My refining process?

So this week has been really rough for me… mostly due to the fact that I haven’t been really trusting God with a situation that I’m facing. I can’t remember who said it but a good truth that I heard recently was that most of the time we don’t entrust God with the little things in our lives and don’t put that into practice, and then when a big thing arises we go to God but we don’t really go correctly because we haven’t been really going to God with the other things… This is somewhat the case for me… I will honestly admit that I haven’t given hadn’t given my WHOLE life to God… mostly due to lack of faith (which is silly because that brings up doubt in the sovereignty of God and His power and love and I might as well not believe in God at all if that is going to be my mentality) My problem… I don’t constantly meditate on the word or on God’s promises to me… and I don’t confess them daily… so while I may know them when they are spoken to me or when I come across them in scripture, I am hard pressed to know what to say/pray when in urgent need… and THAT is very dangerous… I have been getting by thus far through knowing who to go to when this happens who can speak truth into situations and pray with power… but its time out for dependence on people with that… I can pray for myself and know how to get into the presence of God… I need to be able to pray in times of crisis and personal need too… depending on the Only True God and not man…

I’m not sure why this situation is arising… and my pastors always say God doesn’t need to use bad things to get your attention… like God doesn’t need to break your ankle to tell you you need to rest… He can just do it… But it doesn’t really matter why anymore… because the lesson that I’m learning that’ll last me a lifetime… and the devil can be mad because I already had victory over this situation before I even knew it existed…

So I am questioning if this is my refining process… Its funny because in our leadership meeting @ the beginning of the semester we studied John 15 and I was the only one who spoke up saying I don’t know if I like this refining business… I mean like really it just doesn’t sound like fun to me… Mind you I wasn’t really looking at the other option (being cut off and pretty much dying) I was just focused on how pruning and cleansing had the potential to be very painful… So after wallowing in self-pity for half the week I have finally been awakened to the reality of the situation… and I can praise God for that… This was awakened through a note someone wrote on facebook which I believe he said is from My Utmost for His Highest… (which now after reading this I might want that book) 

“Bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar.” The altar means fire—burning and purification and insulation for one purpose only, the destruction of every affinity that God has not started and of every attachment that is not an attachment in God. You do not destroy it, God does; you bind the sacrifice to the horns of the altar; and see that you do not give way to self-pity when the fire begins. After this way of fire, there is nothing that oppresses or depresses. When the crisis arises, you realize that things cannot touch you as they used to do. What is your way of fire?

I’ve been praying and asking God to consume my worship… and I believe that in order to do that… with that fire, he has to purify me… that means cutting me off from my past completely… something I sometimes try to hold on to… or sometimes beat myself up for… But God doesn’t remember our sins and I continually do not need to remember them either… this goes back to a message we heard in Atlanta… Remember in the Hebrew translation means to bring into the present… I know ya’ll may not understand… but its ok… if someone gets it that’s kool… they can understand why I cry these tears of joy right now… Just another praise for my testimony… of how Great… Awesome… Marvelous… Wonderful… Splendorous… Incredible… Mighty… I could go on… MY GOD is… Oh I’m excited… It may have not been immediate but I got there… I could scream…  I can’t even type no more I’m so excited… My God… Ya’ll just don’t know… Giving God my EVERYTHING… my WHOLE BEING… I am SO on FIRE…

A poem I wrote in Atlanta called Remember Me

 

Atlanta ’08 Recap Part 3- Repentance

December 28- Ram Sridharan (THE Ohio State University)

REPENTANCE- 2 Chronicles 26:16-22; Isaiah 6:1-8

So Ram started the conference off with talks of repentance being that if we are to be well equipped leaders we must begin with a vision of God, and our own sin. We must know that God is sovereign and hear his voice and obey it. This was a great kick off to the conference I must say because it just gave us a bigger view of God and a reverance for God. We learned that God is Holy Cubed 🙂

Isaiah 6:1-8

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying.  And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”

At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.”

Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar.  With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

We all we called to a time of repentance to confess our sins before God and before one another so that when we heard the call we could say… “Here we are. Send us!” What an experience that was, even though I was doing accountability the next day I confessed somethings (that I’ve never confessed with a stranger before) and got prayer of forgiveness from a staff worker and it really helped me begin to shake off the bad attitude I had from the rooming situation because I admitted how self-centered I was. Good Stuff…

To Be Continued

Speaker Bio:

Ram Sridharan is on staff with IVCF as Team Leader of the Undergraduate Ministries at Ohio State. He grew up as a third culture kid, living most of his life in Tanzania, Kenya, South India and then the United States for his college education. Ram studied Microbiology as an undergraduate and went on to study Folklore and later Human Resources for his masters. He served as a career counselor for a number of years at the University where he worked to create the African American Peer Mentoring Program. Ram has served as a volunteer for 8 years with InterVarsity before coming on staff full time in 2002. Since then he has helped launch Ignite, the Black Student Chapter at Ohio State, lead a series of Bible Studies and GIG’s with Black Fraternities and has supervised Black staff and volunteers.

 

Preventive Measures

So I have this cavity in my mouth… well I have this disease in my mouth that makes my teeth very fragil and easily get cavities no matter how well I take care of them… but back to this cavity… I have this cavity in my mouth and the tooth wasn’t in enough for me to get the cavity filled because my teeth also stopped coming in halfway in the back because of the disease because I’m so lucky… so they wanted to take the tooth out… Now I’ve had 4 teeth pulled out of my mouth and I felt every single tug and pull and it was horrible and extremely painful… something I’d never want to experience ever again… PLUS the tooth wasn’t giving me any problems and so I didn’t see any reason to get the tooth pulled to cause me pain… and I already have less than the normal amount of teeth… I don’t want to lose another… My mother agreed with me and talked me out of going in for the next appointment… This was like maybe 6-8 months ago… Maybe like a few days ago the tooth has started hurting really badly in my mouth… It actually was loose and a piece of it broke off… and I’m pretty sure my mouth has been bleeding for the past few days plus the gums on the outside where the tooth is is majorly swollen… In case you’re wondering… yes this is extremely painful… Now why did the dentists want to take this tooth out when they did??? It didn’t hurt me then??? Not at all… BUT!!!! They knew that it would most likely cause me pain later and that it’d be better to get it out before the pain was caused…

We were born with this disease… the urge and or desire to sin… God knows our whole life story… God knows everything from beginning to end… Sometimes he tells us to do stuff… we see it as painful and honestly see it as pointless… We don’t want to let go of our sin… Then things get painful and we try to take care of it ourselves and make things worse… and then are stuck… Just salivate on that

 

SIN

Sin.

Where do I begin?

Must I start at the end,

Where I tell you I’m no longer bound

Because Jesus Christ I have found

And my sins He has pardoned

No longer must I bargain

And plead

For my life to be freed

From the sin

That I entangled myself in.