George MacDonald

That June Post

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“Our culture has accepted two lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is to love someone’s means you believe with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense” (Rick Warren).

Yes, it’s June. These days they have created something called Pride Month where we are supposed to celebrate all things LGBTQ, etc. The thinking goes that if you love someone, you will love and endorse just about everything about them, and if you disagree with someone on any point, you must hate them.

That’s not true. I know and love people who are in the rainbow lifestyle, but I don’t endorse or agree with their lifestyle. I don’t hate them. I don’t wish them harm. I do pray for them and wish them true happiness.

I also don’t happen to see sexual sin as any worse than living together outside of marriage or adultery within the context of marriage. I don’t think someone else’s struggle with homosexuality is worse than my struggle with the sins of pride and envy.

Jesus loved people in the middle of their messes but didn’t leave them in their messes. He called prostitutes, tax collectors, and other sinners to follow Him. The best part is that when He was finished with His work, they weren’t prostitutes, tax collectors, or sinners any more. They were disciples. That was their new identity.

Did they still sin? Absolutely. But Jesus still loved them.

One of my favorite quotes that sums up the kind of love Jesus had for them (and for us) goes like this:

“Love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love’s kind, must be destroyed. And our God is a consuming fire” (George MacDonald).

For those of you in the LGBTQ lifestyle, my prayer is first and foremost that you fall in love with Jesus and surrender to Him fully. I don’t want you in heterosexual marriages as much as I want you to be fully devoted disciples of Jesus who confess and repent daily of their sins and let Jesus’ love transform them to be more like Jesus.

Ultimately, your identity is not your sexuality or your skin color or your ethnicity or your nationality or your tax bracket or your ancestry. Your primary identity is one made by God who bears the image of God, called into relationship with God to be a son or daughter of God.

Wanting and Willing

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What follows was originally penned by Elisabeth Elliott. It speaks to the distinction between wanting to obey and willing to obey. The key is that you obey even when you don’t feel like it. You do the acts of love and then the feelings of love will follow:

“We don’t always have complete control over what we want to do because ‘wants’ are determined by circumstances, feelings, other people, social climate, times in which we live. Nobody ever wanted a pair of Reebok tennis shoes before Reebok tennis shoes were invented. The fact that you want it doesn’t mean you go and buy it. It’s a matter of ‘willing’.

The same thing is true of the will of God. We can determine to will to do the will of God. It’s a conscious choice. You may not w’ant’ to do what you know God wants you to do, but you can will to do what He wants you to do.

Don’t ever allow the devil to take you in with the argument, “You gotta do what you gotta do because if you do something that you don’t wanna do or you don’t do something that you wanna do, You’re being a hypocrite.” That’s rubbish! Do you think a mother changes a baby’s diaper only when she wants to, when she feels like it? No, she does it when the baby’s diaper needs to be changed. She WILLS to do it. It has nothing to do with whether she feels good about it.

Here is a poem I came across:

[ I believe the author was Anna J. Graniss.]

“I saw a little child
With bandaged eyes
Put up its hands
To feel its mother’s face.

She bent and took
The tender, gropy palms
And pressed them to her lips
A little space.

I know a soul
Made blind by its desires
And yet its faith keeps feeling
For God’s face.

Bend down, O Mighty Love
And let that faith
One little moment
Touch Thy lips of grace.”

The same thing as what our loving God does. Even if we are made blind by desires, the things that we want–yet faith–which is a willed act, keeps feeling for God’s face. And when we will to come to Him, will to seek His face, then He in tender love reaches down and takes our hands and leads us to Him.

George McDonald said, ‘f I felt my heart as hard as a stone, if I did not love God, or man, or woman, or little child, I would yet say to God in my heart, ‘Oh, God, see how I trust Thee because Thou art perfect and not changeable like me. I do not love Thee. I love nobody. I am not even sorry for it. Thou seest how much I need Thee to come close to me, to put Thy arm around me, to say to me, ‘My child’. For the worse my state, the greater need of my Father Who loves me.’

If anyone feels he/she has no religious feeling whatsoever, but still desires God, believe me, the Father waits for your slightest move in His direction and He will meet you” (Elisabeth Elliot).

Obedience and Trust

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Here are some words from George MacDonald on the importance of obedience and trust:

“Trust and obedience is the greatest thing that is required of any of us. The care that is filling your mind at this moment, or but waiting until you lay the book aside, to consume you, that need, which is no real need, is a demon sucking at the spring of your life. Do you object, saying, ‘But no, you do not understand. The thing I am worrying about is a reasonable anxiety, an unavoidable care.’ ?

‘Does it involve something you have to do at this very moment?’, I ask.

‘Well, no.’

‘Then you are allowing it to usurp the place of something that is required of you at this moment. The greatest thing that can ever be required of any man or woman.’

‘And what is that?’

‘To trust in the living God.’

‘What if God does not want me to have what I need at this moment?’

‘If He does not want you to have something you value, it is to give you instead something He values.’

‘And if I do not want what He has to give me?’

