1/13/2015
Big shout of praise to Elevation 120 🙂 and Jim Stallings. I’m looking forward to it all. This project was a leap of faith. Did I say leap? I mean more like an extended air born jump. I didn’t have all the pieces in place when I got the calling. I don’t even think I have the confidence in myself to pull off the first day, let alone be staring at a 20,000 mile journey. I barely know anything about videography – in fact I’m learning as I go. But what I do know, more than anything is GOD has this, and this is for God.
Well smartie pants, how do you know? Let’s start with this morning, I woke up drove from Hendersonville, Rd to Blue Ridge Parkway to find a overlook, to take video of the “perfect” sunrise. Alas. The fog was way way too thick. By 8 am the sky was bright white, but all I could see across the valley was fog, and more fog. Instead of being disappointed, I prayed.
I have been a video editor for years. However, I was rarely behind a camera, and when I was, I opted for auto-focus. At this point some of you might be thinking, but..Jamie, you are doing a documentary, don’t you have to…?” Yeh, I know right. This is the part of the journey where you have to have some faith, as I do. As I was praying, I had the inspiration to call some camera shops and pay someone to teach me. That’s how I work. Then I realized, oh! And I need to have something to stabilize my gear to capture more professional shots that include slides, pans, and up and down movements that swoop.
Up until now, I have been able to get along with my GX-7 auto-focus, and Galaxy 5 on a mono pod. That is working well for the start of the trip, where most of the stops have been in Holy chaos with lots of people moving around, and few chances for long sweeping shots. But that keeps me limited to the on-the-street indie-documentary look. Think, Blair Witch Project. There is a very select audience who wants to sit through that sort of jarring, edgy, video.
Would I have ever started this project if I was waiting on a perfect time? A sign from God? A perfectly laid out plan?
No.
ALAS GOD IS AN AWESOME GOD! By noon, after that simple prayer, my Atlanta destination revealed that that they are making a video, with a professional videographer, who just happens to make his own guide systems, gimbals and rails. Perhaps, it is suggested, he could meet with me during the week. Thank you Lord. I don’t have to figure it out on my own. There is help. Did I mention God is great?
The events of the day inspired me to write about trust and control. One, I can always use more of, and the other, less. However, I use faith to calibrate the two. I feel for those who keep describing the mountain, over and over, instead of speaking through it, saying to it ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea!” Anything,..and I mean anything – a relationship, a job, a project.. whatever, requires TRUST in God. Faith, after all, is Trust. Double-thinking isn’t trust. Questioning. Devising. Manipulating. Coveting. Lamenting. Regretting. Pitying. Is not trusting God. Oh, it just goes on and on.
What keeps us from trusting God? Control?
While writing this, I kept thinking about idols. We go around thinking we’ve got this all in control. When things go south, emotions run high. You can tell what an idol is in your life, by observing your emotions when it is removed or challenged. The idol is actually blocking you from the thing you want. God will give you your hearts desires in time, but the idol is us involving your own judgement and not God’s in the process. If the idol is a person, the aspect of control gets us embroiled in the expectation that said person will give us something for our person worship, or that said person will succeed or fail to satisfy the rightness of our opinion. And, that NEVER works out. We stop seeing the person for who they are, but rather what they are or aren’t giving us. It actually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. When we are looking for red, we don’t see the other colors in a room. If we are looking for failure, we will find failure. Satan uses this all the time.
The idol we love doesn’t love us back. Amen. Its part of the Karpman triangle; it makes victims, it makes sissies, it fosters addiction, it creates weakness, retaliation, and isolation. Ask anyone who has had someone leave them after thirty years.
Ask anyone whose earthly mansion is washed away in a freak super storm.Control is a trick. The longer the trick, the more we think we’re in control.
Why are we so surprised when the works of our hands crumble? When our expectations fail us? Sometimes, things just don’t work out. The fog blocks the sunrise. How we react says alot about what is in the center of our world.
When we are at the center of our world, when time gets hard, it’s easy to spit on blessings we still have, use up our well-wishers, hide behind anger, mistrust and hurt and throw tantrums. When control is an idol and is threatened, the world is blamed. The process of blaming and shaming takes up the mental and emotional space that praying and praising could use to put into motion, another outcome. The world literally looks different – hostile! After all we are losing our idol is threatened. Often times the idol of control is the very thing that we use to manage our entire world – mess with that idol and your messing with multiple layers of ones existence. Ouch! Look out for angry dogs will bark loudly.
