Tag: Faith

So we worship with abandon

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psalm 150

I can hear my son dancing in his carseat as I drive the minivan around town.

He dances with a particular sense of abandon, throwing his whole body into his head-banging, side to side, forward and back.   He snaps his elbows out and pulls his hands to his chest and then kicks his feet.

When he breaks into dancing at home, he does a combination of skipping/leaping/running in circles that is breathlessly exciting.

He is into it.

I know he’s dancing wildly back there in the minivan (as wildly as one can dance when strapped into a 5-point harness car seat), so I pull down my rear-view mirror for a moment to see what he’s doing.

He immediately freezes in mid-boogie and looks away trying not to catch my gaze.

All of that joyful movement stops in an instant and gives way to bashful embarrassment.

My son is a secret dancer.

Even though I never criticize him for it, he has this innate pulling back, an automatic embarrassment that we never overcome no matter how many times I tell him: “It’s okay to dance.”

I wonder if we also are secret-dancers, secret-worshipers, holding back, hiding away, not wanting to look too wild or too ‘into it.’

Like Nicodemus, maybe we clothe our time with Jesus in darkness and privacy.

Even among other Christians, we might pull back.  Don’t get too serious.  Don’t worship too passionately.  Don’t change your priorities too much.  Don’t talk about God too often.  Don’t let the Bible actually change you.

Jesus has a way, though, of busting through all of the layers of propriety and face-saving, people-pleasing, status-quo-following.

No matter how hard we may try at times to stuff our faith into acceptable packages of behavior, God can stir us to abandon.

In Luke 7, Jesus watched as a widow followed the casket of her only son while wailing with sorrow.  Seeing her pain, Jesus responded with compassion, touched the coffin and commanded that her precious son rise up from the dead.

The son sat up and started talking.

We’re told that “they were all filled with awe and praised God.  ‘A great prophet has appeared among us,’ they said. ‘God has come to help his people.’ This news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the surrounding country (Luke 7:16-17 NIV).

The Message describes the scene:

They all realized they were in a place of holy mystery, that God was at work among them. They were quietly worshipful—and then noisily grateful, calling out among themselves, “God is back, looking to the needs of his people!” The news of Jesus spread all through the country (Luke 7:16-17 MSG).

God’s presence, always with us, should awaken the sense that we’re in a “place of holy mystery.”  Yes, God is at work here and we are amazed!

We may begin ‘quietly worshipful,’ but then we can’t hold it in!  We praise God!  We are ‘noisily grateful!”  We tell everyone what Jesus has done.

Just like these worshipers, we shout: “Praise God, He is at work among us!  Praise God, I’ve seen His hand and He’s real, our God is real!!  Praise God, He has not abandoned us, but He is looking after the needs of His people!!”

We all have these moments when we can choose to dance and sing about all that God has done or remain hidden in the shadows as night-time Jesus-seekers too frightened of popular opinion for all-out discipleship.

This was Nicodemus’s choice. He came in the darkness to ask Jesus just what being “born again” really meant.

But later, after Jesus died,  it wasn’t the disciples or the women at the cross who arranged for his burial.

Instead, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for Jesus’ body.  He was “a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders” (John 19:38).

And who was with him?  None other than Nicodemus, who brought about 75 pounds of lotions and spices to anoint Jesus’ body.  Together, they wrapped their Savior with linen and placed him in a garden tomb (John 19:38-42).

Two secret worshipers, frightened of others’ opinions, ashamed to go public with their faith, now honored Jesus with reverent awe and unhidden love.

Suddenly, religious position, public opinion, and power didn’t matter very much.

Jesus had abandoned all for them, so they worshiped with abandon.

Jesus abandoned everything for us also, so we can also worship with abandon!

God is with us!  Jesus is risen!  He is real!  He is at work among us!

 

 

When you pray for a dog, but don’t get one

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psalm 55

My oldest daughter started asking for a dog when she was about two years old.

She’s progressed since then.  Mention something about a dog nowadays and she’ll launch into a five-point presentation complete with rebuttals and killer facts about the benefits of dog ownership.

As a preschooler, though, her tactics were simpler. She’d ask for a dog and we’d say ‘no.’

She’d ask why.

Finally my husband told her our house was too small, so she one-upped him.

She started praying for a bigger house.

She then informed us that in heaven when she got her mansion from Jesus, she’d have a dog.

So there.

Despite her persistence (and initial cuteness), we still own a cat.

I’ve been wrestling with this lately, how God tells us to ask for specific requests in prayer and to have faith and believe.

