Spiritual Growth @ MindSay 
"O God!
Refresh and gladden my spirit.
Purify my heart.
Illumine my powers.
I lay all my affairs in Thy hand.
I will no longer be sorrowful and grieved;
I will be a happy and joyful being.
O God!
I will no longer be full of anxiety, nor will I let trouble harass me.
I will not dwell on the unpleasant things of life.
O God!
Thou art more friend to me than I am to myself.
I dedicate myself to Thee, O Lord."
--'Abdu'l-Baha
This is my new motto for life! From it i have created my own daily affirmation:
"O God! I lay all my affairs in Thy hand. I am a happy and joyful being. I dedicate myself to Thee, O Lord."
HARVEST TIME
I’m finding, that as I talk with other Christians, I can tell what sort of teachings they have been raised up on in their Christian walk. You can see what sort of theology they have, which “camp” they are from. For we have all come up through some kind of teachings or other. When we got saved we joined ourselves – or the Lord joined us – with some church or fellowship. Whatever camp they were in, whatever the doctrines of that group were, we absorbed them. We tended to be formed in their image, and to seek to fulfill their image of God and of Jesus.
Now this is okay, it’s not a bad thing. That’s the way it had to be in the time and season we were in. But it is a new time and a new season. It is time to leave much of this behind us. The seed had to be planted. The stalk and the leaves had to come up and grow. The heads had to be formed on the stalk. But it’s the grain in that full head that is important. At harvest time, the rest of it, -- the stalks and leaves and husks -- are chaff. It is gathered and burned – gotten rid of. Again, not because it’s bad. It was necessary, absolutely necessary. Without it there would be nothing to harvest! But you can’t make bread out of the chaff. At harvest time, it’s time to separate the grain from the chaff. And we are now in that new season, that new time, -- harvest time. A time to separate, to leave behind the old.
Does that mean the end is near? Well, is harvest the end of the matter? It is for the farmer– at least the end of the season. But it’s not the end of the matter for the grain. After it is harvested, it gets gathered into bins and then it gets ground into flour – a grinding, sifting process. (Ouch!) Then it may go into the oven and be baked into bread. (Ouch, again!) It is that bread that is the end of the process. (Almost!) In the bread, all those separate kernels have been merged into one homogeneous loaf. You can’t tell, anymore, which kernel is which, nor which of the different stalks they came from. They are no longer separate entities, they are one -- one loaf. When the grain was growing, the stalks, the leaves, and the husks kept the kernels separated from each other. That was fine for the time. But if you bring all that stuff along and try to grind it into flour, it’s not going to be fit to make bread out of! What I’m seeing is that all that stuff we grew up in is part of what keeps us separated, keeps us from the unity we long to be in.
So it is a delight to me when I see signs of the chaff falling away! I’ve noticed, I said, that when talking with other Christians, you can pick up on what sort of teachings they have come thru, what group or denomination they are from. But I’ve also noticed, especially when folks are praying together, that these differences tend to get ignored! They don’t hinder or stop the praying. The unity in the hearts to make contact with the Lord, to seek His will and His help, is what prevails. Glory! I hope we can all come to see what is essential in our walk, and what is not. God wants to bring us past these things that separate us, even if they were necessary for us to get here, to this place. “For we, being many, are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that bread.” As members, we all contribute to the body of Christ, to make it what it is. We make up the bread, the very same bread which we all need to partake of in the true communion – our fellowship with one another. The more chaff we leave behind, and the more grinding and sifting we submit to, the better that bread will be! [I Cor. 10:17 & I John 1:6 & 7] [In the Greek, the word for communion and the word for fellowship are the same word.]
At the risk of belaboring this point, let me switch to a different metaphor – but still dealing with what we partake of and what we share with one another, and still talking about maturity.