Faith can even become an idol. Really. When people throw truth under the bus, for ever increasing faith, the structure by which faith works breaks down. Gods blessing is required for things to manifest whose results come without the repercussions of sin and the sufferings that follow. One can get what they want, only to find, it caused alot of pain and suffering after the fact. This is why Gods perfect will is necessary to move and bless the prayers and petitions. God is love and will not deviate from what is best for our eternal future. This is why faith has to be guided. This is why the example prayer makes special note of Thy Kingdom come Thy Will Be Done! On Earth as it is In Heaven!
Some of us think people should act the way we want them to, be who we think they should be and be perfect . The projection of perfection masks looking to heir own failures. The more we demand others to be perfect, the less we acknowledge we are messing up, or question why we demand such high flung standards.
“Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving to be our best. Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth; it’s a shield. Perfectionism is a 20-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us when, in fact, it’s the thing that’s really preventing us from being seen and taking flight.”
And ho-hum, without acknowledging our mistakes, we WON’T EVER CHANGE THEM. I didn’t make this up. This is psychology 101. It’s not Buddhist psychology 101, or Christian psychology 101 or New Age psychology 101, it is JUST psychology 101. Google it or ask any Christian counselor or someone saner than I.
The idol of perfection happens when GOD isn’t the source, the inspiration and the foundation of our lives. Our self-worth should come from being created by an almighty God, and by Christ Jesus’ providing a path away from our fallen blunders, not an expectation of perfection fulfilled or not fulfilled by ourselves and others. Our self-worth comes from being created in the image of almighty God. It’s all from Him. Don’t take credit for something you didn’t create.
When we mess up, and we will mess up, complaining about our punishment just reinforces the punishment. Hardship is discipline But, if we think we are in control, hardship is an invitation for Satan to orchestrate some complex strategy of aversion or distraction. Go through it, praising. Go through it knowing that the eternal reward is predicated upon, surrendering the situation to God. To onlookers it must have looked pretty grim that Daniel was in a lions den. A lessor mind would have crumbled with the chomping jaws and growls prancing around them, locked in a den whose door was sealed shut! Could Daniel fight the lion and win? God had to fight the battle for him. Like Rick Warren says, “You know you’re surrendered to God when you rely on God to work things out instead of trying to manipulate others, force your agenda, and control the situation. You let go and let God work. You don’t have to always be in charge. Instead of trying harder, you trust more.” Trying harder is futile in the jaws of a hungry lion.
One of the hardest things to do when we feel bad is to give up control. How? I don’t feel like it you say? Sit. Pray. Light a candle. Put on inspiring music. Envision yourself past the mountain – envision the mountain gone. Pray. Read scripture. Reflect. There ain’t nothing good going to come out of being in the perils of stress hormones but more stress, more control strategies, and more behaviors contrary to the lesson to be learned. So relax. When you relax, you might just figure out how to stop blaming yourself and others, let go, and REALLY truly know what you need to repent about. You might be repenting about what you did with your idol, not having the idol itself. The underlying reason you have the idol is why you deny the Jesus Lordship over your life. Yes, repent of it all, but be sure to pull out of the situation enough to let the Lord help you realize the root of your issue.
Said in a different way, the mental garbage pile of judgement and fantasies, where we want to go, what we want to do, who hurt us, who doesn’t like us, who said she said, he said she said, personal commercials, is NOT helping. It’s all the voicing of control or loss of it, and might be covering up what the true problems is. A quiet mind is one ready to listen to God. Be still and know that the Lord will answer you.
WARNING.. The sort of indicators that would tell many people they’re wrong are hard to notice, because they are so busy controlling the input that would challenge their control and proving everyone else wrong.
There truly is no way to control anything or anyone, who doesn’t agree to the exercise of those behaviors. The less people are in agreement with your control, the unhappier you will feel. So, I remind myself, as the day went on yesterday, that Lord, it’s all in your hands. I have my desires, I wanted the day to go a certain way but as it always is, your in control.
1 Timothy 1:15
14and the grace of our Lord was more than abundant, with the faith and love which are found in Christ Jesus. 15 It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all. 16Yet for this reason I found mercy, so that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate His perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in Him for eternal life.…
