Holy Spirit

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall…..

~ Good Grief! by Shelley Brandon ~ 2 Comments

Sometimes I Cry by Jason Crabb

 

Hosea 2:14, 15

14 “Therefore I am now going to allure her;
I will lead her into the wilderness
and speak tenderly to her.
15 There I will give her back her vineyards,
and will make the Valley of Achor (trouble) a door of hope.
There she will respond (sing) as in the days of her youth,
as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

I came to Guatemala in search of Jesus in action.  I guess that’s the best way to describe it.  Missions trips were something that Larry and I had always planned to do “someday”, but our “someday” was cut short.  I first heard about this particular mission project last year when we went to church with Jeff & Amy Brandon, my brother-in-law and sister-in-law.  Something in my spirit perked up when Pastor Jim was talking about it and my heart whispered back, “next year”.  When next year arrived and we were moving to Allendale anyway, it was time!

As I said, I came to Guatemala in search of Jesus in action, or the real Jesus.  The Jesus who got dirty and sweaty and reached out to help the ones in need.  Something else happened along the way.  I came face to face with myself.  I didn’t care for what I saw.

Dan, the mission director, asked us the very first night if we loved Jesus or if we were in love with Jesus.  Being in love is so much more than just loving.  When you are in love your thoughts never stray from the object of your affections.  You are consumed with them.  You long to be with them every moment that you are apart.  I love chocolate, but I’m not in love with chocolate.  I had to admit that I treated my relationship with Jesus more like chocolate; it was there when I was hungry for it but otherwise I just left it alone.  My relationship with chocolate was probably stronger than my relationship with Jesus.  Ouch.

What I found in Guatemala was a woman who knew all the right things to say, knew the words to all the right songs, a woman who talked the talk but couldn’t walk that path because deep inside she was still full of resentment.  How could I profess to be there serving the Savior that I love while my spirit was still gray with resentment because my husband was not healed of his brain cancer on my side of heaven.  How human, broken, and selfish that is!  God did not take my husband.  He restored and perfected my husband and brought him home to glory.  My life is still so full of undeserved blessings that I take for granted every day.  Even simple things like safe water.  I do think about that now when I go to the refrigerator for water that is filtered of even the chemicals used to make it safe so that it tastes good.  A bathroom that can handle toilet paper and has a roof and door and seat….  A large house, not huge but compared to what we saw there it is a mansion!  I have 4 sons that I am so proud of.  Three of them have grown into amazing men.  School for them wasn’t an impossible dream.  They are all paying for their own college.  Drew, Wade, and Scott… I am so proud of you.  I love you more than you will ever know.  I fall short in so many ways as your mother, but my love for you will never fade!  The fourth is Noah, a gift to my loneliness.  I see bits of each of his older brothers and his daddy in him everyday.  I have the love of my husband’s family as well as my own.  I have a steady income. I have the privilege of worshiping God openly without fear of persecution.

All this and more, and yet I still held so much resentment.

I set out to court my Savior, to fall in love with him in the days we were down there.  I found Jesus in the work.  I found Jesus smiling in the brown faces that were overjoyed to see us, to have someone care enough to reach out to them.  I found my own heartbeat again.  I found joy in the trust of a little girl who only wanted me to love her and hold her. I found that I could leave a bit of my heart behind and still be overflowing with the love of God.

 

The last evening before the flight home we had devotions that were a bit more intense than they’d been so far… and they’d been intense.  That evening found me kneeling on the floor with my head buried in my arms on my chair, a river of tears that could not be stopped wracking my body with soul shattering sobs.  My only thought was, “I’m so sorry, please forgive me.”  That phrase rang out inside me over and over.  My Jesus was there with his arms open, waiting patiently for the resentment to flow away from my heart, whispering to my spirit, “It’s time, let it go.”

I went to Guatemala to find Jesus.  Jesus didn’t need to be found, he was with me all the time.  I had to go to Guatemala to lose myself and fall in love with the One who saved me.

This drawing is an image that captures my week in Guatemala. God promises us that He catches every tear and He gives us beauty for ashes. The roses are the ones that Heidi wanted me to paint on the walls of her new home. I will be painting them on the wall in my new home as well.

 

Restoring Places Long Devastated

~ Good Grief! by Shelley Brandon ~ Leave a comment

Until the Whole World Hears

March 6, 2012

Daily Devotions written by Shelley Brandon, Grief and Encouragement Coach

Isaiah 61: 4 – 6

4 They will rebuild the ancient ruins
and restore the places long devastated;
they will renew the ruined cities
that have been devastated for generations.
5 Strangers will shepherd your flocks;
foreigners will work your fields and vineyards.
6 And you will be called priests of the LORD,
you will be named ministers of our God.
You will feed on the wealth of nations,
and in their riches you will boast.

