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You are here: Home / Archives for clarissa-worley

Before You Crash

November 29, 2018 By admin

Every time I’m asked why I won’t use my Saturdays to mow the lawn or spring clean my house, I get happy. One of the most profound practices in my life is the practice of Sabbath. I love it when I’m asked about Sabbath. Not only does it give me a chance to promote something that brings balance and security to family ties, it’s also an opportunity to throw some light on the one thing God asked us to remember, that we’ve gone and forgotten.

My favorite story about Sabbath I read in an airline magazine. Written by a Jewish woman with little or no ties to God and faith, she rambles on about how her life is coming apart, how she and her husband for all their work and business don’t seem to know each other anymore. And how with conflict and maybe even divorce staring them in the face, she stumbles upon that ancient practice so familiar to her ethnic heritage, the Jewish Sabbath.

The rest of the article is about how they begin to practice Sabbath—a commitment that is outlined in the Ten Commandments that involves kicking back, communing with your family, and not doing anything mundane or common for the rest of the week. Sabbath practice forces a calm day, a mini-vacation day, like a little respite in the middle of our rampant responsibilities. No matter what has to be done, when Friday night comes with the sun going down, well, everything gets thrown in the back room and forgotten for a solid 24 hours.

Did their marriage start to thrive? Yes. They were very happy in the end. Just as successful, but also very connected and emotionally strong. Toward the end of the article, she went on about how they always have Sabbath to fall back into now, no matter the week. That they know that despite schedule conflicts and all the crazy dynamics of two adults working full time, they will have each other all to themselves in less than seven days. Always.

Her story was very much a take on my experience. I felt like I had read about myself on that flight out East. Although for me it’s not just about saying no to all those annoying must-do-now lists, or even being all day without the pressure of my job or the media or the random information dumped all over my life on a daily basis. It’s also about communing with God. It’s my day where I remember I’m human, a created being, yes, human being, not human doing.

What’s funny though, is whenever I’m given a chance to share about Sabbath, most—especially Christians—get this squinty look on their faces and ask why I’d be doing something Jewish, you know, instead of Christian… you know, like that is the Jewish Sabbath, hello. It’s amazing really; any good Christian will tell you the Ten Commandments are front and central to guiding our lives, and right there in the middle is the one commandment that starts out REMEMBER, and yet has somehow been relegated an ancient Jewish heirloom, like an old relic of times past.

That makes no sense to me. When I get that response I like to remind whoever I’m talking with, that Sabbath was given to the human race before anything happened, including sin and then a few centuries later, the Jewish nation. Sabbath was the first day of life for humans; this is what the Bible teaches. God created us and then the next day—a seventh day, following six days of creating the natural world—He rested and called the day Sabbath—a day to relax and be reminded of our origins as a race.

What a grand idea!

Clarissa Worley Sprout writes from the Pacific Northwest.

The post Before You Crash appeared first on Answers for Me.

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Article excerpt posted on en.intercer.net from Answers for Me.

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Filed Under: News and Feeds, Vegetarian recipes Tagged With: clarissa-worley, divine appointment, jewish, marriage, matter-the-week, pacific, renewal, saturdays

In Search of Forgiveness

November 15, 2018 By admin

After explaining forgiveness as best I could at a large Christian gathering a while back, a large line formed to speak with me. Most were tearing up and grateful for the flashlight on their double-standard Christianity—you know—our guzzling up of the forgiveness of God while stiffing those who need forgiveness from our hands. Everyone seemed convicted, until a guy I’ll call Tom stepped up and shook my hand.

He was the exception. He was in his mid-forties and his sister had recently been run down and killed by a raging drunk. He spoke fast and was sure that he hoped the youth rotted in prison, no matter what. He couldn’t see things any other way at the time. Forgiveness looked to him like a band-aid applied to a hole that cut him from neck to abdomen. It was not enough.

As he went on, two thoughts swirled in my mind. The first thought was that we can never leave forgiveness to our emotions. To feel the deep desire to forgive comes with a most mature faith, often the result of days and days—years and years—of practice and an exceptionally tested surrendered-ness to Jesus’ directive.

A desire to forgive minutes after personal loss can come easier and easier, it is true, but only as we are healed and grown over time. And to wait for such a personal maturity before choosing to forgive would sabotage it happening at all. Lucky for us, forgiveness is a choice of will, not a flood of emotionally generousness.

