Today I am writing about the ONE THING THAT IS TRUE MADNESS! I know I have written on MADNESS for the past three weeks. However, today’s post stands out above them all!

Even though it is madness to run in a direction we do not know the destination of…
Even though it is madness to exhibit extremely foolish behavior…
Even though it is madness to step in any direction except toward God…

The greatest madness of all is not realizing that TODAY is the only day we have, God made it, and we are to rejoice in it!

“This is the day The Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.”
Psalm 118:24

MADNESS is all around us. There is no escaping it! People left to their own devices do selfish, unkind, and at times, unthinkable acts. We can succumb to the MADNESS and join the angry protestors. We can rant, rave, march, protest, scream, cry or fall into a pit of despair and depression. However, in the end, selfish people will continue to do selfish things, and all of the promises made will once again result in MADNESS.

So, am I saying it is hopeless? Am I saying to give up?

NO! I am saying, “LET’S STOP THE MADNESS!”
Let’s do the ONLY THING THAT ISN’T TRUE MADNESS! LET’S PUT OUR ACTIONS INTO TRUE POWER!
Let’s give each and every day to THE ONLY ONE who can stop the madness! Acting any other way is THE ONE THING THAT IS TRUE MADNESS!

“THIS IS THE DAY THE LORD HAS MADE. WE WILL REJOICE AND BE GLAD IN IT.”

God Himself gave us this day! He allowed us to breath air into our lungs for one more day. He allowed our eyes to open for one more day. He allowed our bodies to move and function for one more day. He allowed our voice to speak for one more day. He allowed our hands to help someone in need for one more day! He allowed our heart to break and demonstrate compassion for one more day. He allowed our arms to reach around and provide comfort for one more day. He allowed our feet to move into action one more day.

TRUTH BOMB

THE ONE THING THAT IS TRUE MADNESS IS NOT RECOGNIZING THE GIFT OF TODAY!

We are not promised tomorrow. It may never come. Yesterday is over and cannot be relived.
WE ONLY HAVE TODAY! IT IS A GIFT! DON’T WASTE IT!

I was blessed by God with a priceless treasure, a godly grandmother who not only demonstrated her faith in God, but she also lived it out!

She gave to me the secret of ending the MADNESS! She told me and she showed me how!

“Each and every day is a gift Lisa.”
She said, “Begin each day by thanking God for it, and committing it to Him!” Each and every day that you wake up, breath in the air around you, and open your eyes, put your feet on the floor and say, ‘THIS IS THE DAY THE LORD HAS MADE. I WILL REJOICE AND BE GLAD IN IT!'”

Watching her live out her life doing this, encouraged me to do the same. I did not watch her slide into each day worry free. I watched her live each day out trusting in her faithful God to take care of the problems of the day! I did not watch her walk through each day healthy and strong. I watched her live each day out sharing her faith with others as she endured cancer treatment 5 times over! I did watch her live each day with the JOY OF THE LORD oozing out of her and spreading it to others because she lived out The Truth of God’s Word and allowed it to cut through the MADNESS!

The MADNESS is all around us and it isn’t going to go away because March is over. The true MADNESS we can stop is not recognizing each and every day as a gift from God, and rejoicing in it and living it for HIM! That is the key!

Today I am writing from a very personal place! The title I should have put on this week’s Blog was: ‘MOVING IS MADNESS!’       I have moved three times in the last four months and it is MADNESS! Send caffeine PLEASE…

I packed up a home after 11 years and sorted through all of the memories with lots of tears. I moved and relocated across the state and worked hard to set up what I believed to be our new home. However, God had a different plan. I am now in the middle of DAY 8, packing up that home and moving to another. Dear Friends, it feels like sheer MADNESS!
I have felt sad, lonely, isolated, fatigued, weary, confused, disappointed…and yet at times-renewed, strengthened, encouraged, blessed, and even exhilarated! Only because I had the example of a godly grandma who demonstrated for me the life that cuts through the MADNESS and gives true strength, meaning and purpose!

Today is the only day we are given! How are you going to live it?

I chose to get out of bed, put my feet on the floor, raise my hands to heaven and say,
“THIS IS THE DAY THE LORD HAS MADE. I WILL REJOICE AND BE GLAD IN IT!”

I pray you will be able to do the same!