He tells us to persist and persevere, to fast, and to command mountains to move.

So, just like my daughter, I’m coming relentlessly before the throne room of God, asking Him to be faithful to His Word, to His promises and His character.

But just like my daughter, I still don’t have a ‘dog.’  The prayers remain unanswered.

Prayer is messy.

We can quote about it and preach about it. We can buy prayer journals and set up prayer file systems.  We can read books on prayer and go to seminars on prayer, talk about prayer and study about prayer.

But prayer doesn’t fit into a box and you can’t cram it into a system that works every time.

Some prayers are answered quickly.  Other prayers linger without explanation.

Psalm 37:7 tells me:

Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him (NIV).

So, when I start praying aloud in my minivan or praying face down on my bedroom carpet, I ask the tough question: Am I waiting patiently?

Should I stop praying and just leave this be?

Yet, Jesus told about the persistent widow who nagged that unrighteous judge every single day until he finally listened to her.

Jesus teaches me to pray with tenacious, stubborn faith that will not give up or let go until God completes the work, even if He does so in His own way and in His own timing.

Luke 18 says

Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart (Luke 18:1 NASB).

No one would lose heart if prayer were easy.

We lose heart because we’ve put everything within us into our prayer.  We’re crying out for mercy like the blind beggars on the side of the road, desperate for Jesus’ attention.

It’s loud.  It’s obnoxious.  We’re passionately needy and struggling without answers.

Sometimes we work out these intricate theological side-steps like ‘God answers our prayers when we pray in faith, but only if we are praying according to His will, which we can only know if we have His heart and we’re abiding in Him, so if our prayers aren’t answered maybe we’re just praying wrong.’

What helps me in these moments, though, isn’t to tie perfectly neat bows onto perfectly messy problems.

Here in the trenches where prayer is war and I’m worn-out weary and battle-fatigued, what I really want to know is this:  Jesus wrestled in prayer, too.

Philip Yancey wrote:

Where was it that Jesus sweat great drops of blood? Not in Pilate’s Hall, nor on his way to Golgotha. It was in the Garden of Gethsemane.  There he ‘offered up prayers and petitions and with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death.’ (Prayer)

Jesus demonstrates that the purpose of prayer isn’t getting a particular answer, it’s the relationship prayer creates: An honest one.

Because sometimes God says ‘no.’  And sometimes God says ‘not yet,’ but He invites us to pray and to ask and to seek so that we know Him.

Prayer is deeply relational and supremely complex.  It is the intimate, honest laying down of my heart and finding His heart, submitting my plans to His plans and my ways to His ways.

In that garden, Jesus didn’t hold back from God or keep silent or make vague requests for blessing.

He labored for hours in prayer, sweating blood, crying out with tears.

This is what I need, not easy answers or trite formulas.

I need to know that Jesus understands.  I need to know I’m not alone in this.

Paul says:

Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Romans 8:34 ESV

With great compassion and comprehension, Jesus intercedes for me.  My prayers are never prayed alone.

And my prayers can’t be too honest or too passionate for the Savior who knows me, who loves me and who has wrestled on His own knees in prayer and continues to pray for me even now.

Want to know what the Bible says about praying?  Here are 50 Bible verses on prayer to get you started.

 

Our Jesus Style

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colossians 3-8b

My son screams in the morning when I take off his fire truck pajamas and put on his dinosaur shirt.

Does he want the shirt with the train?  The dump truck and excavator?  The monkey?

No. What he really wants is to stay in his fire truck pajamas all day.

At the end of the day, though, long after I’ve wrestled him into actual clothes, he screams again when I try to take off his dinosaur shirt and put back on the fire truck pajamas.

Now he wants to wear the dinosaur to bed.

Toddler wardrobe wars.

I’ve done this four times with four kids.

I had the daughter who went several years of her life only wearing dresses and skirts and never ever wearing pants.

I had the daughter who only wore pink and purple and didn’t like any other colors, but who also still refuses to wear dresses or skirts.

Then there was my compliant child.  She would say, ‘no’ and take off running when I held up a shirt she didn’t like.

When I found this half-naked toddler in the house, the shirt would be completely missing and she’d appear innocent.

I searched her room, the dresser, every hiding place without result.  No shirt.

Then I went to throw something away and saw it peeking out of the trash can.

She skipped the tantrums and went right for putting clothes she didn’t like in the garbage.

I wonder what would happen if we were as careful about the attitudes, beliefs, and heart conditions we clothe ourselves in every morning.  Maybe we should be that picky.

It’s a favorite metaphor of the apostles, reminding us to peel off the old clothes of flesh, lust and sin and to purposefully put on a brand new outfit everyday.

We are to clothe ourselves in Christ.

Paul described it this way:

But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices  and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator . . .

 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.  And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity (Colossians 3:8-14, NIV).

In other words, take it off, take it all off: The anger, the bad attitude and grumpiness, the bad language, the lies.  All of those pesky remnants of our pre-salvation self have to go.

We stare at the closet and choose the new clothes we’ll wear each day with great care, pulling on clothes of compassion, kindness, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, and most of all love.

Add in to that mix the favorite outfit of Peter:

“All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another” (1 Peter 5:5)

The bottom line, for Paul is that we should, “clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh” (Romans 13:14, NIV).

Unfortunately, our old fleshly selves have a way of sneaking their way back into our closets.

We think we’ve restyled only to snap in anger during the morning rush.

How did that discarded sin find it’s way into our wardrobe again?  More importantly, how did we end up wearing it today?

We aren’t picky enough about the spiritual clothes we don every day.  When we’re not paying attention and when we’re not being careful, we find we’re  wearing the dirty rags of old habits and familiar sins.

We have to make the conscious choice, the prayerful choice, the one where we ask Christ to robe us in His righteousness.

We can choose to wear Jesus each day.

Reject the clothing of the old self and instead pull on love and step into compassion.  Spice things up with a scarf of kindness and a jacket of forgiveness.  Wear our own favorite shoes of humility and gentleness.

It’s our Jesus style, it’s Christ shining through us, making HIs presence in our lives unmistakable.

Originally posted November 8, 2011

The ark wasn’t built in a day so don’t give up

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persevere
They say, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

This morning, I think: “The ark wasn’t built in a day either.”

I think it as my baby girl (too big to be called “baby,” she tells me) bursts into my room far too early to announce, “Mom, it’s morning time!” And I’m tired.

The ark, remember the ark.

I’m pouring cereal and reviewing ancient China with a girl who is taking her big test today.

I pulled my other girl’s hair back into a ponytail, but it was the wrong kind.  She wanted it differently.  Using her hands, she tries to explain it to me and I’m slow, so I lean down trying to understand and experiment with the brush until I get it just right.

That ark takes time to build.

They’ve dressed and stepped into shoes.  I’ve reminded and reminded them, brush your teeth, grab your back pack, zip your coat.  Hurry!  It’s time!

We huddle at the bus stop with our backs to the February wind and I snuggle close to block them from the strength of the blasts.

Then I whisper a prayer for their day, for their tests and their friends and their obedience and their learning and how proud I am of all their hard work.

Just building an ark here.  Just taking the time.

Because sometimes you wake up tired.  Sometimes you’d rather pull those covers right on up to block out the sun and the cold and sleep away some of the day and lounge away the other half in pajamas and slippers.

Sometimes you just need the reminder that what you are doing has significance and value.

Sometimes you need to know….This Matters.

Even if today isn’t the day you pound the final peg into the ark and the animals step on two-by-two and the rain falls…

Even if you don’t see the final results or immediate success, know that every peg you place and every board you lay has purpose.

It takes about nine months for God to intricately fashion a human life in a womb.
It takes 365 days for the earth to circle that sun, spinning around in its orbit.
It even takes 8 minutes from the sun to stretch its light down to our planet.
And it took decades for Noah to build that ark.

Progress happens over time, seconds and minutes and day after another day of perseverance, dedication and refusing to give up.

How often Noah must have woken up to a new morning and wanted to stop.

Surely there were days it felt impossible to construct a massive floating vessel without power tools and contractors.

Surely the ridicule from the masses and those he considered his closest friends—yes even from his family—must have wearied his soul.

Surely there were moments he just needed God to reassure him that he wasn’t crazy, that he heard correctly, that what he was doing was necessary.

Some days it must have seemed so hard.  Some days maybe he wanted to give up.

Yet, had he given up one decade….one year…one month…one week….one day too soon, had he abandoned the project and left the ark unfinished, it wouldn’t have saved anyone.  God couldn’t use an unfinished ship to rescue, save, and redeem.

God saved him…and us…because “Noah did everything just as God commanded him” (Genesis 5:22).

Just one simple verse; it makes it sound so easy.