As one friend of mine put it, forgiveness can be spoken while the heart convulses in anger and emotions rage, we are not, after all, the authors of forgiveness, only its loyal subjects. In other words, I can forgive you by speaking the name of Jesus Christ over what you have done and giving all of it and its repercussions to Him. That is the real thing, all feelings aside. When I forgive the matter is finished right there, even though I may still cry for days.

The second thought was that a desire to forgive can be summoned by consciously studying and embracing our own personal depravity. I don’t care how mad you are, if you go to Father God and swap stories, you’ll always leave with enough gratitude necessary to forgive anybody. The short of it is that our debt tore Jesus away from His own family and our mortal ugliness sent Him to His death. Because of you and me, Jesus was beaten past recognition, and right outside Father God’s living room window.

Think on this and you’ll not be quite so vindictive. God, He saw it all. Sensed it all. Heard it all. Yes, and now He still dreams of your tomorrows and hears your prayers. You and your bungled life with all its messes remains His concern. The teachings of Jesus leave no doubt that we wreaked havoc in a beautiful universe because we were so loved and so evil.

They longed for us even as the sins we nurtured threatened to sink our solar system. We careened over the meridian of a cosmos and devastated the lives of far more than one husband and his two little girls, and that was just the beginning. Surely there was a place for this youthful drunk and his tragic crime.

It seems to me, focusing on the loss sustained by Almighty God can address the most painful numbing loss, and lead forgiveness-ward. With the smallest of efforts, we can imagine Father God’s pain and open our hearts up to the raging drunk that kills our kid-sister, extending that same forgiveness Jesus choked out on the cross.

And in a way this can bring us nearer to God. In our devastating loss we no longer have to imagine God’s pain. In fact, we can feel His pain. Yes, we can cry and scream and know a very small touch of what Father God went through for us.

Clarissa Worley Sproul writes from the Pacific Northwest.

The post In Search of Forgiveness appeared first on Answers for Me.

Read more at the source: In Search of Forgiveness

Article excerpt posted on en.intercer.net from Answers for Me.

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Filed Under: Dear God, News and Feeds Tagged With: anger, answers for me, clarissa-worley, compassion, debt, father, hoped-the-youth, our past, personal, revenge

Life’s Bottom Line

November 6, 2018 By admin

A friend asked me a while back what I’d say if asked what the bottom line in life is. You know, what is the one reality, or belief, or whatever, that is central and essential to life being lived, and lived well? What a question.. What a question. How on earth was a person to know what was life’s bottom line? I chewed on it for a few weeks… and maybe months… and then suddenly it came to me.

If I was Henry Ford and had made the automobile, what would make me happy? Probably that my cars would sell and be driven to death, right? Ok, so God created me, a human being… a brilliantly thinking, feeling, creating, natural wonder of the world, and what could He want more than for me to be born, breathe, thrive, live, feel, think, and engage each moment fully. I am a human being, my bottom line is to fully be me.

What a wonderful thing—to just be. Like the flowers in my yard and the tree over our back porch, within me is the full measure of life and everything else to grow up and thrive. I don’t have to make something of myself to be complete. I came into this world small and wrinkled, but with every bit of everything necessary to expand through the years into a full-sized woman, complete with dreams, desires, abilities and personality.

And this is life’s bottom line. Live and be. Life is a gift I never asked for—it was given to me in its fullness and like the Apostle Paul says, everything needful is ours through Jesus Christ. God set it up that way. I’m innately wired with vision, purpose and destiny. I only need to learn the practice of living and being uniquely myself.

Now as beautiful and simple as that all sounds, It wouldn’t be fair to stop there without mentioning that we all have this condition that has warped us and polluted our grandeur and dignity. Our race was created to resemble God Himself, and yet we’ve been drug down into confusion by a condition that consumes us. As one author put it, we are the most glorious and magnificent of ruins. Brilliant and yet disfigured by a condition of evil—a Hebrew word from Genesis that can be translated with all the negative words just used in the above sentences.

This reality of evil threatens my living and being. It has shattered my psyche into a million pieces, turning my natural instincts backwards and making life seem like a mammoth puzzle seemingly impossible to put together. Evil cuts to the core of not so much what I do, but who I am, my personhood, my livingness. It’s no accident that we stumble and struggle, coping instead of living and shutting down our own thoughts and feelings. No, this is the norm of our evil condition.

