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Encouragement

Deer Lord, Rifle-Shot Prayers

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This is for all of my deer hunter friends. A little hunting season homage to praying without ceasing.
deer lordI love the light-hearted look that the Skit Guys put on this (I am pretty sure I have uttered some of those same Deer Lord prayers.) I also wanted to share with you some real words of encouragement, a real life guide to prayer, that I have gone back to many times since first hearing this message from Matt Chandler. In this sermon from 2013 he is studying from the book of Nehemiah and introduces us to two essential types of prayer, big block prayer and rifle-shot prayer.

First up, big block prayer…

You have a big block of prayer. You have this kind of set-aside block of prayer. If you have a background in church, in your teenage years you were taught it. It was called a “quiet time,” that you are to set a part of your day aside for the sole purpose of being in the Word of God and praying.

I always thought we probably should have named it something other than “quiet time.” That sounds a little bit like discipline, like you’re in trouble. “You get in the corner and think about that.” We probably could have done better at that, but it’s called a quiet time, a set time of your day you are to just commune with God in Bible study and prayer.

And then there are what Chandler has dubbed rifle-shot prayers…

What I want you to notice is also on top of this communion with God that was day and night, this set-aside time, you also had these kind of rifle-shot prayers. “Okay, God. I prayed about this earlier today.” It’s a rifle-shot prayer. So you have these two kinds of prayers being established here, where you have a built-out set of time just between you and the Lord, and then you have these little rifle-shot communications throughout the day.

If you have a set time where you’re saying, “I’m going to pray, I’m going to lay these things before the Lord,” wouldn’t it make sense that it would overflow as you… Let’s take that guy at work you don’t like. Let’s take him, whoever he or she is. You have that person at work you kind of struggle with being kind to, having compassion for, showing patience toward.

If in your prayer time in the morning you say, “Lord, help me with this person. I just do not care for them. I know you love me and I have ugly stuff in me, but I just lack patience with this person,” and then you say, “Amen,” and you get in your car, and there’s Bill walking up to you as soon as you walk in, you’re aware, “I’ve laid this before the Lord.” Now you can Nehemiah rifle shot and go, Here we go, Lord. Here we go. “Bill, how are you? Are you doing all right? No, I can’t have lunch. Good to see you this morning, though, Bill. Blessings,” and then run and lock your door and hide behind the desk. Those little blocks bleed out into the rest of your life.

Now, if we were honest, for relationships to really flourish and have a lot of vibrancy, both of these are necessary. If human relationships work this way, how much more do our relationships with our heavenly Father work this way? Here’s what I’m saying. If you don’t have a set block or you don’t rifle shot prayer, I’m not saying you’re not a believer. I’m just saying the vibrancy of your relationship with God has suffered. You’re not robbing God; you’re robbing you, because to behold Jesus, to have a relationship with God, is to be transformed by him. I fear so many of us are stuck in bad patterns simply because we won’t connect with the relational component we’ve been rescued into. If you’re thinking morally and not relationally, you’re thinking wrongly.

Now, I want to say this, because I believe it’s true and it’s helpful. You will live your life or it will live you. You are never going to fill your spaces with prayer…ever. If you get an hour to kill, if an hour opens up… I don’t even know if that would happen in your world. It rarely happens in mine that “I have an hour here with nothing to do. How should I fill it?” If that happens to you, you will never fill that with prayer. You’re going to catch up on The Walking Dead. You’re going to do whatever else it is you do, but you’re not going to fill that hour with prayer.

I’ll tell you why. Because there is a war, a spiritual war and tear occurring about you connecting relationally with God. If all God is is an ambiguous idea to you that you love…you love the idea of God, but not necessarily love God and have a relationship with God…transformation is slow or doesn’t happen at all. So you begin to be churchgoers who are not walking in the fullness of life God has brought about in Christ.

But if you connect relationally with God, if you set aside periods of time to pray and consider and then from there have that overflow into the rest of the areas of your life, now we’re moving. Now transformation is occurring. Now you’re a bit dangerous to what is evil and dark in the world. If you don’t think our Enemy has a vested interest in us not praying, then you’re walking in some foolishness. That’s why you don’t fill your space with prayer. That’s why this is a struggle.

Prayer is one of those really weird things. I’ve said this over and over again. We all know we should. No one in this room right now is going, “Wait a minute. Are you saying…? You cannot be saying that as a Christian I’m meant to pray.” I just don’t think anyone is doing that. We know we should, but we’ve taken this poll (about seven times since I’ve been the pastor here) about how well we’re doing at that, and we generally have a consensus in the room that we stink at it.

So here’s the way I want to encourage you this week. If you’re one who struggles with setting aside a block of time, you’re going to have to say, “This is when I’m going to do it.” If you don’t, you’re not going to do it. Here’s what I would encourage you. Don’t try to go Michael Jordan right off the bat. Don’t go, “I’m going to set aside an hour a day this week.” Go for it if you want, but I’m saying I’ve seen guys come into the gym and set aside an hour of hard labor and then haven’t ever seen them again. They’re somewhere in an ice bath.

What I would do if I were you is set aside 5 or 10 minutes. You have 5 or 10 minutes. Set aside 5 or 10 minutes just to pray to the Lord, and part of that prayer needs to be, “Help me be mindful of you during the day.” One of the things I do is pray my calendar. I’m praying for the meetings I’m going into. I’m laying those things before the Lord, so that when those meetings come, I get to circle back around and do the rifle shot and go, “Okay, Lord, I laid these things before you. Recall to my mind, strengthen my heart, give me the courage I need,” and then I move into the meeting.

You need to get in your head now, “This is when I’m going to do that,” or you’re not going to do it. Then don’t make it law. If you make it law and you miss for this reason or that reason, then you broke the law and you’re not going to have a tendency to go back, if it’s just, “This is when I set aside time to pray.” Listen. I’m going to throw this out there. I miss sometimes. I have my little block that occurs right after I get up in the morning, and there have been times, because of situations or scenarios or other things, I miss that time.

I don’t think in that moment God is like, “You make me sick.” I think the blood of Christ covers that, and I’m going to rifle shot prayer that day, and I’m going to wake up the next morning and start over, and the mercies of God will be new. God will not be disappointed, although I do believe he’s a jealous God who longs for time with us. You’ll have to set out a little section to do this, or it’s simply never going to occur. You don’t need to view it as law, and you don’t need to view it as “Jordan-esque.” You need to start somewhere small and let it build. That’s how everything good works.

Then maybe you’ll get up to like a Calvin and Luther, praying an hour and a half a day or something. All right? I don’t know. But it should start small and sustainable, and let the Lord grow it from there. Don’t overestimate your own awesomeness. If you can take the posture, “I really stink at this,” then you can set up goals that are attainable. If you think, “I should be able to do what people who have been following Christ for 30 years should be able to do,” then I love you, but you’re a fool.

Don’t overestimate your own awesomeness…but don’t let your life live you either. Just start the conversation and you will be amazed what happens.

Dear Lord…

Encouragement

I Am A Cry-Baby (Not Really. Ok, Maybe I Am)

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Confession:  I hate crying. Maybe, more correctly I should say, I hate other people seeing me cry. This wouldn’t be as much of a problem if the waterworks weren’t activated by something as simple as a sappy commercial for cotton on tv!

I didn’t used to be this way but at some point along this adventure I became an excessively sentimental, emotional (alright, I will just say it) wreck.  Not everyday, but I have my moments.

Me: Watching a YouTube video that has tripped the tear trigger, one of my family members walks in and I am furiously wiping at my face.  Nothing to see here, keep moving, mom is totally fine…

Me:  Worshiping in church and so overcome that my eyes are welling up.  Are you kidding me?!  Get a grip woman, not here, not now…

Me:  Speaking to a group of women at the end of May, the one thing I asked my husband to pray for as I walked out the door that morning was  – no tears! Pray that I can get through this without crying.  (Now, truth be told part of what I was sharing was an extremely moving reading about the burden of the blessing that motherhood is and I had about 99% of the women there in tears.)  By the way – I failed…I was “misting” before I ever got up to speak as a group of young ladies got up to sing a song about moms.  (Taylor Swift’s, The Best Day – I dare you to try to get through it without tears!)

So why does this trait, as I see it in myself, bother me so much?  That is like opening Pandora’s box.  I don’t think anything less of others who cry in public. (Even in the public of your own living room.) Most likely if I see you crying I will be fighting joining in.  If I were to make an educated guess I would say this has something to do with control.  It doesn’t take a huge leap of faith arrive at this conclusion when the starting point is control-freak.  Alright, I think that is enough couch time for today.  The point I wanted to make in this is something that I struggle with and I really need you to hear…

It’s ok not to be ok.

Joyce Meyer said, “We desperately want people to believe we are okay…to think we’ve got it together.  But it’s okay to not be okay.”

Everybody loves a story of someone who has overcome obstacles, trials, tragedy.  But too often we hit the highlights, skip the dark spots because nobody wants to tell that story.  We often hear stories like this one…Once upon a time something bad happened but our hero wasn’t fazed.  Our superhero, with their cape flapping in the wind, squashed the enemy without any problem and they lived happily ever after without suffering any sleepless nights or ever having shed a tear.

Not me, I want an authentic story.  I want to know that someone else struggles with the same things that I do.  Or if not the same things, at least I want to know that you struggle too.  But we are all so good at pretending!  We have been spoon fed the line that if we are true followers of Christ, and we struggle, we cannot actually admit it.  (Gasp!)  Please don’t buy into this!

Matt Chandler, pastor at The Village Church, recently said this.

…an issue that continues to persist among us who confess Christ as Lord are seasons in which we walk in the desert, seasons in which we struggle with doubt, seasons in which we are barely hanging in there. If we are not careful, we will pretend that’s not where we are and, instead, play the part of “Here’s where I raise my hands, and here’s where I take notes…”

In essence, we begin to pretend we’re not where we are. Hear me: that’s dumb. Why? Your conversation with other believers, your conversations in your groups, your conversations with those who are in your life pursuing Jesus Christ with you should be right around this subject: “It’s dry. I’m tired. I’m struggling with doubt. I don’t get this. I’m losing faith.” Why would you pretend that’s not where you are? I love you, but that’s idiotic.

So we confess, “I’m in the desert, and I don’t know how much longer I can survive out here,” and the people of God encourage and pray and they check in and they walk alongside. This is a practice we never get out of.

Also, I don’t know that you’ll ever outgrow seasons of being in the desert.  God accomplishes profound things in the dry times. What we must learn to exercise week in and week out, month in and month out, year in and year out, whether obedience feels like breathing air or obedience feels like a full-out assault on our hopes and dreams, is an openness and authenticity to say, “I’m in trouble. I’m jammed up. I’m frustrated. I’m angry. I’m lonely. I’ve been reading my Bible. I can’t remember the last time the Lord spoke to me through his Word. I’m praying. I don’t feel like anybody is listening to me but the cat,and I need to repent for owning a cat.” (I personally apologize to any cat owners…)
If the Lord has put you in that season, you will be in that season as long as he wants you in the season. My own experience is there have been multiple times I’ve walked through that season where I’m like, “Okay, I get it,” and the Lord has gone, ‘You ain’t got half of it yet, brother.’  We need to learn to trust the Lord in that while simultaneously being honest that that’s where we are.  God hasn’t asked you to be Superman or Wonder Woman.

So, it’s ok not to be ok.  It’s not okay to stay there.  If you are struggling, be honest, tell someone.

So you thought you had to keep this up
All the work that you do so we think that you’re good
And you can’t believe it’s not enough
All the walls you built up are just glass on the outside

This is where the healing begins, oh
This is where the healing starts
When you come to where you’re broken within
The light meets the dark,

(Tenth Avenue North, Healing Begins)

It’s ok…If you’re all busted up, welcome to the family. Oh, you’re dysfunctional? Us too! Come on in. You’re one of the crowd.

 

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

 

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?

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.

Encouragement

This too shall pass…

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I have recently found myself pondering some very important questions. For example, is my car invisible? I have really begun to believe this may actually be truth with as many people as have pulled out in front of me, even though there are no cars behind me! This has not been a one time occurrence but instead more like a daily treat! And then as a follow up question. Why, if you are in such a hurry, that you must pull out in front of me, can you not at least do the speed limit? I have also been recently questioning if my speedometer is not set correctly as every car I am behind seems to be doing 15 miles an hour less than the speed limit. I am not a speed demon by any means, and I try to build some flex time into my travel, but not 15 extra minutes of flex time! This is white-knuckle driving, not because of bad road conditions, but because of the death grip I have on the steering wheel in frustration as the minutes tick by and I get later and later for wherever I am on my way to.

Quick, how would you describe your life right now in five words or less?

Me? I would say I am on my way. That’s how I feel like I live. I am always on my way somewhere. On my way to take the kids to school then depending on the day, I could be on my way to work, either on location or at home. Once there I try to cram as much as I can into the hours between 10 and 2 before being on my way back to pick the kids up from school. Then we are on our way to a music lesson or sports practice (or both), or possibly to feed a sports team if it’s an away game day (which often means fitting baking somewhere in between those precious “working” hours.) Then I am on my way to a sporting event, or on my way to the grocery store to pick up a random item that I need (even though I make lists, there is always something missing when I get home!) Many days I can be found at both. Then it’s on my way home to make dinner, probably do a load (or two) of laundry, help with homework (the dreaded math!) tidy up the mess we have all left in our wake throughout the day, then maybe work a little bit more if 10-2 didn’t accomplish everything on the day’s must-do list and then I am on my way to bed. A picture of a fairly typical day, where a lot of hours are spent on my way to somewhere, in my invisible car.

As the saying goes though, this too shall pass. There are plenty days when the last thing I want to do is get back and the car, and be “on my way” but there is going to come a day, in the not so distant future, when I won’t have to, so I am not complaining.

It seems like just yesterday I was tripping over toys strewn across the family room, changing diapers, and buckling kids into car seats. And now, I look at my two quickly growing children, young adults really, and I realize where we are really on our way to. I pray that as we quickly make our way towards the next chapter in our family that we can teach them enough, prepare them enough. I can’t always protect them from the world, although I try. I can’t save them from themselves some days, although I try. Some days I feel like I am literally in a tug of war match with Satan over them. We mess up, we get angry, I am far from a perfect mother, and I do not have perfect children, or a perfect family, but we try. The beautiful thing is we don’t have to be perfect. Perfection is not our standard. We just have to have a little bit of forgiveness (sometimes a little harder to come by than others) and love. Love the Lord our God, love our neighbor, love our children (and our parents), love our enemy. (That last one can be tough, I know, but this isn’t the a la carte menu. We can’t pick and choose, so love your enemy, with some help from God.)

I don’t know how you described you life (or if you even humored me when I asked you to.) I don’t know where you are in life. Today, I share my “spot in time” with you in hopes of encouragement. Know that whatever you are facing today, whatever your description was, good, bad, or filled with a little bit of crazy, I can only tell you this…it will pass. Sometimes that passing is bittersweet, but if you can keep God-centered, you won’t lose your way or your hope.

If you are having a bad day today, you are not alone. God has said, “I will never fail you. I will never abandon you.” (Heb 13:5) Find rest, refuge, and peace in Jesus. “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” (Matt 11:28) “I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

If you are having a good day, remember the Lord, “Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! His faithful love endures forever.” (Psalms 107:1) “Let all that I am praise the Lord; with my whole heart, I will praise His holy name. Let all that I am praise the Lord; may I never forget the good things He does for me.” (Psalms 103:1-2)

And if you find yourself more like me, with an invisible car, smack dab in the middle of crazy, hold on tight and use the Lord as your balance. Crazy can be wonderful if you don’t let it run you over. Remember, in the midst, God wants to be the center of our day, seek Him first, His kingdom and His righteousness (Matt 6:33) In all things (this goes for the good and bad days too) pray without ceasing (1 Thess 5:17.) Talk to God, share your day with Him. This is real life, and He wants to be a part of yours, no matter what it looks like.

And remember, this too shall pass…

“For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest… A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance.” (Ecc 3:1-2,4)

Encouragement

Still Moments – Glowsticks

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To build in darkness does require faith. But one day the light returns and you discover you have become a fortress; you may even find yourself, sought by others as a beacon in their dark. ~Olga Rosmanith

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. (2 Corinthians 1:3-4, NLT)

Being broken hurts but be encouraged that your pain does have a purpose! You may find yourself shining one day very soon.

And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. (1 Peter 5:10 NIV)