Welcome to my maiden voyage as a blogger!
I am starting a blog because for some time, I have been feeling led to share some of the thoughts, dreams and answered prayers that have helped encourage and inspire me through the years. Though I've been enjoying for many years now a sense of God's presence with me, and an experience of being discipled, guided, led and instructed about heavenly realities that help shed life on earthly dilemmas, trying to share these experiences with others has always been a challenge. God's "still, small voice" is so personal and so - well - a wisp of a whisper on the wind - how do you capture and communicate such things with our limited human vocabularly?
Or should our personal inspirations be shared at all? Maybe not always - sometimes, perhaps, they are simply meant as nourishment for our personal edification. Other times, though, I think the inner growth that results from times of adversity might, if shared, be just the encouragement that might help the next person through what might seem an impossible time in his or her life. And if my experiences can help ease someone else's pain, I am privileged to be the fool who attempts to give form and substance to what I perceive to be eternal truths.
What are my qualifications? None whatsoever, other than the fact I've survived - and even, despite myself, thrived - in this life for over half a century.
But I have always been a seeker after truth. Sometimes that seeking led me down some dead end tunnels in the maze of possible truths.
I grew up in a small, country church (great social club but scant spiritual development), stopped going in 6th grade, then studied the New Age for 15 years (another dead-end tunnel, as much as I had wanted it to be something of substance); and finally, at age 31, read the Bible (I'd searched for the truth everywhere else but there, somehow).
I initially read the Bible in the hopes that its message would align with my metaphysical, Eastern and new age studies...("why can't we all just get along?"); but alas, it did not. In fact, reading scriptures forced me to make a decision. Suddenly, I found myself standing at the fork in the road of my very culturally relevant and popular new age views, at the juncture where they diverged from the straight and narrow road the Bible purported to be the Truth.
At this crossroads of belief systems that would, I hoped, be able to guide me for the rest of my days, I had to choose which direction to take. Having already trod the one and found it to be the Road to Nowhere, I decided to try the as-yet untrodden path of Christianity. Though I didn't understand it all, and frankly found some of it pretty hard to swallow, I promised the Lord I'd at least try to live as though I "got it" - you know - walk by faith and not by sight, and all that. I would try to accept that I didn't have to know the answers to everything, and instead just trust what the Bible said and walk in that way - i.e., give God's road a test drive, as it were.
That was 26 years ago, and I've never turned back. That "test drive" completely changed my life and continues to change my life, always for the better. I have been given a calling to serve in the church, and over the past 15 years have been privileged to be on staff at two wonderful churches (Presbyterian and Methodist), serving a dual role in each as both worship leader and executive assistant/secretary. I have been instructed by some of their best theologians, healed through the ministries of their very gifted prayer ministers, discipled via the guidance and wisdom of many devoted servants of Christ, and mentored and inspired by some of the most respected and gifted worship leaders of our time. I am, indeed, blessed beyond anything I could ever have imagined for myself, and I live each day in gratitude for God's continued favor on my life.
So that's what this blog will reflect - what I have learned, and continue to learn, on my journey. Many lessons have been learned via The School of Hard Knocks, of which we are all alumni. But much wisdom has also come through answers to prayers, which God seems to virtually drop into my mind as I converse with Him. I know these things are not from my own earthly mind, as they are truths of such wonder and wisdom as I could never figure out on my own. Other inspirations come to me through dreams of crystal clarity that sometimes come true, and other times simply reveal a truth about this life, or the heavenly life to come, in a new and profound way. At other times, my dreams reveal to me with fresh insight the reality of a situation that in my waking hours is clouded by emotion or misjudgment.
Thus the name of my blog - DreamSpirations, which is inspired by Joel 2:28, which says that in the day of the Lord, "I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions."
I don't know how often I'll have anything to post, or how much time I'll have to keep up. But my prayer is that as the Lord blesses me with inspirations, dreams, visions or answerd prayers, my sharing them might also bless and encourage others.
Or, if nothing else, may they give you a good chuckle.
Peace be with you!
