Intimacy

            As I write this blog, I feel so unprepared. I hunger for intimacy, search for others who desire intimacy as well, and then struggle to let go and allow the intimacy of relationship change my life! Can you relate?

            I am far from perfect, but I keep trying! My number one desire is intimacy with God and then with others. Life happens in relationship! When God embraced the earthand created us. It is in that depth of relationship that we are changed.

When we sat in the classrooms of our youth, we had teachers who sometimes struggled to teach us the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. Why? Because we only learned some thing when we embraced the bridge between what we knew of the subject and what we didn’t know, and this required us to get involved!

This is why when a child reaches out to his or her mom and mom reaches back, there is real connection. Nothing is more beautiful than real authentic intimacy, where both people are open.

As you are reading this blog, the degree of effect it has on you depends on how well I can connect with you, (connection through content) and how open you are to me (willingness/ability to relate).   

Our ability and willingness to relate is an ever-evolving thing. I am able to relate today better than I ever could as a child, for as a child I didn’t have the experiences that allowed me to understand how to relate, even though I hungered for relational intimacy. Having no experience, I retreated into books because they were safe and easy to understand. I couldn’t face people who did things I didn’t understand. Now as an adult I have learned how to interact with people, and so when I am confronted with a new group of people, I am not afraid to interact with them; rather, I look forward to making new friends and embracing more relational intimacy in my life. Now I struggle to read that book on my shelf!

May you reach out, embracing the Lord and the world around you!

 

Blessings and Complete Joy,

Mikki

 

Please check out our  Prayer Post page created for your personal & corporate prayer requests! God cares for you!

 

This blog is part of the ministry of Complete Joy and is published each Tuesday and Saturday, usually by noon Pacific Time. If you would like to visit our Web site for more encouragement and teaching, please go to: http://www.completejoy.org.

Kicking it up a Notch!

            From the time I can remember, my life has always been about encouraging people, but in the last several years, I have been awakened to the truth of the impact intimacy has in all we do.  When we encourage people, we see something fabulous occur, empowerment.  Intimacy is what makes all the difference.

 

            Many have walked the earth before Jesus; some have even given their lives, but none had been willing to give a depth of intimacy that Jesus was willing to give. The Bible reveals to us that Jesus poured himself into twelve lives in extraordinary ways. When he told a story, it wasn’t enough to tell the story, he empowered his listeners when he explained the meaning of the story so that they could understand. That is the difference between encouraging and empowering, the difference between teaching and equipping, the difference between healing and restoration, the difference between letting go and releasing and the difference between disciplining and mentoring. There is a depth of relationship in each of these that takes concepts that extra step, kicking it up a notch, making all the difference. 

 

            In our American society, when we think of intimacy, many think of sexual intimacy rather then the broader sense of relational intimacy we see that empowers all it touches as Jesus did.

 

            I can take someone in a wheelchair outside to look at the flowers, in hopes of encouraging them, but if I take the time to help them learn to walk outside on their own, then I have empowered them, helping that trip outside to become something they can grasp on their own.

I could teach them how to push their wheelchairs out the door on their own, but how marvelous it is if I take all the time and effort to help them walk completely under their own power!  That is what it means to kick it up a notch! Intimacy allows the person in the wheelchair to become self sufficient rather than co-dependent on the wheelchair. 

 

In the coming blogs, we will talk about the difference intimacy makes in our lives. I hope you will join me on this journey of discovery!

 

Blessings and Complete Joy,

Mikki

 

Please check out our new Prayer Post page created for your personal & corporate prayer requests! God cares for you!

 

This blog is part of the ministry of Complete Joy and is published each Tuesday and Saturday, usually by noon Pacific Time. If you would like to visit our Web site for more encouragement and teaching, please go to: http://www.completejoy.org.

Miraculous ways of God!

God is bringing one time in my life to an end and beginning another in His own miraculous way. This time is so tough, yet it is so rewarding. 

 

            I have spent the last 20 years ministering to survivors. I have seen so much success and joy spring forth in such broken people. Yet the one which always amazes me and is the most miraculous is the change in myself.

 

            I have gone from a child born to worship Satan, struggling to find my own identity to an adult who has chosen to worship God awakening to who I am created to be. When God saves a soul from hell this is the most miraculous! 

 

            Gone are the days when I worried would I survive, now I look knowing my future is secure.

