Trusting God in difficult times

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about trusting in God. Now a couple of weeks later I am even more aware  how hard it can be to trust Him in difficult times. I am having a battle to trust God at the moment. I know I trust Him more than I have done before but at the same time I am still anxious at times about the future.

I am still without a full time job, and have to depend on state hand-outs to help me make ends meet. I want to support myself fully not rely on others. I find myself worrying at times about the situation. At other times I trust God and know totally that He will look after me. I have wonderful friends and family who would not see me in desperate want and I am so grateful for them. But still at times I worry and get anxious.  I obviously don’t trust God as much as I could.

This has led me to think through why I don’t trust Him. I believe it all stems from not really knowing Him. Oh, I like to think I know Him. And indeed I know a lot about Him on an intellectual level. I’ve read His Word, repeatedly over the years. But there is a part of my heart that does not believe what I have read. I find myself wondering if God really will help me with getting the right job. Does He really have a plan for my life?  Does He really love me as much as I think He does? I have a lot of ‘what if’ questions flying around my head.

At times like this I have to make a choice. I can choose to believe what I read and what I know as an act of my will. I read back over things I have learned before. I look at things that inspire me. I look in my prayer journal and see again what I said about how God has spoken to me before. The first two pictures on this page are examples of when I started doodling in a previous time of difficulty. God spoke powerfully to me through both pictures. It is a little like what Joshua did in Joshua 4. They built a memorial with stones.

“When the whole nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the Lord said to Joshua, ² ‘Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe, ³ and tell them to take up twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, from right where the priests are standing, and carry them over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight.’
⁴ So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, ⁵ and said to them, ‘Go over before the ark of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, ⁶ to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, “What do these stones mean?” ⁷ tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel for ever.’
⁸ So the Israelites did as Joshua commanded them. They took twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, as the Lord had told Joshua; and they carried them over with them to their camp, where they put them down. ⁹ Joshua set up the twelve stones that had been in the middle of the Jordan at the spot where the priests who carried the ark of the covenant had stood. And they are there to this day.” Joshua 4:1-9

My pictures are like those stones. They help me remember how God helped me before and give me hope that He will help me once more. And then I remember that when God helped me before I stood and looked at Him. I didn’t look to the problem. I looked to His light and His love and gradually I see again with the eyes of my heart that God is in full control.

For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11

Drinking from the Well of Living Water

We've been thinking about Living Water at our church recently. We've been seeking God's presence with us as a Church, and worship has been amazing. We're drawing closer together and close to God. But also we are starting to think about how we can drink the living water at home, at work and every minute of our lives, not just when we are in church.

I am preaching on this subject on May 25th so it has been especially on my mind. It is also a subject I have thought a lot about over the years. During my training for Church Army I spent a summer reading about prayer. Gradually, I had realised that it was a subject about which I was not taught much after I became a Christian. I was reading around the subject to try to learn more for myself but also I wanted to learn more about how to pass on what I know to others.


You see, I didn't realise for ages after coming to faith that other Christians often had what they called a 'Quiet Time', a time of spending time in prayer and Bible reading. No-one spent time teaching me about private prayer and it started to bother me. What bothers me most is that we are not discipling people on how to spend time with God in private when they come to faith. We teach them doctrine, we show them how to worship in Church, we teach them standards of living that are appropriate for a Christian but do we ever teach them how to sit in God's presence when alone at home in their rooms?

For me it is the times with God on my own that refresh me as much as those in a group setting. being a Christian isn't about learning rules about how to do this or that. It is a relationship with a living person, with a God who is longing for intimacy with us. Jesus spoke of living water when speaking to the woman at the well in John 4.

"Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.’...Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’  " John 4:10, 13-14

Sometimes I still feel as if I thirst for this living water. I am only now after 30 years of faith learning to surrender to Father God and develop a truly intimate relationship with Him. I am learning to drink this living water and am aware of it welling up within me.

We are all different and relate to God in different ways. I now want to explore how we express our personality in prayer, in our alone times with God. I want to explore different ways of praying and also learn more about how we can disciple those who come to faith more effectively in developing a relationship with God rather than a set of rules to follow.

I welcome any input or ideas about this subject. We can all learn so much from each other.

Trusting in God

It's been a long while since I blogged anything. Two of my last three blog post were about how Father God was asking me to let go of pride, expectations and independance (Emotionally Blackmailing God and Letting Go). In the time I have been quiet here on the blog, God has really been teaching me this a lot.

Going it alone
I sunk into depression and anxiety over my future rather than trusting my heavenly Father. I think it was also a reaction to the difficulties of the previous two years. A lot of really tough stuff happened and I got emotionally exhausted, added to which I am in a time of long term unemployment so worries about the future got mixed in with it all.

 I got to the point where I couldn't do it myself anymore. My mind and body were shutting down almost, crying out for rest. I was trying to be strong, trying to sort out my future, trying to serve Him in my own strength. The more I tried to do it alone, the more I failed and the more exhausted I became. As I failed my pride took a battering. I felt ashamed that I wasn't strong enough to cope. I expected huge amounts from myself and hated myself when I failed.