Speak Truth Love

I’ve been told that MADNESS is continuing to do something over and over, and over again even though it has produced nothing good!

Just look at this dedicated basketball fan as he proudly wears his team’s shirt during the infamous MARCH MADNESS college basketball tournament.

Did his team make it to the finals? Did they even make it to the “Sweet Sixteen” round where the final top 16 College basketball teams play to make it to the finals?

NO, they did not! But does that mean that his commitment and faithfulness to his hometown team equate to MADNESS? NO, it does not!
He will fold the shirt and put it away in a drawer until next year when he will pull it out again and faithfully cheer his team on!
He will trust that the team will work hard in the off season toward the goal of not only making it to the “SWEET SIXTEEN” next year, but all the way to the finals. Does the team or this enthusiastic fan have a guarantee that they will make it next season? NO, they do not, but they will still condition themselves, discipline their exercise and eating habits, work out individually and together as a team, listen to the coaches and their instruction, and once again play their hardest and best to make it to MARCH MADNESS!

What about us? What about you? What about me?

Do you find yourself during this month of MADNESS, in-between the cold weather we are leaving in our rear view mirrors, and the warm weather of Spring that beckons us to show our bear, pale arms again, doing the same thing over and over again with no good coming from it?
Or are you ready to take the steps necessary to walk this life with faithfulness and perseverance? Even when the steps seem repetitive and like they’re going no where or going much too slowly!

“Trust in The Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He WILL make your paths straight.”
Proverbs 3:5-6 NIV

in another version it says;

“Trust in The Lord with ALL of your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek His Will in ALL you do, and He WILL show you which path to take.”
Proverbs 3:5-6 NLT

Then I love the way the Message puts it next…

“Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God’s voice in EVERYTHING you do, EVERYWHERE you go; He’s The One who will keep you on track.” Proverbs 3:5-6 Message
Don’t assume that you know it all!

Seriously, if that doesn’t hit you right between the eyes then nothing will!

It may be a familiar verse to some of us, but I believe it is one we more easily take a “nod” at, rather than absorb the whole TRUTH that lies within it!

I do not know about you, but I have been in a tough season these past 14 months. Most specifically, I have been putting one foot in front of the other each and every day for the past 4 months, not knowing where I am stepping, but trusting that God does!

God called us to a new ministry 4 months ago. It is in Northern California and we have lived the better part of our 33 plus years of marriage in Southern California. The packing, the moving and the leaving were hard. The leaving and saying goodbye to family and friends was more than I thought I could take at times. But God’s call was clear and we were headed to a beautiful, committed family of faith at the new church God had called us to!
We also believed we were headed to a beautiful new house that He had provided for us. However, that house was not meant to be, even though I had moved into it and made it our HOME. Three escrows later on our house in Southern California and our new house here in Sonoma County, I still find myself writing to you without a clear, concise picture of where my feet will step tomorrow.
It is looking more clear each day as God parts the clouds and rays of sunshine peak through. But it has been a consistent, step by step, daily walk of faith, trusting not in what we see or even hear, but in our GOD ALONE!

I will be the first to tell you that this kind of faith walk is NOT EASY! It causes you to doubt yourself and others around you at times. It causes you to lose trust in others and their words. It also causes you to lose heart and you continuously ask “WHY ME?”
BUT, it also causes wonderful happenings in your life if you allow it to! If you take the words of this verse to heart, and trust God to give you the strength and courage to live them out, then it can cause you to soar to greater heights with God than you ever dreamed possible. It causes your relationships with those you love and rely on for prayer support to grow deeper that you ever thought possible! It causes you to focus your eyes and steps on what God has truly called you to do and to not become obsessed with what you cannot control!

Living out THE TRUTH of PROVERBS 3:5-6, is not an easy life, but it is the only life that truly leads to peace and trust in the one who penned the words and stands behind them with His very life!
“TRUST IN ME, JESUS is saying, If I am the Lord of your life, than prove it by trusting in me every day even when you do not see the steps to take. Do not trust in what you can understand, because your understanding is limited, MINE IS NOT! In EVERYTHING you do, and in EVERY STEP YOU TAKE, acknowledge ME, AND I WILL DIRECT EVERY STEP AND SHOW YOU WHERE TO GO!”

TRUTH BOMB

STEPPING IN GOD’S DIRECTION IS ALWAYS MOVING FORWARD.

