In His Likeness w/ AntTBri

We’re quick to give lively witness when God says yes to our petitions of prayer.  We boast and relish in the favor of God’s love. Not so quick to share the challenges, confussion and complexities of our struggling to accept, agree and acclimate to God’s No.  Does God’s no mean we are not favored or completely loved by God?  Does His no speak to our value or His? Where does one’s value derive, in what we want or have or in what God wills for us? How does one come to terms with “no I’m not going to change this, I’m not going to fix it like you desire?  How does the believer, you or I, come to terms with God’s no? We grow up into it until the struggling subsides. We learn to surrender and submit to the will, plan and purpose of God. We continue to look to, live and love the manifesting Word before us. Our acceptance, agreement and acclimation very often occurs as a result of intense struggling.   We go through the process of surrender, posturing our hearts in submission. If you’re struggling with no don’t despair you’re not alone all humanity has, all humanity will…no one is exempt. STRUGGLING IS PART OF THE PROCESS OF LIFE AND LOVE.  Many people choose not to be forthright or forthcoming with their struggles but rest assure we all have and will struggle with the reality of God’s no as we live and love in light of God’s yes.

I can relate to the complexities, confussion and conflict of internal struggling when God says no. I disagreed and tried effortlessly to dissuade God from some major life and love no’s. I lived and loved unwilling, not wanting or working to come to terms with God’s no and not appreciating the blessing, benefit or bequest of His yes for me. It didn’t occur to me that the otherside of no reveals his yes, that there was purpose in searching no out. I had to learn to look at no dimensionally. So I spent a lot of time begging, pleading and trying to bargin with God for my yes to the persons, positions and possessions God’s no safeguarded me from. There have been cycles of depression, living and loving dejected and full of despair until the clarity of no materialized. Times when God’s no challenged my faith, fears and fellowship with God, myself and other people. When God’s no denied, delayed and even destroyed life and loves acquistion for long periods of time in resistance. I’ve cried, hurt and mourned no’s reality until tears, tantrums and defeatest talk lost it’s appeal and the HolySpirit taught me a different approach. Authentic desire to please God in everything I do and say helped me in my struggling. What is your heart’s desire?

The perfection of God’s love held me…(it continues to holds me) until I could accept, agree and acclimate to God’s no… I would not birth children, fix the dsyfunction of my family, serve, become or love and live in ease…without the pain, pressure and perception that if God wanted to He could have said yes, changed things, fixed it to give me my way. I now see that no to me opened me up to His yes for me…life and love in His way. No healed the emptiness of a maternal womb and allows me to birth God’s purposes through my spiritual womb…yes grants me the opportunity to nurture and nourish more children than I could ever physically produce. No produced a yes to empathy, empowerment, enlightenment and educating others in ways that strengthened, support and speak life into the institution of family. God’s no groomed a yes to his word, way and works in and through me… to service under pressure, when in pain and the gift of perseverance in terms of life and love. Our lasting, living and loving relationship helps, heals and holds me together until I could grow up and out of the challenges of actual struggling.

I still have bouts of struggling. I now struggle to a certain degree. However in my struggling there are somethings I easily recall…God’s word, way and fact that I know He loves me completely and His no is never purposed to destroy me…He always knows what is best for me and I can trust His counsel, correction and care. When you learn to look, live and love God’s purpose struggling is less severe…it doesn’t last so long…nor does it make you bitter. It makes you better. It’s beautifying to your person and your presentation. No is humbling, it is the truest honor…God can trust you with His plan and purpose for life and love. God’s word will help you and I clarify, correct and conceptualize the experience of surrender and submission. God’s no is spiritual, it’s supernatural.

Ask Hagar, Abrams and Sarai’s handmaiden who had to come to terms with God’s no.  Can you imagine that God would say no when you are doing what is required of you?  When your obedience kindles the hatred, ill treatment and harshness of those that have rule/authority over you?  What if in the midst of your crying out to God he affirms you have to stay, stick with it, stay… go through this, that  there is purpose in the pain, pressure, punishment and religious perfunctory He is allowing or using to grow you up in Him?  What if immediate resolve, restitution or repentance isn’t afforded life and love?  Will your heart towards God remain securely connected ? Or will it shift and accuse Him falsely? Will your attempts of escape and desire to leave or distance yourself from God’s no bring you comfort, correction and clarity? Will you dare to continue to trust Him, please do. Please don’t resist, rebel, or resent the process of struggling? It’s a natural occurence of growth. Can you hear God speaking promise, purpose while you’re in the thrawls of your struggle? God’s no positions us in purpose and postures us in the assurance of promise…struggle but allow life and love to process your growth. God’s no stretches our faith, it steady’s us and secures our relationship with Him. We struggle and suffer with Him…nothing seperates us from the love of God. Hagar’s response to God’s no helps us but there are others.

