The matter of the meat and the meat of the matter

The matter of the meat:  Today was another bargain day at the grocery store.  I got about 20 packs of discounted ground meat and 3 packs of discounted pork chops.  God surely must have someone in mind for me to help.


The meat of the matter:  God loves me and wants me to quit being a brat. 


First, on Sunday I hear Pastor Allan's message on the Treasures of my Heart.  And no, the Treasures in my heart are not of God.  My heart is filled with so much anger and bitterness.  I think I get to the root and pull and chop away yet, there comes another sprout that quickly grows and then I blow.


Secondly, CW pointed me to his post on Sunday that I overlooked.  To quote him, "So I went to prayer in that mindset, and the first thing I realized is that I don’t have the first grip on what my sin means to God.  David looked at it in Psalms 32 at 3 levels.  The first is “sin”, which means an offense.  Doesn’t sound all that bad, does it?  The second is “iniquity”, which means perversity, or moral evil; a bit darker there, huh.  Add in the fact that both translations involve the concept of punishment being involved.  The third word David uses is “Transgression”, which at its core means revolt against God.

I don’t know about you, but while my mind usually looks at confession from a “sin” point of view, and occasionally from an “iniquity” level if what I’m confessing is “bad enough”, I don’t often find myself looking at it seriously from the “transgression” level.  Thus I’m learning that the first part of any confession is going to have to be a prayer to see my failings from God’s perspective, and not my own."


I tell you, CW's post just made my heart hurt. 


Thirdly, my friend Candi pointed to Pastor Bubba's post on repentence called "Get Over It".  Again, God spoke to me,  "If you don’t get over it, you never will; Duh. One of the things we get hung up over is being upset over someone or something. There are several tried and failed ways of getting over it and there is one way the Bible reveals.  READ HIS BLOG TO GET THOSE TRIED AND FAILED METHODS.

There are others, but what is the one way to get over being upset that the Bible reveals? One simple word, repent. Simple, but not easy. Repent means you make a course change because you have gotten off course. One of the first things you learn in driver education is that you cannot keep your hands still on the steering wheel. You must always be making slight corrections because the car will drift. If you don’t correct it immediately, and carefully, the drift will put you in the ditch or into the path of an oncoming vehicle, a head-on path. After you learn how to do this you don’t even notice it much, but you are constantly making slight course corrections. This is what it means to repent.

Repentance is constantly making corrections because you have your eyes on the road (the Way, the Truth, the Life), and your mind on the destination (Colossians 3:1-4).  In the Bible everything leads to repentance; God’s kindness to you leads to repentance (Romans 2:4), godly sorrow leads to repentance (2 Corinthians 7:10), miracles are for the purpose of pointing you to repent (Matthew 11:20ff), instead of saying “Wow, did you see that,” we are to say, “Woe is me for I am undone…” Current events are to lead us to repent (Luke 13:1-9). Good, bad, or boring, like driving, we are to be constantly making corrections. Repent. This will get you over it.

I need to be like Santa, make a list and check it twice.  I need God to reveal my heart to me, to show me what ALL is in there that displeases Him.  I need to see the treasures in my heart from God's perspective, not my own ( I can sugar coat them) and then I need to repent.

While messages like these can feel like a heavy weight on my chest, they are what God uses to get my attention, to speak to me and to minister to me. 

Last night, I avoided God.  You see, I want Him to remove my mother out of my life, I want her gone forever and yet I feel like He punishes me because she is still alive and in my house.  I cannot possibly take 20 more years of her living with me.  

As I am writing this, God brought to my mind about a time of prayer in a Bible study group. When it came time for prayer requests, I was sharing about my boss, not the current one but one that had a Napolean complex.  Having been sexually abused, I do not like certain people to touch me and he just gave me the creeps.  Anyway, one of the ladies asked if I had been praying for him and I said no, because I did not want God to change me but to change my boss.

I avoided God last night because if I pray, He will do a work in me.  You see, I do not want to love my mother.  I do not want to need her, I just want her dead and out of my life.  If I pray and seek God's will, He may bring about me loving her and right now, I DO NOT WANT TO!! She does not deserve my love.

I know, you would think at my age, I would be over my past.  I really do want to be over my past but if it entails loving my mother, I think I may just have to keep carrying my past around.