Day 33 "Onesiphorous"

Sometimes our mentors are people we have never met face to face. -Beth Moore, 4/8/09 Life Today Broadcast

You have to admit that there is some divine providence with me listening to this message today. God is convincing me that He has a plan with this whole blog project after all! Well, if for nothing else God is teaching me how obedience to Him in even the craziest of ways is beneficial to us spiritually. Today, inspiration came as I was exercising on the treadmill. I am trying to get back in shape and today was the restart to that "project." I thought it would be beneficial to do my mentoring sessions during that time too. So I put Beth on my iPhone and we went to work out. Let me tell you what, as God spoke to me in that gym I was quiet sure everyone could tell. I was having a Jesus moment and I wanted to shout to the gym of strangers a good Hallelujah! But, I am in the depths of non-Christians right now and that would not have been a wise choice. I feel sure someone had to notice the stupid grin I had on my face while walking though and just been like: "What the heck is going on on that treadmill?" Anyway....

Check out what I learned from this videocast today: 6 "ex" words that will excite the flame in us.

1. Exalt: we should exalt our relationship with God above everything else.
2. Expose: we should expose ourselves to people who are operating under anointing while using their spiritual gifts.
3. Experience: we need to have experiences that will help us determine our strongest spiritual gifts - trial and error leads to an understanding of what we are truly good at.
4. Excel: we need to learn to focus on our giftedness and learn to excel in that area.
5. Exhale: we need to understand the role of Sabbath rest.
6. Exit: we need to learn when we are called to move on to something new.

For your sake, I won't break down the entirety of the message, but I want to hit on a few of the points that struck my soul at it's very core. I think I will revisit this throughout this week.

First and foremost would be the point of "expose." The essence of this concept is that we should expose ourselves to people who ignite a spiritual flame and passion in us so that we may be motivated to be our best for God. This is also where she noted that our mentors are not always people we learn from face to face. For obvious reasons, this is something I needed to hear to validate what God is doing in my life with this blog project. This concept is one that is completely relevant to my life right now in more ways than one. God sparked a passion in me to begin learning from others pretty much at my salvation experience at age 9, but I would say my hunger and drive for this has grown exponentially in the last five years. God had me reflect on this today.

Look at all He has exposed me too just this last year: Angela Thomas, Priscilla Shrier, Beth Moore, Jennifer Rothschild, Chris Adams, Mary Kassian, Elizabeth George, Elisa Morgan, Shaunti Feldhan, Kay Author, Margeret Fienburg, Rhonda Kelley, Pat Layton, Kelly Minter, Vicki Courtney, Jimmie Davis, Esther Burroughs, Shirley Moses and on and on. And these are just some of the women I've learned from this year - not including books, lectures from men, videos, sermons and other bits of exposure this last year. I mean, I think God intends my soul to be ignited don't you?

I've needed each and every message though. Like Beth says in this message, we need the exposure to refill our souls from the spiritual draining that life can sometimes cause. This past year was definitely tumultuous. It isn't important to bog you down with the details because I know you likely know what it feels like for your soul to feel drained. And honestly, this past year I felt drained just as often as I felt spiritually ignited. But there in lies the point of all this, we have to put ourselves under the teaching of others and God to get that spiritual jumpstart we sometimes need. The other part is that the exposure educates us on how we can be more passionate in displaying our individual spiritual gifts.

Hmm. This encourages me today. Not only does it remind me that my project is a worthy one, it reminds me of the value of Christian fellowship and edification in our daily lives. Two points drive the message of "expose" home. First, Beth mentioned 2 Timothy 1:16:

May the Lord show mercy to the household of Onesiphorous because he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains. - NIV

You see, Onesiphorous was one of the refreshers of the apostle Paul's soul. This is a biblical reminder that we need to be around people who refresh us. At this juncture, I think I can say with confidence that this year God deems Beth as the Onesiphorous in my life.

Second she said, "Nothing like a good lesson to make us want to go and teach one." This speaks volumes to my soul as well. I am always more inclined to teach God's Word when I have been under a teacher who is teaching under God's anointing.

Well, I hope you found this post edifying today. It is important that we seek to expose ourselves to the things of God. I'll work to visit the other inspirations I received from this message later in the week.

Song of the day: What a Day that will Be by Bart Millard