Author: Ragamuffingospelfan

Weak, Stretched Thin, and Out of Your Depth

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“Hey Soul? Yeah, I hear you — there’s times you feel stretched way too thin, in way over your head. 
So every time you feel that stress rising today, just take a moment & take a deep breath —- and just be. Just Be Still — and know & feel & trust how He is God. 
Being weak makes you a cup for God’s power. 
Being stretched thin, makes you a canvas for God’s glory.
Being out of your depths, makes you touch the depths of the love of God. 
#Exhale #BeStill #GodHasGotThis#PreachingGospeltoMyself” (Ann Voskamp).

I know what it feels like to be stretched thin and out of my depth. I know back in the day, I probably would have panicked big-time and not done very well with it. Now, I still get anxious, but I’m learning how to work through worry instead of being consumed by it.

I love the analogy of an archer pulling back on the bow to shoot an arrow. He pulls and pulls as the bow thinks it can not possibly be stretched any further, yet still he stretches more and more. Finally, he sets his sights on the target and lets loose.

God is stretching you and me for a future and a target that only He can see right now. At the moment, the stretching may feel unbearable and you’d rather have it over. It’s tempting to want to take a shortcut to get out of being that uncomfortable. But staying in it rather than bolting is worth it. You have the satisfaction of knowing God will honor your obedience and you can see with eyes of faith that the end will make any hardships seem light and momentary.

Being weak and out of your depth is a place God often calls His children. That’s where God loves to show up. It’s the kind of testimony that is the best, because no human explanation will do. It’s a life that can only be explained in terms of God. We make God famous most of all by being faithful when it would be easier to quit.

A Good Word from Dietrich

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“Christians are persons who no longer seek their salvation, their deliverance, their justification in themselves, but in Jesus Christ alone. They know that God’s Word in Jesus Christ pronounces them guilty, even when they feel nothing of their own guilt, and that God’s Word in Jesus Christ pronounces them free and righteous even when they feel nothing of their own righteousness…

Because they daily hunger and thirst for righteousness, they long for the redeeming Word again and again. It can only come from the outside. In themselves they are destitute and dead. Help must come from the outside; and it has come and comes daily and anew in the Word of Jesus Christ, bringing us redemption, righteousness, innocence, and blessedness. But God put this Word into the mouth of human beings so that it may be passed on to others. When people are deeply affected by the Word, they tell it to other people. God has willed that we should seek and find God’s living Word in the testimony of other Christians, in the mouths of human beings.

Therefore, Christians need other Christians who speak God’s Word to them. They need them again and again when they become uncertain and disheartened” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer).

That’s called community. If I read my Bible right, community is not optional for the believer. It’s required. It’s essential. If I really want to do more than tread water spiritually, I need brothers and sisters around me who can encourage and exhort me toward godliness in all areas. If I want to prosper, I need to be in a place where people gather together to sing, pray, hear God’s Word proclaimed, and give.

My pastor always says that the first person you lie to is yourself, so you need other people around you who will remind you of what’s true, whether you feel it’s true or not. Tonight was a good example as we broke bread together for the first time on a Wednesday night at The Church at Avenue South. It was a good Baptist gathering, so there was fried chicken, of course. But also there was plenty of fellowship.

Life can be a bit of a grind sometimes, so it helps to have people who speak life into you and lift you up in prayer. Some days, you will be in a good place, so you can return the favor. The beautiful thing about community is where I am weak, you can be strong for me, and where you are weak, I can be strong. In all our collective weaknesses, we find God’s strength is perfected.

I look forward to the next few weeks of fellowship and Bible study at my church. It will be a break from the norm, but sometimes that can be a really good thing.

Another Open Prayer

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I found this on Twitter reposted by Beth Moore. The original author is someone’s named Chad Bird. That’s all I know about that.

But the prayer echoes an earlier prayer I posted called the 3-Open Prayer which goes along these lines: Lord, open the door. Lord, open his/her heart. Lord, open my mouth.

To ask God to open anything is to allow Him to enable us to do what we could not have done on our own. It’s to pray for God’s strength to follow God’s will in God’s time.

All 7 of these are good prayers to use, if you are inclined to liturgical prayer along with the spontaneous. I prefer both, depending on the mood and circumstances.

All these are basically saying to God, “Don’t let me be closed off to You or what You’re doing in me and around me. Let me always be open to Your voice so that I may always know the blessing that comes from obedience and surrender. Amen.

Useless Time

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“The world says, ‘If you are not making good use of your time, you are useless.’ Jesus says, ‘Come spend some useless time with me.’ If we think about prayer in terms of its usefulness to us – what prayer will do for us, what spiritual benefits we will gain, what insights we will gain, what divine presence we may feel – God cannot easily speak to us. But if we can detach ourselves from the idea of the usefulness of prayer and the results of prayer, we become free to ‘waste’ a precious hour with God in prayer. Gradually, we may find, our ‘useless’ time will transform us, and everything around us will be different” (Henri Nouwen).

I guess in a sense that prayer is useless, speaking in human terms. We like to measure success and progress in tangible terms. We want to be able to check all the boxes on our to-do lists and see the results of what we do all day.

But prayer is different. We may pray and from our limited perspective nothing seems to be different. We may not hear an audible voice from God. We may not even sense God speaking at all. In fact, we may feel exactly the same after as we did before.

But when you look back over a month or a year, you can see you’re not who you were then. The people, places, and things you prayed for may not be different, but you are. You see a little more with God’s eyes and have a bit more of an eternal perspective on your life.

Sometimes, it’s good to detach from the world and simply to be still. You don’t need to ask God for anything. Sometimes, you don’t even need to say anything. Just sit at Jesus’ feet and breathe in and out slowly and above all pay attention. Be mindful in your silence and ready to obey whatever you hear from the Lord.

It may seem useless to a world that glorifies busyness, but in eternity’s perspective, nothing is more important than time spent in prayer.

The Purpose of Prayer

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“Every time we pray our horizon is altered, our attitude to things is altered, not sometimes but every time, and the amazing thing is that we don’t pray more” (Oswald Chambers, in The Place of Help).

Oswald Chambers also said something else that I’ve thought a lot about over the years. He said that prayer doesn’t so much change the things around me as it changes me and I change things. I think maybe I’d say that when I pray for God to change my circumstances, what I really want is a shortcut out of the difficult season. God wants me to endure the season so that I am changed by it.

It’s like the old story of the cocoon and the butterfly. If you “help” the caterpillar out of the cocoon rather than watch it struggle, you deprive it of the strength it needs to fly. When we pray for God to take us or those we love over an obstacle rather than through it, we are robbing ourselves of sweetness of learning to know God deeper through the struggle and coming out of it more like Jesus.

I don’t think my problem is not praying enough as much as it is praying the wrong way. I still pray to God like I used to write to Santa Claus back in the day. I have my list of what I want, and when the list is over, I’m done. But prayer really is so much more than getting from God as it is getting to know God. And getting to know myself in the process.

“Prayer is not getting things from God. That is a most initial stage; prayer is getting into perfect communion with God: I tell Him what I know He knows in order that I may get to know it as He does”(Oswald Chambers, Prayer: A Holy Occupation).

Vintage CCM Vinyl

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I wrote a year and a half ago about how I love collecting all the old CCM (that’s Contemporary Christan Music for the uninitated) vinyl, especially from the 70s and 80s. It seems almost sacrilegious that in Nashville of all places these records could be so criminally undervalued and underappreciated. I mean, Nashville is supposed to be the center of the Bible belt in the United States of America.

But that’s where we are. Most people even the churches around Nashville, have no knowledge or appreciation for the history of Christian music. Most have no idea that it even exists. But for those select few who know and grew up around it, their childhoods were awesome.

I still love going to record stores and thrift stores around town to hunt for vintage CCM. There’s nothing more fulfilling than flipping through the bargain bins and pulling out one or two classic Christian artists from back in the day.

Better yet, when I drop the needle and some of those great songs hit me from the speakers, I am instantly back in time to when I first heard them. I can vividly remember what I was thinking and feeling at the time. I can usually remember all or most of the words.

I consider myself a child of the 80s because that’s when I really discovered music. I heard a lot of CCM music from my church youth group days and with much thanks to my youth pastors who went out of their way to introduce me to a better faith-based alternative to the music of the day (most of which seems tame compared to music these days).

I remember the kids I knew used to say their first concerts were to artists like U2 or Motley Crue or Ozzy Osbourne. My first ever concert was Sandi Patty. I know, I know, there goes my street cred, but there it is. That was my music growing up. I distanced myself from it for a bit, but I’ve come full circle again to loving the music that taught me so much about God and the Christian life. So much of my theology is from those songs.

I’m thankful for the music that made me who I am. I love how even though some of the artists aren’t in music anymore and some have even passed away, their music still lives on and still speaks a better word. May that be our legacy as well.

