The Devil and His lies

Lately I have been finding many good articles elsewhere, so I guess I am taking a break from writing my own. This article is awesome.  I think the title says it all. This article was written by Fabiola Garza and she has her own blog. You should check it out!! http://catholiccolors.blogspot.com/

"I have yet to meet somebody whom at some point of his or her life has not tried to compensate for qualities he or she is lacking. For my entire life I have used my facility in the arts to boost the self-esteem that was slowly depleted as I realized I couldn’t compete for praise in other areas. First I realized that I wasn’t society’s ideal of physical beauty, so as I covered up my thighs and looked at my nose in the mirror, I thought at least I can draw. In middle school I was top of my class without even trying, but throughout High school and college excelling in academics became harder and harder, until every so often I felt dumb. I felt awkward at large parties; I had no idea how popular people enraptured an audience. But still I told myself at least I can paint. When all my cousins and friends began to have steady boyfriends and get married, I’d think, I’ve been gifted; I can draw.

So as you can expect the days when I couldn’t quite paint what I wanted and “worse” when the very ideas and worlds I wanted to convey were done more beautifully and effortlessly by close friends of mine, I felt very, very small. I dreaded being compared, I dreaded being glanced over. I dreaded having nothing to offer. At that moment I felt ugly, dumb, unloved, and not good enough. And worse I felt sorry for myself. I had all the comforts in the world, but I felt empty. On top of it all I was ungrateful. I hated myself.

It is a terribly thing to be caught in so great a lie. The devil, I am convinced, loves using small insecurities to create obsessions over things that are lies. For in fact I am not the most beautiful, but often people remark that I am pretty. I might not be able to debate with great wit and write with ease, but I’m most certainly not dumb. I might not have a boyfriend, but I feel truly loved by others. And yes, I’m not the best artist, but I’m pretty darn good.

How is it then that every once in a while I found myself in a deep well of insecurity, feeling so small like I had nothing to offer?

Well, there are several ways to get to that awful place and I’m going to tell you my theories. I’m pretty sure I’m right. The lies you believe might be different, but maybe you’ve experienced something similar.

The Devil lost me long ago, but he is still around looking at any moment to get me back. He is not an idiot he knows that I’m no longer (usually) drawn into serious sin when I am weak, so he has to take a few extra steps. He’s crossed off a few choices that he can’t coax me into anymore, because I know they won’t make me happy. I know they’re sugarcoated poison. But I’m still sensitive and often insecure and that’s all he needs to work with.

The key for the evil one’s plan is now even subtler. He will make me believe that by pursuing and fulfilling the ideals of beauty, fame, intelligence, popularity and romance I will become a whole and worthy person. Only then will this insecurity fade. After all, wanting to be attractive, acknowledged, smart and well liked aren’t bad things. The word ‘sin’ doesn’t immediately come to mind…

In retrospect, I realize that I’ve been coaxed and that I’ve listened.

…So go my dear, pursue these things for look at yourself, young men are now used to looking upon perfect women, you wouldn’t want to disappoint. Nobody will every take you seriously if you can’t match their knowledge of history, and look how alone you felt during all those parties, better work on that too. It is wise for you to worry about the future; you don’t want to come home to an empty house every night, do you? Now, don’t look so sad my dear, at least you are doing well with your art, but isn’t it too bad that you are still second-rate. Oh I know you get plenty of praise, but you’re still just not there. Just compare yourself. Compare yourself.

Now where is My Lord and My God in all of this?
He is waiting for my ear and heart to turn His Way and ask two very important questions. “Who am I?” and then, “What do you want of me?”.

But until I ask those questions, I find myself trying to get out of that spiral by devising plans to achieve all those goals. And the Devil is gleeful, because I have forgotten who I am and the God who loves me. These goals will never be achieved because there is always something more to covet. His lie is alive.

I know this sounds silly. But I have many friends who start tearing up because they think they don’t look good in a bathing suit, or because they are not talented enough, or smart enough. As the outsider and the friend you think they’re crazy! They’re so valuable and kind and creative. What are they talking about? You might think it’s a good idea to slap them out of such on obvious falsehood. It’s always obvious when it’s someone else.

The longer you persist in conversation with the evil one the harder it is to stop. But STOP, and turn your eyes to the heavens and call out to Jesus and ask Him, “Who am I?”And He’ll say quick and loud as thunder, “ You are my beloved daughter”, “You are my beloved son”. Then ask, “What is it you want of me?” And He’ll say, in some way or another, “Your heart; all that you are. Be perfect as my Father in heaven is perfect.”

Stay with Him there.

In that quiet I’ve seen my true self as God’s beloved daughter called to true goodness, to true perfection. Perfect looks so different in God’s eyes, and is so much more exciting!

Do not be afraid to ask! Ask often, I forget all the time.

Most people think that if they give their hearts to God they will have to forget about everything else, but the truth is once you put your confidence in God and not in yourself and what others say you must be going about your life becomes joyful, because your are no longer on an anxious pursuit to become worthy of love. Living with God is living in reality; a land of truth where all the smallest lies are brought into the light.