But I know the truth.  I know every time I sit down and open the Scriptures up on my kitchen table on days when I’m tired and the interruptions just keep coming, that I can’t give this up.  Even if the inspiration doesn’t come, even if God seems silent or my soul unstirred, still I build this ark.

When the chores seem endless…
when you’re deep-soul tired…
when you can’t seem to find your joy and don’t know where you lost it…
when no one says, “thank you” or appears to notice you serving them…
when others ridicule your efforts and tell you it doesn’t matter…
when you’re teaching but they don’t seem to understand….
when you’re pouring everything you have into this but you don’t see results….
when you give with passion and what you receive back is criticism….

You get up in the morning and you lay one more peg and one more board into the ark that God told you to build.

You do everything just as God commanded you, not because it’s easy or fun or seems so rewarding in the moment.

We do it because we’re building into eternity:

“Therefore we do not lose heart.  Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all”
(2 Corinthians 4:16-17).

Originally published 2/1/2013

25 Bible Verses on Trust

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verses-on-trust

  • 2 Samuel 7:28 NIV
     Sovereign Lord, you are God! Your covenant is trustworthy, and you have promised these good things to your servant.
  • Psalm 9:10 ESV
    And those who know your name put their trust in you,
        for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you.
  • Psalm 13:5 ESV
    But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
        my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
  • Psalm 20:7 ESVSome trust in chariots and some in horses,
        but we trust in the name of the Lordour God.
  • Psalm 22:4-5 NLT
    Our ancestors trusted in you,
        and you rescued them.
    5 They cried out to you and were saved.
        They trusted in you and were never disgraced.
  • Psalm 31:14 ESV
    But I trust in you, O Lord;
        I say, “You are my God.”
  • Psalm 33:21 NLT
    In him our hearts rejoice,
        for we trust in his holy name.
  • Psalm 37:3 NLT
    Trust in the Lord and do good.
        Then you will live safely in the land and prosper.
  • Psalm 37:5 NLT
    Commit everything you do to the Lord.
        Trust him, and he will help you.
  • Psalm 40:3 NLT
    He has given me a new song to sing,
        a hymn of praise to our God.
    Many will see what he has done and be amazed.
        They will put their trust in the Lord.
  • Psalm 40:4 NLT
    Oh, the joys of those who trust the Lord,
        who have no confidence in the proud
        or in those who worship idols.
  • Psalm 56:3 ESV
    When I am afraid,
        I put my trust in you.
  • Psalm 84:12 ESV
    O Lord of hosts,
        blessed is the one who trusts in you!
  • Psalm 91:1-2 NLT
    Those who live in the shelter of the Most High
        will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
    2 This I declare about the Lord:
    He alone is my refuge, my place of safety;
        he is my God, and I trust him.
  • Psalm 112:7 NLT
    They do not fear bad news;
        they confidently trust the Lord to care for them.
  • Proverbs 3:5-6 ESV
    Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
        and do not lean on your own understanding.
    6 In all your ways acknowledge him,
        and he will make straight your paths.
  • Proverbs 11:28 ESV
    Whoever trusts in his riches will fall,
        but the righteous will flourish like a green leaf.
  • Proverbs 28:25 NLT
    Greed causes fighting;
        trusting the Lord leads to prosperity
  • Proverbs 28:26 ESV
    Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool,
        but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.
  • Isaiah 12:2 NLT
    See, God has come to save me.
        I will trust in him and not be afraid.
    The Lord God is my strength and my song;
        he has given me victory.”
  • Isaiah 26:3-4 NLT
    You will keep in perfect peace
        all who trust in you,
        all whose thoughts are fixed on you!
    4 Trust in the Lord always,
        for the Lord God is the eternal Rock.
  • Daniel 6:23 ESV
    Then the king was exceedingly glad, and commanded that Daniel be taken up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no kind of harm was found on him, because he had trusted in his God.
  • John 14:1 NLT
    Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me.
  • Romans 15:13 NLT
    I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.
  • Revelation 21:5 NLT
     And the one sitting on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new!” And then he said to me, “Write this down, for what I tell you is trustworthy and true.”

The one thing I need to hear when I’m waiting

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psalm 27

I was five minutes early and already nervous.

A friend and I were meeting up so we could drive together to an event.

The plan was simple.  Meet in the parking lot at 5:00.

At 4:55, I started worrying.

Did we say 5:00 or 5:30?  Did I have the time right?  What if we had miscommunicated?  What if I told her the wrong day?  The wrong place?  The wrong time?

This could be a disaster.

By 4:57, I pulled out my phone to double-check our messages.

Okay, I’m safe.  This was the right day and time and place.

But what if she couldn’t see my car where I was parked?  What if she pulls in the other side of the parking lot and misses me completely?

I crane my neck around, glancing from side to side.  Then I actually drive through the parking lot to make sure she wasn’t already there waiting for me and I’m just being ridiculous.

It’s 4:59 now, and yes, I am absolutely being ridiculous, but it’s taken on a humongous snowball life of its own and I feel powerless to stop it.

I am worrying about being late and about traffic and maybe we should have said we should meet earlier.

I am worrying about miscommunication and how I should have called her that day to verify the details one last time.

Then I start worrying about my friend.  What if she is hurt and in a car accident somewhere and she can’t call to tell me because she’s in an ambulance on the way to the hospital?

And then, just as I’ve worked myself up into frantic worry….my friend pulls in.

It’s 5:01.

She’s fine.  I’m fine.  We’re completely on time.

I really am ridiculous.

Every single day, I tell my two-year-old son to ‘be patient’ about 20 times.  Maybe 50 times.

He wants juice.  He wants snack.  He wants Bob the Builder on the TV.  He wants his shoes on.  He wants his shoes off.  He needs help with a toy.  He wants me to read a book.

What do I say?

Okay, in just a moment.  Be patient.

And, I act like he should just accept that.  I act like it’s a perfectly reasonable request for a two-year-old to have patience.

But today, I’m recognizing that it’s hard.

I should teach him patience, of course.  I still need to keep asking him to wait sometimes.  This doesn’t mean I need to snap-to-it and answer his every whim and will immediately.

No, I teach him to ‘be patient,’ but I do it with some understanding that what I’m asking him to do takes oh such a long time to learn.

Some days he’ll get it just right.

And some days he’ll fall to pieces just like his crazy mom does when she’s waiting for a friend in a parking lot at 4:55 p.m. and they’re supposed to meet at 5:00.

There’s something more, too: All these years, I’ve recognized how waiting takes patience (and who likes learning about patience?) and it takes trust (and who finds trusting without controlling easy?).

But it also takes courage.

David wrote:

Wait for the Lord;
    be strong, and let your heart take courage;
    wait for the Lord! (Psalm 27:14 ESV).

and again:

Be strong, and let your heart take courage,
    all you who wait for the Lord! (Psalm 31:24 ESV).

I’ve missed it a million times.  I’ve read those Psalms and sang them and written them in my journal over and over again, but today it hits me in a new way.

God says that in the waiting, I need to take heart.

I need to be courageous.

I need to be strong.

And, that’s exactly what I need to hear in seasons of waiting because when I’m waiting, I’m full of doubt and questions and worry.

I think maybe I heard God wrong.  Maybe this is going to take forever and He’s never going to bring me through this situation.  Maybe the deliverance won’t come after all.  Maybe I’m in the wrong place.  Maybe there was miscommunication.  Maybe I missed God and He was already here and gone and now I’m outside of His will!  Maybe God is done with me and now He’s just left me here in this place.

I’m being ridiculous, I know it.

Yet, it’s in the moments of waiting that I feel most abandoned and most afraid.

And it’s in the moments of waiting that God says exactly what I need to hear the most:

Don’t believe the lies.  Don’t fret over the future.  Don’t question the calling.  Don’t doubt God’s ability or willingness to care for you.  Don’t think you’re alone.

Be strong, and let your heart take courage.

 

What her message to me said and why I needed to hear it

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1 john 3

I surveyed the possible outfits and an empty suitcase.

I hovered a hand over the teal scarf, pulled it away and then reached for my favorite top and jacket…pulled my hand away again and flopped back onto my bed in defeat.

I was heading to my first writer’s conference where there’d be thousands of women, most of whom I was sure would be perfectly coiffed and fashionably dressed in matching high heels and handbags.

They’d probably have cute haircuts with tons of highlights.

They’d have dangly earrings and other bling.

They’d wear lipstick.  Lipstick!!!  And probably even eyeshadow.

I was in way over my head and I had outfit-picking paralysis.

It was a crisis moment for me.  Yes, a crisis over scarves and skirts.  Suddenly I wasn’t worrying about fashion.

I was stressing over not belonging.  I was worrying about the expense and the time and whether it was worth it. What if I was just fooling myself about this whole writing thing and this was a complete waste?!

I feared failure and laid out the question again and again to God, “What is it you want me to do?”

And then….the follow-up questions, “Does it have to be this hard?  Can’t we take the easy way?  The one where I get to stay home in jeans and sneakers?”

I opened up Facebook to avoid making decisions about what to pack in that suitcase.

That’s when I opened up the message.

A writer I’d never met, but who was also going to the conference, wrote me a note.

She told me not to worry about my outfits.  How I could just be myself.  I didn’t need highlights in my hair or lipstick or high-heeled shoes.

She told me Satan attacks before the conference so be ready and stand strong in the Lord.

She told me not to fret over my calling, not to feel like I have to fight or make things happen and not to feel for a moment that it all depends on me.  God could do the work.  All I needed to do was show up in obedience.

She obeyed God’s prompting, and she blessed me because she was obedient, speaking words of encouragement to me just when I needed them.

I read in Acts a powerful story of the church’s impact:

 But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having persuaded the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead.  But when the disciples gathered about him, he rose up and entered the city, and on the next day he went on with Barnabas to Derbe (Acts 14:19-20 ESV).

It’s a two-verse miracle.  A little encounter, barely noticeable in the book of Acts, but a miracle nonetheless.

Paul is stoned, dragged outside the city and left for dead–not just seriously injured or barely alive.

They thought he was already a corpse.

But then….the disciples gathered about him, and Paul stood up, walked back into the city, and went on another journey the very next day.

He didn’t even need a week to fully recover.

Maybe the disciples prayed for him.  Perhaps they gathered so they could plan how to bury him. The Bible doesn’t fill us in on the details.

All it says is that in the moment he was broken, they gathered around him and he had new strength.

They could have left Paul there as a hopeless case.

They could have been busy, forgetful or too focused on their own problems to care.

They could have feared being stoned themselves.

No, they gathered around the wounded one, and God performed a miracle.

God works miracles of healing through His people when we choose to love another.

I feel the challenge.

If Paul were stoned today, would I choose to gather around him?

Or am I too busy, too self-protective, too self-focused, too self-indulgent, too self-seeking, too prideful, too forgetful…..to minister to one in need?

To write an email….to send a note…to share a meal…..to make a phone call….to invite a friend….to pray for the hurting…to take the time.

And what if it hadn’t been Paul, a leader in the church?  What if it was the smallest of the small who’d been stoned and left for dead?

Would I still take the time?

We love others with Christ’s love when we choose compassion over comfort.

We love like Jesus when we reach out instead of draw in.

That day as I flopped back in my bed in frustrated annoyance and insecurity, a  woman I didn’t know ‘gathered’ around me.

She had her own bags to pack.  Her own plans to finalize.  Her own life to manage.

But she reached out to me with kindness, and God moved.

How can we show someone that love today?

(Just a note that Luke wrote about this miracle in the book of Acts, and as a physician he seems very careful to say that Paul appeared dead or seemed dead.  He does not claim that Paul actually was raised from the dead, only that he seemed dead for a moment and then got up, walked into the city, and was recovered enough for a journey the next day.  Still a miracle–but a miracle of healing, not resurrection.)

Digging out the minivan

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luke3I got stuck in the slushy mess.

Driving out yesterday was a cinch.  After a mass of snow and ice hit our area over the weekend, we now had temperatures in the 50s.  It was warm, bright and sunny and we needed to get out of the house.

The snow was no longer snow.  The ice no longer ice.  It was a slushy concoction and when we walked in it, our feet sucked down into the wet.

So, we inched out of our driveway and headed to freedom at the library and the grocery store!

But by the time we got home, the slush had melted even more.  It was like quicksand now, and we were sitting in a huge minivan loaded down with one mom, four kids and a week’s worth of groceries from Wal-Mart.

So, my minivan just slurped right down into it the moment I drove into the mess.

I unloaded the children.

I unloaded the groceries.

And I grabbed a shovel to dig out the slush from around the tires.

It didn’t take much to get the van moving again, (it’s only snow after all), but then we just sunk right down into the slush again every few inches.

Finally, I realized what this was truly going to take.  I was going to need to dig a path for each tire until no more melted snow and ice remained anywhere my tires needed to go.

I had to prepare the way.

So that’s what I did.  I shoveled the melted mush out of the way and drove just as smoothly as could be back into the grooves of an already worn path.

That’s what John the Baptist told the curious crowd gathered by the water to hear him preach:

‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
    make his paths straight‘ (Luke 3:4 ESV)

In her book, Jesus, The One and Only, Beth Moore says:

The original Greek word for ‘paths’ is the word tribos, which means ‘a beaten pathway.’ In a personal way God wants us to prepare a path.

This isn’t a path that’s just stumbled upon; it’s one that’s beaten out and formed with purposeful intentionality.

What would that mean for me?

If I stood on the bank of the river and heard this wild-looking prophet telling me to make a beaten pathway in my life for the Lord, what would I need to do?

I’d need to dig out the slush and the mire, the mess and the grime.  I’d need to clear it all out of the way so my heart was ready for God to come in power and might to do a new work in me.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that grace and righteousness depend on me shoveling out sin with my own two hands gripping the shovel.

But it does mean I need to be yielded and ready for the work God wants to do.

I can’t hold on to my plans.

I can’t cling to my agendas.

I can’t try to hide sin in the corners of my heart.

 

Preparing a way for the Lord means listening and not shutting Him out.

It means offering up my heart to Him and asking the Holy Spirit that question that I can be oh-so-hesitant to ask:  “What do you need to change in me to make me more like Jesus?  I offer you my heart and I ask you to do the work.”

I know what that means.  It’s risky.  It’s dangerous.

He could try to teach me patience.

He could put difficult people in my life to teach me how to love more truly.

He could bump into my perfect plans and replace them with His own.

In my flesh and in all my selfishness, what I want is what I want:  My expectations, My hopes, My thoughts.

But what I want truly, deeply, more than anything else is for God to transform me, to take off those rough edges and mold my heart so people see Jesus in me.

So I yield.

I pick up the shovel.

I ask God to prepare my heart for the work He wants to do in me and through me.   Beat out a straight path in my life.  Wear it right down, Lord, so I’m ready for what you want to do.

I join Him in the task, knowing that I want Jesus, just Jesus, always Jesus more than anything else.

 

 

The Grace God Gives for the Wearied Soul

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psalm 51-12

I could recognize the discouragement. The perpetual fatigue in the face and in the slumping of the shoulders, not extreme, but ever so slightly burdened down low.

It was clear in the mechanical activity, not the joyous friendliness of cheerful service like before. Now my friend moved from point A to point B, task one to task two, not smiling, just doing because doing is what needed to be done.

I recognized the discouragement because

I

Have

Been

There

Before.

We who have been weary can see the signs in others, the trudging, the exhaustion, the worn out soul fraying at every edge and held together with patches and slipshod stitchery.

So we come alongside our friends, our Christian sisters and brothers, those whose burdens we’re supposed to remove so they can walk free and unencumbered for a time.  We remind them of God’s goodness, His grace.  We encourage them in their efforts, cheering them on with reminders to persevere and not give up and yes, there will be a harvest in time, and no, it isn’t all in vain.

How do we know?  That’s what they might ask.

Oh my friend, how I know.

Because contrary to what you might have heard or expected, the Christian life isn’t all easy and Christian service isn’t all joyfully inspiring and pouring out to others out of an overflow.  Sometimes we’re emptying out the last few drops from our own parched souls, not knowing what to do when we’re dehydrated and depleted and still others hold out needy hands for more.

Yet, we know this also.

We pour out…everything….and He pours in anew.

You might think you’re alone in this, stumbling over your own weaknesses, serving to exhaustion, not seeing the reward or the gain or the purpose or the point.

Yet, the prayers of saints long before teach us that others have desperately needed to be renewed, revived, restored.

The Psalmists prayed:

Will You not revive us again
so that Your people may rejoice in You?
(Psalm 85:6 HCSB)

and

Restore our fortunes, Lord,
as streams renew the desert.
Those who plant in tears
will harvest with shouts of joy.
They weep as they go to plant their seed,
but they sing as they return with the harvest  (Psalm 126:4-6 NLT)

and

God, create a clean heart for me
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
 Do not banish me from Your presence
or take Your Holy Spirit from me.
 Restore the joy of Your salvation to me,
and give me a willing spirit (Psalm 51:10-12 HCSB).  

Their prayers would be unnecessary, meaningless even unless they felt the need for the renewing, the reviving, the restoring work of God in us.

We need the grace again, the joy again, the steadfast spirit again, the life again.  That’s what they asked.

That’s what we need, too.

Eugene Peterson wrote:

Nothing suffers from time quite so much as religion.  The skeletal structure of obedience becomes arthritic, and the circulatory system of praise becomes sluggish.  The prayer ‘revive us again’ keeps the body of Christ youthful and responsive to every new mercy and grace in God (Praying With the Psalms).

So we offer to help carry the cross for a time through this valley and we remind them of the hope and the promise as we travel along together.

We tell the fullness of our testimony, not just the revival, the renewal, the restoration after the fact…not the destination without the journey or the end result without the in between.

No, we remember that we were worn out and limping and God renewed us.

We were dead and hopeless and God revived us.

We had lost everything and God restored us.

God did this for me, that’s what we say.  And He will do this work in you, too.

And we pray, of course we pray.

We ask God to fill them right up again, fill their own parched souls so they are overflowing. We ask for strength anew and energy for each day, for reminders of the vision and reassurance of the harvest.

God’s plan isn’t for us to walk through discouragement alone, not any of us. How could we ever survive it, after all, if we thought we were the only ones and that somehow we must be here because of our own fumbling and faltering?

But to know others have been there, have made it through, and have traveled back to tell us the good news and to pray for us along the way…that’s the grace God gives for a wearied soul.

My perfect future

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Psalm 31-15

At least eight of them were going to live in big houses.

One of them wasn’t going to have a big house.  His house was going to be BIG.

They would compete in the Olympics, be world famous surgeons and vets and carpenters, play professional sports, write books, run businesses, and make a lot of money.

They would drive Jeeps or a Ford or a convertible.

They would all marry, have several children (whose names they already knew) and live incredibly happily ever after.

These were the futures my daughter and her fellow fifth graders described during their DARE graduation this week.

We parents in the crowd smiled and laughed and probably some of us cried.  What a wonderful, beautiful, sometimes humorous thing it is to hear eleven-year-olds dream.

My daughter jumped right in there, dreaming with the best of them about education, career, marriage, having kids, and making a difference in the lives of others.

Lovely thoughts, all of them.

But when they read her “My Future” paragraph at the graduation ceremony, I finally succumbed to the tears when I heard her concluding words: “My future is in God’s hands.”

Whatever happens…

Even when the plans don’t turn out the way she hoped or expected….

Even when life gets crazy or even just slightly uncertain…..

“My future is in God’s hands.”

I take this to heart.  Shouldn’t we all?

My eleven-year-old self never planned or expected all that God has done and all that He has planned for me.  My life has twisted itself up into a thing of beauty that I never could have created on my own.

There were seasons I thought God was messing it all up.

He told me ‘no.’

He changed my direction.

He made me wait ‘forever.’

He carried me through valleys of darkness when I couldn’t see the next step right in front of my face.

Maybe now I already know the answers to the questions these kids were asking:  Where would I go to college? What would I study?  Who would I marry?  How many kids would I have?  Where would I live?  What would I do?

Yet, still there’s that constant compulsion to lay the future all out clean, perfect, organized, and bullet-pointed with measurable goals and a five-year-plan of how to make it all happen.

My own daughter’s wisdom brings me back.

Do I need to know all that?

Or do I need to just know this:  ‘My future is in God’s hands’?

I think of Joseph, the perpetual Old-Testament dreamer.

God gave him so much more than a fifth-grade perfect-life wish-list.  God gave him prophetic visions of his parents and brothers bowing down to him in homage and respect.

Then he was trapped in a pit while his brothers plotted to murder him.  He was sold to slave traders and carried off to Egypt.  He was falsely accused and thrown into prison.  He was forgotten and left to rot in the jail while others were freed.

It might have looked like one great big hopeless mess.  How could Joseph ever make those God-given visions work out?

The truth is he couldn’t.

And he didn’t need to.

He just needed to keep living, day after day, moment by moment, obedient to God, trusting that God was in charge of his life story.

Louie Giglio writes in his book The Comeback:

Maybe your dream is to go to school or get a degree or accomplish a certain task or find a certain spouse or start a business or move to a certain place or create a movement or carry the gospel to people who’ve never heard it before. Those may be great dreams, but there’s a bigger dream that overrides everything else: it’s that your life counts for the glory of God.

This is the constant dream we can cling to at all times and in all situations:  May our lives bring glory to God.

Yes, in the prison.

Yes, in slavery.

Yes, even when all the dreams come true.

Ultimately, Joseph told his brothers:

And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life (Genesis 45:5 ESV).

Joseph knew nothing happened just for his own benefit, personal comfort or ultimate happiness.

Everything he endured was so God could ‘preserve life.’

His life was tucked into the grander story, the God-story, the story of salvation.

That’s true for us, as well.

We can dream, plan, plot and strategize, but ultimately we return to trust.

We trust that our lives can glorify Him. We trust that He has a grand, God-story for salvation, and we have a place within it.

We trust that our future is in His hands.