Good Doubt  -  Bad Doubt  

Is there a difference? 

     As children of the Most High GOD, we are told to not doubt, and made to feel guilty if we do. Is there such a thing as good doubt? The answer is absolutely, yes there is. I asked GOD, "Why do I doubt all the time? How can you really use me, love me, trust me, want me if I doubt the direction you are giving me? The answer I got was  

     "Child, you know that doubt is good at times, when it sends you into the Word to prove what you hear." 

     I knew that answer was from the Holy Spirit, because it came to me before I even finished asking, and it was wisdom far beyond my limited brain could have thought on my own.  The English language is so boring whereas, Greek and Hebrew have several different kinds of words for our one English word. There is a doubt that really means, "research this," and there is a doubt that mean, "ya, right!" So, doubting is good, if it means seeking more information. There is a chip on one's shoulder doubt, and then there's please GOD help my unbelief doubt. 

     The best example we can see would be John-the-Baptist. He was the greatest born of women, Jesus said. Yet, while he was in a dungeon, chained to a wall, he sent his cousin a message, the one he "knew" since he was in the womb. During his despair, he sent his disciples to ask Jesus if he was the One to come, or should we look for another. We are thinking, Really, John, it's your cousin, you lept in your mother's womb when my mother was in your presence. You baptized him and saw the Holy Spirit descending him. For Pete’s sake, how can you question all this now?

     Jesus didn't say that, though. He just sent back a confirming answer, not yes or no, but consider the evidence: " Jesus answered and said to them, “Go and report to John what you hear and see: 5 those who are blind receive sight and those who limp walk, those with leprosy are cleansed and those who are deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. 6 And blessed is any person who does not take offense at Me.”"

     John had doubts, because of his dreadful hopeless situation, not because he was cynical, needing to prove Jesus wrong, like the Pharisees. Their doubt was different in tone and inference, theirs was from pride, from a chip on their shoulders that was permanent.  The kind John had comes from a broken contrite heart. Hopelessness and faithlessness are two different things. Hope is a feeling, while faith is fact. We can lose hope without losing our faith. Hope is an emotion and emotions have no intellect, whereas facts are truth, and facts don’t have feelings.

     When hopelessness and fear set with me and I doubt that I'm truly hearing from GOD, I compare it to what I have learned in Scripture. I research and I research until my eyes bleed and my fingers are fused to the keyboard. Life in the fiery furnace of affliction can be exhausting and scorching.  I've spent a lot of years in the Bible, and I'm mean nose to page, so I have a pretty good working knowledge of it, and I know how to get around the Whole Counsel of GOD.  I know where to go to feed my faith with facts. Eventually, after I overdose with Scriptures that I know are facts, there is a slight whisper of hope that accompanies that faith, until the fatigue sets in. Never believe what you feel when you are tired. That’s the enemies favorite time to attack.

     When we fall in love with someone, what do we do? We study everything about that person, their mannerisms, what makes them tick, how they think, and their history. We fall all over ourselves trying to make them deliriously happy.  Yet when it comes to loving YHVH with all our hearts, souls and mind, we go to church and are spoon-fed a few verses in 43-minute sermon, and we are done for the week. We cannot really determine if we are hearing from GOD if we do that, even if we never miss a sermon. Think back, how many sermons you have heard, how many can you remember all the content? Not very many, huh? Just a few highlights of a good one, right?

     I was married to a cynic. He has always been a cynic. His attitude toward anything I told him that I thought GOD was going to do, his response was always the same. "Well, I guess we'll see if it happens." His cynicism is a vicious cycle of doubt and disbelief, to complete unfruitfulness in the Kingdom.  It was a cancer in his spiritual life that was terminal.  When his spiritual life died, he walked away from GOD, permanently. His cynicism kept GOD from showing Himself because of chip on his shoulder. If a cynic walks away, in all likelihood, they won't come back. There is a difference between a cynic and a prodigal. The cynic walks away out of disbelief, whereas the prodigal walks away out of hurt and not knowing how to process the emotions, or the event that sent them over the edge.