And yet, there is hope. We all still resemble God, so we must go to war against evil. We cannot consciously surrender ourselves at any time. This was what Jesus taught. He pointed out that our very nature had gone south, but that His love and guidance could slowly bring the real person we were back to life again. He also clarified the threat of death that hovers in this evil condition, and received it’s full threat in his own dying, breaking the cycle of eternal endings and restoring our chance at eternal living, something we all deeply long for.

And so to know and practice the teachings of Jesus is the only way I have found to live and be completely me. He has taught me that I was created to thrive. He has taught me that I am fully crafted and innately wired for all that my destiny here on earth asks of me. Yes, and He has explained why it’s all such a struggle. He has demystified the great confusions and passions co-existing within my soul. And in the end, taking His word for it, I believe I will be lifted from this evil condition and restored to pure living and being forever.

Clarissa Worley Sproul writes from the Pacific Northwest.

The post Life’s Bottom Line appeared first on Answers for Me.

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Article excerpt posted on en.intercer.net from Answers for Me.

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Filed Under: Dear God, News and Feeds Tagged With: answers for me, apostle, being me, bottom-line, clarissa-worley, evil, jesus, life's meaning, personhood, self awareness

Waking Up to Trust

October 17, 2018 By admin

For all the times I’ve heard humans go on and on about love and how Jesus is huge on loving all people everywhere, I have never heard a single monologue on trust. Considering I sit in a church each weekend, this should be strange. Yes, and sadly, the dearth of education on this subject has cost me a few boatloads of emotional energy—not to mention a few thousand moments of misplaced expectations.

The truth about trust hit me square in the face one day about a decade ago. I had been fuming to myself about the repeated judgments of a certain co-worker and how he would regularly lavish his twisted take on whoever was not present. As kind as I had tried to be around him, my turn had finally come. Driving home that day, I was crestfallen. I was part hurt and part frustrated. What was his problem?!

This is when enlightenment fell from Heaven. I heard a voice in my mind ask why I was acting all shocked and mad. Why? I returned. You don’t see why? The voice asked how many times I’d heard of this guy doing this. Ok, many. The voice then asked over how many months or years I’d witnessed this behavior. Ok, several… and…?

As this mental dialogue progressed, my ignorance came shining through. This guy was known to take a swing with his “baseball bat” every time someone rang his doorbell. I’d read it through the grapevine and seen the damage with my own eyes, more than once, yes, and yet without a second thought I had run up the steps to his house with a smile on my face and hopes of having tea. I was the fool.

Over the next few days I processed how trust is opening up oneself to receive favor. It’s a choice that is made—even if not consciously—and a choice to which the trusting one is held fully responsible. Why had I not figured this out sooner? I was trusting all over the place—without even one thought or intentional question about the person I emotionally embraced.

It all sunk in very fast. Trusting should not happen before the other party has shown over time that they are capable of coming through. Their track record should be the only consideration. And yes, if they exhibited negative behavior, expectations need to be adjusted, and emotional bonding kept in check. It made me think of the Proverb that states how it is out of the heart that all of life flows. What could be worse than opening my heart up to someone with a track record for ill? What could be more devastating than broken trust and a broken heart?

Today, many years of practice later, I am doing quite well. Instead of naively hoping that all the evidence will be wrong this time, I observe a person’s emotional maturity and accept them where they are, making choices accordingly. I size up Mr. Coworker, expect what is evident, and treat him with respect without looking for any kind of goodwill to be returned. Basically, I emotionally adjust to reality and resist opening myself up for something good that will certainly not be given.

What is so huge about all this is that we are only as strong as the people we let into our hearts and lives. And what is so overlooked about all this is that the choice is always ours. Even if you have to share geographical space, this doesn’t mean you have to share your heart. And by the way, if you check out the Bible on trust, you will find it adamant that we are not to trust humans—even ourselves. We are told to trust only God.

I can count on two hands the people I now trust. They, as it turns out, are all people who have given their lives over to God. They are people who have shown over time that they are committed to honoring God’s laws and teachings. So, in the end, I guess I have found the Bible to be right on. Screening those who I trust has got me—even if indirectly—trusting only God. And what a huge relief that has been.

Clarissa Worley Sproul writes from the Pacific Northwest.

The post Waking Up to Trust appeared first on Answers for Me.

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Article excerpt posted on en.intercer.net from Answers for Me.

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Filed Under: Dear God, News and Feeds Tagged With: answers for me, bible, clarissa-worley, face, find-it-adamant, heart, house, jesus, life applications, pacific, people, proverb

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