you, we will get from Him what we want.  It took me some time to learn He can’t be known through formula’s and 5 steps to abundance programs.  He can only be known through faith, and real faith works best in the dark, in places where there is no light to maneuver, and no space to if there was.  We can only abandon ourselves to someone we trust, who we believe.  Such a relationship can never be established with a vending machine, or through a formulated plan.  Too many have started out on such a road, and have not found Him there.  After several or more disppointing attempts, we come to the conclusion Crabb speaks of.  God may have great power, but He’s not much interested in using it on our behalf.  We must make it as best we can.

     All through His Word, the Father tells us that He’s cloaked in mystery, but it’s mystery He longs for us to enter into, which then, piece by piece, becomes knowledge.  We’ll never discover this mystery by formula’s, and most certainly, not by our maneuvering and manipulations.  We will only discover Him by abandoning ourselves, casting not only our cares, as Peter tells us, but ourselves upon Him.  Upon His mercy, His goodness, His love.  He tells us that He is all these things, but we can only discover the truth of this through abandonment, through total trust.

     Paul said he knew in Whom he’d believed, and was (completely) convinced that He was able to keep (all) that he’d commited (abandoned) to Him until that day.  For Paul, the maneuverings were over.  Are they for you and I, or do we go on living, manipulating through life “as best we can?”  There may be darkness and mystery all around you.  He is in that, even if we can’t see or discern Him.  He calls us to enter in, to abandon ourselves to the One who really will keep it, keep it all, until that day.  Till that day, and beyond.

Blessings,

Pastor O

Tags: Heart Thoughts by oshell
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     I came across somethng spoken by blind writer and speaker Jennifer Rothschild.  After losing her sight as a teenager, she began to be instructed in the use of a cane.  She said she had to learn to live not by what she couldn’t see, but by what the cane told her was there.  In the same way, you and I need to learn to live our lives not by what we feel, or fear, but by what He says, by what He tells us is there.  What is there is His total faithfulness.  This is the walk of faith.

     In Hebrews 11:8, it says of Abraham, father of the Jewish nation, “By faith, Abraham when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place, which he was to receive for an inheritance, and he went out not knowing where he was going.”  I began my walk with Him in 1979.  I thought I knew where I was going.  I didn’t have a clue.  He kept leading me to places I never thought I’d be.  Geographically for sure, but even more so, in the realm of the spiritual.  Oftentimes, too often, I wanted to stay in the known, but He kept calling me into the unknown.  I did not always go easily.  I still don’t, but He continues to call, to lead, to invite me into my own inheritance.  To trust not in what I think may be there, or even see that is there, but in what He says is there.  Himself.  His life.  The land that He has for me.  It doesn’t stop with age, and in truth, it doesn’t stop with death.  The path He leads us on stretches into eternity, and though I’ve never “seen” that place, He tells me it’s there, and there the fullness of my inheritance lies.  I can begin to live in that inheritance now.  So can you.  So can we all.

     Many of us may feel like Rothschild must have felt as she was taught the use of the cane.  Our world may have been turned upside down, with circumstances, needs, problems, and challenges that have rendered us, in a sense, blind.  We can’t “see” what to do next, but His call to us is to not live by what we cannot see, but by what He says is.  He is.  He will always be.  Like Abraham, we don’t know where we’re going, but we do know we’re going with Him.  Faith is knowing that we are always going onward with Him. 

     Of Abraham, Hebrews 11:10 says, “….he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose Arcthitect and Builder is God.”  That’s to be yours and I’s destination as well.  We will never find its fullness here, but here is where the journey starts.  All along the way will be places where we’ll be walking blind, except we won’t be blind at all, for He’ll be there, He is there, and He leads us along.  I don’t, we don’t know where we’re going.  He does, and He’ll take us there, to the city with foundations, our inheritance.  Designed and built by the Father.  For me.  For us.

Blessings,

Pastor O

Tags: Heart Thoughts by oshell
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