Month: August 2009

Feeling that anxiety and fear began to come across me again. Knowing I had to shift my thoughts I reached for a devotional and this sentence began to turn my mind around”

“I say this a lot, but don’t look at how big your mountains are;look at how big your God IS. I encourage you to stay strong and expect God to intervene on your behalf”

For God to intervene on my behalf. That was it. The reason I tend to get anxious and fearful is because in my heart I have this misconception that God is not going to act on my behalf. That I will go through endless trials, one harder than the other, and God will help me but He is not about to intervene in my life. Somehow I have been treating God as this great entity but not my loving father.

Thats when the Holy Spirit switched my mind to the cross. I remembered and began meditating that Jesus died for the sins of the world. Yes thats true. But that is so impersonal. Christ died for me. When He was on that cross, suffering, and His body had been pierced through, I was the reason He was on that cross. Me. Geri Kuykendall. 13769 Francisco Drive. If I had been the only person in the world He would still have died just for me. And He endured such pain so that I could today live powerfully. With authority over fear. Like, I am the boss. I have the power of Christ in me. God is for me, He is not against me. Yes of course If He allowed Christ to suffer for me then yes of course He is going to intervene in my life. And He will intervene with Goodness.

Whenever I become fearful, I am buying into the lie that God is not for me. That He doesn’t love me that much. That He sees all that I do in His name, how much I love Him, how I search for Him, and it just doesn’t affect Him. He doesn’t care that much.

But what a lie. He LOVES ME. AND its big, huge, unstoppable, powerful, changing, indescribable, uncontainable, love. And its all aimed at me. That kind of love does not stay stagnant, nor is it indifferent. It’s the opposite of all that.

LIES, LIES, LIES, once again my God, my father who loves me, who’s child I am, has come to renew my mind and my spirit.

Oh and I have power. Power of the enemy, power over fear, over my thoughts, over my circumstances,

I am in the win.

There are certain verses in the Bible that just fascinate me. Don’t get me wrong, they are all good; they are all God breathed useful for teaching, rebuking, and correcting. But there are some verses that when I read them I just want to ask, “Are you sure God?”

This is one of them:

1 Corinthians 10:13
“No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.”

First and foremost God does not tempt us (James 1:13). But He does allow temptation in our lives in order to purify us. First, He measures what you can handle and second, He always provides a way out.

Insert personal application now 🙂 The other day I had driven over to my mom’s house to hand her some papers she needed. As I was leaving her house, out of the blue she made some backhanded comment. Kind of shocked, I quickly said goodbye and got in the car. I immediately started mulling the comment over. “Why had she said that to me?” “I did not deserve that.” I had just driven to her house as a favor and now I was getting an attitude. Also, what she said wasn’t even fair or correct which made me even more upset. So, upset turned to anger, anger to hot under the collar, and hot under the collar to “I’m going to call her right now and tell her exactly how I feel!”

As I scrambled for my phone with my freehand I realized where I was- on the corner of Imperial and Brea Blvd. Also known as the dead cell zone. Never in my life (or the 5 years that I have lived in La Mirada) have I ever been able to maintain a clear connection in that 4 mile stretch from Brea Blvd to Beach. I was going to have to make a choice: A) I was going to have to sustain my anger until I reached a better cell zone. B) Call anyway and yell extra hard to break through the static. C) And this is when the verse came to me – use this time to calm down and escape the temptation to act out in anger.

Right at the exact moment I needed, God brought His word to me. Pretty cool, right? You think I would feel relieved, right? Not exactly. Yes I was excited that I was putting two and two together but on the other hand if I were to follow through that meant I would have to put down the phone and swallow my righteous indignation. Painful! But I knew I had to; it was too clear to ignore. I had to go forward. Thankfully, I know myself pretty well, so just to be safe I hurled the phone to the back of the car and settled that temptation once and for all.

Later that night my mom called me. She began to tell me what a hard time she had been having finding a job lately. She was feeling overwhelmed having to deal with this issue so late in life and she was frustrated. Before we got off she said if she ever came off short or upset she was sorry.

