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Without the rai…

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Without the rain there is no beauty in the summer. Rain gives depth, it gives beauty and it gives roots. If a plant is only exposed to sun and no rain, it becomes dry, flimsy, and dead. Too many times we curse the rain in our lives – suffering, trials, hardships – but the truth is without rain nothing grows ~ Jefferson Bethke

Words that rang true and nailed what this series, “Into Every Life,” is about at it’s core. The days when the sun is shining and everything just seems to fall into place are wonderful.  These are the easy days.  But they are only part of the equation, it’s the rain that cultivates deeper roots.  The days where as Abraham Lincoln so poignantly said,  “I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day.”  These are the days when we are driven deeper into dependance on, and the care of, Jesus.  These are the days your roots are deepened, your faith is given a chance to blossom.

6 So be truly glad.  There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you have to endure many trials for a little while. 7 These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world. (1 Peter 1:6-7 NLT, emphasis mine)

Into Every Life

Into Every Life…Oh, That’s Good. How Very Nice For You…

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Yesterday I wrote about my beautiful niece Hannah, about the grace with which her parents have continued day after day through exhaustion, desperation, and helplessness. But they have also been the recipients of great joy as they have seen prayers answered in the very life they are able to hold and cuddle and treasure every day. (Into Every Life…The Good)

I can only assume in reading that there were some of you that felt the sharp pain of longing and the prick of reminder that your prayers were not answered. While Hannah’s parents have witnessed a miracle, you were the recipient of silence. And you find it an impossibility to find any type of the”good” that I was suggesting in that.

It doesn’t matter what you have prayed for, a child, an illness, a hurt, if God has remained silent, you can easily find yourself ambivalent, not only towards someone else’s happy ending but God himself. For some, ambivalence would be an improvement over how they feel about a God who doesn’t answer.

For those who don’t know let me share with you the lens through which I share life with you and more specifically yesterday’s story of good. We buried our infant son who never even took a first breath. Stillborn at 32 weeks, he could have had a shot at this life if only we would have know how wrong things really were. If only God would have intervened. We labored in prayer over that pregnancy and our son but God didn’t answer our prayer. I understand the raw pain of God’s seeming silence. I understand if you are not ready to see or even begin to look for the good in anything. But can I ask you one question? Isn’t it lonely in the pit you have dug for yourself?

I know the pit. I came dangerously close to camping out there in anger and bitterness 13 years ago. It was through God’s hand, holding out hope and rest and peace that I baby-stepped out. Brooding is exhausting, miserable work. I tried to ignore the disappointment. I tried to hide from the anger. I pretended, I masked, I denied but it wasn’t until I crashed headlong into it that I finally began to deal with my pit. Only then could I begin to heal, and begin to see the light that “good” can provide. But I had to make the choice, do I want to be bitter or do I want to be better. Do I want this mess to take me under or can it somehow be redeemed? I couldn’t do on my own though. I couldn’t make it better, I couldn’t make it “good” and the harder I tried the deeper my pit became.

It took me five years to get there, to have my eyes opened to see what I had become.  On this particular Monday I had come face-to-face with myself and the pain that I hadn’t let myself feel in a long time. The more I do, the less I feel; and the less I feel, the less I hurt. I thought I was doing just fine, that I had been handling myself in a healthy manner.  I didn’t realize that I had put up a major wall within myself, not allowing the emotion to spill over into the matter-of-fact way that I had dealt with our son’s death. I was afraid to be vulnerable, especially in the eyes of others, because in that I saw a weakness in myself. Repeatedly people had commented on my strength, but in reality, I tucked the pain and hurt away and never fully dealt with them.

Instead of fully allowing myself to feel the brunt of my pain, I had created a numbness and called it strength. I was afraid that if I felt the pain that I would also feel the anger, and I was afraid if I started down that road, I might not be able to come back. In my strength, I was robbing God of the ability to save me from myself and robbing myself of the knowledge and gift of true strength and dependence on God. God was longing to provide not the fake, plastered-smile, I-have-it-all-together façade that I was trying to convincingly pull off, but the glorious, holy power that brings with it pure strength.

