Job

Two Words

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“Blessed be Your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there’s pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name” (Matt Redman)

Two words: give thanks.

Give thanks even when you don’t feel like it. Give thanks as a defiant cry against desperate circumstances, in spite of the odds and the naysayers and the dark clouds on your horizon.

Give thanks like empty-handed Job, who in the face of his own wife telling him to curse God and die, with painful boils all over his body, made the declaration: The Lord gives and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

Give thanks when the checks bounce, when the bills are past due, when the rent money is AWOL, when it would be so much easier to throw in the proverbial towel and just give up.

Give thanks when there are no job prospects in sight and when you feel defeated and your life seems to have hit a dead-end. Give thanks even when your dreams and hopes are on life-support.

Give thanks if for no other reason that God is worthy of it. Period. Even if those fig trees are barren and the grapevines have no grapes and the olive trees yield no olives. Give thanks because God is always good and you are always loved.

Just give thanks.

Keep Calm and Choose Joy

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“When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight” (Khalil Gibran).

“…the secret to joy is to keep seeking God where we doubt He is” (Ann Voskamp).

The difference between happiness and joy is this: happiness requires the right circumstances while joy can be found anywhere at any time.

The Apostle Paul could indeed count it all joy even when he was imprisoned or beaten or shipwrecked. He could sing hymns of joy when locked in a dungeon with little hope of his circumstances improving any time soon.

You can’t depend on happiness because you never know from one moment to the next what will happen. You can’t say for sure that everything will turn out the way you want to produce the happiness you desire.

But joy is knowing that the future belongs to Jesus. For Jesus, the future is now. For you, that means that you can count on that future coming to pass as surely as you can count on Jesus.

But joy is still a choice you and I must make every single day. Sometimes, you won’t feel like choosing joy because it seems unnatural in the face of what you’re going through. I know many times I’d rather choose anything but joy because feeling sorry for myself makes me feel good. For a little while.

So when people disappoint you– and they will– choose joy.

When you lose your job, choose joy.

When the rain clouds cover the sky and you can’t find the sun, choose joy.

Trust me. It’s always worth it.

 

 

I Absolutely Refuse to Refer to Wednesday as Hump Day Anymore

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There. I got your attention, didn’t I?

I don’t have any moral or religious objections to the phrase “hump day” or even that  talking camel. I just think the whole joke’s been overdone a tad. And by a tad, I mean a gazillion times too many.

My Wednesday was just fine. How was yours?

It rained where I was. Not a downpour, but a pleasant soft-falling rain that always soothes and calms me. Except when I have to drive in it. Or more accurately, when I have to drive amongst all those others who absolutely cannot drive in the rain.

Wednesday means that the work week is halfway over. Wednesday means that only two more days remain until that blessed event called Friday and the start of the weekend.

I’m thankful for Wednesdays and not just because of being halfway to Friday. I’m thankful that I woke up this morning and that I have a job and that I still have a God who loves me in spite of my plethora of quirks and failings and broken promises.

I’m thankful for the rain that will bring growth and new life. And hopefully less humidity.

I’m thankful because I know that I already have exceeded the amount of blessings that I truly deserve. I far exceeded that a long time ago.

How many blessings do I truly deserve? None. But how many do I get in spite of that? Too many to count. Too many that I take for granted and don’t even see.

If God told me my bag of blessings was empty and I had used them all up, I’d be okay with that. If God never did one more thing for me, He’d still have been way, way better to me than I ever could have hoped or deserved. In a million lifetimes.

I call that a good Wednesday.

 

A Prayer for the Weak

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Maybe this is your prayer tonight:

Lord, I feel like giving up tonght. It’s just not worth it anymore.

Whatever I’m desiring most seems always just out of my reach. Right now, it feels easier to quit holding on to that dream of mine.

I want to pray “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief” but I don’t even have enough faith for that. I’m bankrupt when it comes to believing.

I’ve just about quit believing that I’ll ever get married. Or have children. Or that the children I do have will ever turn out right. Or that anyone will hire me. Or that I’ll ever be able to work in a place where I come alive instead of counting the hours and minutes until the weekend.

I feel like I’m completely screwing everything up. I don’t feel like anything I do matters or makes the tiniest bit of difference.

I do know that You’re still God. I do know that my impossibles aren’t impossible to You. In fact, they’re not even difficult for You.

I know You are truer than my feelings and though You seem so far away, You’re nearer to me than my next breath.

I don’t know how any of this will work out, but I know You will take care of me. Even if You deny my dreams, it’s only because they weren’t big enough for You.