The village that we worked in building houses is situated on land that was once a thriving but now abandoned plantation.  Few of the original concrete buildings remain.  Anyone who had been fortunate enough to claim one was blessed indeed.  Most of the dwellings were mere shanties thrown together with rusted scrap metal.  No light, no window, a blanket for a door, dirt the only floor.  The floors were swept every morning by women who carefully tended their meager homes, grateful for some type of shelter from the elements.

The homes that we built for them were smaller than my bedroom.  One 8’x10’ room with one window, a plastic skylight in the center of the metal roof, a real metal door, cement floor, dry-walled inside and cement board with stucco on the outside made a home.  A metal awning in front for a covered porch nearly doubled the living space.  Most of their days are spent outdoors and this awning provided both shelter and shade.  This modest building was more than most of these families has ever known.  The simple gifts we brought along for the families were for them more extravagant and overwhelming than any Christmas I’ve ever experienced.  Tears of gratitude and joy filled their eyes as their new homes were dedicated to them.  Tears of overwhelming humility filled ours.

As each home was dedicated, the team that built the dwelling went inside with the family, the mission directors and a Guatemalan Pastor named Hermanos Jesus (does it get any cooler than that???  Sir Jesus!)  The other teams surrounded the house in a human chain of prayer.  As Hermanos Jesus presented each family with the Gospel of Jesus we all prayed for the Holy Spirit to break through the bond of Mayan religion that had been co-mingled with Catholicism into a warped and twisted belief system that had glass-topped coffins in the churches with a wax Jesus inside.  In two of the houses that bond was broken!! In another it was cracked as the mother committed her life to Jesus in spite of the controlling fear that had been instilled into her children by her absent husband. The fourth family was not yet ready to make the commitment, but did not outright reject our Savior asking that the evangelism team come back to talk with them more.  This evangelism team held discipleship meetings in the village every week.  They would not be forgotten.

We weren’t prepared for the spiritual battle that we’d been warned about.  Everything from the noise of the village children, dogs fighting with each other near us that had been napping together earlier, loud music from somewhere that had not been heard all week, a Pepsi truck driving back and forth on the narrow dirt road trying to sell his sodas to the villagers and some guy with a P.A. system on his truck verbally running his own commercial for whatever it was that he was trying to sell.  Anything that could distract us from our prayer vigil was used against us, even the weather.  The only rain we encountered all week fell in those few hours.  Our mission for the eternal destination of the wonderful people was under attack.  When the distractions became too much, we sang.  Any song we could remember the words to we sang, from Jesus Loves Me to Revelation Song.  I have never been so spiritually exhausted as I was when we were finished but I have never been so content in the moment either.

To Be Continued…….Image

Lord, can you just hold me?

~ Good Grief! by Shelley Brandon ~ 3 Comments

Epiphany! 

1. a Christian festival, observed on January 6, commemorating the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles in the persons of the Magi; Twelfth-day.

2. an appearance or manifestation, especially of a deity.

3. a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.

1 Peter 1:3-12

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

10 Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, 11 trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. 12 It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.

January 6, 2009…it was a “normal” Tuesday afternoon.  Larry was done with chemo and radiation, and we were hopeful that he was improving.  The steroids that he was still on made it difficult for him to sleep though so Larry had decided to go to bed and try to nap.  I was upstairs in the office getting caught up on the book work and trying to keep the dogs quiet so Larry could rest.  I didn’t have the slightest clue as to what was happening in our bedroom just below me while I worked.

About 30 to 40 minutes later Larry came up the stairs.  I was so disappointed for him because this meant that sleep had once again eluded my exhausted husband.   However, when he sat down in his desk chair and turned toward me I was instantly alert.  Something had happened. His face was red, but glowing.  There were tears flowing down his face.  I’ve never seen such amazing humbleness and awe.  While he was lying down God had come to Larry and gave him his own Epiphany.

Larry told me that as he’d been laying in our bed he physically felt God’s hand under his own elbow, holding him up.  Larry said that he had felt as if he were lying on water and God’s hand was keeping him afloat.  God told my husband not worry anymore about the company that we owned, HE would be taking care of it.  God also told Larry that everything was going to turn out just the way it was supposed to.

I don’t remember the exact words anymore, just the look on Larry’s face ~ the look of all-consuming love.  For days afterward Larry would say, “I don’t want to lose this feeling.  How can anyone experience what I did and not be changed?”

Eventually the glow left and the nightmares of his disease returned in the form of a seizure while driving us home and more surgery followed by more chemo.  The glow returned weeks before Larry’s death when he could no longer communicate with us.  Instead he communicated with angels who were sent to comfort him.

Everything did turn out as it was supposed to of course, just not how the rest of us wanted it to.  How comforting to me it is though, that my beloved husband experienced moments that I can only dream of.  Moments that I cherish.  Moments when I could not comfort him, but God could.

We are never ever alone.

Todd Agnew ~ Sit With You A While