Morphing book?

I suppose it IS possible, although I don't think it's likely.  I truly believe God gave me the topic of how the reframe your thoughts using scripture to overcome the evil attacks of Satan which trap you in a life of misery and defeat yet it seems that either I am drifting off topic and not keeping with that theme (the likely culprit) or the current chapter on spiritual warfare is taking on a life of it's own.

 

I have no doubt received a second book idea through this process so why doubt this as a third.  Perhaps I need to write out the chapter and divide it into what fits the original model and what goes with "something new."  Who I am to presume to box God in and tell him when he can give me his next idea and when it will be shown me. 

 

I will say again - I sure didn't think it would take this long.  I was so gung ho and the beginning and still am so very passionate about following through on his vision for this book and am constantly trying to maintain my proper place in all this - his instrument.  It's not "my" book, it's His.  Nor am I on the level as such writers as the gospels or any of those who wrote the books of the Bible.  No sir!  I am conduit for a message for the modern day.  A message that is IN those pages written 2000 years ago that need to be said in a different way by someone else to reach a new demographic.  A message written by someone who lived life in the pit sinking deeper each and every day, the stench of despair threatening to overtake her or worse, that I would become numb to and simply accept.

 

Perhaps spiritual warfare is so all consuming because it is such a monumental task - it takes every ounce of fiber to deal with the enemy day in and day out.  It also is where we engage the enemy on a supernatural playing field.  We get to use God's powerful weapons and FIGHT!  And the best part is that we know in the end that we win.  So, no matter what your demon is that you are fighting: depression, despair, discontent, doubt, addiction, abortion, abuse, anger, fear or whatever it is - WE WIN IN THE END if we are on God's team.  War is hard - there are casualties.  We loose creature comforts, the enemy looses ground.  We have to let go of hard held beliefs that are not true but are "safe," and the enemy has to flee.  In the end, we get to walk with our hand held high - slowly, one day at a time, holding the hand of our savior. 

 

So, I guess even this little rant about my book topic detour took a bit of a road trip, and that's ok.  As long as we get back on the road God has planned for us right now, we are on the right path. 

 

Game on God!

The real thing!

What an amazing day today.  You know how you go to church and you sing those songs "take my life and let it be...." and you mean it, really mean it.  You want God to take you life, you want to be used.  You are sincere when you sing.  Well today, as I was singing, I felt something different.  It was as if today was the real deal.  This was the day that as I sang about "giving my life, my all to God" that I really meant it.  As I sang, I started to laugh and get excited and I said to God, "this is the real thing isn't it?!  It's finally happening?" 

 

I realized that today was the day that I crossed the line.  I had ALWAYS loved God, served him and meant every word that I sang and I know those who sang the same words today do, too.  It's just that TODAY, for me, God took me across a line.  A self-made line maybe?  He knew I was ready based on some of the things I have been working through and learning.  In my trials, God is with me, and he is teaching me.  I am learning so much in what I am going through.  If nothing more, a reliance on him more than in any other season. 

 

I am a little concerned about what that means but all I do know is that it changes everything.  I may be the same in some areas but I may be so different in others.  Friends may fall away and others may be drawn to me.  I pray those who believe, love and trust God will stay with me and jump aboard this crazy ride I am about to take.

 

I am expecting great things from God and I am expecting I will have to do some great things, too.  Or perhaps I will just need to be faithful with the few so he can bless me with greater down the line.  Either way, knowing God, this will be an adventure. 

 

I can not tell you how I feel inside.  There has been something that has come over me.  I can't explain it.  I feel this amazing sense of desire to be with God and know His word and study it.  I am overwhelmed at times with love and excitement and all I want to do is run to my room, shut the door and start my Bible study or read a devotional or in some way study His powerful, perfect word.  I have prayed for this and he has answered.  I hope you, too, will pray to be filled with the desire to know and understand his word.  It's hard to stop and focus on my family but I know I must.  This is when I can talk to them about who God is and how much he loves them and why I love God's word so much.

 

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, may you be blessed with wisdom and discernment and excitement and you study the word of God!!  May you, too, cross that line and make it REAL with God.  It will be worth the ride. 

My thoughts about my book and this blog and my facebook page have been all over the place for the past month.  I have not been focusing on "my" book as much as I would like as I have been dealing with work, some health issues and the like.  And then I started hearing my thoughts. "my book," and that started to worry me.  Was I being prideful?  Was that why I was feeling stuck?  Was that why I was holding back?  Was that why I didn't feel God's presence and push towards making this public even though I had finished chapter 5.  Remember in my last post I stated that MY plan was to make this public after I had finished chapter 5.  Was I taking credit for this?  I have to admit, I had daydreams about this book taking off and me becoming a public figure and being able to quit my day job and write / speak professionally. 

