Sunday, September 7, 2008

Barrier-Free

This past weekend we went to a one-day seminar (held by the Bonner's Ferry, ID church near Troy, Montana) by Daniel and Lorna Dreher. We heard about it because Lorna's parents recently moved to our church in Creston. So we camped by the Yaak River. The kids had fun jumping from stone to stone in the river's edge Friday afternoon. (The first miracle was that at 2 pm Frank dropped his work -- just dropped it where he was, instead of finishing his list, and came down and said, "If we want to get there we'd better get going!" I wasn't expecting that so early! It was actually the time we had planned!) So the girls had time to jump from stone to stone in the river after we set up the tent! It was too cold for "swimming". Bethany had fun drawing princesses on the rocks with water, and Carrie Ann cried when the water evaporated and the princesses were gone! Matthias really enjoyed the campfire at the first meeting, Friday night. The night was so cold I could hardly sleep -- but we expected that. We had lots of extra blankets and sleeping bags, and once I finally got them properly arranged (and Frank got cold and snuggled up to me) I got a couple more hours of sleep. Frank got up early (because of the cold) and started a fire -- that was more fun for Matthias, in fact it was hard to drag him away!

The seminar was about getting rid of the barriers in our relationships with eachother and with Christ -- so that his love can flow through us. A barrier is a sin -- the first step is to become aware of and acknowledge the sin/barrier. The second is to be sorry for it -- repentance. The third step is to ask for and accept forgiveness -- from God primarily, but also from anyone we've wrong, and to make restitution where necessary. The fourth step is to ask for and accept the Holy Spirit to cleanse us from unrighteousness and fill us with power to walk a holy life.

The greatest barrier is self -- at first I thought I probably wasn't too bad, but when I read the list of selfish ways, all but two or three of the 16 fit me either now, or at some time in the past! So even though it was a "rate yourself then your spouse" exercise, I didn't rate Frank -- he sometimes feels like I'm always judging and accusing him, so it opens up the way for him to search his own heart when I reveal that I'm searching mine -- not his!

The most painful barrier is bitterness. This is when I am right and someone else has wronged me, perhaps hurt me deeply -- and I have the wrong attitude about it. Instead of forgiveness and pity towards the offender, I cling to the hurt and my "rightness", preventing God from healing me. This is one of my biggies -- it sometimes takes years for me to realize that I'm still bitter about something in the past. So this weekend I realized that, although I made some progress in not being bitter toward Frank, I was selfishly protecting myself, not able to trust God, because I was bitter against Him -- for taking my Mom (it was good for her, but not for me!), for the whole Dickendorf experience (it was not what I expected), for the amount of pain it took to have Carrie Ann (I couldn't roll over in bed without pain for about 6 weeks after she was born -- the hernia is only now starting to close). I want to open my heart up to God -- I always knew he loves me, and I belong to him -- but He can't use me (or heal me) when I'm protecting myself from him! So if you've seen my bitterness in my stories, I'm sorry. And if you put me on a pedestal because I concealed it well -- I'm sorry!

One of the tools they mentioned for overcoming a besetting sin (one confession doesn't take away a habit of years) was to use Bible verses to fight it every single time it tries to creep in. So right after the session, as I was reading my Bible, God gave me this verse from Job (my paraphrase) "God will lift up those who mourn to safety". Isn't that funny? The connection from mourning to safety is not immediately obvious, but it was exactly what my heart was crying for. So I know that doesn't mean nothing bad will ever happen, and I always knew God has promised to not give us more than we can bear... but this is a help for me on my road to healing. God really does care -- he really does speak to us, and even write us love letters in the sky from time to time (see this post and this one).

So, please pray for me too, that my healing will be complete, and God will be able to use me.

2 comments:

Roboseyo said...

thanks for sharing that, beckles. Job is funny because it's one of the hardest books to get into, one of the hardest books to appreciate, but it also might be the wisest book in the whole darn bible, outside of Christ's own words.

Rebecca said...

Yes, I used to read Job and Revelation twice as much as the other books, for that very reason!