     We are told not to question GOD, but I can't find that in the Bible.  Lots of men questioned GOD.  The only stupid questions are the ones not asked.  How else can GOD speak to us if we don't ask Him questions and if we don't compare our circumstances with Scripture.  You know an answer or direction you feel led is really from GOD if it matches with Scripture, is bathed in Wisdom, and fits in GOD's character. It is probably something you never would have thought up yourself, because it’s way beyond your any human wisdom you have achieved.   I have always said, if you look for GOD everywhere, that is exactly where you will find Him. In other words, the more we pursue the One we love, the more we will hear from Him, learn from Him, see His Hand at work, and know Him intimately. When seeking truth, let Scripture interpret Scripture. One Scripture taken out of context is not proof enough, there must a few more Scriptures in line with the historicity of GOD's dealings with His people. Therefore, one must study the Bible from cover to cover and the historical context. I tell people, if it makes no sense to humans, it's probably from the Almighty. As mere humans, we can never really know the mind of GOD or, understand the ways of GOD.

 Who am I? I really do not know

 I wish I did.  

I'm not really an author, so to speak, not recognized by man.  I may have written ten books and a fictional series, against my will, but I did it, anyway.  I hate fiction. I’ve always hated fiction. (It is turning out less fictional every year, whooda thunk it?) When GOD put that silly notion into my head to write a novel,  I did have one condition though.  I would do it, ONLY if it had a happy ending.  Too many tragic literary fictional stories out there, and life is depressing enough. I don't want any money for them, nor will I ever write anything like them, again.  I only did it, because GOD turned on a movie projector in my head and I typed everything I saw and heard in great detail. A lot of people who read it say they feel like they are watching a movie in print.  Yeah, that's how it was for me.

 

I don't want a publishing contract, even if offered one, I won’t sign on any condition. GOD entrusted LOVE'S MUSES and its character with me, I won't turn them over to anyone else because they are that precious. I don't even want my books really out there until after I'm gone, as in permanently Retired in that Assisted Living Mansion in Paradise, the one Jesus says that he is preparing for me. (John 14). That way GOD gets all the Glory for the work, and Katie Lynn Moore becomes world famous in my stead, and she's limited to the words on a page. 

 I'm a mother who has graduated seven children into legal adulthood, so I can’t be sued by anyone for anything they do, now. I have one left who is still a minor. Man, am I going to miss that.  I say legal adult, because in the eyes of the law, they are adults, in the eyes of anyone else, that’s left up to interpretations.  GOD told Moses to count only the males twenty and over as adult enough for any kind of military service. (Numbers).   A Levite could not start serving as a priest until thirty. (Leviticus, Ezekiel) 

  I'm an ex-wife by man's law, but a Covenant Wife according to GOD's Law, yet, I've been cast aside by a man who doesn't want to live the Christian life anymore, after 30 years. Well, the Bible's version of it, anyway.   I'm not old as some would see it, but I'm not young as others would see it. I'm at that dreadful middle-age.  You know, smack dab in the middle, wishing I was young, but knowing young and stupid is not an expression, it's a reality.  I hated my fifties, fought all the way through it, now that I have the wisdom of the "aged," I boast about my age, now.  I was thrown in and lived in the fiery furnace of affliction for most of my life, so I have a lot of weight to my words.   

These past years in the furnace, I’ve studied just about every main character in the Bible, backward, forward, inside, outside and upside down in order to find some semblance of hope that the fire will go out someday, and the furnace door will open.   They are my BBF's, (Bible Best Friends), and they all gave me a  reason to rise up and put my feet on the floor in the morning, besides my children and my assignment from GOD.  More on him in other posts.

So, daily, I ask GOD, who am I?  Why did all this awful stuff happen to me?  I’ve lived Job’s life, only not so immediate, but I’ve suffered gradual losses over the years, the kind that just keep picking away pieces of your heart, until you think there’s nothing left to pick away or give away.   I do not handle loss very well, in fact, I handle it quite badly, because I love too big. 

So, I guess: I'm Abram - called out of Ur or in my case – Massachusetts, away from my family of non-believers.  

I'm Leah - the rejected wife who was a dirty man's trick to a "trickster," who competed w/a beauty queen, then her ghost.   

I'm Jacob - the trickster, trying to manipulate GOD, losing all the time, because I'm slow learner.