I AM NOT MAKING LIGHT OF THE POWER OF GOD’S WORD OR THE SERIOUSNESS OF IT! I am sincerely and truly putting into words what God has spoken to me and demonstrated to me about the living TRUTH of Proverbs 3:5-6.

This life you and I are living makes only false promises of what it will deliver: Fame, fortune, happiness, peace etc…

But God delivers on His promises each and every time! Trust Him as you take your steps each and every day.
“HE’S GOT THIS!”
“HE’S GOT YOU!”

Speak Truth Love

The Madness Continues…

One of my favorite definitions on MADNESS as I was researching the word was:
“EXTREMELY FOOLISH BEHAVIOR!”

Now, I relate to that!

I find myself in the second day of what I define clearly as MADNESS! The world refers to it as “DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME!” I refer to it as Madness!

IT MESSES UP MY INTERNAL CLOCK! It makes me feel like someone set me alarm for 3:00 in the morning and played a cruel joke on me!

The first day I’m pretty much ok. It’s Sunday morning. I get up, go to church, and have the evening to catch up before Monday Morning hits! But then it hits! It’s Monday Morning, the alarm goes off, it’s DARK outside, and I feel like someone played that bad joke on me, of setting my alarm for 3:00am ALL OVER AGAIN! By the time evening rolls around I could care less that I have one more hour of sunshine! I’M TIRED and feel like someone pulled the rug out from under my feet!

Seriously, the experts say that it is done this year on Sunday March 12, at 2:00 a.m., and then again on Sunday November 5, at 2:00 a.m. when we “FALL BACK” TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED TIME!

Now you do the math with me…March to November, that is almost eight months! They are not even dividing the twelve months we have in a year evenly! What they are doing however, is telling us that we should make good use of our time. Now that I can agree with!

They say that the Main Purpose of DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME is to make better use of DAYLIGHT. We change our clocks during the warmer months to move an hour of DAYLIGHT from the morning to the evening.

Did you catch that phrase, “To make better use of DAYLIGHT”?

As much as I DO NOT LIKE getting up in the dark, having my internal clock messed up, or feeling like there is simply not enough caffeine in the world to jump start this time change in my body, I do like the idea of MAKING BETTER USE OF THE TIME, DAY OR NIGHT, THAT GOD HAS GIVEN ME!

I have to admit, it is a rather Biblical concept!

“As long as it is DAY, we must do the work of Him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work.” John 9:5

TIME, DAYTIME specifically, we truly should make the most of it!

However, TIME never seems to be on our side!
We never seem to have enough of it! We find ourselves saying, “If only they were two more hours in this day, I could finish all of the tasks that are on my “To Do List!’
Or, “If I had an eight day week instead of a seven day week, I could finish my work!”
“If I just had more time to…You fill in the blank. Our lists of what we wish we had more time for are endless!

And when we do have more TIME, we tend to wish it away…
“This clock is not moving fast enough, I wish this day would end!”

We are a FICKLE bunch, my friends. We want what we do not have, and when we get it we wish it away!

TIME is a gift. It is a gift from God that He grants us each day we wake up and watch the sunrise. It is a gift each day we complete and watch the sunset. It is up to us what we do with the TIME He has given us!

So, even though it feels like MADNESS to my body in this first week of DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME, I need to approach each day as an opportunity to “work for Him who sent me,” while there is still DAY!
For this life will soon be over. The clock continues to click, and the minutes speed by. No matter if the clocks Fall Back or Spring Forward, when the DAY is no more, and my NIGHT has come, only the work I have done for Him will last! I need to make the most out of each and every day I am given!

So Friends, whether you love this extra hour of daylight at the end of your day, or you are like me, and you long for the longer, cozy mornings wrapped in the comfy covers of your bed, and wish you did not have to “Spring Forward”, let’s commit to making the most out of every DAY we have. Even when our bodies tell us we can’t do this, we have the supernatural strength of our Lord telling us WE CAN!

“I can do ALL THINGS, (even the time change,) through Christ who gives me strength!” Philippians 4:13

TRUTH BOMB

Each day is a gift from God so make the most of it!

See you back here next week for more of the MADNESS!

Speak Truth Love

Can you feel it? It’s in the air!
That crazy unsettled feeling after something is over, and before something else happens.