Paul prayed, perservered and pressed to accept God’s no in response to the affliction within his flesh. In ministry suffering, still expected to produce, preach and minister from a place of pain while living and loving in pain and God said no, he’s not going to change or move the thorn. No it won’t get better. God will change you not the situation. No God deems it necessary, needful and nutures it when your discomfort is evident and you have prayed and repented, petitioned God on more than one occasion. How tempting to feel God’s unfair, unjust and he doesn’t understand our struggling. Wouldn’t it be natural to feel, respond and fear life and love in this state? How likely is it that the struggling would opt to believe God will provide a means to bear it…that God will sustain, support and strengthened us in and through confussion, complexity and challenges? Can we trust that God’s glory, grace and gifts accompanies his no…that God’s no to our good thing for us is a yes to His good thing to us.

God’s no causes us to understand life and love in spiritual dimensions. We view pain, pressure and purpose relationally. We begin to experience and express our interconnectedness with the plan and purpose of God for life and love. We accomplish God’s greater things in and through our struggling. We emerge stronger, smarter and are stablished in God’s word, way and work. Paul said, and we will too…it is good that I struggled, suffered, and stayed with God because in my struggling, through my suffering and because I stayed with the God plan I’ve received the prize of a higher calling. I’m living and loving above and beyond the limitations of my fallen flesh.

Jesus, the son of God faced and overcame God’s no also. He serves as our best example when we revisit his allegiance to God’s purpose and plan when it cost him his very life. We struggle with no because we cannot control, manipulate or say/ do anything to alter God’s will, word or works. We want our way, insist on gratifying our flesh. We’re naturally distrusting, disgruntal and disobedient. In and of ourself we struggle because His ways are not ours. We struggle because outside of a relationship with Jesus we cannot live or love in God’s likeness. Our humanity is deprived, dark and death ridden.

So God sent his son Jesus to save us from our human struggling and striving against Him. God’s no to His Son Jesus ” No I will not spare you the absence of my presence or continue to look upon you when you’re robed in humanities sin” gifts us with a greater quality of life and love. God’s no to Jesus satisfies the requirement of death. It is symbolic of the necessary death of our perceptions, practices, and passions not like God. GOD’S NO makes us lay down life in the natural…it doesn’t permit us to live or love in His likeness in our carnality, cravings or conceit. It brings us into the safety and security of the perfection of God’s love.

If you’re persistent, passionate and practical like me initially you will struggle with God’s no. You won’t imediately accept, agree or acclimate to God’s no. You will struggle like Hagar to pray through your pain, you will struggle to persevere like Paul and you will struggle to live and love when God appropriates the blood’s covering to remove the consequence of sin. BUT because we are made triumphant in Jesus you too will conquer life and love and endure the process of struggling. No is making you and I. It is developing us whole. It is bringing about God’s plan and purpose for life and love. God’s no is absolutely right. God’s no although hard to accept, agree with and acclimate to is worth the effort, energy and expectation of discovering His yes.

God’s Yes will make sense…we’ll understand no by and by. Jesus died, rose and lives and loves us in, through and with our struggling. Look for that, live for that and love for that…it will be worth it. All praise to God for the work He is completing in us when he causes us to overcome the struggle of God’s no as we live and love focussed on the importance of His yes. Yes you will live and love abundantly. Yes no good thing(what He deems good) will He withhold from us. Yes life and love is working together for our good. Yes He is working in us the will, desire, and hope of yes by growing us during the process of no. YES God is not a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that He have reason to repent…because He spoke it (purpose, promise His plan) it shall come to pass. No one or nothing can pluck us out of his hand his love craddles us even in our struggling. He is our help, our hope and our hold when we’re struggling to see the blessing, benefit and bequest found in God’s no~AntTBri