How the Holy Spirit Works in the Lives of Believers - Women, Listen Up!

For many women, service is a part of their character. Many of us learn as little girls to serve others as part of a daily routine. Even some of us have been taught to perform various types of service in the church from a young age -- e.g., altar guild ministry, acolyting, hospitality initiatives, and others (we all have our own lists). Because of the ingrained programming of service, some of us then may miss, may not be aware, of God's call to service. It is a huge difference that too many churchgoers fail to recognize, and thus, there are those instances in some churches where 20% of the people do 80% of the work of ministries. Consider the following message I gave to members a while back on knowing who you are in the Lord:

We are many of us involved in various ministries at church. Many of us have come to know what God has called us to do in the building up of the church. 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12, and Ephesians 4:11-13 share the types of ministry gifts that God has bestowed on individuals and on the local church. The ministry gifts on and in individuals do not happen when you sign up for church membership. They do not happen when a priest or clergy task you with an assignment. You don't get them as a result of going to meetings or classes. THE ONLY WAY WE RECEIVE INDIVIDUALLY THE MINISTRY GIFTS SPOKEN OF IN THE ABOVE SCRIPTURES IS THROUGH THE INDWELLING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT WHEN WE ARE BORN AGAIN AND ADOPTED AS SONS OF GOD. I can't say it any more plainly. The 'deposit' of the Holy Spirit in us - our guarantee from God of salvation - is the first gift of rebirth. From that point, the Holy Spirit operates within a believer and follower of Christ in a unique way that was preordained for Him to work, part of which is the bestowing of your personal ministry gift. Because many churches do not talk about the Holy Spirit, who He is and what He does in the lives of Christ's followers, so many churchgoers are ignorant of this part of their life in Christ if they have been saved. It is that call by the power of the Gospel and Holy Spirit working in us that God initiates our new life in Him - we have no power to do it ourselves.

The blessing of that calling is that God will enable us to do what He has called us to do. What He has called us to do has spiritual implications, and is outside of the natural -- therefore we cannot successfully respond to God's calling in our own strength. That is, we must do all things in Christ who strengthens us for the work we have been called to do.

How do you accomplish God's will in Christ? As believers, we have Christ living inside us in the form of the Holy Spirit. (please read 1 Peter 4:11; 2 Corinthians 12:9; Philippians 4:13,19; Romans 8:9; Ephesians 3:16-18) How do you know how to respond to the indwelling of God? Well, how does He speak to us? Through study and meditation of his Word, the Bible - the believers' handbook and authority, through prayer, and through circumstance. If you leave out the first two, it will be hard to discern the third one. When you leave out the first two, you will find your calling may begin to feel like a burden, or that it has become a routine duty - something on your checklist, something to satisfy your church membership or sense of doing good. When you don't do the first two regularly, the intimacy to which God is calling you to be in with him may escape you. When you don't do the first two consistently, it will be challenging to do God's will with joy. The sad truth is that there are those throughout Christendom who have been going to church for years and giving to the church in time and money and, yet, they have never known God because they will not do the first two things. (2 Peter 1:3-11, 20-21; Isaiah 5:13; Hosea 4:6; Ezra 8:22-23; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; 4:1-4; Hebrews 5:11-14; 6:1;Psalm 119:114; 1 Timothy 4:10; Hebrews 10:23;1 Peter 3:15; Romans 15:4,13; Nehemiah 1:3-6; Matthew 26:41; Luke 6:46)

Ladies, I pray that the only true burden we have in our work for the Lord within the Body of Christ is the burden of desperately wanting to please God in fulling His purpose for us. He will help you do whatever He has called you to do, sometimes using your God-given natural talents to accomplish the work. Do not forget though: do your utmost to continue first to seek relationship with Him who has called us, rely on His strength, and allow God's Word to dwell in us richly as we do his will.

Blessings.

Sabbath Rest

It's less than two hours before midnight and I'm writing a post about sabbath rest. What does that tell you? God graced us with a period of rest on purpose - we need the un-wind, decompression, refocus and most of all physical rest. He did not make us to be a 24/7 machine. This principle applies universally - a need for adequate rest and refreshment of spirit. We are desperate for sabbath rest whether we admit it or not. Stress takes a chunk out of our lives, leaving us sometimes in emotional distress, and rushes us sooner than we would like to the grave. Our cognitive skills are strained and our bodies' organs must work overtime to compensate for how the stress is affecting us. We retain body fat when living in stress because the body reacts to stress relative to fat the way that squirrels react to the changing fall weather, storing up vittles for themselves. The body clings to the fat. Google "fat and stress" to see the results of research in that area. Scary.

I am one of those persons who needs to be busy. At least, that is what I have been for x# of years. Since I couldn't say no, and did not include sabbath rest in my schedule as a fixed event, it was only a matter of time before I hit the wall so to speak. It's not that I wasn't warned - I was warned countless times. You know -- 'you can't burn a candle at both ends,' 'even Jesus slept' (to which I have cynically replied inaudibly at least once, 'but He arose early'; tsk tsk), and - well, you've heard them all, too. See, sometimes us women of faith think that as long as we are doing ministry and keeping the home fires burning, God is going to keep us going even when we start to violate the parameters (we don't see it as violation - we see it as a failure or some kind of  - dare I say it - lack of faith to reject or say no to new challenges that never ever end). I kept thinking, well, that probability of crashing is way off in the future, and besides, I'll be able to tell when I need to stop and wind down. Deception! Even after hitting the burnout phase, thinking that maybe one more year will be ok before I take a vacation or take time off to do nothing, and step down from the responsibility of those things outside of true life necessities (arrrgh - we even blur 'necessities'). An individual with this personality doesn't have guardrails that are reliable. We keep moving them so they have no permanency. Eventually, we will move and move and keep moving and never see the brick wall until it is 2 feet away.

I am a recovering workaholic trying to practice a sabbath rest that works in real time for me - time when I can relax, lay back, read, and not have to be anywhere or required to be doing something. And I don't mean vegetating before the TV necessarily. It's hard, though, to go from 200 mph to 0. Especially the time for exercise - well, I'm supposed to be a steward of my time so why don't I act like it? The reality is that very few of us women who are householders, moms, or business owners, working a night shift, engaged in ministries, and/or any combination of these and other life needs can take a full day 'off' each week. But can we schedule 2 hours two or three times a week that we fix into the calendar to take a sabbath for restoration of our spirits and bodies? If you are graced to do so, could you take a full day once a month or bi-monthly to do something outside of your routine to give yourself a fresh perspective? I won't disrespect anyone reading this and needing sabbath rest in their life to draw a picture of how to do this in 7 easy steps. Each of our circumstances are unique - unfortunately/fortunately, we have to work it out for ourselves in ways that fit our realities. Women of faith need sabbath times especially as an opportunity to commune with our Heavenly Father to strengthen that relationship.

Take the idea of sabbath rest to God in prayer asking Him to give you wisdom in this area of your life. Ask Him to bring into your life women from similar lifestyles and routines as yours who have learned to do sabbath rest so that they can show you how it may work in your life. Ask others to pray for you, too, that you will find a blessing in your effort to establish this in your routine as a way of life, and a way of thanksgiving to God. As the psalmist says boldly in his own stress in Psalm 30: "To you, O LORD, I cried, and to the LORD I made supplication. 'What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the Pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness?' Hear, O LORD, and be gracious to me! O LORD, be my helper ... you turn mourning into dancing; you take off my sackcloth and clothe me in joy, so that my soul may praise you and not be silent."

I will listen to my own exhortation and shut down the computer and dim the light. Time for rest.