 

            Yet we need to bring it down to specifics – What does it look like when God battles in miraculous ways. We can take a simple situation, where communication is all messed up like it was today. I got an e-mail from a Christa, she was giving out information that was not correct, it could cost me a lot of money, yet I put it in the hands of God and told him that I would accept if a mistake had been made. Just in the last hour I got another e-mail that cleared it all up! No mistake was made, the lines of communication was just messed up.

 

            Do you see this as miraculous, or are you waiting to see God part the Red Sea or raise someone from the dead. If we can’t welcome those small miracles in our lives like this one with Christa, we won’t be ready when the Red Sea is parted before us!

 

Blessings and Complete Joy,

Mikki

 

Please check out our new Prayer Post page created for your personal & corporate prayer requests! God cares for you!

 

This blog is part of the ministry of Complete Joy and is published each Tuesday and Saturday, usually by noon Pacific Time. If you would like to visit our Web site for more encouragement and teaching, please go to: http://www.completejoy.org.

Marvelous ways of God!

            When you allow God to fight your battles marvelous things can happen.

 

I woke up one morning, not too long ago, knowing I was to take some chocolate chip cookies to my evening prayer meeting. God impressed on me not to worry about the cookies, because he would provide them. I have learned when I am impressed not to worry about something by God, the best thing I can do is not worry!

 

I went about my day as usual, seeing a client, even stopping to price some supplies at a store, before meeting a friend for lunch. I never once thought any more about the cookies.

 

            At noon I met my friend for lunch, we made small talk as we moved through the salad buffet line at my favorite restaurant, Sweet Tomatoes. We got to the cashier. I gave her my coupon, and handing her my money $20.02 for my bill of $6.97. She was clearly frazzled and she just couldn’t figure out the change I should have gotten, I told her that was okay, and she could do the change out of the $20 and I would take back the two cents. She was so pleased and surprised that I didn’t get mad; she gave me a bag of 12 chocolate chip cookies.  I looked at the change as I put it in my wallet and saw she had  given me one too many $5 bills, so I quickly caught her before she closed the till, and she tried to hand me another chocolate chip, which I told her to give to my friend.  We walked away from the cashier marveling at the 2 dozen chocolate chip cookies we had.

 

            As we sat at the table, I realized God had provided the chocolate chip cookies I was to take to the prayer meeting. We had the best lunch as we rejoiced in God’s provision. I had my cookies for my prayer meeting and my friend had 12 cookies to share with her 6 grandkids, who were staying with her!

 

            God tells us do not worry or be anxious about anything, but by prayer and supplication make our requests to him. We really don’t have to worry, not when we allow God to fight our battles, especially for provision! Believe God when he said he will provide, for in that you allow him to work in marvelous ways!

           

 

Blessings and Complete Joy,

Mikki

 

Please check out our new Prayer Post page created for your personal & corporate prayer requests! God cares for you!

 

This blog is part of the ministry of Complete Joy and is published each Tuesday and Saturday, usually by noon Pacific Time. If you would like to visit our Web site for more encouragement and teaching, please go to: http://www.completejoy.org.

When God fights our battle!

Our last blog, discussed how we often use money and prayer to fight our battles and how that doesn’t work. Today we shall begin to explore what it looks like to have the Lord fight our battles.

 

The first thing we see is that God’s ways are unconventional, whether we are looking at Jericho, where men walked seven times around a city then blew a horn or where God sent a baby. God always works in unconventional ways. It is always his doing, not ours, always his ways, not ours because it is his battle, not ours.

 

Our God is an unconventional God!

 

Why is it that we always expect God to do as we do? Could it be that we think we always know what is right, what is best and what will win the battle? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. 

 

Yet when we allow the battle strategy to be made by God, it is like a well tailored suit which hugs the body and fits like a glove. It isn’t bulky and cumbersome to walk in like a suit that is purchased off the rack.

 

I look at my own life, which is not unlike Joseph’s life. Joseph saved his people from starvation. God could have rescued me from the childhood I had, where abuse and trauma were a daily occurrence. But God knew the greater plan. Because I had grown up in an abusive and traumatic environment, God knew I would seek Him out all the more, and as I did that, I acquired the skills and relationships that allowed me to help other “people of trauma” to find Him as well.

 

I look at my life, and I marvel at God’s battle plan, not from the perspective of poor me, but rather, WOW, me? How could God choose me to be a weapon in his hand to free his people?

I close with this: never be afraid to let the Lord of creation champion any battle you face. Look for the marvelous, miraculous and unconventional ways he brings you through to victory!

 

In subsequent blogs we will be looking further at the marvelous and miraculous ways of God!

 

Blessings and Complete Joy,

Mikki

 

Please check out our new Prayer Post page created for your personal & corporate prayer requests! God cares for you!

 

This blog is part of the ministry of Complete Joy and is published each Tuesday and Saturday, usually by noon Pacific Time. If you would like to visit our Web site for more encouragement and teaching, please go to: http://www.completejoy.org.

Who is really King?

 Who we put our faith in affects who fights our battles. If we put our faith in money, then we will throw every cent we have at what we are fighting for. If we believe that prayer will win the war, then we will spend every waking moment in prayer. Both are favorite weapons in the battles we face in the 21^st century. The church favors both of these weapons, but neither of them works very well.

 

Contrary to what we are often told, money doesn’t win the battle for souls, bringing people into the kingdom; only the glory of the Lord and a belief in Jesus does that. It takes sweat on our part as we take time to share who Christ is to us, which happens in our everyday lives. Likewise, prayer is treated far too often as if it were a candy machine: if you put in your coins (time in prayer), then you get what you want. This is more like spiritual manipulation than relationship with God, which is what prayer is all about.

 

I have nothing against money I appreciate being able to pay the light bill when it comes. And as a former prayer pastor, I believe in the power of prayer, but not to get what I want, rather, to sustain my relationship with God. 

 

I firmly believe when money is king, people aren’t willing to part with it and we don’t see the offering plates full. Likewise, prayer meetings will be attended by only a few when they are set to manipulate God.

 

When we make anything other than God king in our lives, as with money and prayer, we should not be surprised when God doesn’t use these resources to build the church. The church is to be built on Christ. The Lord Christ himself came to reveal God’s glory. Christ won the victory because he allowed God’s glory to be revealed.

              

We must battle to allow God to be King in our lives, fighting the fight of faith that He first established in Christ, allowing God to reign as King in our lives!

 

 

Blessings and Complete Joy,

Mikki

 

Please check out our new Prayer Post page created for your personal & corporate prayer requests! God cares for you!

 

This blog is part of the ministry of Complete Joy and is published each Tuesday and Saturday, usually by noon Pacific Time. If you would like to visit our Web site for more encouragement and teaching, please go to: http://www.completejoy.org.

Who is your King?

            I am often called to pray for someone who wants God to step in and heal a loved one. One time sticks in my mind even though it happened almost 20 years ago… My friend Marilyn asked me to come over and pray for her friend’s sick child as he lay in bed. As we talked, she told me about how this child’s mother, a strong Christian, had died only months before and then said she just couldn’t take it if this child died too. “Don’t tell me, this child is going to die,” she said. I didn’t say much after we finished praying. I think Marilyn knew that God had talked to me about the child, but she never asked about it until a month later when the child died. “You knew he was going to die,” she said. It was then I told her the words of comfort the Lord had spoken to me about the child: “This child will die, but take heart for he will be with me in heaven.”

 

            Marilyn struggled with God over her friend’s death and then, added to that, the child’s death, yet in the end her faith won out. God was still king in her life, even though she didn’t understand why her friend or her child had died.  So often things happen that test us in the area of allowing God to be our king.

           

            Early in my own Christian life, I struggled with praying for healing. I had a close friend at church who battled breast cancer three times, and the third time finally killed her. It was so tough walking with her family through that time, and when I think of it, I still cry because I miss my friend so much.

 

But great good came out of it. Several years later, when another friend, Bonnie, got cancer, I struggled for God’s will and allowing Him to be King.  I could pray and supported her, and not be concerned with her healing as I had been before. It is a joy to report that Bonnie beat breast cancer and is still enjoying life.  I don’t always like the outcome, but I know my King is fighting my battle and he knows what is best. We should trust God as Jesus did. All things are for God’s glory, not our pleasure.

 

We must battle to allow God to be King in our lives, fighting the fight of faith that he first established in Christ, allowing God to reign as King in our lives!

 

 

Blessings and Complete Joy,

Mikki

 

Please check out our new Prayer Post page created for your personal & corporate prayer requests! God cares for you!

 

This blog is part of the ministry of Complete Joy and is published each Tuesday and Saturday, usually by noon Pacific Time. If you would like to visit our Web site for more encouragement and teaching, please go to: http://www.completejoy.org.

My King is the Lord

Here is an amazing thought: if you allow God to be the King of your life, He will fight your battles. If God is not your kind, you will still expect some king to go out and fight your battles.  

 

1 Samuel 8:10 -18 speaks of the effects an earthly king has on a nation… As the king begin to assert control, the people will lose power and control. We see this issue so vividly in all forms of addiction. The most dangerous thing we can do it to make something or someone other than God our king. God is empowering, not overpowering. Our faith, not his oppressiveness, allows him to stay on the throne of our lives,

 

Just as with the people of Israel, we have a choice. We choose who is King in our lives.

 

God is King over my husband, over my home and all of my life. It hasn’t been easy; I fought to make my husband, rather then God, king until one day when the Lord showed me how human my husband was and the flaws I embraced in making him king in my life. It was a humbling experience that nearly cost me my marriage, but I have never been the same since. I was slowly trying to replace God with my wonderful husband like Indiana Jones tried to replace the statue with a bag of sand, but now I have a wonderful God and a wonderful husband and the freedom to enjoy both relationships in their proper perspective. The Lord has put my husband as a protective covering in my life, but he is not to be lord of my life.

 

    1SA 8:10 Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day.”

 

 

So… Who have you made King in your life? 

 

 

Blessings and Complete Joy,

Mikki

 

Please check out our new Prayer Post page created for your personal & corporate prayer requests! God cares for you!

 

This blog is part of the ministry of Complete Joy and is published each Tuesday and Saturday, usually by noon Pacific Time. If you would like to visit our Web site for more encouragement and teaching, please go to: http://www.completejoy.org.

Who fights your battles?

            My friend Judy has been struggling to understand why the battle belongs to the Lord. It is something we all struggle with at sometime in our life. 

Early in August, she told me she was at the hospital with her aunt, who had come to visit her. Her aunt, a Catholic nun, had been diagnosed with brain cancer. When she first called, she was crushed and wanted to go to war for her aunt… Later in August, Judy called to give an update and said the Lord had stopped her from going to war for her aunt, by reminding her of the Scripture passage that says, “the battle belongs to the Lord.”  She said that she has discovered that healing is God’s plan. He sent Jesus to defeat every illness, so we need to believe God and let Him win the battle over the disease! Our battle is to believe God no matter what, to have faith. Now that Diane has taken up her rightful place in the fight, fighting for her own faith, her peace and joy has returned.

We were never created to do battle as most of us think of it. When we go to battle in the traditional spiritual warfare sense of the word we become tired, and overwhelmed, which can lead to defeat of our faith, when the situation doesn’t have the outcome we prayed for. I saw these affects first hand, when the wife of a pastor died of cancer. The prayer warriors in the church were tired and broken from contending for her healing, words were given, prayer vigils were held and yet she died.  It was so devastating, even some on the pastoral staff questioned if prayer really works. It is very dangerous when we contend for healing instead of for our faith.

We need to keep our eyes focused on God who fights our battles; yes we can ask, if we really want to know what is going to happen, however in reality much of the time we want God to do our will.

My friend Marilyn many years ago called, asking me to come and pray with her, for her friend’s son, adding don’t tell me God is going to let him die. Well, you guessed it, as I prayed the Lord showed me he was going to die. My hands were tied, so I didn’t tell my friend, nor she didn’t ask until after his death. Marilyn’s faith had been broken by the time she called me to pray, because her focus was for healing not for God’s will through faith.

We are fortunate and can learn from our mistakes, Judy has, and she learned to contend for her faith, and let God handle her aunt’s healing, because the battle belongs to the Lord. Jesus knew this as he talked to his Father about the cross saying, “not my will but thy will be done.” He knew his responsibility was to contend for his faith, leaving the battle for the outcome, to God his King.

 

In our next blog we will continue this discussion as we look at: Who is your King!

 

Blessings and Complete Joy,

Mikki

 

Please check out our new Prayer Post page created for your personal & corporate prayer requests! God cares for you!

 

This blog is part of the ministry of Complete Joy and is published each Tuesday and Saturday, usually by noon Pacific Time. If you would like to visit our Web site for more encouragement and teaching, please go to: http://www.completejoy.org.