The pursuit of SELF-esteem is a distorted, winding journey, because truly we are looking for confidence in something perfect that can’t be ourselves because we are flawed. We inevitably fall into either arrogance: believing we are more than we are or self-loathing: believing we are less than we are. No wonder humility is so hard to come by and so highly prized. The humble man is so calm, so unshaken by the affairs of the world and the whispers he might hear. The humble man knows who he is and what is expected of him. He only weeps when God weeps."

Imagination & prayer

This article is by a Christian singer, Audrey Assad.  She sings so beautifully for God and her love for Him runs deep.  To listen to one of her songs click on the link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0B2ybZpDeM

Audrey writes......" Many of us view our imaginations as traps, as stumbling blocks to rational thought. Can you remember the last time you heard a sermon on the subject of the imagination? I cannot. And yet it is probably the most powerful tool we possess for the creation of art, whether for good or ill.
  As I see it, the next question is, can/does Jesus redeem the imagination? I believe the answer to be yes, which is why I do spend time using my imagination in prayer.".....(Please read her article below to get the full story)

"I have never forgotten the day I first actively used my imagination in prayer. In my mind’s eye, Jesus was swarthy, bearded, swathed in burlap—it was unthinkable in such heat. A dry desert wind covered Him in dust. I stood in line with many others, some sick with palsy, some holding children with disorders or diseases. Somehow I just knew He was going to find me out; that with one piercing look of His black eyes, He was going to see inside my veins and my capillaries and know that I had no disease to be healed of that day. And yet I could not tear myself away from that line. I could barely see Him at most points; the crowds pressed in so that I could only just make out the top of His head, occasionally glimpsing those flashing black eyes. He passed His hand over the face of a small boy afflicted with a neurological syndrome, and the little boy was made physically new, as though he had always been. His father wept for joy. I watched him shake with sobs.
After many moments, many miracles, finally I was next in line to see Him. And suddenly, the only thing between Him and me was thirty feet of golden flecks in the close air. Crowd sounds died down to a whirring murmur, and I locked eyes with the Man.
I stood there, my brow furrowed—I didn’t know what to do. Surely He would reproach me for taking up His valuable space and time! And so, unsure of how to act, I waited. His gaze was searching, indeed. It stung a little, even.
Then He smiled a little, and reached out His hand.
“Me?” I said in a small voice. My lungs felt vacuum-packed—I could not draw a breath. He stretched out His arms like an old friend.
And so I ran. I closed that thirty-foot gap with all the ferocity of a freight train falling off the rails. I wanted to collide with Love, to be strained and sifted through the weave of that rough cloth around Him and soaked right into His pores. We crashed into each other. He smelled like red spices and sweat. His robe sandpapered my cheek. All else faded. . .all else vanished. It was just Him, and me, in the scalding white light of the Eastern sun, and I knew His love for me. And as so many other times before, my heart was moved to love Him.
That day I had begun by thinking of Him as the healer of the multitudes. It is a story I have read countless times in various places in Scripture; I was taught it with felt-boards and sticky paper cutouts in Sunday School as a child, and preached to about it as an adult in the pews. Having never been terribly physically ill myself (with the exception of the multitude of varyingly serious food allergies I suffer from), I could wonder at the miracle of it, but never exactly empathized with the characters. In a completely new way, the day I prayed this and saw Him healing, I understood one of the central tenets of the Gospel; that though our bodies may be well, our hearts may be infirm; and though our bodies may crumble, our hearts may be wellsprings of life. I felt how sick my heart was when I put myself in the story. And though the physical encounter was imagined, the emotional and spiritual one was very real. I cannot prove that, but I do testify to it. I started that time of prayer viewing Him as the healer of the many; and by the end of it, I saw Him as the healer of me.
The risks of praying that way can be intimidating. Our imaginations are not wholly pure; they are informed by our context, our experiences, our culture, and they are crippled by sin. On top of that, the word “imagination” has taken on somewhat of a negative connotation in everyday conversation. Usually when you hear someone say “you’re just imagining it”, they are typically implying that whatever “it” is, is false. “It’s all in your imagination,” a friend might say to me when I believe someone to be angry with me who is not angry with me at all. Many of us fear imagining what God is like, because we might believe something wrong about Him, or be led astray by foreign ideas of God operating in our subconscious. Many of us view our imaginations as traps, as stumbling blocks to rational thought. Can you remember the last time you heard a sermon on the subject of the imagination? I cannot. And yet it is probably the most powerful tool we possess for the creation of art, whether for good or ill.
To settle some of these interior difficulties, it must be asked, what is the imagination? Dr. Peter Kreeft ¹ defines it this way; it is the ability to call up interior images of physical things, even when they are not externally present; it is the ability to conceive of things that we have never seen, or that perhaps do not even exist; and it is the ability to hold before the mind a meaning—to stand under it, to contemplate it. It is sensory, creative, and contemplative.
Our imagination, particularly in its creative and contemplative dimensions, is one of the particular things that sets us apart from the animals; it is one of the ways in which we have been created in God’s image. It has the capacity to express both light and darkness, and as such is a powerful tool in whatever way it is exercised. As I see it, the next question is, can/does Jesus redeem the imagination? I believe the answer to be yes, which is why I do spend time using my imagination in prayer. On that premise, it follows that our imaginations can be very helpful to our souls in both prayer and art.
Religious art is made using a combination of theology and imagination; I believe this holds true for worship music in a particular way. We who write for the Church take truths that are already formed and find a new way to imagine them—a new way to communicate them with imagery.
Take “How He Loves” (John Mark McMillan) as an example. The song is undoubtedly one of the more interesting and moving worship songs written during our generation; the first two lines say this;
“He is jealous for me.
Love’s like a hurricane;
I am a tree bending beneath
the weight of His wind and mercy.”
The picture is stunning, and effective. John Mark imaginatively found a way to communicate the very simple idea that God’s love is strong. Simple though the truth communicated may be, the lines would never have been written if McMillan had not exercised his God-given gifts of creative and contemplative imagination. We who desire to write songs for God’s people to sing in worship can be greatly assisted in our task by putting those faculties to good use. Anyone who has ever met and loved C.S. Lewis’ Aslan in his The Chronicles of Narnia can attest to the potential spiritual impact of creative writing. Lewis imagined a character that has helped many like myself to love God and desire heaven.
The one caution I offer, first to myself and then to anyone who reads this, is that anytime the use of imagination is intersected with prayer, we run the risk of creating images or ideas of God and looking upon them as private revelation. This is very dangerous. It isn’t impossible, but nor do I believe it is likely. Proper boundaries are needed. The renewal of the mind by consistent and faithful Scripture study is essential.
I plan to always keep thinking and dreaming about God and His heart, taking the risk of creating a mess. It is how I create images, and often how I write music; more importantly, it is one of the myriad ways in which I learn to love Him with more of my heart."