Not What My Hands Have Done

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Tonight, I’m spotlighting an old hymn with some powerful words and sound theology. I do like modern worship, but sometimes we need to get back to a hymn or two, even if it’s the words of a hymn set to a more modern arrangement.

Here’s a hymn that I’ve never sung or heard before tonight. I hope these words will bless you as they have blessed me:

“Not what my hands have done
Can save my guilty soul;
Not what my toiling flesh has borne
Can make my spirit whole.
Not what I feel or do
Can give me peace with God;
Not all my prayers,
And sighs and tears
Can bear my awful load.

Thy work alone, O Christ,
Can ease this weight of sin
Thy blood alone O Lamb of God,
Can give me peace within.
Thy love to me O God,
Not mine, O Lord, to Thee
Can rid me of
This dark unrest,
And set my spirit free!

Thy grace alone, O God,
To me can pardon speak;
Thy power alone O Son of God,
Can this sore bondage break.
No other work, save Thine,
No other blood will do,
No strength save that,
Which is divine,
Can bear me safely through” (Horatius Bonar -1864).

We Resemble What We Love

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That’s true. You do become like whomever you spend time with. You begin to resemble the things and people that take up the most space in your heart and in your calendar. You can say how much you love God and want to grow in godly character, but if you spend more time in worldly pursuits and passions, you will end up looking more like the world than like God.

People say they don’t have enough time for God. Not true. You make time for what matters to you. If God really and truly matters to you, you will carve out margins and space in your day to spend time with God. Otherwise, what you do and not what you say shows what and who you truly love.

Jesus said that if you love Him, you will obey Him, and the way to obedience is through intimacy that can only come from T-I-M-E. No other way. You can read all the books in the world about Jesus, but until you spend time with Jesus, those books and any other reading you do is in vain.

Lord, help us to draw near to You because You promised then to draw near to us. Help us hear Your voice as You speak and obey what we hear. Give us a passion and desire for You and Your Word above all else in this world. Amen.

Turning the Wine Back into Water

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“Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses (C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory).

I’m guilty all the time of looking at people like they’re ordinary. I think that’s the default setting for the human race. We rarely if ever see anyone and see the image of God in him or her. We just don’t take the time to see beyond the surface labels of pretty, plain, fat, skinny, tall, short, etc.

I wonder what would happen if we could see people the way Jesus saw people. He didn’t see a stereotype or a caricature. Every time, He saw a unique individual with a story like no one else’s. He created each person with a one-of-a-kind purpose and plan that no one and nothing else can do.

He looked at you and me and thought we were worth dying for. Even at our worst moment in those times we wish we could take back or do over, Jesus still chose to go to the cross and lay down His life for us. While we were still sinners, the Bible says, Christ died for us.

I’ve been guilty of prejudging people before I’ve even had the chance to get to know them. Sometimes, I see the way they interact with others or maybe the expression on their faces. I’m sure I’m not the only one, but I’m also sure glad that Jesus didn’t judge me like that. He saw the absolute worst version of me and still loved me.

I wonder what would happen if we loved people like that. Maybe we wouldn’t have to hunt high and low for gospel conversations and opportunities to share our faith. Maybe people would seek us out and want to know more about this Jesus they see in us, even if they can’t put a name to what they see.

Abiding in Jesus

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“There is no condition of life in which we cannot abide in Jesus. We have to learn to abide in Him wherever we are placed” (Oswald Chambers, in Our Brilliant Heritage).

Abide isn’t a word that we use much anymore. I can’t remember the last time I used the word abide in a sentence, unless I was reading from the Gospel of John in a more traditional translation recently.

But to abide in something isn’t pitching a tent and packing up the next day. It’s being in it for the long haul, so to speak. To abide is to remain. Specifically, to abide in Jesus is more than being around the things of Jesus but immersing in Jesus.

To abide in Jesus is to remain calm when all else is chaotic and uncertain. It’s being able to sleep on a boat in the middle of gale-force winds and crashing waves. It is to be so centered in Jesus that nothing can overthrow your peace or dampen your joy.

Jesus told us as His followers that we must abide in Him as He abides in His Father. Think about that. His abiding in the Father was a daily, hourly, even moment by moment occurrence. It was not a one hour a week or even a three times a week thing. It was every conscious moment of every single day.

I want that, but I confess I don’t really know how to do that. Lord, teach us how to abide in You. Give us the desire above all else to want to be daily aware of and immersed in You so that we can more and more reflect You to everyone we meet so that they will want to know You and abide in You, too. Amen.