Walk with Patti and me 02

Walk with Patti and me….02

This weekend was a real learning experience.  For several hours all our worry and concern just faded away.  It was as though everything was AOK.

How did this happen?  Well, Saturday we spent several hours collaborating on some of the blogs.  It was a wonderful time of questions and challenges and laughter (ok if you’ve read any of the pieces Patti didn’t get to edit you understand the laughter).

The thing is that we were so focused on the work of improving the blogs that we were absorbed by it.  This wasn’t busy work; it was a mutual concentrated focus on serving Him through the blogs.  What was so wonderful was that we both had such openness and freedom in the exchange.  It wasn’t about us and our circumstances it was about Him and you.

The second experience of relief was, as you might suspect, at worship.  Again, our problems were kept from imposing themselves on us.  We were not giddy but at peace and a little joyous.  Again, for that period of time it wasn’t about us and we were safe from the distraction.

What’s the point?  I think it was the experience of fellowship – real fellowship with each other and the body of Christ.  We weren’t “distracted” (that’s what TV is for ;-}).  We were focused off ourselves and on a greater priority.

In the lesson at church Pastor David mentioned perspective.  Well maybe it was being engaged with Him that altered our perspective.  Even when I shared our circumstances with the fellowship the impact seemed smaller.  Maybe we were repairing our nets but it was a wonderful gift from Him to be working and worshipping together.

A thought -

In Sibbes’ book, The Souls Conflict With Itself, he devotes an entire section to the imagination.  It is tied, of course, to our vanity and our difficulty in being un-autonomous. 

I was especially convicted when he wrote about how we imagine things to be worse or potentially worse than the reality. 

It’s real easy for Patti and I to “imagine,” how things will go and it is typically a terrible imagining.  What Sibbes helped me see is that there is very little of the rational in our common imaginings.

Just yesterday my Pastor taught about the need to know and the need to be biblically rational.  As the Puritans would say, the mind needs to direct the affections (feelings) and no doubt that needs to be true of our imaginings as well. 

Here’s the great thing (thank you David) about starting with what we know.  Of course I use know in the “know God” (John 17:3).

When we begin with what we know (and it must be biblically sound) our imaginings start with the final truth and its assurance.  So we know, regardless of our imaginings, that it all ends well – in Him.  Now it’s the time between this moment and that one that we have to deal with.

But the lovely truth is that God has provided us with examples of a lot of in between stuff.  Some of it is tough to accept, some of it we hope for – but all of it has happy endings for those who are His.

Now, imagining can be a useful powerful tool when done in submission to and dependence upon the Holy Spirit and the Word.  The Word gives us boundaries, the Holy Spirit works with our consciences to warn or encourage us. 

What we’re working on:

There ought to be in man a conformity to the truth and goodness of things, or else, 1, we shall wrong our own souls with false apprehensions; and 2, the creature, by putting a fashion upon it otherwise than God hath made; and 3, we shall wrong God himself, the author of good-ness, who cannot have his true glory but from a right apprehension of things as they are.

Sibbes, Richard (2012-04-24). The Soul's Conflict With Itself: And Victory Over Itself By Faith. (p. 153). A Puritan At Heart Press. Kindle Edition.

Keep praying with and for us!!

THANK YOU!

Michael & Patti Sanders

2205 New Garden Rd # 2807

Greensboro, NC 27410