Learning from our mistakes
But God has really used this to teach me as I work through it. So often God will use our hard times if we let Him. God was trying to teach me to
lay down my independence, my pride and expectations of Him and expectations of myself. I am now learning to let go of this, rather than just thinking about letting go. And the difference is amazing.

My whole outlook is changing. I am looking to God to tell me when to move forward and when to rest. At the moment He is saying rest, so I am resting in Him. In day to day life this means, trying to be aware of His presence all the time (I recommend Practising the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence to study more about this, which can be found to download for free on the internet), and every time I start berating myself to do better I stop those thoughts and remind myself that God loves me and has told me to wait and rest, to learn to simply be, not do.

Letting Go for real

Surrender pride, independence & false expectations.
Jump into Father God's  arms.
It is the way to peace and freedom. 

It also means not getting cross with myself when I fail to let go. It means learning to forgive myself for not being perfect, and for failing. It is all a part of letting go of pride and realising that I am still loved by God if I admit to being a sinner. In fact I am learning that the times I am closest to Father are when I am being truly honest about who and what I am. Coming to Him and saying 'Father God, have mercy on me, I am a sinner' and acknowledging all my faults to Him pleases Him. I am forgiven and can experience His touch once more.




Freedom
In fact the more I lay down the pride, expectations and independence the more close to God I am and the more freedom I experience. The more I try to go it alone the more captive I become. Surrendering all to Father, through Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit really does bring freedom, not just in name, but in experience too.

Letting Go

Tregonings Ope

www.colinsart.org.uk  ©Colin B

In my post before last, Emotionally blackmailing God, I shared about how Father God had asked me to surrender to Him three things if I were to learn how to trust. God spoke to me very clearly through the painting on the left, "Tregonings Ope" by Colin Brown (www.colinsart.org.uk). On my way to being out in the openness of trusting God with my life I had to place pride, expectations and independence into the rubbish bins on my way out.

Letting go of pride and independence

Since then I have been working on letting go of these things. I have managed to let go partly I think but still have much more to learn. I'm realising just how independent I am. I want to do it all my way, have what I want when I want and how I want. I want to be in complete control. Boy, am I learning an awful lot about the kind of person I am. Pride takes over and I don't want to admit to myself what I am really like even though admitting the truth leads to freedom. Both my pride and my independence keep me thinking I can do it all alone, that I should do it all alone. It makes me angry that I have to accept help from others while I don't have enough money to live on. Although I have more to learn about letting go of pride and independence I feel I have made progress in the area. I am learning to depend on others more. I am learning not be proud. 

Expectations or expectancy

I looked at this subject nearly 3 years ago in a post called expectations or expectancy and I find my thoughts coming back to the subject again now. Expectations carry with them a sense of burden. When I have expectations about myself, other people or God I am looking at that person always trying to judge whether they have met the requirements. I am looking at them with a judgemental eye. 

I realise now as I type this that I have not dealt at all with my false expectations of God. This is one of the major things I am learning at the moment. I have false expectations about what my life should be like, what should happen to me and what God should do for me. I am so angry that God has not done for me what I want Him to. I put expectations onto God and  then got angry when He didn't live up to them. 

What I need is to have a sense of expectancy about what God will do. If I have a sense of expectancy about someone, myself and God included, I don't have a list of dos and don't that must be met. I am looking through the eyes of grace and allow the person to be all they can and all they are meant to be. I am looking to make the best of what happens. 

Letting go

So can I let go of my expectations of God. I am expecting Him to do things He never promised to do (i.e. give me what I want, when I want and how I want). Can I allow God to be God and to look to Him through the eyes of expectancy, trusting that whatever happens He will be true to who He is. Trusting that He is love, mercy and grace. Trusting that He will always be with me just as He promised. 

This is my prayer for myself over the coming weeks - that I may learn to let go of my expectations about God and looking to Him instead with the eyes of expectancy. For this is just how He looks at me. He looks at me with the eyes of expectancy not expectations, with eyes of infinite love and grace. 

Broken Dreams, Kintsugi and Jesus

Ars Electronica / Foter / CC BY-N

I recently gave a sermon at my church, Coastlands Church, in Peacehaven. As I planned it I started out thinking about veneers. I was thinking about how in churches we often put a veneer over what we are really thinking and feelings. In the course of my research I came across websites talking about the Japanese art of Kintsugi, or Kintsukuroi. This ancient Japanese art fascinated me immediately.

Kintsugi (Japanese: golden joinery) or Kintsukuroi (Japanese: golden repair) is the Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with a lacquer resin sprinkled with powdered gold. The beauty of this pottery captured me straight away. It spoke not just to me as a thing of beauty but the spiritual message that goes with it seemed to shout off the page to me.

We all go through hard times. We all suffer. I have found that sometimes going through those hard times has left me feeling like broken pottery.  As the Psalmist says,

"I am forgotten as though I were dead; I have become like broken pottery". Psalm 31:12 (NIV) 

tinowa / Foter / CC BY-NC-SAC-ND

My guess is that we have all felt like that at times. But at those times it is good if we can remember another truth from Scripture, a truth found in Isaiah 64:8

Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.

