Color Your World with NCD

This whole exhaling / inhaling thing has been a bit of a revelation.

My starting point is on the green blue side of the trinitarian compass and with church life. A percieving detached believer who lacks faithfulness and self control, but is totally big on the peace and goodness.

Historically the problem for me has been exhaling and over inhaling. I never exhaled enough. Whether it would be from sharing, doing ministry or basic daily life. I was king of "the get into ruts" tribe!

Why I didn't exhale enough was largely due to fear and laziness, and often contempt.

Unhealthy church experiences are never pleasant for anyone, and for me, being green blue, its really easy to say, " Blow this joint, I am out of here ...! " Or if I was to really be honest, if I was to look at the state of Western Christianity, particularly in Australia, its even easier to say, " Why bother with church at all!"

I'd be deluding myself to think I could not go to church and live a life of discipleship to Jesus successfully. And tragically many green blues actually live a life like this. Its why they are so rare in church life circles. Although there is more to it than that, but now is not the time write about that.

From the perspective of church life, being a perciever, I would be robbing the church of the opportunity to use my strengths for the building up of the body. And I'd be useless to God.

So bad was I at exhaling, my inhaling strengths eventually presented a dangerous reality. Much of my life has been like that. It could be said I am " touchy feely." I like to see and feel. Like when I am at the beach for example, I like to look around the coast line, close my eyes, feel the sea breeze and inhale the air. Its the same with God. Its the same with life itself.

Whether it was good or bad from a Godly perspective, it didn't matter. The need to touch and feel something, and to inhale 'good' even though its bad, would more often than not catch me out. And because I wasn't exhaling enough, or at all, out of boredom I inhaled a lot of bad stuff.

I actually became deluded and when you are deluded, you are useless. I have made a lot of bad mistakes in my life as a result of not exhaling.

Actually I failed my biggest life trial as a result of not learning how to exhale properly, and as a result, I became desperate in wanting to right the failure. But in wanting to right the failure, I forgot an important dimension to the equation. Me.

I prayed earnestly for the opportunity to turn the failure around. And I recently learned that that opportunity was not going to arrive until I had righted myself with God and learned to have a balance of inhaling and exhaling ... and I am still learning!

I had to learn to exhale first. So how?

I used my strength and asked God to show me what was wrong with my life and what was right with it? I needed to see. I not only needed to see, I needed to listen. I listened intently to hear what was going on, and once I understood what was happening and what needed to change, I could then go on and make the necessary changes.

I have since been given an opportunity to right the failure. But now what I am finding because I have learned to exhale, the inhaling has become a bit of a puzzle.