Anger and bitterness are far more common than most of us would like to admit. Sometimes it just feels good to be angry, especially when we don’t have the answers or they aren’t the answers we wanted. It feels good to point fingers and place blame in order to try and make sense of things. We end up destroying our own soul when it becomes filled with anger, resentment, and hate; the one who has wronged us moves on, while we crumble under the weight of our resentment. It is hard to forgive sometimes, yet I have found it is even harder to carry the soul-crushing weight of anger and resentment.

Ephesians 4:26–27 says, “Don’t sin by letting anger control you. Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry, for anger gives a foothold to the devil.”  We must choose to be honest about our anger and admit that we feel that we’ve been let down, that life isn’t fair, that we have been forgotten, passed over, and left for dead by those whom we loved the most. When we can take the first step in admitting these things, then we can begin to heal.

The question I asked you at the beginning of this series was this: how are you? I know how I used to answer it. Are you holding on tightly to your bitterness, to your anger, letting your hatred numb the pain and sorrow and disappointment of what you think should have been? Have you driven a wedge between yourself and others who have reached out their hands to help because your pride wouldn’t allow you to take it, wouldn’t allow for vulnerability and weakness? Have you written God off because He didn’t come to your rescue when you thought He should have?

Admitting that we are carrying this anger doesn’t mean that He’s guilty; God cannot commit sin. But when we admit and acknowledge our anger at God, we release our expectations of what we think God should have done to prevent our hurt or failure in the first place. When we acknowledge our anger at others and seek forgiveness for this anger, God creates in us a clean heart and renews our spirit, allowing us to begin living again.

This is not easy.  This is a choice.  Bitter or better?  Are you ready to see healing and redemption begin?  It most likely will not happen quickly but one foot in front of the other if we keep moving we will begin that baby-stepping journey out of our own personal pit. Reach out for the hope and healing that God is offering…begin your journey back to your ability to see the good.  My prayer for you even as I write this is that you don’t give up.

 

Into Every Life

Still Moments – God as Comforter

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I wanted to dig into the Word this morning and look at one of my favorite passages about comfort. God is the author, the well-spring, of comfort. There at His foot have I found comfort that no one else can offer because His comfort comes infused with rest, and hope. God’s comfort is bigger than a few hollow words uttered by someone who, although trying, has no idea what to say. And then, because I have “been there” and received comfort from the hand of Jesus, I can comfort others with His comfort from the heart of a fellow weary traveler.


God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us. For the more we suffer for Christ, the more God will shower us with his comfort through Christ. Even when we are weighed down with troubles, it is for your comfort and salvation! For when we ourselves are comforted, we will certainly comfort you. Then you can patiently endure the same things we suffer. We are confident that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in the comfort God gives us. (2 Corinthians 1:3-7 NLT)

Comfort is a blessing. That comfort which we receive and the comfort we in turn provide.

Then call on me when you are in trouble, and I will rescue you…” (Psalms 50:15 NLT)

God will rescue you…with comfort for a broken heart, peace for a tormented soul, and hope for a better tomorrow.

Charles Swindoll said this, “When you accept the fact that sometimes seasons are dry and times are hard and that God is in control of both, you will discover a sense of divine refuge, because the hope then is in God and not in yourself.”

Into Every Life

Into Every Life…God as Comforter

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Ok…this concept from Matt Chandler blew my mind. The first time I read it I thought “nice quote.” Then, after reading it through a couple of times and allowing it to penetrate through the cliche part of my brain to something deeper I began to really get on board with what Matt Chandler is saying. Let’s call this the head to heart transition. Take a few moments and reread these words today. Allow their meaning to seep into your soul.

“Comfort is the god of our generation, so suffering is seen as a thing to be solved, and not a providence from God.” Matt Chandler

Suffering as a providence from God, a blessing maybe? Let me clarify and say that I don’t believe suffering is the blessing. The bad, the mess, the hurt is not the blessing. I will not ask you to swallow the “suffering is a blessing” pill.

But before we get to where the blessing can be found answer this question, where do you turn when things begin spiraling out of control?