‘If you are not willing that God should have His way with you, then in the name of God, BE MISERABLE, until your misery drives you to the arms of the Father.’

‘Oh, but this is only about some financial concern. I do trust him with spiritual matters.’

‘Everything is an affair of the Spirit. If God has a way of dealing with you in your life, it is the only way. Everything little thing in which you would have your own way has a mission for your redemption. He will treat you as a willful child until you take your Father’s way for your own.'”

There is no area of your life that does not concern God or is outside of His purview. Every part of your story is sacred because God is using that small part to showcase His glory in a way that only you can see. What everyone else can see is your faithfulness to trust God when it doesn’t make sense or goes against what you think is best.

When you choose God’s way over your way, then people see where your allegiance really lies. They see that you are God’s and that He is yours. While it is important to speak your faith, how you live it out is just as vital to a good testimony of the goodness of God.

Love That Says No

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“Love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love’s kind, must be destroyed. And our God is a consuming fire” (George MacDonald).

I think as a society we’ve turned love into a vague kind of permissiveness that tolerates anything and has no will of its own, a thinly disguised kind of lust that puts self-gratification above all else.

Not so with the ruthless, radical, relentless love of God. Not so with the love that took Jesus to a bloody death on a cross.

I’m finding out in my own life that this love of God, while pure and perfect and good, won’t tolerate anything but God’s very best for me.

While I’ve received God’s YES in Jesus, often that YES means a No to lesser desires and wants in my life. Sometimes, they’re bad and harmful. Sometimes they’re good. But just as bad is an enemy of good, so can good be an enemy of the best.

I still believe that the times God has said no to my prayers have been great mercies, maybe even more so than when He says yes. He’s kept me from finding the end result of me getting my own way, which usually doesn’t turn out well. Especially since I’m not always certain that I actually know what I want.

God will burn away anything in me that’s not pure and lovely. The bad, the ugly, and yes, sometimes the good. That’s what hurts the most.

Maybe the best kind of love is that which seeks to bring out the best in others and won’t settle for anything less. That’s God’s kind of love. The kind that sometimes says no.

 

Things I Love 32: Everything Will Be Fine in the End

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island hammock

“The prayers we weave into the matching of socks, the stirring of oatmeal, the reading of stories, they survive fire” (Ann Voskamp).

“I don’t really want more time; I just want enough time. Time to breathe deep and time to see real and time to laugh long, time to give You glory and rest deep and sing joy and just enough time in a day not to feel hounded, pressed, driven, or wild to get it all done-yesterday” (Ann Voskamp).

The way I figure it, I have only two of these left. Then again, I was never good at math. And who knows? Maybe I’ll be a rebel and add one extra just for the fun of it. Why stop at 1,000? Why stop at all? Gratitude means you never stop counting your blessings that you become aware of as you number them one by one. So that said, I start again at #936.

936) Making my triumphant return to swing dancing tonight at Centennial Park.

937) How anyone who has ever worked in a corporate environment can relate to the movie Office Space.

938) The Greek on the GO! Strawberry Granola Bites. You can’t have just one. Or at least I can’t.

939) Whenever my family gets together.

940) That I’m losing my mind and as long as I don’t lose the part that tells me when to pee, I’ll be just fine.

941) Reading The Horse and His Boy again for probably the 15th year in a row.

942) Having “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree” as my new text and email alert on my iPhone.

943) Mild summer days with low humidity.

944) Having my only expectations be that God will keep all His promises to me.

945) The Dream of someone.

946) Using Inappropriately Captalized Letters At Random.

947) Having access to the Throne of Grace 24 hours 7 days a week.

948) Sometimes my only mode of transportation is a leap of faith (borrowed from a Facebook post).

949) That I don’t have to fire cannons to call attention to my shining; all I have to do is shine (from D. L. Moody).

950) Borrowing quotes and ideas from people on Facebook.

951) Being able to highlight verses in my YouVersion Bible app on my iPhone.

952) Having all my Christmas music on my laptop in case I ever feel the need for Christmas in July (or August).

953) Office chairs that swivel and spin.

954) Saturdays when it’s not raining.

955) Ditto for Sundays.

956) Not having been hit by any cars in the last 6 months.

957) Being alone and praying in Baskin Chapel at Brentwood Baptist Church.

958) Every time someone accepts my friend request on Facebook.

959) The way when I’m in a serious moment of silence and my stomach suddenly decides to do a spot-on impression of a whale’s mating call (borrowed this one from Pinterest).

960) That the walk of faith is not about seeing the whole journey but taking the next step.

961) That my hope isn’t in a President but a King.

962) Knowing the Kingdom of God is now and not yet.

963) Nerds candy.

964) Big League Chew bubble gum.

965) Meeting an Asian person who hates all Asian food (and thus busting another stereotype).

966) Asian food of just about any kind.

967) All George MacDonald’s fantasy stories.

968) How much I can relate to John Cusack’s characters in just about every one of his movies.

969) Living in the moment and finding God there.

970) My friend at Ultimate Frisbee who looks like Amanda Seyfried and who always makes me smile.