Labels

Tuesday, February 22, 2022

Low Maintenance - Travelling in the Spirit – Purity 661

Low Maintenance - Travelling in the Spirit – Purity 661

Purity 661 02/21/2022

Good morning,

Today’s photo of a jet taking off into blue skies over LaGuardia Airport was captured by yours truly Saturday morning as my wife and I were shuttling between terminals as we were preparing for our afternoon flight to Tampa.  

Its Tuesday and as we have entered the midway point of our honeymoon vacation, I am overcome with gratitude this morning as I am simply in awe of how much I love my wife and how much I love what the Lord has done in my life to bring me where I am today and I am not just talking about a third floor hotel room with a view of Tampa Bay. 

As I look at today’s photo, I remember that this was in the early stages of what is TammyLyn and my first experience traveling together and how I contemplated what it would be like. I have travelled with family, friends, and for mission trips in the past and until you get on the road you don’t really know what someone will be like to travel with.   You don’t know if they will be pleasant, angry, nervous, quiet, or loud.  You don’t know if they will be someone who looks on the bright side or if they will be someone who will chronicle and complain about  every step of your journey. You don’t know if they will be “high maintenance” or “low maintenance”.  

With TammyLyn,  I had an idea that she would be easy to travel with because as a teacher and parent she has the kind and patient demeanor of a caregiver, but I didn’t know for sure how she would hold up “on the go”.  

To possibly complicate matters, due to the fact that I had suffered a canceled flight out of Albany once upon a time in the month of February before, I decided to book our flight out of LaGuardia to be further south, or to have more options for flights if the weather didn’t cooperate… so I added a two and a half hour drive to begin our honeymoon journey. If you are traveling, why not to add a mini road trip into the mix?   Nothing like adding a drive through traffic of the highways and streets near NYC before getting on a plane to properly gauge someone’s patience. 

In retrospect, adding a drive might not have been the best idea because although I am the seemingly quiet confident traveler when it comes to airports I am a somewhat volatile driver as I still struggle with being impatient and reactive behind the wheel when I am dealing with traffic and adjusting to GPS directions to unfamiliar locations.  

In airports, I am pretty low maintenance because “this ain’t my first rodeo” and I tend to just keep to myself and occupy myself with music, a book, or my phone while in transit and don’t tend to make any comments to anyone as I don’t feel the need to share my experience with strangers and make “travel buddies”.  But on the road, I can be quite the opposite as I tend to speed and sometimes make quick transitions in traffic when I fail to understand the GPS directions. 

So doing a road trip was questionable because  before I would be able to demonstrate that I am that “calm cool and collected” world traveler at the airport, TammyLyn would get a perfect view of the recovering “road-rager”!  There is no where to hide your worst tendencies when you are travelling, and those habits will rise to the surface when you are under stress.   

Luckily, most of the drive to our LaGuardia parking destination was incident free and if anything TammyLyn got to know me a little more as I used a large portion of the drive to LaGuardia to worship the Lord in song.  If TammyLyn didn’t know how much my heart is set on the Lord or how passionate I can be in worship, she knows now. 

I tell my discipleship students and people I counsel or encourage about the importance of worshipping the Lord in song as part of our spiritual disciplines as disciples of Christ as it can help us bridge the gap of knowing our faith in our heads to knowing it in our hearts, and how worship can be a vehicle that can deliver us to an encounter with the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit.  I stress that the most appropriate thing we can do as Christians is to praise the Lord in song and that when we passionately worship the Lord we can grow in our heart relationship with the Lord and literally encounter His presence.   So if you are going to sing to the Lord, I suggest you let go of your inhibitions, remember who the Lord is, who you are in Christ, and what He has done for you and others, and let ‘er rip! If you are going to sing to the Lord, bring it!

So as we listened to worship music on the Taconic Parkway heading south Saturday, I felt the spirit to worship come over me and I put any inhibitions I had about worshipping in front of TammyLyn aside and I let her rip! I mean I worshipped the Lord like I did as if nobody was there besides me and Him.  TammyLyn got a front row seat to what had only been a private performance for the Lord and if she had any doubts about the sincerity of my teaching on worship before, she certainly doesn’t have them anymore.

Despite making a wrong turm just before our final destination in Queens and getting beeped at a few times, TammyLyn and I made it to Bolt Parking no worse for the wear and were both glad to be on the part of the trip where we would just be shuttled and flown to our destination in Florida.  

We got to the LaGuardia with plenty of time to spare and spent a few hours waiting before we had a short and uneventful flight to Tampa.   TammyLyn’s patient and kind attitude never wavered, and she demonstrated that she was about as low maintenance as you could get as she required no special handling and attend to her own needs and well-being as she was undoubtedly used to doing as a mother to 5 and a teacher to Pre-k students who demanded her focus to be on them more than herself.    