When we are hurting, searching for an escape it is so easy to medicate, to mask, or to smother our suffering. Or at least to try anyway…with a drink, a pill, food, shopping. Understand that it doesn’t have to necessarily be the “taboo” things that are destructive. When we reach for “stuff” first, we will constantly find ourselves reaching, going back to the well for more, trying to fill the hole, trying to escape our suffering. This is shaky ground and I will just say this. Pretending “it” doesn’t exist doesn’t make it go away. The only place to find healing is digging all the way to the root and then laying it down at the foot of the cross. It WILL hurt, and it is most likely NOT going to change over night but everything that happens in this life happens for a reason. Of that I am confident and unwavering.

Let me share with you what I have learned first hand…

When we are hurting, we want someone to sit down next to us, take our hand, and tell us it’s going to be okay, even if he or she doesn’t really believe it. We want to pretend, at least for a little while, that everything is all right. That in that very moment in time, everything is fine, and all that has happened or is yet to happen will just go away—the hurt, the shame, the fear, the consequences. In the absence of being able to turn the clock back, in the absence of being able to change the course our life has taken, we want comfort. We want to be loved and assured. And many times, the last thing we want to hear is that our pain has a purpose. We want to wallow in our pain; we want to have a pity party for ourselves. We want to scream at God that He has made a mistake and demand that He fix it. God doesn’t make mistakes, and search as we may for an escape route, the nearest exit as it were, from our current situation, it is in these situations that we really begin to understand what God is really like. I have been there, desperately searching for the emergency exit, but though we may not want to accept it, what we are going through has a purpose—God’s Word tells us exactly that. If you are there today, I pray as I write this that God’s words will penetrate your heart and you will be able to see God through the haze of your pain…I have come to realize that sometimes bad things are going to happen. Sometimes terrible, unthinkable, unimaginable things are going to happen, but it is God’s will. He has not turned His back on me, and I can use these things to make me bitter or I can use them to make me better. I love what Charles Spurgeon says; maybe you too can identify with his words. “I bear my willing witness that I owe more to the fire, and the hammer, and the file, than to anything else in my Lord’s workshop. I sometimes question whether I have ever learned anything except through the rod. When my schoolroom is darkened, I see most.” (An excerpt from Run and Be Still. )

When we are suffering what is the first thing we look for? Relief, an escape, a way to stop or avoid the pain. That is our human nature. We need to take a fresh look at Jesus in times of suffering, to understand better the promises He makes us when we find ourselves in the valley. Let me encourage you that in our suffering, God wants to be our comfort. Herein lies a major blessing if we can shift our thinking to see it as such. If you aren’t there yet please don’t give up. Just stick with me and keep an open mind. Know that on the bad days, God has not left you. He has not forsaken you.

I encourage you to look again at Jesus with the words from Laura Story’s song, Blessings.

What if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
And what if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near
What if my greatest disappointments
Or the achings of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy
And what if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are Your mercies in disguise

 

Into Every Life

Into Every Life…

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We’ve all been dealt cards that we wish we could exchange. There have been times we have been ready to lay our hand down and just fold and walk away, but during the month of May I want to challenge you to see those cards for the blessings that may spring forth from them through this series that I have dubbed, “Into Every Life.” I want to challenge your definition of a “good” life and look at what a blessing may sometimes truly look like. My prayer is that as we do this we will begin to see our hand through the Dealer’s eyes.

“Into each life rain must fall,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous words……but what if, as Laura Story in her song Blessings asks,

What if Your blessings come through raindrops?
What if Your healing comes through tears?
What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You’re near?
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise?

What if…will you join me this month as we look at this what if? If you know someone else who needs some encouragement, someone whose umbrella is tattered and torn from the downpour they have been weathering, would you please share this with them? Invite them to take this journey with us for a very real look at pain and blessings.

Easter

A Shift In Thinking – Suffering As A Gift

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We all have stories and no two are the same.  (If you haven’t read my story I would invite you to do so.) There is a common thread that runs through all of them however.  We all celebrate, we all get restless, and we all suffer.  It is this, the suffering that shapes us more than anything else in life.

