Just Like The Leaves..

Just Like the Leaves
Marybeth Whalen

"For whoever wants to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it."
Mark 8:35

Devotion:
As I write this, it is fall and the leaves are changing in a glorious display of color. Each landscape looks like God Himself personally painted it—red, yellow, orange and green. I marvel as I drive, soaking in the visual display that is a feast for the eyes, thanking God for His creativity and care for even the smallest of details on this earth.
When my daughter asked me one day why the leaves change color, I scanned the recesses of my brain for this most basic of elementary science facts. But there was nothing there. I patted my daughter and assured her, yet again, that we would learn this answer together. (Sometimes my children wonder if I ever went to school and—if I did—how it is I managed to retain precious little.)
We read a book together and learned why the leaves change color. The leaves are slowly dying, their hold on the tree loosening a little more every day. The more they detach, the more a substance within them called chlorophyll dissipates. Chlorophyll is green in color, which causes the whole leaf to appear green. But when the chlorophyll is gone, other colors have a chance to surface. The red, gold, and orange colors were within the leaf all along—they were just overshadowed by the presence of the chlorophyll. It took the process of dying for their glorious color to be displayed.
We are in the process of dying every day, just like those leaves. When we choose to follow Christ, He asks us to take up our cross and follow Him, engaging in a daily process of giving up our rights, our pride, and ourselves in the name of service, giving and submitting. It is the painful work of death, yet in it we find colors we didn't know were there emerging. Once our sense of self and entitlement overshadowed us, coloring us an eternal—yet common—green. In the dying process, we find that God designed us to be more brilliant and colorful as we surrender our lives to Him.
People are drawn to this colorful display. They want to know how they too can break out of their same old green-colored lives and live with this kind of brilliance. In our humanness, we want to cling to the security of the tree - the security of money, or family, or our comfort zones and routines. But God asks us to let go, to trust Him, and to die a little more every day. We must trust the dying process and encourage others to do the same, displaying our colors so that people far from Him are drawn to Him, just as He intended.

Dear Lord, I don't want to live a me-colored life. Please show me how, through dying to self, Your brilliant colors can be displayed in me. In Jesus' Name, Amen

-Live Productively

Abandonment Is an Awful Poverty

One day I visited a house where our sisters shelter the aged. This is one of the nicest houses in England, filled with beautiful and precious things, yet there was not one smile on the faces of these people. All of them were looking toward the door. I asked the sister in charge, "Why are they like that? Why can't you see a smile on their faces?" (I am accustomed to seeing smiles on people's faces. I think a smile generates a smile, just as love generates love.)
The sister answered, "The same thing happens every day. They are always waiting for someone to come and visit them. Loneliness eats them up, and day after day they do not stop looking. Nobody comes."
Abandonment is an awful poverty. There are poor people everywhere, but the deepest poverty is not being loved.
The poor we seek may live near us or far away. They can be materially or spiritually poor. They may be hungry for bread or hungry for friendship. They may need clothing, or they may need the sense of wealth that God's love for them represents. They may need the shelter of a house made of bricks and cement or the shelter of having a place in our hearts.

-Mother Teresa, In the Heart of the World

Be that person that these aged people are waiting for to enter through those doors. The aged may be someone nearby or someone on the street, someone who's lonely or someone in need of a word, hug, love or act of kindness. Be that person today!

Yesterday is gone.

Tomorrow has not yet come.

We have only today,

let us begin!

-Live Productively

Listening Prayer

AHH PLEASE JUST STOP AND LISTEN!

everything is just happening so fast, i'm having such a hard time keeping up. it's funny because the moment that I said that I surrender my life into His hands, all of a sudden one thing leads to another and now i'm in a place where things are changing so rapidly and suddenly that I'm at a loss, I feel like I'm losing control which is what God wants me to let go of, myself. I'm not even sure how to process this whole thing. It basically all started with me going to my academic counselor for school to seek some advice and counsel in regards to my educational plans and goals. Explaining how I seem to have everything else balanced, family is good as well as church but when it comes to my education I just can't seem to balance it. He responds by saying 2 things that I took away: 1) take it one semester at a time because things always change, 2) As I looked at the educational plan that he handed back to me he had wrote the key focus is: LISTENING PRAYER. I then looked at him in the eyes as he smiled then nodded, it was this moment that I knew that God was evidently speaking to me audibly. It wasn't like a the heavens parted and I saw God beaming down but it was more like His presence surrounded me at this moment and I just felt it being so strong. I honestly thought he was going to say to focus, keep doing a good job or something along those lines when he responded to me that he was going to give me a key pointer but to find out that he knew the discipline of listening to God in the silence just paused all the noise surrounding me as I gleaned in to this moment in time. Awesome, right?

This all happened this morning, btw..