 

When I faced these thoughts, I was ashamed and sought forgiveness from God.  He says that when we come to him and sincerely seek his forgiveness, it will be given and I feel that he has honored his promise.  Yet again, he has proven himself so faithful.  God is so good to us.  I am currently partaking in a Bible study - The Patriarchs by Beth Moore - and it is having such rich application to my life at this time and in this season.  I never would have believed it.  There was even a video session on there being a "fine line between Godly vision and selfish ambition."  I so desire to be used as an instrument of God to share the word he has given me and that there be not one ounce of pride in me - ever - but especially so over this message.  I realize I am human and that pride is one of my pitfalls which is why I believe he gave this to me to test me and help me work on this - one trip up at a time.  Beth warns in this video segment about Satan and that the enemy will try and twist the vision and message God has given me.  He is sly and subtle.  And he tempts me every day with visions of me being exalted because of my writing or that I will have thousands of people like my facebook page (if I ever publish it) and I will have tons of fans on twitter (if I can remember my password and learn how to tweet and figure out the whole hashtag thingy).  He knows my weakness and he will exploit it.

 

But that is not why I have been so anxious to write this post.  I have been praying for God to give me an amazing and overwhelming passion and desire to love him and know him and his word.  I can tell you that he is honoring every one of these with an Amen (so be it)!  I have come to realize that God has me where I am so that I HAVE to depend on him and draw near to him to survive.  He has me in a place of waiting so he can make me into whomever I need to be for when this book is published - even if only one book is sold.  And that may be the word he has given me.  But if that is the case, so be it.  His message is out there and he will bring it to whomever needs it.  And, through the trial, I have come to a new level of trust, love and connection with God.  God is sovereign and he has a plan for my life and it includes my past.  My past is who makes me what I am. 

 

Right now in school my son is studying the life cycle of the caterpillar.  How timely, don't you think?  The book title God gave me is from my childhood "Pretty Yellow Butterfly."  It was name when I was in Indian Maidens.  Sort of like Girl Scouts, I guess.  Right now, I am a caterpillar.  But soon, I will wrap myself up in a cocoon and emerge as the most beautiful butterfly.  A pretty, yellow butterfly. 

 

No disciplice seems pleasant at the time, but painful.  Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.  Hebrews 12:11 NIV

 

God's desire is for us to grow more Christlike as we grow to love Christ more.  Even during the trials when God is working on us, working on setting us free from sin, working on changing us from the inside out.  I can not wait to see how I look when God is done with me and I break free from my cocoon.  I am at peace now with writing this book and the message that he is sending out to the world through me.  I will write whatever he tells me to and will make it public when he says it is the right time.  This is God's book - not mine.  He is simply blessing me with the priviledge and honor to put pen to paper, so to speak.  He knows I have a passion to write (after all, he made me this way!) and he is giving me this gift.  What more can I ask for?





Chapter 4 and delays, delays, delays!

wow - I don't even know where to begin.  Writing is much harder than I thought but then I never did expect it to be easy.  I have to find the time to write on weekends because working full time makes writing impossible during the week.  Writing on the weekends is hard because I want to be with my family and children and that wears me out.  More often than not, when the kids take a break to rest and nap, I do the same.  But I am determined to birth this book.  God has a message for me to share and I want to share it.

 

Today I finished Chapter 4.  Right now I am sitting on the couch, fireplace going, house quiet and rain falling outside.  It's cold and I just want to relax and snuggle in the warmth of my home.  I feel so blessed right now.

 

Since my last blog, I have come to realize that perhaps it was not some horrible twist of fate that brought me to my new job.  My book is about changing our thinking - substituting our deceptive thoughts with the life-changing truth of God's Word.   I have been thinking that God took me through the process of Scriptural Based Thinking during my leave of absence and my time of recovery.  That was to give me the idea of how I needed to survive.  Now, dealing with my present circumstance, I will truly be putting the process into practice.  If I believe in it enough to write about it - then I should be able to live it.  Perhaps I can write about it even better if I am living it while I write it. 

 

I will now be getting into the meatier part of it - Chapter 4 is about how we got into the situation of needing God and this process and sets the stage for the remainder of the book which discusses how to fight the spiritual battles, live victoriously and stay living in victory.

Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness.  (Romans 6:19 NLT)

I am getting very excited about making all of this public.  My plan is to start spreading the word after chapter 5 is complete.  I want to make this process, make this tool, make this way of life available to all I can. 

 

I can say with 100% belief that what I have to share, the way people can change their life through this process, will work.  It will set people free.  It will give them a completely new way to attack the deceptive thoughts in their head that come from the world in which we live. 

 

I did some research on he word deceptive and how it applies to deceptive thoughts: deceptive has the connotation of being interrupted, beguiling, plausible, subtle, sneaky, crafty, cunning, ambiguous, vague by accident or intent, questionable, and unclear.  Deceptive = causing one to believe what is not true or is likely to mislead someone.  These are the thoughts with which we are bombarded day in and day out.  This is why we must have the power of the Word of God on our side and on the edge of our lips.  We must know how to combat the lies we are told.  We need a weapon and that is what I am trying to share with the world.