Suffering is more than just physical hardship. It’s also emotional pain, relational woes, soul unrest, and spiritual attack. Jesus’ death does not take away our suffering, but it gives profound meaning and purpose to it.

I have learned this first hand. I love what Charles Spurgeon says; maybe you too can identify with his words. “I bear my willing witness that I owe more to the fire, and the hammer, and the file, than to anything else in my Lord’s workshop. I sometimes question whether I have ever learned anything except through the rod. When my schoolroom is darkened, I see most.”

Consider James’ words “Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.” (James1:2-4)

Count it a joy? When you feel like you are drowning in grief or suffocating in fear, joy is one of the last things you are thinking of!  However,I have learned that suffering provides an avenue for our faith to mature.  Don Barker, in Pain’s Hidden Pleasure says, “If there is anything a sufferer needs, it is not an explanation, but a fresh, new look at God.

As I faced a future with TA I was afraid, and I prayed over and over that God would rescue me and He did.  Maybe not in the way that I thought He would or should but he has given me more strength, more sanity, more of Him, than I ever had before I was sick and I wouldn’t trade any of that for the life that I had before.

AW Tozer says, “God never uses anyone greatly until He has wounded them deeply.”  We must be stripped down of our self-sufficiency and taught to rely on God for everything and sometimes it takes having things ripped out of our hands or our lives in order to learn.

As I have been been “journeying to the cross” this season I have been giving some extended thought to the suffering that Jesus endured.  We we know the outcome—an empty tomb. For me, this is an exercise in reflection, but for the disciples as they found themselves in the middle of it was an exercise of faith. I see what God was doing in the garden of Gethsemane, and I know the great necessity of the cross  because I have the benefit of understanding the why in this situation. Otherwise, I too would probably have fallen asleep and most likely would have run for safety. It’s easy to look back.

We look back all the time, longing for comforts past, wondering what might have been. Even though we have taken up life with Jesus, suffering challenges our resolve and fixes our attention to how things used to be. We look wistfully at our “before” life.  Our hunger for restoration and relief from burdens turns our heart to the past, but Jesus has only an eye for what is set before Him.  He knew what had to happen, kept His focus forward, and stayed the course, amid the suffering.

God’s purpose is to create Christlike character in us, to bring us into harmony with His will for us. He is interested in a “better us,” not in providing an easier path. Sometimes we need suffering as a way to bring us nearer to God and remove our worldly attitudes.

The Isrealites experienced this in the forty years they spent wandering in the desert. They argued with Moses, idealizing their life in Egypt and questioning the goodness of the Lord. They complained about the Lord’s provision, not because he didn’t provide, but because they weren’t content with what he provided.

The paradox of suffering is that it is actually a gift – one we might like at times to give back unopened– but a gift nonetheless. God gives us suffering as a way of giving us himself, for it is in our suffering that we become acutely aware of his presence and power. Hardship empties us of our self-reliance so that we might soak in what it means that we are children of God.

The Israelites in the wilderness and Christ on the cross both stand as a testament, old and new, that God does not forsake his people. More than this, they remind us that suffering is a gift from God that very tangibly embeds his promises in our daily life. Of course, we have to be looking to him to receive it as such.

This is wisdom borne of suffering.  But this is the clear-eyed analysis of someone who is standing on the  other side having survived in one piece.  What do you do when you find yourself in the midst of suffering with no end or relief in sight?  Know that you are not alone and Jesus holding out his hand to, ready to rescue us with peace and rest.  Call out to Him, He will hear your cry and save you. (Psalm 145:19)

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.” (Isaiah 43:2 NIV, emphasis mine) This promise from Isaiah is not an if but a when. And when it happens, God promises to be with us, always. Sometimes we lose sight of that as we are beaten by the raging storm around us.  If that is the case you are in good company.  Matthew 14:22-32 tells the story of Peter’s experience with walking on the water and then losing sight of Jesus in the face of the storm. Vernon McGee writes, “When he [Peter] began to sink, he prayed the shortest prayer in the Bible,” Lord, save me!” If Simon Peter had prayed this prayer like we have heard others sometimes pray, “Lord, Thou who are omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent…” Peter would have been twenty-nine feet under water before he would have gotten to his request.”  Charles Spurgeon once remarked that “the best style of prayer is that which cannot be called anything else but a cry.” This is the prayer of a drowning person in need of help from a savior, and aren’t we all?  Do you know what happened next?  Jesus immediately reached out and grabbed him. (Matthew 14:31)

