from bell to bowl...

I COR 10:1For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. 2They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. 3They all ate the same spiritual food 4and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. 5Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.

I woke up craving sugar this morning.  I'm gaining weight because of my own choices.  Granted, the stress of resigning from my job, trying to navigate life with four drivers and two cars, and to plan trips when no one can nail down their schedule because we are all at the mercy of others' revolving deadlines at the moment... stress is present in all our lives.

But as I was gathering my foggy first morning thoughts, I was suddenly hit by this thought,

"I have as much self control as any other human."

What I think about, the truth - or lack of it - that I feed my thoughts directly effects that self control.

When I whine,
                         which I am totally tempted to do now

I am only trying to justify my unwillingness to pick up this gift and use it....   self control.

With that thought rolling through my head, I sat down to pick up where I left of with this blog.

I've tried to write again several times, but I wanted to skim over these verses.  They seemed like a bit of "yeah, yeah... blah, blah, blah."  And my head knows that every single verse in the Bible is there for a reason and is in its exact order for a reason.

Like a game of chutes and ladders or Candy Land,

I tried to get past this, but I keep landing back here in my lack of discipline to direct my thoughts.  In other word, its not what I'm doing that trips me up.  It's what I'm thinking.

The truth for me is this.

I keep landing back here on my game board because of my choices.  NOW, however, I'm seeing something.

No amount of good choices on my part can get me to his "promised land" for me.

I hear message after message, but they ring shallow.  A bell ringing, ringing... a vessel meant to be flipped upside down to be a bowl filled with His presence, overflowing into the lives of others.

the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. 

My worst choice is simply this.... trying to please Christ without letting the Holy Spirit do the work in me that He was sent to do!


I can not welcome Christ with one hand while pushing Him away with the other and honestly claim that I am trying to please Him.  

If He says, "Come" and I simply dump gifts at His feet and run away...

You see what I mean, right?

I can try to put the Holy Spirit in my tidy little box, but here's the deal.  When I go back to the box to ask for what I want, I will lift the lid and discover that the box is empty.  He has gone on to where He is welcome.  He will readily return, but only to open arms... surrendered and outstretched.

P.S.

After writing the above, I turned to my Daily Light devotional book and...  LOOK! 

I don't know exactly what it means to grieve the Holy Spirit, but I plan to look each of these references up and find out.