You are so right, the Lord DID have this in mind for you today, and having been through a similar “crappy email situation” recently myself, I praise Him for giving you what you needed to bolster you through. He did the same for me. The note wasn’t on the caliber of yours, but it was still hurtful.

I want to share Friday’s My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers with you. A friend of mine shared this with me and it just –well, unsettlingly (!!) put things in perspective. It’s not comfortable by any means, but it helped me to (a little…. baby steps, sister!!) realize that this is the path God wants… that WHATEVER happens, WHOEVER points the finger, WHOEVER criticizes, rejects, shames, or –whatever — including Christians — only HE matters. And He’s taking us on this journey from where we were to “there.”

My prayers are with you as you walk with Him…

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Are You Ready To Be Offered?

“Yea, and if I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy and rejoice with you all.” Philippians 2:17

Are you willing to be offered for the work of the faithful – to pour out your life blood as a libation on the sacrifice of the faith of others? Or do you say – “I am not going to be offered up just yet, I do not want God to choose my work. I want to choose the scenery of my own sacrifice; I want to have the right kind of people watching and saying, ‘Well done.’

It is one thing to go on the lonely way with dignified heroism, but quite another thing if the line mapped out for you by God means being a door-mat under other people’s feet. Suppose God wants to teach you to say, “I know how to be abased” – are you ready to be offered up like that? Are you ready to be not so much as a drop in a bucket – to be so hopelessly insignificant that you are never thought of again in connection with the life you served? Are you willing to spend and be spent; not seeking to be ministered unto, but to minister? Some saints cannot do menial work and remain saints because it is beneath their dignity.

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This last line I believe (because of what I’m reading in a book by Francis Chan on the Holy Spirit, called Forgotten God) is referring to Christians who have squelched the Holy Spirit and are acting / responding out of the flesh instead of through Him. Yes they are saints, but they have stopped listening to His voice, or at least (as we all do) circumstantially have put on the flesh for a spell. But they ignore the conviction to take it off.

Anyhow, that is how I interpret that last part… I don’t have any notes or commentary, but it just was so tied to what I was reading in Francis’ book that I think this is what he (O.C.) may have been referring to.

Hang in there… I know we don’t know each other but I am still sending big big hugs your way and praying for you all.