Tag: deep joy

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fruit glory

Who’s Fruit?

From https://dailyverses.net/2025/2/2

This verse jumped out at me this morning.

Who do we want to bear fruit for? I think often it is so we look good, so people will say “What at good person” or even better “what a good Christian” or even “I’d like to be a Christian because of the example that person lives.”

I think all those are admirable but to me this verse says we should be bearing fruit for God the Father’s glory so that God the Father can delight in us being God the Son [Jesus’s] followers.

So we are doing and being and “bearing fruit” [whatever that means] not for any egocentric reason but because we just delight in God.

I remember when my kids were little we would do craft projects or snuggle on the couch to read from the latest Horrible Histories magazine not because there was some great educational benefit but because we loved being together. Our “fruit” was in hanging out together being family. I do think too often now when either my adult children visit or we go to visit them we feel we should “do something” so we can say there was purpose [fruit] in traveling all that distance, when maybe we’ve actually missed the point.

I think too often with God we put on events, do church, have meetings, talk to people about God, because we think that is what “bearing fruit” is all about. But that isn’t bearing fruit for God’s glory or showing we are Jesus’s disciples. I think “fruit” isn’t something tangible, not something we can say X number of people attended this event, made this commitment, took Bibles, even got healed. I think the fruit being talked about here is that deep stuff where we learn to trust God more, even when things go wrong; when we can live in a place of deep joy and peace no matter what; when we can accept ourselves just as we which is what God does with us; when we can believe God, the Creator of the Universe, loves us unconditionally and we can love ourselves and others unconditionally.

I truly believe this “fruit” Jesus is talking about here doesn’t come with targets, attainments, no new converts but is a deeper love of self, others and of trust in God, the Creator of the Universe, loving us unconditionally. Then we are truly disciples of Jesus and would be willing to go anywhere, do anything, know our end goal but not have to put in boundaries to get there but be able to go with the flow.

I think “going with the flow” is another fruit of being a disciple of Jesus.

So bearing the fruit that is the glory of Father God, I think, involves sliding into a deeper place with them and no longer trying to achieve, attain and be noticed.

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christmas faith Mary

Faith and Action

Cute picture of my dog and cat being inactive – photographed by myself Dec 2024

James says “faith without works is dead” [James 2:26]

After yesterday’s Upper Room gathering and rehearsing with the young people for the Nativity play, I realised God works this way too – sharing deeds to help our faith. Probably if one looks properly all those things we say the Bible says God wants us to do God’s doing them anyway.

In the Upper Room we got into talking about ways we had really seen God show up – a nurse suddenly appearing to suggest a treatment which saved a dying mother, a head on crash being diverted by the car suddenly being in a lay-by, a vision of a car which slowed the driver down and stopped her being hit, etc, etc, etc. We all had some story or another. But I also wonder how many more things had happen to us that were God’s intervention but we didn’t see because we weren’t being observant enough?

When we are fully present in the moment we see the things God has for us, I believe. Then instead of worrying about our circumstances we can be in that place of openness, observation and deep joy. But we do need to be in that place.

With the QEC work I do our practitioner talks a lot about keeping one’s autonomic nervous system in a place of calm which we learn to do by saying things like “I’m safe, your safe, we’re safe” or “my ANS in a calm and stasis” or for me spending time free writing and letting my heart seep out of my pen then adding in some different beliefs.

So where am I going with this? Well for me I like QEC because not only do I see it work in myself but I see it working with my practitioner. She isn’t just talking the talk she’s walking the walk. [Faith and deeds]

The reason I like God [and struggle with much of organised religions] is that I see things that align with what is being talked. Like with the stories from the Upper Room community – God in action.

So back to the Christmas story. The other day I said that people believed Mary because they had faith and trust in her; that she was the only human who really knew how she got pregnant. But actually if one reads the Christmas story then there is more to it than that.

Firstly we have to let go of all we have been preached and also all of modern life. Jewish communities did NOT have a stable on the edge of town where Jesus would be born away from prying eyes. He would have been born in the town. Even if there were people who did not believe Mary’s story about how she got pregnant they would still have taken her and Joseph into their home because there was no where else to go.

Jesus was born into a home not away from everyone though much of what we hear preached and are encouraged to believe now is that Jesus was born on the outside. As I read recently [but have lost where] religion, and so ourselves, likes the idea of Jesus being born in a stable on the edge of town where we can go and visit him rather than being in our homes where we are stuck with him all the time.

Next angels appear to shepherds. It says “the brightness of the Lord’s glory flashed around them” [Luke 2:9 CEV] So you’ve got shepherds on a hill above the town. Close enough to run into the town to see the baby. It wasn’t like we are now with light pollution and whatever. The place was in pitch darkness so even a small fire would be seen for miles and miles. Suddenly, up on a hill, there is light. Someone in the town would have seen it.

Then these shepherds hurry down from the hill to see Jesus. It doesn’t say they wait till daylight. So they’ve got torches and all sorts and I suspect they weren’t being quiet.

Also remember now we’ve got Mary, Joseph and Jesus in someone’s house not in a stable on the edge of town. I’m suspecting those shepherds didn’t get the right house the first time. I suspect they knocked on a few doors before they found the right one. But also I am suspecting because of the light and noise of the angels that people in the town were up.

This was no secret on the edge of town birth. This was big. This was noticeable.

God asked for faith and then gave deeds to help with that faith.

As I’ve pondered it this year I would love to think of Joseph and all his relatives in Bethlehem thinking that they would love to believe Mary because she is such a sweet person and so reliable and trustworthy, but then God comes along and does the deeds thing and they go from that small seed of faith to that tree of full blown belief.

Maybe too it is how those of us who accepted Jesus by faith have been able to hanging in there during the tough times because God gave us something more tangible too?

Faith without deeds is dead – and because God knows our fragile hearts they are able to give us deeds to help us with our faith.

Peaceful Christmas to everyone who reads this. And keep your eyes wide open to see what really is going on around you.

My hallway with and without extra lights – December 2024

Categories
Encounter prayer

Cart Before The Horse

New Forest ponies photographed by myself June 2021

Too often we put the proverbial cart before the proverbial horse and wonder why nothing happens.

For instance we pray for world peace, for people groups to forgive each other, for people to consider the earth and the climate change issues, for people to stop abusing each other, yet I have realised that with the stories I read with my youth group Hagar and Gideon only changed when the had an encounter with God.

Hagar could only forgive Abraham and Sarah for their abuse of her and let go of her own anger and pride when she had met with the God who fully saw who she was. Gideon could only go and do what God asked of him calmly and without anger when he had met with the God who calmed his fears.

I think too often we expect ourselves and others to forgiven, to do just as God says and no more or less, to walk in peace and deep joy, when they had not had an encounter with God. I also think it often needs to be a regular different facet of God we encounter to fit with the things we are dealing with at the time.

So I am going to try to start praying for my friends, my family, world leaders, situations, and asking if these people will have an encounter with God. That sort of encounter that makes them feel fully known, as Hagar did, fully trusted as I think Gideon did, fully loved just as I am as I did and do regularly.

I also think that to be able to have those true encounters we need to be healed so we can truly see God when they come visiting. As you know I’m very pro QEC and also Sozo, but there are other ways of allowing those false beliefs of self-doubt, unworthiness, expectations of life, etc, changed and replaced by Godly freeing ways. For Gideon it was giving a sacrifice. For Hagar it was believing God say her.

So let’s get praying for people to have God encounters and then trusting God will change them, will speak to them, will be with them, in the way that is right for them and their situation rather than telling them and God what they should be doing.

Categories
forgiveness freedom

Forgiveness Part Two

Woodland walk. just me and my dog. A space to think. April 1st 2023. Photographed by myself.

I was going to write a post about another thing that keeps niggling at me but I felt I wanted to revisit Forgiveness before I can really let it go.

I’m not sure if it is forgiveness or the things that one needs to forgive that start to loom large once God hooks one onto a topic. But just recently it has felt like there are things with spikes, like those seed cases that stick to one as one walks through a wood, or have to be tugged from the dog’s fur, things that I thought I’d “dealt with” via various QEC and inner healing journaling stuff but that nip at me when I’m not quite noticing.

A thing that not only QEC but other inner trauma type healings talk of doing is to be aware of one’s vagus nerve and how one is reacting – fight, fight, freeze, fawn – and how to bring it back to feeling calm, peaceful and filled with deep joy. Not happiness but contentment and something 100 times deeper than happiness.

But these little sticky seed cases aren’t heavy. The dog can continue his walk when he has them. They don’t slow him down. But these small sticky things that I need to forgive for the millionth time do slow me down. They make me grouchy, which makes me tired, which makes me uncreative. And I really don’t like to be uncreative.

And that for me is my awareness; when I feel uncreative, when I don’t want to write anything at all. Sometimes I write angry pieces which I don’t share but that helps me look at what I need to forgive so I can move onward. We each have different things that show us we are out of sync with the calm, peacefully, pure, safe joy we should be working if we are aware of ourselves. So when we don’t enjoy or want to do the things that make us who we are that is the time when we have to stop, reset our vagus nerve, breath, and forgive – often ourselves for still reacting with that hurt as much as forgiving the person who hurt us.

Forgiveness is NOT something with sharp teeth, which is what I was going to write. Forgiveness is the the true MUST DO that is the only things that is going to keep us in good relationship with others and with ourselves. If I don’t forgive me then I forget who “me” really is.

It isn’t easy forgiving but it is essential but too often we get used to those sticky seeds, to those sharp teeth. Too often we are afraid to brush them off, to release ourselves and others. Fear stops us doing many things but most importantly it stops us being ourselves.

So as we enter into the season of Easter, into Holy Week, whether that is your faith or not, just ponder some of the things that are recorded of what Jesus did – the Ultimate Forgiver.