teaching

More About Blessings and Such

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For the record, I thought about calling this blog “Mo Better Mo Blessings,” but decided against it. Be thankful for that.

I had some more thoughts about blessings earlier today when I should have been paying more attention to the sermon. That’s actually where some of my best ideas for blogs come from. Shhh, don’t tell anyone, okay?

Some blessings are only found through suffering and trial and can’t be found any other way.

Some treasures are only found along the road through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, but they turn out to be some of the dearest treasures you will ever find.

Sometimes, the words God speaks to your heart in the midst of great pain are the words that turn out to be life and light and healing. Those are the words you remember most and hold most deeply in your heart of hearts, for those are the ones that go deep and speak to the most hidden, secret parts of you.

Some joys born out of sorrow are the ones that last with you the longest. Long after the storms cease and the suffering ends, these joys remind you like the rainbow of God’s goodness and His faithfulness.

Sometimes worship means the most to you when it costs you something. David once said, “I will not sacrifice to the Lord that which cost me nothing.” Sometimes, the cost is tears. Sometimes, the cost is your time, your talents and your treasures. In some places, the cost of worship may very well be your life.

Hold dearly to these lessons learned in the dark. Treasure the blessings found in storms. Never let go of the words God speaks to you in the midst of your suffering. Those are what will carry you through to the end.

And may you always hear in the night the voice of your Abba singing and rejoicing over you in the night as He does every night.

 

Sitting Still

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Today I had an epic fail. I was supposed to meet a friend for the 11 am service. I thought I had plenty of time to get one of those white chocolate mochas with a shot of hazelnut (which are fantastically good and you should try one some time). It turns out I did not.

By the time I got my awesome beverege, I was already ten minutes late and not at all in a reverential mood. More like impatient and frantic and stressed and mad at myself. By the time I got to the sanctuary, there was no way I was going to be able to find my friend, so I ended up sitting in the balcony.

But God reminded me of the sermon I had just heard about Mary and Martha. Martha was the one frantically scrambling to get everything just right and Mary was sitting silently at the feet of Jesus in the posture of a disciple. Martha had good intentions, but Mary did the better thing.

I took a moment to steady my thoughts and quiet my heart. I prayed for peace to replace the chaos and I took a few deep breaths. Then I was fine.

We often get so caught up in school, work, play, and doing things for God that we have precious little time for God. But if we want our desire to be more like Jesus to go from wishful thinking to reality, we must make time to sit at His feet and be silent.

I am the worst. When I try to be silent and still, my brain doesn’t want to cooperate. I will conjure up  whole conversations in my head, hear snatches of songs, and think of things I forgot to do or that I still need to do. In other words, my ADD kicks in with a vengeance.

But the more I come to sit at Jesus feet, the more I am learning to capture my anxious thoughts and give them to Him. The more I am learning to let everything else go and listen to the Voice that still says good things about me.

Come to Jesus all you who are at the breaking point of exhausting. Come, be still. He will give you much needed soul-rest even in the midst of a busy day. He will speak peace and healing over you. He will refresh your spirit and renew your mind.

So just come.

Unwanted

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I heard a beautiful story today in a sermon. The story was about 200 or so girls born in a village in India where boys are preferred. The fathers all named them “Unwanted,” because they were hoping for sons.

Later, these girls had a chance to get new birth certificates and choose their own new names. They chose names like “Wanted” and “Happy” and “Beautiful”.

In the same way, some of you have felt Unwanted at times. I know I have. I have a family who loves me and wants me, but some of you had parents that didn’t want you or gave you away or left you.  Maybe it was a husband or a wife. Maybe a son or a daughter. Maybe a close friend. They as much as told you that you were Unwanted.

Have you ever been at a party and felt left out and like you were not wanted there? Have you ever been in a large crowd and felt completely alone, like no one understood you or your circumstances? You thought to yourself that you might as well have been wearing a name tag that read Unwanted.

 Have you ever come to the conclusion in the dark watches of the night that the world would have been better off without you in it? That you are a worthless waste of space?

The good news of the gospel is that through the cross, God is calling the Unwanteds of the world and giving them a new birth certificate and a new name. Your new birthday is the day you said YES to Jesus and his forgiveness bought by blood.