Kendall Huag said, “Ultimately, suffering is about learning to receive whatever God has placed in our hands as his goodness for us today. For Jesus, the journey to Jerusalem was a gift. Gethsemane and Golgotha were gifts. They were not easy gifts to receive, which is why he had to say, “Not what I will, but what you will” (Mark 14:36). And it is why he taught us to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done” (Matthew 6:10), because if we are not looking for God’s kingdom come, we always be looking back for our kingdom gone.”

This is what my happy ending looks like, a fire for God that has been rekindled. The opportunity to take heartbreak and fear and turn them around for God’s glory.  Stop for a moment today, and think about your love story. Maybe it’s only just a story right now and you need God to pour His love into it. He will, you know. It doesn’t matter how ugly the beginning is, He loves you just the same. I am here to tell you that some of the ugliest stories can become beautiful when you give God the opportunity to pour His love into them. It is only through the grace and love of God that I can stand here today, not bitter and angry about the hand life has dealt, but thankful that through all of it I have been drawn closer to a God who wants nothing more than to be my happily ever after.

If you haven’t before I would invite you to accept the gift of cross. The gift of forgiveness and salvation. If it’s a gift you have already received maybe you need to dust it off and realize the true cost of it before another day passes.  It is this gift, offered to us for free that cost Jesus everything.  The gift we are getting ready to celebrate.

Easter, featured

Let’s Go Deeper

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If it seems we are crazy, it is to bring glory to God. And if we are in our right minds, it is for your benefit. Either way, Christ’s love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them. This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:13-15, 17, 21 NLT)

I love the beginning of that passage as Paul writes to the church in Corinth. If it seems we are crazy…that, I can easily identify with. But truly I just want to bring glory to God. I hope that you are continuing this Journey to the Cross and learning more about God and yourself through it.

These verses also say, those who receive His new life will no longer live for themselves. Here we are again old friend, the cross of sacrifice. A life for a life. He has provided us through death with the gift of eternal life. We can’t do anything to earn it. All we have to do is believe and accept. But if you want to do more than that, if we want to follow Jesus, live for Him we have to get ourselves out of the way and give up our life.

Then, calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul? (Mark 8:34-37 NLT)

I am admittedly stumbling and fumbling through this and appreciate so much the messages and comments through this site and Run And Be Still’s Facebook page after my last post Dead Man Walking. It is so nice to know I am not alone on this. But I couldn’t stop there, I want something deeper out of this. Something other than just fluff. I want this journey to mean something, to make a difference in me.

Your struggle may be different than mine. The following words from Kendal Haug and Will Walker were enlightening to me and you will hopefully find some truth to take you deeper as well, no matter what you are facing.

It is possible to believe in God and functionally exclude him from our lives, to act as if we are ultimate. How often do we consider our circumstances and think, “What do I need right now? How do I feel about this? What do I like or not like about this?” We even enter into prayer and worship with these kinds of self-focused questions. In these moments, though we believe in God, we are not functionally aware of his presence with us and his providence in our circumstances. If we were, we might say, “Father, you know what we need;” “How do you feel about this?” “Teach us your will, that we may know what is ‘good and pleasing and perfect’” (Romans 12:3). Notice two key differences: the questions are directed toward God, not self, and are concerned for “us” and not just “me.”

The word “sin” has been defined and applied in so many ways that I think most people have adopted a rather trite view of sin that is focused on specific actions that break God’s rules. The biblical concept of sin is not less than that, but it is more, much more. Let me share a helpful definition of sin from a 19th century philosopher named Soren Kierkegaard: “Sin is the despairing refusal to find your deepest identity in your relationship and service to God. Sin is seeking to become oneself, to get an identity, apart from God.”

We were made for God, to center our entire life on him and find our sense of worth and purpose in him. Anything other than that is sin. Tim Keller summarizes Kierkegaard’s point this way: “Sin is not just the doing of bad things, but the making of good things into ultimate things. It is seeking to establish a sense of self by making something else more central to your significance, purpose, and happiness than your relationship with God.”
This is a meaningful way to think about sin because we all identify with trying to build our identity on something. In our culture it tends to be things like achievements, or relationships, or being thought of as a good Christian. Everyone is building his or her identity on something.

We try to justify our sin. When you become aware of sin, do you feel the need to nuance everything, explain how complicated things are, or make excuses? (Let me interrupt here and say these are my personal “yes, but” moments that I have shared in the past.) Taking responsibility for sin means we say, “I lusted because my desires are perverted” … “I lied because I am afraid of what people think about me” … “I ate that because I do not have self-control around food.”

We try to downplay our sin, hoping or assuming that God overlooks our sin. We don’t think sin really affects our ability to relate to God, or hinders the flow of his blessing. We think we are the exception. Taking responsibility for sin means we say, “My sin is destructive and grieves God. I will not be right with him until I deal with this.”

We pretend things are better than they really are, cleaning the outside of the cup while we are filthy on the inside.

Taking responsibility means we say, “It doesn’t matter how good people think I am. God sees right through me, and is not impressed or tricked by my lip service. God hates hypocrisy!”

Our problems are bigger than our circumstances: we are broken on the inside. And repentance is deeper than what we do: we need to repent of who we are. Remember, repentance is good news. It is hope that God will restore us. Conviction of sin is a difficult pill to swallow, but it is good medicine to the soul.

Are you ready to be taken deeper? This is my prayer tonight…
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life. (Psalms 139:23, 24 NLT)

A Challenge, March 2014

Dead Man Walking

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Just checking in today to see how everyone who decided to take the “Journey to the Cross” is faring now that we are one week in. As I have been studying and praying and listening I have come to a realization. God has been at work on me peeling away my layers of “yes, buts” and showing me that in this season of sacrifice, while chocolate was a nice thing to give up, unless it draws me closer to Him it’s just stuff. The sacrifice that I have been more and more convicted to lay over is that of self.

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Deny thyself. It was at the heart of the very first post of our Lent journey.

If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it. (Matthew 10:39 NLT)

I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives. Those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who care nothing for their life in this world will keep it for eternity. Anyone who wants to be my disciple must follow me, because my servants must be where I am. And the Father will honor anyone who serves me. “Now my soul is deeply troubled. Should I pray, ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But this is the very reason I came! (John 12:24-27 NLT, emphasis mine)

And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. (Romans 12:1, 2 NLT, emphasis mine)

Lead me to the cross
Bring me to my knees
Lord I lay me down
Rid me of myself
I belong to You.

A.W. Tozer said, “among the plastic saints of our times, Jesus has to do all the dying, and all we want to hear is another sermon about his dying.”

Here are C.S. Lewis’ thoughts on this subject from Counting The Cost.

The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self–all your wishes and precautions–to Christ.

Christ says ‘Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don’t want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked–the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: My own will shall become yours.’…

The goal toward which He is beginning to guide you is absolute perfection; and no power in the whole universe, except you yourself, can prevent Him from taking you to that goal. That is what you are in for. And it is very important to realize that. If we do not, then we are very likely to start pulling back and resisting Him after a certain point. I think that many of us, when Christ has enabled us to overcome one or two sins that were an obvious nuisance, are inclined to feel (though we do not put it into words) that we are now good enough. He has done all we wanted Him to do. And we should be obliged if He would now leave us alone.

But this is the fatal mistake… The question is not what we intended ourselves to be, but what He intended us to be when He made us….

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you know that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of–throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself!

“Yes, but” cottages are cute and chocolate is so much easier…

How are you doing?