I declare all these things with a faith that’s barely a blip on the radar screen. A faith that’s as small as a mustard seed. But still I declare.

So here’s me offering all I know of me to all I know of You. Take me and use me in whatever way You want. Let me know You’re near and let me feel in this moment how much You love me.

I surrender.

A Really Good Question

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While I was house/dog-sitting at a friend’s house, i was channel surfing. I ran across a program that was just getting started on TBN.

Normally, I avoid that channel like the plague, but the program featured Max Lucado, one of my favorite authors, so I gave it a shot. As it turns out, I did indeed choose wisely.

Max spoke on Joseph of Old Testament fame losing everything he had– possessions, family, reputation, freedom. He was literally looking up from the lowest point in his life at one point.

Then Max asked a profound question: “What do you still have that you cannot lose?”

Maybe you’ve lost your health. Or a job. Maybe it was a spouse. Or a child.

Maybe you’ve lost your reputation.

Whatever it is, there’s one thing you can’t lose. Your destiny as a child of God. Because God looked down on you at your very worst and said, “I choose that one. I want him. I have great plans for her.”

Your identity isn’t lost when you lose everything. You are still God’s. He still loves you and still has your name tattooed on His hands and on His heart.

Joseph was faithful to His destiny and God rewarded him. And so he will reward you. Maybe not in this lifetime, but you can bet there is nothing you’ve lost that won’t be restored a thousandfold over.

I love how Max said that our lives aren’t the dashes between our birth-dates and death-dates. They’re more like a grain of sand on the beach of the eternity of God’s stedfast love. I like that.

Maybe I should watch TBN more often.

American Idols

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I suspect that we’re all guilty of idolatry at some point. I wish I could remember the definition of idolatry I heard earlier today, but I didn’t take very good notes so I’ve forgotten most of it.

It had something to do with us valuing anything more than God, of seeking our identity and purpose in anything other than God.

In biblical times, idolatry often meant bowing down to little tin or bronze statues. But in our time, it is much more subtle. Sometimes it’s harder to detect because it looks like normal devotion.

I wonder how many parents idolize their children. Or how many children idolize their parents. Or maybe it’s men (and women, too, I suppose) who make idols out of their careers or their spouses.

I think anytime you say that your child is your world, you’ve created an idol out of him or her. The same goes for spouses or boyfriends or girlfriends.

You can even make religion into an idol if you get caught up in following rules and rituals for their own sake rather than because it pleases Jesus.

It can be wealth or the desire for wealth. It can be sex or the desire for sex. It can be a relationship or the overwhelming desire for one. Idols are tricky like that. It’s not about an object as much as the desire in your heart.

You can make idols out of genuinely good things, like your children, your marriage, your job, your bank account . . . just about anything and anyone can be an idol if you place it above God in your heart.

How do I know so much about idolatry? Because I’ve had more than my fair share of idols. I can always tell when a relationship has become idolatrous in my life because my peace of mind gets tied to my perception of how well that relationship is going.

It’s easy to point the finger at the Israelites in the Old Testament for their propensity for idolatry. Heck, they were barely out of Egypt before they were bowing down to golden calfs. But that tendency is just as much in me as it was in them. I suspect it’s in you, too.

I think we have idols because we haven’t fully grasped how good God is, how much He’s really for us, and how much He really does love us. Or maybe we’ve just forgotten like those old Israelites did back in the day.

The best way to combat idolatry is to remember. To go back and recall how it felt when you first grasped the love of God for you. Or as the Bible puts it, “to remember your first love.”

I’m So Very Tired That I . . .

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I am tired. I mean more than “I slept until noon and now I need a frappucino from Starbucks” tired. I mean soul-weary and bone-tired. I figured out by my vast mathematical skills that by tomorrow’s end I will have worked almost 70 hours this week. That’s a lot.

I’m so very tired that I spent 20 minutes looking for my iPhone last Sunday. The very iPhone that was attached to my belt the whole time. I even called it a few times from the house phone. Sad.

I’m so very tired that not even my super-awesome concoction of coffee + hot chocolate + creamer seems to be working lately. I even almost miss those Diet Mountain Dews. Almost.

I’m so very tired that I fantasize about sleeping in. Just sleeping in, under the covers, alarm clock turned off. That’s all. And by sleeping in, I mean past 5 am.

I’m so very tired that even I am wondering what I’m doing typing this when I could be sleeping and dreaming and all those restful things. The sacrifices I make for my art. Sigh.

