I love pictures!!  I love to look at them, hang them all over my house and show them to people on my phone.  It is something that I love!  Especially pictures of my son!!  I have chronicled every phase of his life digitally!!  It makes me happy!!  I know that at any time I can go back to many nostalgic moments, while sitting at my computer and just reflect!!    That love for snapshots doesn’t just stop with print photography, I also take snapshots of situations!  My “remember when” albums!  Basically, these are albums full of my favorite memories!  But the section of my albums that get most of my attention are my pictures of pain!  I have spent a lot of time there in my life.  I have pictures of people who have hurt me, pictures of people I have hurt, pictures of places I have failed, pictures of people I have failed, pictures of extreme disappointment, pictures of places I have crashed and burned and on and on.  While spending time there, a predictable thing always happens….. I start out really excited to look through them as I feel a sense of justice and judgement rise.  And so I proceed….judging the successes and failures of my entire journey, my life, my friends, my enemies and my God by these snapshots.  It doesn’t take long for my sense of justice to turn to outrage from the deep anger then on to depression and on and on!  You know the place, where you take your photo album of life out and open to your pages of pain, hoping that process will one day hold the key to dulling the pain or ending it altogether.

Typically, we like to photograph with our cameras things that produce good feelings.  But why with our minds and hearts are we so completely different?  Why do we usually snapshot memories that bring up bitter, resentful, hurtful, offended experiences?  I just wonder if we do that because we were programmed for peace and each snapshot continues to remind us of areas that need to be addressed in truth from our Creator and Lover of our souls….

I liken it to getting all of the ingredients out to make a delicious cake and just sitting there and dipping your finger in the baking powder and tasting it over and over again concluding that the cake is just awful!!  Snapshots are this isolated.  And albums of these snapshots have the power to remind us of isolated times and help us bring conclusions.  They are meant to trigger a memory, good or hurtful.  But the snapshot, by itself, can lead you nowhere productive.  It cannot heal or end your pain,  just as the baking powder, can’t be compared to the symphony we call, the cake!!

What if instead of inducing our normal process of remembering the pain, feeling the hurt and then judging the outcome we could learn a new way?  A way we could allow the snapshot to simply do it’s job and nothing more….to remind us.  Then we could learn another new way, take that snapshot to God and ask Him to reveal the truth to us and replace that snapshot with a new one.  One of His goodness, faithfulness, and love to us no matter what the situation was or is.  And so step by step we learn a completely different way of dealing with our pain, we allow God to heal it.  And we learn to combine all of the ingredients to the cake in a bowl and stir them around before we taste and see.

As a child of God we all are always fully engaged in a process from our creator.  In 2 Corinthians 3:13-18 we learn that,  “We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away.  But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away.  Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts.  But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. ” 

The time of the veil is really the same thing as the baking powder.  It is only a snapshot of God’s complete process.  If we look at the Old Covenant and choose to stop there, and don’t move forward, in faith in God’s plan, receive Christ and allow His transforming work, we are doing nothing more than tasting the baking powder.  Or if while in His transforming work, we don’t really understand that we are being transformed with EVER-INCREASING glory, we might wrongly judge Him or ourselves and get bogged down in the details.  We might even contemplate jumping ship!  But thanks to God for His faithfulness to us and that He will not allow a snapshot to represent how comprehensive He is!!  How can it?  Why do we think that it can represent us, who are created in His image and being transformed into his likeness?  If baking powder cannot represent a cake then how can a snapshot represent me?

In the book, “Sun Stand Still” by Pastor Steven Furtick, he writes about 12 Audacious Faith Confessions.  These confessions are the truth of what my blog is ultimately about.  Who our supply is and how to apply Him to our lives.  It is God where we find complete healing, wholeness, and freedom.  It is the word of God that truly sets us free.  The confessions are a great overview of the scripture, but I want to expand them and dive into the meat of the view for myself.  Join me for the next several blogs as we explore the word of God and get a COMPLETE view of His love for us and what He says we can believe and trust upon.  Join me and learn a new way of dealing with your snapshots, so your albums can be a true representation of HIS GLORY!!

People need the LORD!!  Join with me and invite your friends to join us as we embark on this 12 step  journey of wholeness together!!