It may be the Madness of Basketball? The season that overlaps every other season.
Football is over, and baseball has not yet begun, yet we are inundated with more basketball games than we have time to watch! Bets are being made on teams you hope will do well and produce a victory!
There are 64 college teams in the beginning with their eyes on the prize in what has been termed “The Big Dance.” They are all fighting to be the FINAL TWO to play each other and become the FINAL ONE, the Victor who will claim the ultimate prize and be crowned the number one college basketball team of the year! CRAZY MADNESS isn’t it?

Or, maybe it’s that unsettled feeling between Winter and Spring? You can feel the weather outside turning from cold, to warm, and then back to cold again! You put your umbrella and rain coat in the closet for the season, to only turn around and take them back out again. Sweatshirt or T-shirt, what should you wear today? You want to put your winter clothes in your closet away and replace them with your colorful, bright spring wardrobe, but the minute you do, it’s cold outside again!

What about ‘Spring cleaning?’ You have put away your winter decor, the dust has settled nicely on all of your shelves, and you long to push it all aside and clean it off for Spring. But, alas, as soon as you do it’s time to turn that heater back on and all of the dust is blown around and resettles on those clean, spotless shelves.

Maybe what you are reading today is just me, talking to myself. I have been in a season of unsettledness, “MADNESS” if you will. I have been running hard toward something that I am sure of, but cannot see.

Thinking about the things of heaven and eternity, the things that will last forever is the goal. Not about the things of earth which rot, decay, spoil, distract and discourage. This is the only way to live victoriously through this life of MADNESS that we are called to but cannot see the end of!

“Think about the things of Heaven, not the things of earth.” Colossians 3:2

I have been affirmed of God’s clear call on my life to move to Northern California with my husband and begin a new ministry as Senior Pastor’s wife. We have taken all of the proper steps toward that call, packed our house up in Southern California, and moved it all to Northern California. We put our So Cal house on the market, said good-bye to our ministry of thirty years, and all of our dear friends and family, including our daughter, son-in-law, and precious grand babies! Then we PRAYED LIKE CRAZY, and we made the move! We stepped out in the direction God was calling us to. A new church, a new group of people, a new ministry, a new part of the state, a new neighborhood, a new grocery store, a new hair stylist etc, etc, etc…You name it, it was NEW! I found myself alone and confronted with everything new everyday!

Now, if you think that is the MADNESS I am sharing about, you are wrong! The madness came in the trial we have faced since we moved and are still facing. Our house in So Cal has now been on the market for four months, we have been in and out of escrow twice, and are now in it again for the third time! Everyone told us our house would sell quickly, our neighborhood moves fast! No rhyme nor reason, just fact, it hasn’t sold. The MADNESS has been that the house we found in Nor Cal and moved in to has been impossible to close due to the fact that our escrow has fallen through twice!

MADNESS sets in and what do we do? The world tells us that MADNESS is running hard in a direction you do NOT know the destination, outcome or end of! If that were the truth, then I have been running in MADNESS for four months!

The Truth, the Truth with a capital T, the only Truth that lasts for eternity, is ‘The Only Direction I need to be running toward is God!’

As long as I am running toward Him, staying in His Word Daily, Praying and Speaking and Listening to Him Daily, then the MADNESS around me will become peace and comfort as He transforms my MADNESS into Victory!

“Don’t you realize that in a race everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize? So run to win! All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. So, I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadowboxing. I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified.”
I Corinthians 9:24-27

I’M IN IT TO WIN IT! ARE YOU? I do not want to succumb to the MADNESS around me! I do not want it to cause me to doubt the One I am following! I do not want my circumstance to distract me from the end goal. I want to “RUN TO WIN” just like Paul says in verse 24. I want to “RUN WITH PURPOSE IN EVERY STEP,” verse 26, even when I cannot see the end!
For it is not MADNESS when you are running toward God, toward the prize that will never fade or tarnish.

TRUTH BOMB

Keeping your eyes fixed on heavenly things is the only way to navigate the MADNESS!

Setting our minds on the things of heaven, and not the things of this earth, even when the MADNESS is all around us, is the only True way to navigate this MADNESS we call life.

I’m in it to win it, are you?
Let’s meet back here next week as we take a further look at the MADNESS surrounding us and how we can discipline ourselves through it.

Love, prayers, strength and hope to you all,

Speak Truth Love