But the “worst” was still in store for us, as we experienced the longest line I have ever seen for a rental car agency that I had ever seen or experienced when we got to Tampa.  Many people abandoned the line and sought other travel means, valuing their freedom more than their non-refundable deposits.  Some tried to book a car from other rental agencies at the airport without luck as they were told there were no available cars at the other companies. Others got on the phone to voice their complaints to Budget Rental’s corporate offices to no avail..  And some made an ongoing commentary about the status of the line and how “this sucked” for the duration of our time in line.   We landed at roughly 5 pm and it was around 9pm when we finally receive our rental car! 

But through it all TammyLyn remained patient and kind and, although I did make the observation that it appeared that the entire operation of dispensing rentals was being handled by a single person,  we joked and supported one another lovingly as we waited to finally get our car.  

After we made a quick run to local Walmart for what turned out to be our dinner and for supplies for the week, we were thrilled to finally lay down and go to bed and awoke with no residual bitterness as we both chose to praise and worship the Lord by streaming our local church service in our hotel room on Sunday.  

TammyLyn has remained patient and kind and low maintenance throughout our trip, and I have repeatedly thanked the Lord for bringing her into my life and having her agree to be my wife.  

Our time together has been wonderful and the joy of it all is only increased as I remember the difficulties I faced in the many years of my life where I wasn’t a Christian and was consumed by my selfish desires and spent the vast majority of my life reacting in continuous cycles of temptation, guilt, shame, anger, anxiety, and depression and dealing with others far less patient and kind than my wife. 

Because of Christ, I am not the man I used to be.  I may still struggle with impatience and less than perfect speech in moments of stress but because of Jesus Christ I am free of the things that used to drive a lot of the dysfunction in my life, and I now find myself in the peace that comes from letting go of pushing my personal agenda and just abiding in my desire to follow and worship the Lord in all things.   

Throughout our travel day, amidst all of the hustle and bustle and disappointments, I took the time to appreciate where I was going, where I had come from, and where I was in each moment. 

In the hours waiting for our flight, I finished rereading Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship. On the plane I listened to a message by Derek Prince on Following the Call of God, and I spent time in silent prayer and worship as I listened to an eclectic mix of pop and Christian music where I thanked the Lord for all that He had brought me through and provided me with to put me in the middle seat of that plane at 42,000 feet, seated next to my Christian bride.

Even though we were “on the go” and could have been completely focused with the details of our travel and with meeting our personal needs of “self-care” as we were in transition,  I took the time to periodically check in with my Lord to ask for His guidance and protection and to thank Him for the life He had given me.      

Regardless of what plane I get on, or what rental car they assign to me, I travel with the Lord and that journey doesn’t end when we reach our vacation destination or when we get back home. 

So keep walking and talking with God. Become a “low maintenance” traveler by making the decision to “walk in the Spirit” because when you commit yourself to travelling with God, and living according to His ways,  you can experience peace and joy when you travel through life no matter what delays, detours, or obstacles that may come your way.   

 

Today’s Bible verse come to us from “The NLT Bible Promise Book for Men”.

This morning’s meditation verse is:

1 Corinthians 2:14 (NKJV)
14  But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Today’s Bible verse speaks of the fact that some people will consider the things of God as foolishness and that they are incapable of knowing them without the Holy Spirit to reveal it to them.  

One of the biggest paradoxes of the Christian faith, has to do with the challenge of balancing the concepts of man’s free will and ability to decide with God’s sovereign will.  Passages like today’s scripture indicate that it is simply impossible for people to come to God without His divine intervention to reveal the truth to us.  

Other passages of scripture detail the Lord’s call on mankind to repent and to turn from their sin and to follow Him by placing our faith in Jesus.  

If the Lord decides who will and who won’t know the truth, why does He call “all men everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30)?  

While there are whole schools of thought regarding this dynamic to describe the levels of man’s contribution, or his complete lack of contribution, towards His salvation and relationship with God, I try not to get bogged down with theological labels and merely encourage people to seek the Lord and their salvation with fear and trembling.  

In spiritual matters, I echo the sentiment of Alfred Lord Tennyson who said in his epic poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, “Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die”…”  - We all must choose what we “believe” or reason to be true, and live or die with the consequences of our beliefs. 

If we don’t know who God is, the appropriate response is to seek Him.  If we choose not to seek Him and dismiss the biggest question of our existence, we can’t honestly make a charge of wrongdoing to the One who gave us the free will to reject Him.

As creations of God almighty, we are not to question the “fairness” of God’s redemptive plan and muse over why some come to the Lord and others are spiritually blind to the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.   