Your new name is what God has chosen to call you. Wanted. Beautiful. Forgiven. Blessed. Son of the King. Daughter of the King. And, my very favorite of all, BELOVED.

When it felt like no one else wanted you, God did. He died to prove it. He still wants you to be a part of what He’s doing. He wants to take the broken and shattered pieces of your heart and your life and put them back together.

He wants to take your unholy mess of a life and transform it into something that shines and radiates the glory of Christ. He wants to take your scars and pain and make them testimonies. He wants to take you and make you a beautiful and glorious witness to the power of His love. He wants you.

If you say YES to Jesus, there’s no telling what He can do through you. You’ll never cease to be amazed at all God does in you and how He uses your hands and feet to bless those in your life. If He could turn the 1st century world upside down through 12 nobodies, imagine what He can do with you!

I can’t wait to see what that will be.

Blessed

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 I could some up my life right now in one word it would be . . . . chocolate. No, not really, although chocolate does take me to a happy place. My life could be summed up nicely by the word “blessed.”

I am so blessed. I have great family, great friends, and a great God who loves me so much more than I deserve. He loves me so much I can’t stay the same. I can’t receive all that love and not become a better person, one who looks more and more like Jesus every day.

I am blessed that I know how my story ends. I know that one day all the injustice and wrong in the world will be made right. I know that everything I’ve gone through that didn’t make sense will make perfect sense and I will see it as what drew me closer to Jesus.

You who read this blog are part of the blessing. You never do realize how much your texts or posts or notes or spoken words mean to me. Sometimes, God has spoken through you to me at just the right time with just the right words to keep me going. You’ve helped me make it through some days.

If I never had another dream come true, if I never had another desire fulfilled, and if I never had another visible expression of God’s goodness, I would still be blessed. If God told me that I had used up all my blessings and had none left, I would be good. I’ve had more than my share already.

I do think there’s more to come. The Psalms say to taste and see that God is good. I have tasted and seen and it is better than any buffet or feast. The love of Jesus is truly better than wine and that love keeps getting better with age.

I will forget this, so keep reminding me. When you forget, I will remind you. That’s what the community of faith is all about. My favorite definition of a friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.

Jesus knows my song and He’ll keep singing it over me night after night until I have learned all the words and can sing it for myself. I think my song starts off something like “All the way my Savior leads me, What have I to ask beside?”

A Letter from Jesus Christ

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This was written by a sixteenth-century Catholic monk named John of Landsburg. This spoke volumes to me today when I read it in A Praying Life by Paul E. Miller.

“I know those moods when you sit there utterly alone, eaten up with unhappiness, in a pure state of grief. You don’t move towards me but desperately imagine that everything you have ever done has been utterly lost or forgotten.  This near despair and self-pity are actually a form of pride. What you think was a state of absolute security from which you’ve fallen was really trusting too much in your own strength and ability. Profound depression and perplexity of mind often follow on a loss of hope, when what really ails you is that things simply haven’t happened as you expected or wanted.

“In fact, I don’t want you to rely on your own strength and abilities and plans, but to distrust them and to distrust yourself and to trust me and no one and nothing else. As long as you rely on yourself you are bound to come to grief.  You still have a most important lesson to learn; your own strength will no more help you to stand upright than propping yourself on a broken reed. You must not despair of me. You may hope and trust in me absolutely. My mercy is infinite….”

If I could add anything, it would be that the economy of faith, weakness and dependence are good things. Utter helplessness leads to desparate prayers which God hears. As long as we’re self-sufficient, we will never really and truly pray. Only when we come to the end of ourselves do we reach out.

I’m learning it’s okay to be weak and dependent and helpless because that’s where I find that God is my strength and my source and my ever-present help. And for the record, all of this is from A Praying Life, which you should go buy and read now.

 

Yet Another Aimless Blog

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One of the joys of writing a daily blog is when I run out of ideas. Some days, I sit down in front of my computer with no idea what I’m going to write about. I just start writing, and the results always amaze me. Sometimes, they kind of give me the wiggins, too. But it’s mostly amazing.

I don’t try to be original. Like the song Mockingbird by Derek Webb, “I just tell you what I’ve heard.” Honestly, there are probably a hundred other blogs out there that are better written and have more readers. That’s okay. More power to them.

I just want to write something down every day for my own benefit. God has taught me a lot through these blogs already since I started in July, almost a year ago. And one day, I just might blog about how fast time flies.

So at the moment what I know, aside from the fact that I am extremely tired from being up since 4:50 am, is that regardless of how my feelings fluctuate or how my perceptions of the world around me change, I know God is for me. His plans may not look like I want them to look, but they are always good and good for me.

By the way, if any one wants to pay me to blog, I totally would go for that. But I’d also do it for free, because it’s something I love to do. I also love reading, watching movies, photography, music, moonlit walks on the beach . . . and cats. But not as much as that girl from the infamous eharmony video that’s circulating on youtube (check it out and let me know if you think it’s for real).

So, my night consisted of watching Shawshank Redemption again. I really love that movie. There’s a Shawshank blog coming one day soon. I will end this disjointed blog with one of my favorite lines from the movie.

“Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

Yeah, I believe that. Sometimes it’s hard, but I still believe that even now. Good night, my loyal readers. May your hope remain strong in the God who is unswervingly faithful and true.

So What Translation Do You Use?

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I have started a new hobby. I collect small leather Bibles in different translations. I have several that I use, among them the ESV, NASB, NLT, HSCB, and the Message. For those who aren’t as nerdy as me, that’s the English Standard Version, the New American Standard Version, the New Living Translation, The Holman Christian Standard, and the Message (there’s really no cool abbreviations for that one yet, but I’m thinking maybe something clever and trendy like The M).

I’m a big believer in variety, whether it involves Starbucks, ice cream, music, or Bibles. I don’t just use one translation anymore. I switch between several. Ususally, I will read a passage in the ESV and then follow up with the Message. I tend to use the Message as a suppliment, because sometimes it gets a little too loose with the translating.

The point is not what translation you use, but how often you use it. How familiar you are with it. This could be another one of those times where I tell you I don’t read the Bible nearly as much as I should, but it’s not. The point is not to beat yourself up about how you don’t read the Bible for hours upon hours a day.

Start small. 5 minutes here, 5 minutes there. If I tried to start out with a marathon 6-hour Bible study session, I would probably not last very long. The idea is that the Bible is not a book you talk about or reference or read other books about, but a book that you read.

I’ve heard the Bible described as your Letters from Home. Kinda like when I was in college and I used to get  letters from mom. They started off hand-written, then they were typed, then she progressed to computer-drafted letters. The point is that each of those letters were a piece of her I had with me in college.

The same way with God. No matter what translation you use, you’re getting God’s Love Letter to you. It’s all about God’s great plan for the world and how He has invited you and me to be a part of it. How He picked nobodies and losers and outcasts and ordinary Joes and Janes like you and me to be on the winning team.

I think if you read it that way, it will mean more to you than if you read it as a book of rules and regulations or as a manual to show others how you’re so much more superior to them because you keep all the small laws in Leviticus. Those are impersonal, but God is a personal Being who has chosen to share His heart with us in these books compiled in the Bible.

I hope you will fall in love with God’s Word and grow to cherish it. I pray the same for me. As a pastor once said, May we have Bibles that are frayed and worn out and falling apart and lives that aren’t.

I like that. I think I’ll use that.

Lead Me

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“Lead me, ’cause I can’t do this alone.” I love that line from a Sanctus Real song, called appropriately enough, “Lead Me”. It’s good advice.

I think our culture has sold us a bill of goods. We’re taught that you can do it alone by yourself. You don’t need anyone else because you are strong enough and you can be a lone warrior. You can do anything you set your mind to, if you only believe in yourself and try hard enough.

I think not. I can’t. I’ve seen all the disastrous results of my own self-help, especially when it comes to spiritual matters. My sin management only leads to more sin. My efforts to try harder to be more religious are short-lived and end up with me either smug and prideful or frustrated and burned out.

We need each other, to borrow the title from another Sanctus Real song. We need a community in which we can be real and authentic, where we can hold each other acountable while being transparent with each other. We need to be strong for others when they can’t be strong for themselves. We need to let others be strong for us when we can’t for ourselves.

Most of all, we need to admit and confess to God our great and desparate need for Him at all times. Our need for the gospel didn’t go away when Jesus saved us. We still need it. We’re so very prone to wander back into rule-keeping and legalism and external appearances and outward actions and to forget to mind our hearts. But what God wants is our hearts.

Lord, I come to you with a confession that I’ve pulled away and tried to lead instead of simply following You. I’ve tried to be strong when You’ve called me to boast in my weakness and allow Your strength to be perfected in my weakness. I’ve tried to advance my own agenda and speed up and enhance Your plans for me instead of waiting and preparing to receive what You wil give me in Your own good time.

Lead me, because I can’t do any of this alone. Lord, make me willing to be lead, because I can’t even do that. None of us can. But, as Oswald Chambers said once, we don’t have to know where You are leading us because we can surely trust the One Who is leading.

Spring and New Life

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I love when spring arrives because spring is a picture of the resurrection in so many ways. Most importantly, it reminds me that winter doesn’t last forever, but that new life is waiting just around the corner. The same goes for the seasons in my own life.

My hopes may seem dead and my dreams dashed. I may feel the cold inside and not see any colors in my world. It may be dark and desolate and I may be feeling like my life will always be this way, never to change in any way or ever get better.

The resurrection of Jesus reminds me that darkness does not last forever. Not the cold or the desolation will win out. I’m reminded that true hope never dies and God’s dreams for me always come to pass. Whatever season I’m in, whether it be one of despair or one of hopelessness or one of waiting, must come to an end and all those seeds planted in me must come up and sprout and bear fruit. Every season will have its reward if I remain patient and trust in the God who is Lord of all the seasons.

The best part for me is that I see how Love sought me out and fought for me and that absolutely NOTHING could stand in the way of Love finding me and winning me back. Jesus is the one who fought for me, the one who defeated death and hell for me. He never gave up but found a way to get to me and win my heart. That’s love. That’s spring.

No matter how long winter seems or how cold, spring always follows behind. No matter where I am or what I’ve done or what I’m going through, I can rest assured that my rescue is nearby and that my hope won’t dissapoint. I can trust that God will keep His promises and that Jesus will be faithful and get me where I need to be. Namely, Home.

Amen and amen!

Grace and Faith and Other Ponderings

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First of all, let me just state again for the 1.000th time how much I love grace in all its forms. I love the fact that faith is what saved me, not my own works. But that leaves me with some questions:

1) Why are we so quick to default to rules instead of grace for living out our faith? It seems we’re a lot better at looking at a biblical text and coming up with all sorts of applications and practical steps than seeing what that passage reveals about the heart of God, especially toward His people.

2) Why is it that I in particular am really good when it comes to receiving and sometimes even expecting grace from others, but not nearly as good at extending grace to others? I judge others by their actions, while at the same time expecting them to judge me for my good intentions.

3) Why aren’t we putting down our picket signs and boycott plans and forming more confession booths. Not the kind where people confess to us, but where we confess to others how we have failed as believers to show them what Christ is really all about. Oh yeah, and Read Blue Like Jazz to find out more about confession booths.

4) Why are so many of us so quick to condemn sins we don’t struggle with, such as homosexuality or addictions, while minimizing the our own sins of pride and gluttony and lust? Why are we so quick to be like that Pharisee that thanked God that he wasn’t like all the sinners around him? Why aren’t we more like the tax collector who truly saw his own desparate need for grace and took the blame instead?

5) Where is the love that we are called to show each other? Not just a once a week kind of love, but an everyday, burden-sharing, transparent, completely honest love that seeks the best of the beloved, no matter what the cost. The kind of love that will draw people in droves to seek what we have in Christ.

If I am honest, I have to look in the mirror to find the problem with the Church. I am way too judgmental and condemning and quick to blame or cast doubt, slow to show grace and mercy. Each one of us could stand to look in the mirror for the culprit of what’s wrong with America. Not those liberals out there, but this hypocrite right here.

If I am true to the gospel, I see that that’s not who I am. That’s the sin in me, but not me. I am who God has declared me to be. So are you. We are already blameless. Already justified. Already righteous. Already victorious. All we have to do is claim these things and live in them. To so be enraptured by Christ’s love and let it envelop us until it shines through every pore and transforms us into the likeness of the One who loves us so much.

If I want grace, if I need it, then I should want it just as badly for my fellow believers. If I am forgiven for so much, then I should strive to aks God to put forgiveness in my heart for those who wronged me far less than I ever wronged my Jesus. Help me to want those things, Jesus.

Amen and amen.