This new time, this new season, is a time, I sincerely believe, that God wants us to be weaned from the breast, weaned from milk. Even though it is the sincere milk of the word that has got us this far, it is time, now, to feed on meat. Time to feed on the solid food that belongs to those who are of full age. [Hebrews 5:12-14, & 1 Cor. 3:1] What?! Are you saying we should leave behind the word of God?! No, no, not at all. In fact, just the opposite. Bear with me here, and let’s look at the difference between milk and meat (solid food). I was blessed when someone pointed out that milk is food that has been previously digested. Previously digested by someone, or something else. This comes back to the teachings that we have received so far to date, to what we have absorbed so far. I’m grateful that, one time, the Lord showed me that a lot of my beliefs were just based on things I had heard or read. They weren’t things that He had showed me, not things that I was taught by His Spirit. There can be a difference between hearing something from men, and hearing something from God! When we are babes in Christ, we have not yet learned His voice. So we need to learn from teachers – hopefully ones that have heard His voice! What we learn about God, we get second-hand, from others. (Not all of it, thank God! -- but some of it.) We want to learn more about God, so we read books, listen to tapes, go to seminars, maybe even to Bible school. That’s all good – as far as it goes. It’s the natural way to do things: to study in the field of your interest, and listen to the experts. But God also has his own way, the way of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit, Jesus said, will teach us all things. If we have been fortunate, the books we have read, tapes we have listened to, etc., etc. have been done by people that had learned to hear from God. Still, all of that stuff is milk – stuff that has been previously eaten (received) by someone else, and then passed on to us. That’s fine, like the stalks and the leaves, for a time. It’s fine for that time when we need teachers. But there comes a time when we ought to be teachers. (That’s what it says!) That doesn’t mean that we should try to get “our teaching ministry” going! That we should start writing books, making tapes, offering classes. It just means that we ought to reach a stage in our growth where we can hear God’s voice ourselves. We ought to come into a level of maturity where our relationship with God is a close enough one that there is a direct interchange between His Spirit and ours!
Returning to I John and the topics of fellowship, and communion, it says there: “truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.” That’s the place, that place of an intimate relation with the Father and the Son, where we get fully fed, where we get solid food. And that’s the place from which we can feed others, if that’s what the Lord leads us to do. (Let me say that, yes, we can hear God, and He can speak to us, through others. Amen. But the point still holds that what is important, is that we hear from God Himself. We shouldn’t be content to settle for just being blessed by someone else’s relationship with God.)
So if God has opened our eyes to see the difference between the wheat and the chaff, let us be willing to let go of the chaff. And let’s not let the chaff that we may see in others distract us from fellowship with the precious seed within. We do need to move on. We do have a very high calling – nothing less than the calling to be members of the Royal Priesthood – to be ruling and reigning with Him. He is getting us ready. Let’s go! Let all things be new, let old things pass away!
Glory!
I am on a journey, a journey I have been preparing for all of my life.
I am seeking complete and total spirituality. Spirituality goes way beyond merely attending church, but a transformation within your soul. A growth process of learning to live up to your fullest potiential, of seeking guidance beyond yourself. Learning to listen to your intuition and knowing that this is Spirit talking to you. Sometimes it is merely a whisper, an urge or a desire to be more, to be complete and to find wholeness.
Our earthly bodies are only temporary, but our soul lives on. We are here to learn and to grow, and to seek and learn to accept the pure and uncondional love of our Heavenly Father.
I am excited by the transformations that are happening within. I feel the presence of something more, something much bigger then life as we know it. I truly believe with all of my heart in things unseen. I believe in the Spirit, the Spirit of God. He is working in my life, and for this I am grateful beyond words.
As my husband and I resumed our bible study last night, I could feel a presence in the room. I could feel my husband and I coming closer together as we worshipped in love, with love.
This is a journey worth taking....join me!
I made a promise I couldn’t keep.
Some things got hard in life
And I made scars that were really deep.
You asked me how I was doing
I told you I was great
But when I smiled and said that
I thought my heart was going to break.
