Parakalein

I listened to AndyAndrews www.andyandrews.com at Influence & Impact Summit <michael@michaelhyatt.com> going on thru Oct 13th.

He stated that "Discipline was acting in a way regardless of how you feel to get or accomplish what you want to accomplish".

I was in church yesterday stockbridgeucc.org and heard a message from pastor Brent that focused on Psalm 22 which expresses the feelings inside of the human Jesus as he was dying on the cross.  He said, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me".  While he knew the history and knew God was good he could make no earthly sense of this feeling of abandonment but he knew he had to honor it which is to speak honestly about it.  A couple of years ago a series of events happened in my life that had me feeling abandoned, hopeless, deserted and depressed.  I was looking at just one thing, my feelings.

In verse 23/4, a remarkable thing occurs which I think shifted Jesus form his feelings to the goal of accomplishing what he came to do: "to give his life a ransom for many" (more on that in a later blog).
V.23/4 "All of you that fear the Lord, praise him!...for He has not despised or abhorred the affliction of his own, neither has he his his face from him, but when he cried out he heard so my focus is to praise God".  He shifted his focus from what he was feeling which he had to honor to what he was disciplining himself to do, the task of giving himself so others might live and learn the secret of discipline.  He shifted to as Hebrews 12"2 tells us "the joy that was set before hime while enduring the cross its affliction and pain. I believe that on the cross in the afflcition and in the feeling of abandonment, Jesus shifted to the comfort of the much shorter but focused Psalm 23.  He literally said in the inner regions and from the vision of his soul to, Yeas I feel abandoned but what I KNOW is that "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want, He leads me in my mind the choice central of my will to green pastures, still waters,...He restores my focus...though I walk through the valley of death and feel abandoned I know it is not true for the rod of their affliction gone bad turned to good and your staff the sign of the shepherds care, they comfort me.  You prepare a table before me (so in between me and my enemies) in the presence of my enemies (death, Rome, Religious zealots, fearful deserters, quiet onlookers, people of helplessness and hopelessness)  my cup overflows surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
forever!  Now that is a shift.

I have learned the hard way that that shift from the feeling of loss, misunderstanding, abandonment, hopeless ness, helplessness are true feelings that need to be honored but they do not need to direct our lives.  We can shift.  God can help us to shift to focusing on the discipline of doing what God has called us to do regardless of anything we feel.

God is good.  And His Goodness transforms the not good into something good for us, in us and for the world.

Praising God is not an act ewe do because God needs our praise but because our praise shifts our focus form our feelings to the fact of God's eternal presence in the pain through the pain into any pain that comes turning it all with creative genius into goodness and mercy that follows us all the days of our living

Thanks be to God.