A Challenge

I Will Be A Subway Preacher

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start where you are

 

If you gotta start somewhere why not here
If you gotta start sometime why not now
(TobyMac, City On Our Knees)

Start something…do something…be something.  It’s a pressure I feel on a daily basis.  One that I quite admittedly make much larger by my obsessing on questions like…Am I living up to my potential?  Am I following God’s leading and teaching? What is God’s will for my life?  Start something…do something…be something.  My self-talk mantra.

In trying to answer those questions I continually fall short in the answer department.  I have had this image in my mind, the way I have felt lately and I haven’t been able to  reconcile what it, until just recently.

I find myself standing in the middle of the subway station platform during the early morning rush.  Frenzied chaos with people swarming, rushing, getting on trains and headed out.  Confident people who know where they are going and how to get there.  But not me…I am standing, jostled, stuck, and confused, not sure which train to get on because I don’t know where I am supposed to be going, but I really feel like I should be moving,  going somewhere, anywhere.  I start towards one train and stop, second-guessing.  I am feeling helpless, another face in the sea of people.  This was me, inside…

If you know me at all you will know that I am a fan of big gestures.  Go big or go home.  So part of what I was looking for in my subway destination was influenced by this.  I was ready to embrace Ephesians 3:20, “Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.” To infinity and beyond…God definitely knows how to accomplish the “big gesture.”  This is the pressure I was putting on myself…Start something (big)…do something (big)…be something (big.)  Instead I have felt like I was languishing, particularly in regard to my book and this nebulous idea of a “ministry.”  But recently the sand under my feet has begun to shift and I am seeing things in a different light.

Have you ever heard the phrase “grow where you are planted?” That is where this change began.

If standing in the middle of a subway is where I find myself then I will become a “subway preacher.” I say that in jest, however, the “ministry” that I am so desperately searching for has been right in front of me.  It just doesn’t look like what I had pictured in my head so I overlooked it.  I have also realized I need to release myself from the burden of “greatness” (that is founded in my own definition) and just be who God has created me to be at this moment, with these circumstances, in this place.

There is a Part B to that as well.  Not one that is particularly pleasant to admit.  That is releasing God of the expectations that I have for Him, the quiet undercurrent in the self-talk.  You have big plans for me God, right?  We are going places, right?  Surely we haven’t come this far to just hang out here, right? It is putting my agenda on God’s plate and I know that isn’t how it works.  Chalk it up to being a slow learner…

So I have begun pouring myself into the here and now instead of looking ahead to the future and waiting for it to happen.  I need to throw out the idea of “ministry” by my definition and walk in faith.  Maybe I will walk in place for a little while.  Maybe I will feel like I am walking in circles but God is in control.  He has me exactly where I am supposed to be right now.  I can’t second guess that.  Maybe someday we will jump on another train and head out, but for today I am going to grow where I am planted.  And suddenly, I have found myself at peace in the subway.

Today, I challenge you.  Are you growing or are you spending your time wishing you were being re-planted somewhere else? Are you giving God your best in the here and now, wherever that may be?  Have you placed expectations on God that He isn’t meeting and you find yourself frustrated?   A lot of questions that dig a little deeper than we are sometimes comfortable looking.  I have one last one…do you believe the words of Jeremiah 29:11?  “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”  God has plans for us, sometimes they line up with ours, sometimes they don’t.  But He knows what is best, His plans are for our good, even when we can’t see it and we don’t understand it.  I challenge you to trust God to do what is best for you and to use you for His purpose and for His glory.  And if you do, look out.  You may get to experience “more than you could ask or imagine” and never have seen it coming!

If you gotta start somewhere why not here.  If you gotta start sometime why not now…even if it’s in the subway!

 

 

 

Encouragement

Half the joy of…

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Half the joy of life is in the little things taken on the run. Let us run if we must – even the sands do that – but let us keep our hearts young and our eyes open that nothing worth our while shall escape us. And everything is worth its while if we only grasp it and its significance. ~Victor Cherbuliez

Open my eyes so I can see what you show me of your miracle-wonders. (Psalm 119:18)

This week as you work, cook, clean, drive, dream, cry, laugh, grumble, complain, sit, stand, run…and be still.  Take a moment to breathe it all in and acknowledge God.  Find your stillness amidst the running.