Name: Linda
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
I'm Not Going Back to Babylon
I have just come from my first lesson in Daniel. Beth Moore is remarkable. I could just go on and on about how gifted I think she is and how she ministers to me in such a unique way. I know she wouldn’t like it if I did go on and on. She is truly humble, and that happens to be one of the things I like best about her. She has a way of cutting to the heart of the matter that just speaks to my heart.
She began the study by talking about the Jews being taken into captivity – right back to the place they had once been. God allowed them to be taken from the Land Of Promise to the place where it all began – back to the tower of Babel – back to Babylon. She compared this with our lives today. She spoke of how the enemy likes nothing better than to “rewind the tape” of our lives - working hard to take us back to the place of captivity, the place of our deepest despair and bondage.
I felt this play out in my own life in just the short time between leaving Bible Study and sitting down here to write. I left feeling so great – so moved by what I had been taught. My heart felt full of joy and excitement. And then everything began to fall apart. A little misunderstanding, some news I really didn’t want to get, a talk that left me feeling discouraged and defeated. When I allow my feelings to overrule faith in my life, I always find myself sliding backwards. Instead of drawing closer to God I pull away. I don’t pray; I don’t read His word. I wallow in a pit of despair.
I felt the Lord speak to my heart – “Don’t allow these things to carry you back Linda. I brought you to this place, and I don’t want you to return to the old way of doing things.” Oh Lord, I don’t want to. I don’t want every little bump in the road to send me hurtling backwards. I don’t want to give the enemy ground that has been so hard won. I don’t want to revisit the places where You once gave me victory.
The Lord is so gracious. He works so gently and patiently in my life. I chose to rest in Him and hold the ground the enemy would be so delighted to take. He has, after all, already won the victory for me. I have but to claim it.
Blessings,
Linda
She began the study by talking about the Jews being taken into captivity – right back to the place they had once been. God allowed them to be taken from the Land Of Promise to the place where it all began – back to the tower of Babel – back to Babylon. She compared this with our lives today. She spoke of how the enemy likes nothing better than to “rewind the tape” of our lives - working hard to take us back to the place of captivity, the place of our deepest despair and bondage.
I felt this play out in my own life in just the short time between leaving Bible Study and sitting down here to write. I left feeling so great – so moved by what I had been taught. My heart felt full of joy and excitement. And then everything began to fall apart. A little misunderstanding, some news I really didn’t want to get, a talk that left me feeling discouraged and defeated. When I allow my feelings to overrule faith in my life, I always find myself sliding backwards. Instead of drawing closer to God I pull away. I don’t pray; I don’t read His word. I wallow in a pit of despair.
I felt the Lord speak to my heart – “Don’t allow these things to carry you back Linda. I brought you to this place, and I don’t want you to return to the old way of doing things.” Oh Lord, I don’t want to. I don’t want every little bump in the road to send me hurtling backwards. I don’t want to give the enemy ground that has been so hard won. I don’t want to revisit the places where You once gave me victory.
The Lord is so gracious. He works so gently and patiently in my life. I chose to rest in Him and hold the ground the enemy would be so delighted to take. He has, after all, already won the victory for me. I have but to claim it.
Blessings,
Linda
2 Comments:
Hello Linda,
First let me say this. This is a beautiful post. The way you express yourself moves me almost to tears.
Second let me say this. I finally had a little spare time this afternoon and read through all your posts. Please do not get discouraged. Every single person I know who has a blog felt confused and overwhelmed when they started. You'd be surprised how you're going to feel when you look back at it all three months from now.
I would recommend a book that I finally broke down and bought because like you, I'm not a computer guru and was pulling my hair out. I've recommended this book to lots of people and it helped them figure out the ins and outs of blogger.com.
Blogging In a Snap by Julie C. Meloni. I bought mine at Borders. Several people told me they had to order it because it wasn't on the shelf of their favorite bookstore. And you can probably find it cheaper at Amazon.com if you shop on line. Brand new at Borders I think I paid about $25 for it.
This book deals strictly with having a blog at blogger.com. It's written in language so simple even I can understand it and takes you from the moment you set up your blog through every single thing you want to learn how to do. I learned blog etiquette, how to upload photos, how to link to specific blogs and posts other people have done. It will help you immensely, relieve all this frustration and make blogging more fun.
Now I don't want to freak you out but I just tagged you to do a meme.
Just click on my name in this comment and it will take you back to my blog. You'll see that I tagged you to do the Pizza Box meme. No one knows for sure what meme means but we all think, since the purpose of memes is to get to know each other better, it means ME ME - in other words, all about me.
You'll see a lot of them. They're usually fun and really, the reason we do them is because until we get to know things about each other, we're strangers.
If you have a theme in mind for your blog that doesn't include this kind of thing, if you don't want to do it, well, then you certainly don't have to. It's your blog. Be comfortable.
I tagged you because I love the comments you leave and you're a new blogger. I wanted to "introduce" you to some of the other wonderful Christian women out here.
If you DO want to do it, first look at the way I did mine. The proper etiquette is to refer back to the person who tagged you. For now, don't worry about trying to link back to me. You'll learn how to do that later.
Please don't get discouraged. Blogging is a great way to meet new people and express yourself. And it really does all get easier and falls into place. Just remember -- we were all new at this at one point and we learned one little new thing at a time.
Be Blessed,
Barb
My email address is
BarJr50@aol.com
Feel free to chat with me in a less public forum.
Linda, this is just beautiful. I, too, love Beth Moore and don't have the new study, so thank you for sharing this with me. It sounds like it is going to be excellent!
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