I realised that if we surrender the broken pieces of our lives to the Heavenly Potter then something beautiful happens. He will put us together again with gold, the gold of His healing, His Holy Spirit.

This is what Hannah, the prophet Samuel's mother, did in 1 Samuel. She poured out her heart, with all its broken dreams to the Lord, and He heard her pain and He put her back together again with gold.

Surrendering the broken pieces of our lives is hard - it is oh so hard, But worth it, oh so worth it!  I have found this to be true in my life. I pray it will be so in yours too.

If you would like to hear the full sermon you can do so either on YouTube, or via my website,  http://www.lyndaalsford.com.

God bless you

Emotionally blackmailing God?

© Natelle - Fotolia.com

If God is waiting to catch me 

why can I not jump into His arms?

This post was originally going to be called 'training in trust' after a friend replied to one of my Facebook status updates "It seems the Lord is training you to the enth degree in trust!". I agreed with her through gritted teeth at the time. She is right of course. So many of our difficult situations are opportunities to trust God more. So often I fail. My last year has been really tough and I have spent a lot of time being anxious. I have become gradually aware over the last 12 months that God is trying to get me to learn trust. He would like me to trust Him for all my needs and not to worry. I read passages like the one below, Matthew 6: 25ff.

25 ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life[e]?

28 ‘And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you – you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

When I read Scripture like this I realise now I often read it in a condemnatory tone to myself. I heard the 'do not worry' of this passage and the 'do not fear'  of other passages as a reprimand spoken in a sharp voice. I heard these words spoken to me through a filter of my fear of God's displeasure. But the truth is so different. A loving parent doesn't usually shout 'don't be scared' at their child. They know that to calm the child one must speak in a soothing voice, a gentle voice that aims to ease away fear with love. 1 John 4:18-19 says,

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

19 We love because he first loved us.

As I look back over my year I see that God's loving response to my fear is to show me love, to speak gently and soothingly to me.  And still I am filled with anxiety at times. My question is why? Why am I still anxious and not able to trust as I would like to? I have spent a while thinking about this and praying about it too. What is stopping me from giving up worry?

I think one reason, if I honest, is that I hope to achieve something through my worry and anxiety. In the above passage from Matthew, in v27 Jesus says, "Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?" . He knew that we try to achieve something by worrying. That is what I am doing. I want to keep control of my situation. I don't want to let go to God, or anyone else. My response to the lack of control is to worry - i hope to change the situation by worrying. How do I think worry will change the situation? It is because through worry I try to emotionally blackmail God into doing what I want Him to do and to do it quickly. "Look what is happening, Lord. I am anxious. I can't sleep. You must do something so I don't feel like this. Don't you care?" This morning in  my prayer time I realised this is what I was trying to do.

Tregonings Ope
www.colinsart.org.uk  ©Colin B

Then I remembered something God said to me while I was at the Church Army Gathering in April. I was preparing for a workshop led by Church Army Evangelist Colin Brown who is based in Cornwall. He was talking to us about Faith and Art, and how God uses art to speak to us. Some of Colin's artwork was on the wall. One picture(the one to the right) spoke deeply to me. It is called "Tregonings Ope". See more of Colin's work by going to www.colinsart.org.uk. There are three bins in an enclosed passageway (called an Ope in Cornwall) that is leading out to the harbour in Falmouth. I knew God was saying to me I had to put something in  each of the three bins as I passed them before I could get out into the open. After praying I knew God wanted me to lay down pride, expectations and independence.

Today I realised that those three things are each a hindrance to trust. I have pride that my way is best, not God's way. I have expectations that my life should go a certain way and I have expectations about God too - false expectations. And I am independent, wanting to maintain full control over my own life. To learn trust I have to lay down these things before God and yield totally to Him. Trying to keep hold of all these things causes worry because things are not happening as I want. Yielding to God is the answer! Therein lies true freedom. Therein lies trust! 

I'll let you know how I get on with letting go of these things! 

Free from food addiction!

My new book 'Being Known; My journey to freedom from food addiction' is now out on Kindle. My  desire is that those suffering in a similar way to me will find hope for their own journeys in its pages. Freedom from food addiction is possible and I hope my story can encourage others.

Being Known description

“Food is an anaesthetic and its anaesthetising powers have me imprisoned”Lynda Alsford was a captive who dreamed of freedom from addictive overeating. 
“I had a hole in me somewhere… a black hole of pain sucking in all the food around me”Would she ever work out how to fill the hole in her soul with something other than food?
Being Known describes Lynda’s long, arduous journey to find freedom from addiction to food. Share her triumphs and disappointments over many years of searching as she edged her way to freedom.

I've had some lovely messages from people who read my first book, He Never Let Go, telling me how it helped them in their time of doubt, so I hope this will be the case with this one too.

'Being known' will be published in paperback in the next few weeks too. I will let you know here when it is out in that format.