Other than in the remotest parts of the world, the historical figure, and basic facts of who Jesus Christ is supposed to be widely known.  The details about Jesus’ life are available for anyone to read about in the New Testament.  

Now while we could worry about the poor soul of the “ones who never got the chance to know who Jesus is”, Besides the mission field is waiting for those with the call to bring the gospel to the unreached,  we should be more concerned with the vast amounts of people that have access to the knowledge of Jesus Christ but who have turned a deaf ear to His offer of eternal life.  

I was lost in sin and selfishness for most of my life. In light of a tragic loss and the failure to find satisfaction in life, I began searching for truth and to find an answer to the questions of the meaning and purpose to life.  

In my confusion, I had found other answers and could have stayed in the darkness of those decisions, but the Lord was gracious and gave me a message of His love and grace when I was otherwise unreachable. I had shut myself from all considerations of Christianity, but the Lord arranged for me to hear the message to save me.   

Was it my searching that led me to the truth? Was it the Lord alone who revealed the truth to me?   I don’t know! I’m just glad I got saved!

Although I earnestly sought some truth, I had rejected the Lord out of hand.  It was that one gospel message that saved me and altered the course of my life.  I was the natural man, and the things of God were foolishness to me. I could see lots of things, but my heart was hard and my eyes were blind to the gospel until the day I heard of salvation and the forgiveness of sins through faith in Christ alone.    

So while today’s verse may make us think that it isn’t fair that God has to give us a revelation of His truth through the Holy Spirit, we should rejoice that He is willing to save us at all and that He can choose to use us to pass along the truth of His word that could save others.   

So don’t question why some will be lost, instead share the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the hopes that the words you share with others may be used by the Holy Spirit to cause them to live!  

Ours is not to question why, ours is but to share the words of the gospel that can cause other men and women to live.

 

As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.org where I always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk. 

Today we continue sharing from June Hunt’s Codependency: Balancing an Unbalanced Relationship.

As always, I share this information for educational purposes and encourage all to purchase June Hunt’s  books for your own private study and to support his work.  This resource is available on many websites for less than $5.00.

C. Take the Codependency Checklist Test

Are you unsure about someone who is significant in your life? Is it possible that you are in a relationship that others would call "codependent"? If so, how would you know? Read through the Codependency Checklist and make a check mark by what is applicable to you.

  • Do you struggle with feeling loved; therefore, you look for ways to be needed?
  • Do you want to throw all of your energy into helping someone else?
  • Do you say yes when you really want to say no?
  • Do you feel compelled to take charge of another person's crisis?
  • Do you feel drawn to others who seem to need to be rescued from their problems?
  • Do you have difficulty setting and keeping boundaries?
  • Do you find it difficult to identify and express your true feelings?
  • Do you rely on the other person to make most of the decisions in your relationship?
  • Do you feel lonely, sad, and empty when you are alone?
  • Do you feel threatened when the other person spends time with someone else?
  • Do you think the other person's opinion is more important than your opinion?
  • Do you refrain from speaking in order to keep peace?
  • Do you fear conflict because the other person could abandon you?
  • Do you become defensive about your relationship with the other person?
  • Do you feel "stuck" in the relationship with the other person?
  • Do you feel that you have lost your personal identity in order to "fit into" the other person's world?
  • Do you feel controlled and manipulated by the other person?
  • Do you feel used and taken advantage of by the other person?
  • Do you plan your life around the other person?
  • Do you prioritize your relationship with the other person over your relationship with the Lord?

If you responded with a yes to four or more of these questions, you may be involved in a codependent relationship!

When we find ourselves in unhealthy patterns of relating, we need to change our focus, change our goals, and change what is hindering us from running the race God has planned for us. Our primary focus should be not on a person but on Jesus.

"Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." (Hebrews 12:1)

Biblical Counseling Keys: Codependency: Balancing an Unbalanced Relationship.

 

---------------------------more tomorrow------------------------

Join our “Victory over the Darkness”, “The Bondage Breaker”, "Freedom in Christ" series of Discipleship Classes via the mt4christ247 podcast!

at https://mt4christ247.podbean.com, You can also find it on Apple podcasts

(https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mt4christ247s-podcast/id1551615154). The mt4christ247 podcast is also available on Google Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartradio, and Audible.com. 

These teachings are also available on the MT4Christ247 You Tube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTxjSNstREpuGWuL0bF3U7w/featured

Email me at mt4christ247@gmail.com to receive the class materials, share your progress, and to be encouraged.

My wife, TammyLyn, also offers Christian encouragement via her Facebook Group: Ask, Seek, Knock (https://www.facebook.com/groups/529047851449098 ) and her podcast Ask, Seek, and Knock on Podbean (https://feed.podbean.com/tammalyn78/feed.xml)

Encouragement for the Path of Christian Discipleship

 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.