My thoughts were suicidal
My goal in life was death
Life no longer appealed to me
Demons screamed inside my head
One night I tried to do it
Just get rid of all my pain
The night was cold and dark
And it began to rain
I wanted to swallow the pills so bad
To stop the noise inside my head
But then I chickened out
And went safely back to bed
Sometimes I want to kick myself
For not ending all my heartache
I get so mad sometimes
And feel like such a fake
I wish I could be real for once
Not pretending all the time
I wish that I could be speaking truth
When I say I’m fine
All I live for now
Is for the day to end
I wish that I could tell the truth
To you, my closest friend
____________________________________________________________
before i became a true christian this poem was the absolute truth. i hated life. every second of every day seemed to drag on and on for hours. i would tell friends nothing was wrong. even though it was a complete lie. but alot of them believed me. except for one person. my best friend Aryana. i wanted to tell her the truth but couln't bear the thought of her knowing my darkest secret. but it seems she already knew just by spending time with me, she was able to figure it out. she ended up inviting me to go to a home meeting with her called: Liberty Tree. at first i thought it was weird. with all the people dancing around singing to God, and speaking in a language that no one undersands (speaking in tongues) i sriously thougt everyone had lost it. and at first i thought "what have i gotten myself into???" but at the end of the meeting. this woman came up to me and gave me a big hug. she told me she was glad i had come and that she hoped to see me at the meeting again the next week. and i was thinking: "lady you must be on crack or somthing! there is NO WAY IN HELL i'm ever coming back to this nut house!" But strangly enough the next week, Aryana asked me if i wanted to go to the meeting again. i was actually open to the idea.....(which is def. a God thing)
so i went. this time however we had some visitors for our meeting. their names were : Jamie, Tayler, Naomi, Kori, and Brittanie. they were from a ministry team called: The A-team. (which is like a group of people who go all over the country to do the work of ministry for God's kingdom) They fit in extremely well at Liberty Tree. it wasn't long b4 they were all up dancing around,shouting, singing, and speaking in tongues. i sat on the couch feeling a little scketched out by all the noise. Aryana sat next to me for moral support. then to my shock, all the A-teamers' collapsed on the floor histerically LAUGHING!!!!!! i was so surprised, and i thought someone was going to yell at them for being "unreaverent" or something....but no one spoke against it. through their tears (from laughing so hard) the girls on the floor looked up at us and invited us to join them. NOW i SERIOUSLY thought they had lost their marbles. so i sat and wached as they once again collapsed into fits of giggles. and while i wached them, i couldn't believe myself but i started laughing too! it was impossible not to! just looking at them wiggling on the floor laughing so hard it brought them tears, was enough to make me fall of the couch in a fit of giggles. we layed there for about a half an hour trying to compose ourselves. and when we finally did. it was almos time for us to go home. but before we left, all the girls from the A-Team proficide over Aryana and me. (which is like when God gives a person a word or a vision to speak over someone) when they spoke over me i thought it was all fake. this couldn't be real.... these people don't even know me at all. i almost fell off the chair when they started praying over me. it was like God had told them the secrets in my life. and then he sent a blessing to me. and he told me my light would never burn out. and to me that one sentence meant more to me then anything anyone could have said to me. we left that night and i couldn't believe what had happened. i was suddenly SO pumped up for God. the next few weeks were awsome. we continued to go back to Liberty Tree. i hadn't seen the A-teamers in two weeks because the had continued on with their tour. then we heard of a meeting called: "17 days of desperation" that was going to be going on about an hour and a half away. and the A-Team was going to be there! the 17 days thing was a time to cry out to God and to prayer for the things going on in the world. we went and it was SO invigorating! pretty soon i was up with everyone else singing , and shouting praise to God. and we got to felloship some more with our A-Team friends! every night, the meeting would start out with worship, then if anyone felt led to share a word of testimony they were invited to go up to the microphone and share. well since God had done such an amazing work in my life, Aryana, and the A-Teamers all tried to get me to go up. and even though i wanted to, i was extremely shy and there was about a 60 or 70 people in the room. i was just too self-concious to go up and tell my life story with them. but after 4 or 5 days, God really began pressing on my heart to go up and share. was shaking so badly all the way up to the front of the room and i was so gratful for the older man that was up there at the microphone, because he put his arm around me and without that support, i probably would have collapsed onto the floor. so i shared my story with that whole group of people i went into detail about the things i had been invoved in that year. i had released information i had never shared even with my closest friends. and as i walked back to my seat,. i felt about a hundred pounds of pressure being lifted of my shoulders. and i felt like i could suddenly fly. it was so hard to say goodbye to my A-Team friends. they had done so much for me and there was no way i could have repayed them. but i still get talk to them online sometimes. so it works our wonderfuly. Aryana and i have now become closer then ever, and we make sure we keep eachother out of trouble. we still go to Liberty Tree, and have a grate time too. i'm so glad for God putting a friend like her in my life. without her, i probably wouldn't still be here. so if your reading this hun! THANK YOU!!! I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!! DON'T EVER FORGET THAT!!!!!
~Emily~