Article from : http://fqworship.com/blog/news/imagination-prayer-and-songwriting/
2011 Audrey Assad

Having Faith Like A Little Child

"Unless you become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven."
                      - Matthew 18:3

When I was younger, people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I simply would always reply, "I just want to stay a kid."  
To this day I don't necessarily want to be a kid but I want only to have that sort of freedom that I once had when I was young.  
I'm sure we've thought back to childhood memories and we remember how we felt.  We remember how we viewed the world.  We were, for the most part, Carefree - climbing trees, riding bikes, making clubs and to us, everyday was and adventure.
Why were we so free?  Why was it so easy to get excited about the simpler things?
Well, part of it is that we simply knew less, and dreamed more.  I think as we get older we learn more, but not only that; we seem to want to understand everything.  It was the-not-knowing that nutured part of our innocence that we so dearly want to protect in this world. Most of that freedom came from having little responsibilities and we Trusted our parents to care for us, clothe us and feed us.  They guided us down the path they thought was best for us, and we trusted them to do this.  We may have had some struggles and fears but most of us had our parents to fall back on.  Therefore, we were more free.  We knew we could trust our parents, and that made life that much more enjoyable - that much more simpler.
Now we are adults.  Now we are more knowledgeable to take care of ourselves.  We naturally no longer need to rely on our parents to provide us everything.  We also know more and we begin to take on responsibilities.  And, since we are in a world of good and evil, with those responsibilities may come fear and worry.  We begin to naturally leave the trust and security we had from our parents and try to start trusting ourselves to get us what we think we want and need.   We soon notice that the cares of this world are weighing us down-the temptations, past wounds, trials.  Our once easy excitement and innocence slowly leaves our heart as we begin to pick up more cares of this world.
We wonder, who will guide us?  Who will rescue us?  We are tired of trying to do it on our own, so deep down we long for someone else to save us,someone else to fall back on, someone else to whisper to our heart that freedom is still possible but then also wondering where it has gone?

I think being a child is a gift.  - A gift from God so that we could experience a small taste of the freedom that we were all made for. This taste is to show us that freedom is real.  That there is more to life. That there is hope. And when we look at little children, let us be reminded and moved by their simplicity, their freedom, their  innocence...
Instead of having our parents to trust and hold us when we needed them, Jesus is telling us,
"Trust me now. You know that I am here and I am your Father, even if you did not have the perfect parents, know that  I am many times better than they, for I am your perfect Father and Mary is your perfect Mother.  Let me now guide your ways.  I will always know what's best for you.  Let me care for you, clothe you, and feed you.  Let me take those worries and stresses and carry them - Let me carry you.  Have faith in me like you did with your parents. Have the faith like a little Child.  I will never you let you down.  Let me love you. Trust in me. Surrender it all and you will experience that true freedom,  a better freedom - A freedom that comes from a perfect love."
 I think this is what God is referring to when he says "have faith like a little child." We might be adults, but we will always be like children who need and are searching for their perfect Father. We are searching for that freedom we were made for -  that perfect love.
Trust is a gift. We must ask for it and always pray.  We must get to know our Father better, for it easier to trust someone we know.  Once we open our hearts and let God take control, then we are trusting.  It is a journey.  It is a journey we must all take because, "unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven."

"My dear sweet child, reach out and take My hand , and never let go."


>St. Therese of Lisieux-pray for us<