I am starting a blog because for some time, I have been feeling led to share some of the thoughts, dreams and answered prayers that have helped encourage and inspire me through the years. Though I've been enjoying for many years now a sense of God's presence with me, and an experience of being discipled, guided, led and instructed about heavenly realities that help shed life on earthly dilemmas, trying to share these experiences with others has always been a challenge. God's "still, small voice" is so personal and so - well - a wisp of a whisper on the wind - how do you capture and communicate such things with our limited human vocabularly?
Or should our personal inspirations be shared at all? Maybe not always - sometimes, perhaps, they are simply meant as nourishment for our personal edification. Other times, though, I think the inner growth that results from times of adversity might, if shared, be just the encouragement that might help the next person through what might seem an impossible time in his or her life. And if my experiences can help ease someone else's pain, I am privileged to be the fool who attempts to give form and substance to what I perceive to be eternal truths.
What are my qualifications? None whatsoever, other than the fact I've survived - and even, despite myself, thrived - in this life for over half a century.
But I have always been a seeker after truth. Sometimes that seeking led me down some dead end tunnels in the maze of possible truths.
I grew up in a small, country church (great social club but scant spiritual development), stopped going in 6th grade, then studied the New Age for 15 years (another dead-end tunnel, as much as I had wanted it to be something of substance); and finally, at age 31, read the Bible (I'd searched for the truth everywhere else but there, somehow).
I initially read the Bible in the hopes that its message would align with my metaphysical, Eastern and new age studies...("why can't we all just get along?"); but alas, it did not. In fact, reading scriptures forced me to make a decision. Suddenly, I found myself standing at the fork in the road of my very culturally relevant and popular new age views, at the juncture where they diverged from the straight and narrow road the Bible purported to be the Truth.
At this crossroads of belief systems that would, I hoped, be able to guide me for the rest of my days, I had to choose which direction to take. Having already trod the one and found it to be the Road to Nowhere, I decided to try the as-yet untrodden path of Christianity. Though I didn't understand it all, and frankly found some of it pretty hard to swallow, I promised the Lord I'd at least try to live as though I "got it" - you know - walk by faith and not by sight, and all that. I would try to accept that I didn't have to know the answers to everything, and instead just trust what the Bible said and walk in that way - i.e., give God's road a test drive, as it were.
That was 26 years ago, and I've never turned back. That "test drive" completely changed my life and continues to change my life, always for the better. I have been given a calling to serve in the church, and over the past 15 years have been privileged to be on staff at two wonderful churches (Presbyterian and Methodist), serving a dual role in each as both worship leader and executive assistant/secretary. I have been instructed by some of their best theologians, healed through the ministries of their very gifted prayer ministers, discipled via the guidance and wisdom of many devoted servants of Christ, and mentored and inspired by some of the most respected and gifted worship leaders of our time. I am, indeed, blessed beyond anything I could ever have imagined for myself, and I live each day in gratitude for God's continued favor on my life.
So that's what this blog will reflect - what I have learned, and continue to learn, on my journey. Many lessons have been learned via The School of Hard Knocks, of which we are all alumni. But much wisdom has also come through answers to prayers, which God seems to virtually drop into my mind as I converse with Him. I know these things are not from my own earthly mind, as they are truths of such wonder and wisdom as I could never figure out on my own. Other inspirations come to me through dreams of crystal clarity that sometimes come true, and other times simply reveal a truth about this life, or the heavenly life to come, in a new and profound way. At other times, my dreams reveal to me with fresh insight the reality of a situation that in my waking hours is clouded by emotion or misjudgment.
Thus the name of my blog - DreamSpirations, which is inspired by Joel 2:28, which says that in the day of the Lord, "I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions."
I don't know how often I'll have anything to post, or how much time I'll have to keep up. But my prayer is that as the Lord blesses me with inspirations, dreams, visions or answerd prayers, my sharing them might also bless and encourage others.
Or, if nothing else, may they give you a good chuckle.
Peace be with you!
2 comments:
Welcome to this crazy blogger world. It's fun and addicting but informative and full of really incredible people.
Yeah, a little nervous about opening up my innermost spiritual thoughts for a world that is often hostile to such. But I'll see how it goes!
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