It's been 3 years to this day that my grandpa has left and gone to heaven. So in commemoration of that I took a visit to my grandma's for dinner. I am not sure how a casual dinner with laughs and smiles turned into me grasping my tears into my hands as they shed down my face as my tears dropped one by one. Somehow, conversing with my grandma led to us discussing how I'm going to make my move out of this place and into my grandma's. You know what the scariest thing in life is?..hearing someone speak out the raw truth right in front of your face and not be scared to hurt your feelings about it. She laid it on me thick, the truth as. it. is. but the weird thing is, I wasn't offended what so ever, I took it with grace because she was right, I am too self-less. So self-less that I can't see when someone is purely taking advantage of me in their selfishness. She became my eyes for what I could not see. For what I thought I was doing a good job at, I was actually putting myself in the grasp of another person, obeying not God but man. As I've always grown up doing. Taking responsibility for things that are not mine to begin with. Doing more than I can handle, just obeying the commands of others so I won't be kicked out on to the streets, in fear of being abandoned. And everything I did gladly with a smile on my face because I trusted that the Lord brought each and every responsibility as mine to own for as much as He knew I could handle. But the funny thing is, today I really had to think about why I was crying. Even my biological mom (whom I have not spoken with in a couple months, btw) called me up talking some sense into me, like actually being a mom and explaining how I need to start thinking about myself now. My present for my future. She actually kept asking me why I was crying and to not hold things in to myself but to share the burden. She was basically explaining to me out of experience from how she is. It was great that I was able to see how much I am like my mom. Although I couldn't fully explain to her what was going on inside me because I am still in the process of unfolding deeper wounds I've never seen before, I was still able to receive my mom's words with love, something I was never able to do before. It's at times like these that I just know that everything has a place in time (Ecclesiastes 3). Now, more than before, I'm at a place in my life where I'm confidently content with where I am, in the embrace of my Lord and Savior. Doesn't matter what unfolds before me, I just know that it's all in His hands. Whether I stay at my moms or move into my grandma's to focus on my studying, I fully trust that, "all things to work together for good BECAUSE HE LOVES ME!" (Romans 8:28) With the word spoken to me this morning and this whole ordeal panning out so well. I'm left with just following and obeying, nothing more and nothing less. Listening Prayer is the key...

Jesus said in John 10:27,

“My sheep listen to my voice;
I know them, and they follow me.”

-Live Productively

Merciful to the Ungrateful

Even though I may be ungrateful, blind to His handiwork upon my life, attribute credit to someone/something else, never being satisfied, or never being fully grateful- YET Jesus still blesses me, lavishing His provision upon me!

Now, isn't that mercy to the ungrateful!

Just as He has been merciful to me, I am called to give that same kind of mercy to others, regardless of if I'm acknowledged for my deeds, or words spoken or acts of service yet STILL, I will emulate as His child that same character He's graced me with towards others, mirroring God as His child.

One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him- and he was a Samaritan.

Luke 17:15, 16

-Live Productively

Through it All

You are forever in my life
You see me through the seasons
Cover me with Your hand
And lead me in Your righteousness
And I look to You

And I wait on You...

I will sing to You, Lord
A hymn of love
For Your faithfulness to me
I'm carried in everlasting arms
You'll never let me go
Through it all

Hallelujah, hallelujah!

-Live Productively

He was there through it all, carrying me

This past Sunday, my pastor spoke about a profound topic that gripped me from the moment he started talking about the importance of inner healing- going back to the inner child and embracing her, telling her it's going to be okay and seeing Jesus carrying her in his arms. It was this powerful image that the Lord personally gave me as a testimony to share how He was there through it all, carrying me.

By the grace of God, I have come to this point in my life where I am confident in the God who guides me and leads my path, giving me the strength + confidence to be strong enough to go back into the deeper areas in my past that are dug so deep that it's not visible to the naked eye. I know that some areas in my life that I've been deeply wounded go deep because it shows in the way I feel towards certain situations and people, the way I act and the things I say at certain times of my life. These moments are what I want to live for the glory of God, not for my selfish pleasurable gain or to be self-seeking but to be able to look past my hurts and embrace those who are hurting themselves. Even if these people have caused deep wounds in my life. To be able to look at my dad with love and tell him that I love him without expecting anything in return, or to apologize to my brother for neglecting him by putting my own defense up to protect myself, or to be able to look in the eyes of a past love and see the great person that he is becoming. It's in moments like these where my heart feels the fullness of God, exceeding what I could never have done in my own efforts and works.

I only look forward to more freedom in my life as I go back to areas I was never strong enough to go back to and an outpouring of His Spirit in my life, even in the hard times clearly knowing that He's the one carrying me through it all!

By day the Lord directs his love,

at night his song is with me--

a prayer to God of my life

Psalm 42:8

-Live Productively

Brace Yourselves..

After a long hiatus away from liveproductively, I've decided to slowly make a come back with some life's lessons that I've acquired through that time away from blogging. Uninspired, random ranting and life's experiences has all had some part in it but mainly I just needed time away to draw closer to the main source of life itself, God himself.

We've reached new heights in our relationship, new levels of intimacy and I'm super excited to share about the many things that He's been revealing to me in the past couple of months, well this whole past year, for that matter. What amazes me the most is how I've blogged about how I was unaware of what He was leading me in but now that I'm seeing the fruits of my labor being reaped in such abundance, I'm enjoying every minute of it!

"From heaven the Lord looks down and sees all mankind; from his dwelling place he watches all who live on earth- he who forms the hearts of all, who considers everything they do."

Psalm 33:13, 14, 15

So, Brace Yourselves.. this is going to be good!

-Live Productively