I'm Joseph - rejected by my siblings as the different one, imprisoned for not doing "it" Egypt's way.

I'm Ruth - "widowed" of Mahlon, the weakling with no future, a Moabite woman, wishing there was a Boaz for me.

I'm Hannah- barren with no spiritual descendants to speak of waiting for GOD to give me spiritual children.  Worse even than that;

 I’m Peninnah - her rival, used only as a wife to pop out a bunch of babies, whose husband loved someone more.    

I'm David- hunted by a mad king (the devil) wanting to kill me, yet suffering the consequences of my sins because I'm human, and I did cave.   

I'm Josiah - The TORAH has been found in the church, but just as disregarded as it was in Jesus's day, because the church decided to make up their own rules.  

I'm Jeremiah - the weeping prophet with a fire burning inside me that I can't quench, GOD won't put out, and grieving for what I see as not just a lost sheep, but an entire field of them. 

I'm Daniel - trapped in an upper room with only Jesus as my friend, nose buried in the Word, if not in the carpet, sucking up prayer dust mixed with tears. 

I'm Zerubbabel - an exile, wondering if ever we will ever be able to back to Jerusalem and rebuild or are we lost forever, a people forsaken by GOD, so as it seems. 

I’m Paul, a former legalist, who was set apart (and very much alone) in the wilderness for a certain amount of years to learn to hear only the voice of GOD, and not cave to the voice of the masses.  

I’m Peter – an impulsive loud mouth with a bit of a temper, who has trouble swearing I’ll do things, then finding I don’t have the strength or stamina to do them, constantly feeling like a failure. 

What about you?  Who are you?  Can you identify with one of these? Maybe you can identify with all of them, like I can. Are you a seed in the soil like me, covered up, buried in the dirt where it's dark, damp and you feel quite alone and despaired wanting to break out of your shell?  Maybe you have a dream bigger than the prison in which your trapped? David did, Joseph did, Jacob did, Josiah did, Daniel did, Zerubbabel did, Ezra and Nehemiah did, and a host of others.  What I want to be is a lighthouse for those drowning in their seas of despair.  The fiery furnace of affliction has fired the bricks GOD has formed to build a very tall lighthouse out on an isolated jetty.  I don't have a working light yet, GOD has to install that too, then He has to supply the Power to light it up.  So, who am I?  Nobody, and that's all I ever want to be, is a nobody pointing people to a Somebody who can help them. 

 

Cancer,  Death , 
and Good Humble Pie 

~Among Others~

   Twelve years ago, I remember GOD calling me to begin a writing career. Of course, I thought that was the most ludicrous notion that I had ever heard. After all, I don't think I received higher than a D in any of my college writing classes. So, I said to GOD, "But GOD, I'm not a writer, I'm not a novelist, I haven't a clue how to do that." I distinctly heard in my spirit, before those frightful words of rebuttal left my lips,

   "Kristina, you are who I make you to be." Oh, yeah, that did it. I had no argument with that.

     You see, we can argue with GOD all we want, but we will never win. Here's the beauty, He doesn't mind how much we do it, until we learn that we aren't going win, and we can trust Him with that which we know we can’t handle. Eventually, we realize that He has been trying to teach our slow brains that we can’t handle it, but He can. 

    Another day, I remember being on one of my five-mile autumn walks, and  I saw in my head in the future, a very successful author who had my face. The terror that ran over me on my walk nearly face planted me right there and oddly enough, right in front of the local library. GOD has a funny sense of humor. That fear gripped my heart because I know just how much of a screw-up I have been and still am. Again, I had a rebuttal for GOD, and before the words,    "Oh, no, GOD, what will I do if I am successful. I'm sure to ruin it. That kind of success like that ruins everyone. What if I get too full of myself? What is to stop me from making it all about me?

    Again, the answer was swift and only took two nouns and a conjunction, "Cancer and death." 

   “Oh, yeah, that'll do it." The Bible is clear, storms come from GOD’s permissive and sometimes planned will. The crook in your lot that totally messed you up came from GOD. He may have used other people to put the bend in the road that caused you to crash and burn. He did it because you were probably going the wrong way at warp speed and didn't see the train wreck coming right at you.