Can you imagine if I had given into my anger and made that call? I would have hurt my mom’s feelings, created one more frustration for her, and acted like a fool over something that I should have overlooked.

In My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers says this regarding 1 Corinthians 10:13, “A persons inner nature, what he possesses in the inner, spiritual part of his being, determines what he is tempted by on the outside. The temptation fits the true nature of the person being tempted and reveals the possibilities of his nature.”

What God has allowed to be put before you has already been measured and is according to what you are able to overcome. But let’s not even try to pretend here. Resisting a temptation is not for the faint of heart. You need God’s help and to remember what you have been allowed to experience is not more than you can bear and with the temptation He will be faithful to provide a way of escape.

Kimmy went into the hospital on Saturday again because she was having pain but this time they could not give her the pain medicine because her blood pressure was low.  She had been throwing up earlier from Joshua and serenity stomach flu( we never got it! and they had both spent the night when they were unknowingly sick!)

I remember how scared I was because I didn’t want her to suffer but somehow I mustered all the faith I could, I called her and prayed for her with Dan.    And guess what her blood pressure came back up. God answered our prayer!!!  In a dark time things changed.  After that she began to get better and better.  Praying changed things.

Today she called happy, content, because she was better.  Not shaken at all by the events just happy she was well The things that do bother her have nothing to do with her illness.  NOTHING.

God was there and He stepped in and he changed things.

I heard God ask me.  “Geri what it be okay if in your life you do go thru some things (nothing as bad as you have imagined) and I am there for you and make things better in the end.  If in the end not after  A LONG TIME but shortly I make beauty out of them, would that be okay.  If it all works and nothing brings you down.  The way you think it will.  Could we just then leave in peace and joy now instead of dreading what will never happen?”

I said yes.

God don’t let me forget, Holy spirit, remind me of this.  I love you.

After dropping the kids off at school one day I realized I had an hour to kill so I decided that instead of driving home I would work on my bible study in the peace and quiet of my car. Thankfully I had all my equipment with me: my bible, study book, pen, and me. I flipped the pages to week 5, day 1 and read the big-bold- title:

“You Can Do All Things Through Christ.”

And in a big, bold, response I quickly replied “Oh no I cant!” Immediately one perfectly good reason after another came pouring out of my mind as to why that statement was not true of me. The truth of me is, some things I can do, most things maybe, but all things- no way.

God must have had it with my self loathing because right then I audibly heard in a shouting chorus, “YOU CAN DO IT!”

For a second I couldn’t breathe. Was it the end of the world? What was going on? Had I actually heard the voice of GOD? And then I looked up and just a few feet away I saw the school field and the 4th grade class (my son’s class) running the mile run.

The mile run. It had been the talk of our house for the past month. All the 4th graders were determined to accomplish the race and finish in good time. I was able to make out my son in the field and could see he had crossed the finish. But he along with some of the other children were cheering on the kids who were lagging behind trying to finish that last grueling lap.

“You can do it!” they shouted “Don’t give up”, “You only have a little more to go”, “Your almost there!” The kids were speaking to the runners and God was speaking to me. I stayed glued to the scene until the last child triumphantly crossed the line. And when they all had finished they walked back to class and the field was empty.

Leaving me alone to process.

First of all, is God the king of timing or what! All the moments that had to perfectly coincide just so God could shake me by my insecure shoulders. If that isn’t love I just don’t know what is. Secondly, can I do all things through Christ? I can when I stop thinking its all about me and instead remember its all about Jesus. Jesus no doubt can do all things. And through him I can also. The door is wide open and the possibilities in our lives are endless.

All God wants us to do is keep our eyes securely fastened on Him and believe that He will empower us to do what he commands of us. That He loves us more than we can imagine and He would never lead us to failure. In fact 2 Corinthians 2:14 tells us God always leads us to triumph in Christ. So with that truth confidently under our belt we can step out in faith in whatever challenge He puts before us.

And if you tremble, it’s okay; walk forward anyways and watch as He comes and steadies those shoulders.

Philippians 4:13 (Amplified Bible):

I have strength for all things in Christ Who empowers me [I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him Who infuses inner strength into me; I am self-sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency].