Our God is able to re-build

July 3, 2020July 4, 20202 Comments

There’s building. And then there’s re-building.

My son is a builder-of-Legos. They are the first item on any birthday or Christmas wishlist and they are his favorite presents to open and play with as soon as the celebration time is done. In just six years, he’s amassed quite a collection of super-hero, Star Wars, and dinosaur Legos.

But.

(And this is what can drive me crazy).

He does not keep his Legos together, perfectly constructed, high on a shelf, all the pieces still in the right places. (How could we possibly have enough shelving to do that?)

No, as soon as the Legos are built, they are played with relentlessly. Pieces come off. Those pieces then become new creations with pieces from other sets, a mishmash of Lego bricks.

There are some of us (me) who like things to always look like the instruction manual, as if there is a “Right” way to build with these Legos. When a piece comes loose, we pull out the picture and put it back exactly where it is supposed to go.

My son is not that person. He swaps dinosaur legs and superhero bodies, and he combines kits relentlessly. He is silly at times and innovative at other times.

Sometimes I envision having so much free time that we can spend days sorting the Legos back into sets and then following those instruction manuals once again to put them all together the right way once more. This sounds like the ultimate project for me. Get everything “right” and all will be right with the world.

That hasn’t happened yet.

It would take extensive time and great effort, of course, because I truly think building is far, far easier than re-building. Building starts with such a clean space. The pieces are clearly sorted and separated. Building does not begin with confusion.

But re-building starts with brokenness and mess and rubble and has to restore what’s broken and re-make or even re-design what is lost.

In the book of Nehemiah, God’s people rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem that had been destroyed by their enemies and had lain in ashes and mounds of rubble for years.

During the rebuild, they were taunted, mocked, and threatened by new enemies, and yet they kept working. Some guarded while others built. Some built with one hand holding a weapon and the other hand laying bricks. They refused to be sidetracked, delayed, or stopped.

The rubble, however, almost defeated them. Nehemiah 4:10 says:

In Judah, it was said:
The strength of the laborer fails,
since there is so much rubble.
We will never be able
to rebuild the wall.
” (Nehemiah 4:10 CSB).

That’s what almost broke them.

Kelly Minter writes in her study on Nehemiah:

It was that exhausting rubble that just about took them down. What rubble in your life is presently the most discouraging and exhausting? (p. 56).

This year, it’s easy to be defeated by brokenness. Ministries, jobs, finances, churches, school plans, friendships and connections with others… all may be in need of rebuilding, and such rebuilding is exhausting and hard.

We can’t just jump in with a brand new vision, a clean slate and build. No, we need to re-build. There are hurts tangled up in this. There is sadness over what is lost. There is stuff we have to let go of and get rid of. There is letting go of the known. There is anger and frustration. There is uncertainty. There is a feeling of helplessness and powerlessness because we have no control.

There is a tremendous desire to just get things back to the way they were before, the way they are “supposed” to be—and then set those constructions high up on a shelf so they can never be changed again.

That is not our reality. So we need God to equip us for the rebuilding, to strengthen us to face enemies and strengthen us to clear out the seemingly never-ending rubble and start raising the walls again.

Nehemiah said to the discouraged, worn-out, battle-weary people of Judah:

“Don’t be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your families, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your homes” (Nehemiah 4:14 CSB).

Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome.

This is not too much for Him. That is the reminder I need. It may take time, it may take creativity, it may mean hard work and standing against the Enemy.

The truth remains, though: Our God isn’t just able to build; He is able to rebuild. He has done it before and He can do it again.

The Art of Celebrating

May 11, 20182 Comments

“Mom, can we have a milkshake because it’s Tuesday?”

We do celebrations in our family. We celebrate first days and last days, pick-me-up treats on the hardest days, victory treats when we have a big win and even sometimes just for trying.because we know trying requires courage.

My daughter has a competition this weekend, but I’ve already let her request her “celebration dinner,” whether she comes home with first place or last place. We’re not saluting the prize, we’re saluting the effort, the time, the commitment, and being done, of course.

Our celebrations aren’t elaborate or Pinterest-worthy. We make a special batch of cookies or stop in at 7-11 for a Slurpie, cook up a special dinner or maybe even get milkshakes for a “big” treat. We “party” with family movie night and a bowl of popcorn or head to a beach or a playground for some afternoon fun after a week of testing at school. I’ve even been known to happy dance in the kitchen occasionally, (which is instantly embarrassing to my children).

But that day, my daughter climbed in the minivan after school and asked for a treat because it was Tuesday.

I finally gave in and asked, “Why are we celebrating Tuesday?”

“Oh, it’s just that Tuesdays are really busy days for us and I think we just need a treat because it’s Tuesday and that’s all.”

Well, maybe we’re stretching our rejoicing habits a bit too far if we’re now celebrating specific days of the week just because they exist on the calendar.

I tease my daughter gently and call her the “queen of treats.”

Can we celebrate because we had a good day? Can we have a treat because we had a bad day? Can we have a treat because…it’s Tuesday?

We all have a good laugh because this is who we are: We’re celebrators and rejoicers. We’re joy-seekers.

I love that God gives reason to rejoice. Not just that, He compels us to rejoice.

In Romans, Paul tells us that we have peace with God because of Jesus. We’re justified by His blood and saved from the wrath of God. He reminds us we were God’s enemies and yet, because of Jesus’s death, we’re now reconciled with this perfect, holy God.

But Paul tells us what is the greater thing. We recognize His holiness and our need for reconciliation. We recognize we were enemies of God and yet now we have peace with God. We recognize all of that….

and then…

we rejoice.

He says:

“More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation” (Romans 5:11 ESV).

We rejoice because Jesus has done the work. We believe in Him as our Savior, we place our faith in Him as our Lord, and He has reconciled us to the Father.

So, we don’t need to drag around shame; we can lift up praise. We focus more on our Savior than we focus on our sin.

We are saved.

The note in my Bible says, “Christians GO BEYOND avoiding God’s wrath and actually rejoice in the same God who would pour out wrath on them were it not for Christ” (ESV Study Bible).

So, let’s go beyond.

Our faith is about more than just avoiding the wrath of God; it’s celebrating the good news: Jesus made us righteous by covering us with His righteousness.

And, God Himself rejoices. Maybe recapturing the image of God and all of His joy reminds us to have joy, too.

He rejoices over His people:

I will rejoice in Jerusalem
and be glad in my people.
The sound of weeping and crying
will no longer be heard in her (Isaiah 65:19)

and He sings over us with gladness:

The Lord your God is among you,
a warrior who saves.
He will rejoice over you with gladness.
He will be quiet in his love.
He will delight in you with singing.” (Zephaniah 3:17 CSB).

We are unworthy, and yet He loves us. He finds joy and takes delight in us.

And it is His joy, His deep-hearted gladness, that we can cling to when we’re overwhelmed by our own sin.

In the book of Nehemiah, the people were moved to mourn when they heard Ezra the priest read from the law. They saw all of their unworthiness and all the reasons for their exile.

Nehemiah and the other leaders redirected them:

This day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep…today is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, because the joy of the Lord is your strength (Nehemiah 8:9, 10).

Rejoice today. Celebrate. Praise Him.

He loves you. He died to save you. Her rejoices over you. Such love deserves a celebration.

Joy and April Fools and Finding New Strength

April 1, 2016April 1, 20164 Comments

Two years ago, I glued googly eyes to all of the food in our refrigerator, swapped my kids’ clothes around into different dressers, and stuffed toilet paper into their shoes.

Last year, I swapped out all of their regular shoes for doll shoes and acted like they shrunk over night.

I drew terrified faces on the hard-boiled eggs I packed in their lunch box with the message “Don’t eat me!”

And, I lined up their stuffed animals in the bathroom as if they were all waiting for the toilet.

This year, I’m sending my kids to school with gummy worms hanging out of the apples in their lunches.

And, I’ve turned all the pictures and knick knacks and everything I can get my hands on upside down in the night so they wake up to an upside-down house.

I hate pranks. It’s just not my kind of humor.

But I knew my kids would get a kick out of my April Fool’s fun, especially my one girl. Maybe my other kids would laugh at mom’s silliness, but this girl of mine would cackle.

So, I’ve been lightening up a little and celebrating April Fool’s Day as a mom.

It’s because I love my kids and I love this wacky, quirky, silly-joke-telling, comic-book-reading girl of mine.

Maybe she teaches me a little how to choose joy.

This world can batter us and beat us with depressing news and overwhelming sorrow.

But we have Good News.

God Himself came to earth in human flesh, received the punishment we deserve for our sin, died in our place and rose again, offering us eternal life with Him in heaven.

This Good News should root itself deep into our hearts and make our lives blossom with joy.

It’s an excitement that maybe the world just doesn’t get. Maybe they don’t understand.

Maybe we miss it sometimes ourselves. We talk about Easter or new life in Christ like it’s blah, blah, blah….words in a book, something that happened a long time ago, information for our head never impacting our heart and life.

Unfortunately, we become immune over time to the message’s impact. We forget the joy. We forget the wonder and excitement.

And when we imagine Jesus Himself healing people and teaching them, so often we picture Him as a melancholy Savior, all staid, straight-laced and serious.

Surely, though, he must have smiled a bit as Nicodemus puzzled out the meaning of “born again.”

When Jesus deftly sidestepped the theological traps laid by the Pharisees and Sadducees, I imagine He did it with an internal grin.

As He delivered the revolutionary Sermon on the Mount, Jesus could not have been a boring monotone preacher. He held the crowd’s attention for two solid chapters worth of teaching in Matthew 5-7. There must have been some joy there!

And I hardly think children would climb all over Jesus’ lap if He frowned and scowled and scolded.

Jesus is a joy-filled Savior teaching us to live with the joy of God’s presence.

Not that our life circumstances always make joy easy. Sometimes we feel like our “cup runneth over” and sometimes we feel like our cup is all poured out. What then?

Nehemiah faced a crowd of Israelites who felt too overcome by their sin, too full of repentant sorrow to feel joy. Yet he told them,

“Don’t be dejected and sad, for the joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10).

We have our weak days, our weary days, our times of feeling out of control, confused, worried uncertain, scared, sad, and broken into a million pieces.

Yet, the joy of the Lord is our strength.

It’s not the fake, paste-on-a-smile joy or the pretend-like-the-world-is-perfect joy.

It’s living fully confident that God is sovereign. We are in His hands and His hands can be trusted.

That’s what gives us strength to face each day, that quiet assurance of His love and His might.

So, we rejoice together when we consider the Good News of the Gospel.

We rejoice in God’s presence, in His accessibility to us at all times, in His compassion, in His faithfulness and unfailing love.

We rejoice in the journey of our faith, knowing that wherever He takes us, He is present there with us, even in darkness and long journeys through the valley.

Still we have joy.

“always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4, NLT)

Originally published 4/1/2015

Here’s the Good News

April 1, 2015March 31, 20152 Comments

“Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness more than Your companions”
Psalm 45:7

Last year, I glued googly eyes to all of the food in our refrigerator, swapped my kids’ clothes around into different dressers, and stuffed toilet paper into their shoes.

This year, I swapped out all of their regular shoes for doll shoes and acted like they shrunk over night.

I drew terrified faces on the hard-boiled eggs I packed in their lunch box with the message “Don’t eat me!”

And, I lined up their stuffed animals in the bathroom as if they were all waiting for the toilet.