Standing firm in God's grace - Heather

Derailed on Chapter 3

Things have been moving along nicely.  I have been working on my book with my past summer experience as my point of reference.  Until recently.  On December third, I found out my job was being done away with and I was going to be reassigned to a different position and I was welcome to search for one on my own while HR tried to find a match.  I have been applying for jobs and networking and nothing was happening.  A couple of days ago, I got my reassignment letter and it was the outcome I feared and dreaded the most.  I had been assigned to a job I did 7 years ago (so taking big steps backwards in my career) and back into a high stress quota based environment (I purposely left because I hated what it did to me and my relationships - and now I have children!).  After I stopped crying hysterically, I gratefully went to my preplanned therapy session and as time passed and I processed things, I started to be less gloom and doom. 

 

So, what I had thought would be a painful look back into my past summer while writing my book looks like it's going to turn into a process where I will be writing this book and using my SBT (Scriptural Based Thinking) techniques at the same time.  On the positive side, the experiences will be fresh and painful and I will totally be connected to my reader while writing.  The down side, I had really hoped to have a greater break between trials.

 

I have heard this quoted by many:  You are either going through a trial, just came out of one or are about to enter one.  I guess mine has just started.  I pray that the good Lord will see fit to give me a much longer break after this trial.  At least I know that someday in the future I will be just coming out of this. 

 

I am almost finished with Chapter 3 and will soon start Chapter 4.  To celebrate my new season of tribulation I will show you an example of SBT.

 

Lie: I am doomed.  I will completely fail in this job because I lack the skills and I won't be able to handle it.

 

SBT reframe:  I have but to ask and reach out to God and he will help me.  Ephesians 3:20 tells me, "Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within ME, to accomplish infinitely more than I might ask or think."  I believe that is what this is about - God's glory.  While I am desperately leaning on him to get me through this trial, I can't take any glory for this book or the message of SBT that he gave me.  If I did not have this difficulty at hand, I would surely be tempted to be proud of "my" book and what I was writing.  Maybe even forget that it came from God in the first place.  God, in his glorious and infinite wisdom, is protecting me and the book he is blessing me with the opportunity to write.  If I humble myself under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift me up in honor (1 Peter 5:6).  His awesome word goes on to say that, "after I have suffered for a little while, he will restore, support, and strengthen me, and he will place me on a firm foundation." (1 Peter 5:10) 

 

So, to close as Peter did in his first book, "my purpose in writing is to encourage you and assure you that what you are experiencing is truly part of God's grace for you.  STAND FIRM AND STAND IN THIS GRACE! (1 Peter 5:12, emphasis mine).

Day 3 - where did the time go?

Day 3 - 12.29.12

 

While these two kids are the most important facets of my life right now - they are not making it very easy to find time to write.  I finished my first chapter yesterday and was really gung ho on tackling the 2nd chapter today.  Well, I managed the 1st paragraph.  Not near what I had hoped or planned. 

 

I realized I am doing alot of my creative writing in from of the computer, so I am going to try something different.  I already had the basic outline and scriptures and order as God laid it out for me.  My thought is to write out a more detailed outline so that when I sit down to write, I have more of a plan of action and it is not my creative process and writing process at the same time.  We shall see.  I don't want to deviate from God's plan but I do want to accomplish more when I do have time to write. 

 

I don't want this taking a year to get out - my emotions and feelings are still fresh - I am actually walking through a new situation which is requiring me to use the tools God created through me this summer and I want to be able to incorporate those real time into the book so as it unfolds it is a testimony to God's faithfulness and how this process - Scriptural Based Therapy - SBT - can help anyone get through a crises or even their everyday life. 

 

Time to go rest and work on this outline.  I pray the Lord will bless me with clarity and vision and continue to bless this process and move me forward even when I doubt and tire.  May he always remind me that this is His story to share with the world and I am just his conduit.

 

Thank you Lord for your grace and mercy and love.

Day 2

Day 2

Writing a book is harder than I thought.  I have so many ideas in my head and I am juggling priorities.  Time ... there is never enough.

 

When I took this photograph, I thought I looked pretty.  Now I can see how gaunt I looked.  I took this months into my illness when I was blind to my actions and how they were affecting my family.  At the time, I was consumed with my stress and my pain.  Living with a chronic illness is not easy - daily pain eats away at your patience and makes you frustrated and angry and hopeless.  I don't know how people go through something like this without faith in God. 

Phillipians 4:13 For I can do everything through Christ,

who gives me strength(NLT).

 

As I write this, I am getting ready for a job interview.  Due to a large company reorganization, my current position is gone and I am "reassignable."  I am trying to find a job I want before they hand me my new assignment as I would like some say in where I land.  I am thankful that I was not surplussed and I know that I am in God's very capable hands.  He has always been in control of my career and while I am nervous about the position (it's not the one I have my heart set on), I am going to trust in Him.  He has never steered me wrong. 

 

That's the awesome thing about God - He wants the best for me so even if this new position is designed to teach me something, it's a lesson from God - who loves me more than I can imagine - and I can TRUST Him.  This goes for you, too.  If you are struggling, stop messing around and give it up to God.  Trust in Him and his goodness.  He has a plan for your life (Jeremiah 29:11) and it's a good one. 

 

If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me.  I will be found by you, says the Lord.  I will end your captivity and restore your fortunes. 

Jeremiah 29:13-14 (NLT)

 

So whether it be an illness or a job change, I trust God with my life.  After all, he gave it to me in the first place.