   Two years later, I was knee deep in radiation hell, having all pride I had built up in my first book, finished, with “rave” reviews burned out of me. (I sometimes wonder if there was more wrong with those who reviewed my book than me in the intelligence department.)   So, one book down, another started and an amazing one at that. You see, GOD let me screw up the first one, make every mistake a new writer could make in order to prepare me for the EPIC!  (LOVE'S MUSES). God gave me a story that was sure to be an epic, as sure as I am sitting here typing this, or rather revising it here six years later than I wrote the original. Right after I finished the rough draft, I spent the next six months in radiation hell getting the snot burned out of me, literally. 

   Sadly, though, GOD had more sense-of-self I needed to be rid of, because having bounced back beating cancer and surviving radiation hell, I still had a garden needing to be weeded after a longest winter of my life. So, he ruffled up the garden paradise of my home and family life. With a stroke, dual cancers, a few days past the pain of radiation hell, I was basking in victory. With no real warning, none that I paid attention to, because I never thought divorce could happen to me, my husband informed me during the last few weeks of my cancer treatments that he was filing for divorce when my treatments were over after twenty-nine years of marriage. 

    A year after that, another major heart crushing rejection came along to seriously send me under the bed hiding behind my cat afraid to even come out of my room, lest something worse happen. Rejection is one of GOD's greatest tools, not only to protect us from those who are not good for us, but to protect us from ourselves and that ugly human disease called, P-R-I-D-E. It is so sneaky. Even in all that, it still snuck up on me. You'd think I would have had my fill of humble pie with my family shattered, dual cancers, divorce pending, and a crushed and broken heart should have humbled me, but nope. He had one more lesson. Vindication!

   You see, the Bible promises us that He will vindicate us from those who do us harm, even if sometimes He was the one who sent them to do just that. Boy, I surely needed some vindication, or rather thought that I deserved vindication. Do you see it? Pride entered even through my brokenness. I was so broken by those who GOD sent in my life to hurt me, on purpose, to keep me humble, but now as the "victim," I felt I deserved some Heaven sent vindication, and some serious justice to feel satisfied. There is a difference between seeking justice for a person’s well-being, and seeking vindication for our bruised egos. When we plead for justice, it must be with an attitude of needing deliverance from something that is oppressing us, with the Father-forgive-them-for-they-know-not-what-they-do attitude and heart behind it. When we seek the self-satisfying kind of justice and vindication, that is usually nothing but pure anger and bitterness coated in pride.

    Now, I am cancer survivor who is well aware that just like the winter, cancer always comes back, especially the rare kind I was gifted with, even if it takes decades. Yes, cancer was a gift, and anyone who drew closer to GOD during theirs understands that. It is, however, a permanent, unwelcomed guest that never really leaves, but lies dormant in my cells, ready to leap at a moment’s notice, and all just to keep forcing that humble pie down my throat, but then again so isn't a brain aneurysm, when cancer's return doesn't scare you or humble you enough.  Sometimes, GOD has to pull out the big guns to keep us humble.

     

  So, here I am twelve years later, still working on my eighth of ten books, (eight meaning new beginning in Hebrew numerology) Google-able, yet, still a nobody. Yes, you can google me.  As a mother of eight in a small town, my house isn't all glass, but still too much of it is. I can't walk down main street without one of my children's friends letting them know that they saw me tripping over my own two left feet on that sidewalk, again. Failure in obscurity is fine with me. After fifteen years in the fiery furnace of affliction, with the heat turned up to broil, I've learned that failure is the flour in humble pie and the stepping stones to success, and it is way easier to deal with, and much more preferred than success. I know how to do failure very well, but I've never done success. Believe me when I say this, I'm scared to death of it! PUN intended. I'd almost rather fail my entire life, and let my work succeed after I am gone. That way GOD gets all the credit, all the glory and I'm just a stone in the ground. After all, Allen means stone!

It would be nice to have "one moment in time when I'm more than I thought I could be, when all of my dreams are a heartbeat away, and the answers are all up to me!"  Enjoy one of the many songs that have kept me going these twelve years of writing, crying, fighting with GOD, and everyone else who were naysayers the devil sent to me.  

ONE MOMENT IN TIME