I’m so very tired I think I actually fell asleep twice on Wednesday in the middle of working, each time for about 15 seconds. I don’t think I dreamed that.

I’m so very thankful that my God never gets tired, never needs sleep, never grows weary of watching over His children or blessing them.

I’m so very thankful that there is never a moment when I’m out of His care, away from His gaze, or not in His heart. Not one.

Now I get to go to bed. I get to rest. God willing, I will get to wake up and go to a good job and live my blessed life for one more day.

Life is good, God is great, and I am still more blessed than I deserve.

Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word

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“Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.” (Henri Nouwen)

I’ve posted and blogged and mentioned multiple times before how the hardest person to forgive is often yourself. You know yourself too well and you know your own weaknesses because a certain adversary reminds you of them every single day.

I know I’ve blown it with a friend and the friendship won’t ever be the same again. We used to hang out and be good friends but now she won’t even sit on the same side of the room as me and we feel like really good acquaintances.

There are one or two (including that one at Starbucks) who have taken to actively disliking me and nothing I say or do will change that. For me, I have to remember that I can’t be friends with everyone and that it’s not my job to make every single person like me. It’s my job to be the best me possible.

But forgiveness isn’t optional. Not with others and especially not with ourselves. How dare I choose not to forgive myself when God (who incidentally knows me better than I do) has freely forgiven me? And why would I want to live under a cloud of condemnation when I don’t have to?

No one does relationships well. We mistrust each other. We read too much into silences and jests. We say the wrong things and fail to say the right things. Most of us have gotten used to the taste of shoe leather from sticking our feet in our mouths so often.

But real friendship between two believers is the Jesus in me communing with the Jesus in you. It’s practicing forgiveness and grace and blessing, giving these abundantly because we know our desperate need for all of the above.

You are not your past. Or your mistakes. You are not the names you’ve been called or that you’ve called yourself.

You are:

Redeemed

Forgiven

Blessed

Child of God

Beautiful

Beloved

To Die For

The One Your Abba Is Still Very Fond Of

May we speak not hurt but life, not wounds but blessings into each other. May we always look to see the best in ourselves and in others and call out the beautiful and glorious in each other. May we learn to love others and ourselves the way God has always loved us.

More Pre-WordPress Nuggets (Containing No Actual Chicken)

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June 24, 2010

I was thinking today about Job’s situation and how it relates to mine (and possibly yours, too). In Job 42, God tells Job’s friends that they have slandered Job and misrepresented God. He tells them that Job will pray for them, and He will hear him and not deal with them as they deserve. Job prays for his friends, then God gives him back what he lost, doubled.

Job had to pray for those who wronged him before God restored him. Job had to forgive the ones who slandered him and his God. Is there some area of your life that needs healing and/or restoration? It could be that God is waiting for you to pray for the ones who hurt you in that area before he restores to you what you lost or heals you.

As much as I pray for God to forgive those who hurt me, that much will God forgive me (see the Lord’s prayer). As much as I pray for God to bless those who slander me, God will bless me. As much as I pray for the restoration and healing of those whose wounds I carry, God will restore and heal me.

This is me thinking out loud again. So take it for what it’s worth.

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May 3, 2010

My greatest fear is that if people ever really find out who I am and what I am like, they will leave me and want nothing else to do with me. That I am not good enough. That I do not have what it takes.

So I live to please others. I become whoever I think they want me to be. I strive constantly to prove myself to others, so they can tell me who I am. That I do have what it takes. I feel that if I can make them like me, then I am worthy and not a cosmic *$#-up.

But I can’t make anyone like me or be interested in me. I can only let God love me and let that Love define me. If I let people tell me who I am and define me, they will get it wrong. If I make pleasing people my purpose, they will fail me every single time.

Lord, you are telling me that I am someone beautiful who has meaning and is worthy. I am good enough and I do have what it takes because I have you. I believe what You say about me. Lord, I do believe. Help my unbelief.

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April 26, 2010

I am Jacob, for I try to manipulate and deceive every person I meet.
I am Gomer, for I whore myself after other gods and do not seek the One True God.
I am Abraham, for I lie when it suits me.
I am Esau, for I am willing to trade things of eternal worth for worthless things.
I am Cain, for my anger gets the best of me at times.
I am Moses, for I do not believe God when He says He can speak through me.
I am Judas, for I am so often ready to betray my Savior for so little.
I am David, for I sin and try to cover it up, rather than confess and be made whole.
I am Forgiven, because Jesus died for me.
I am Beloved, for God has declared me so.

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April 11, 2010

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me (2 Corinthians 12:9).

When was the last time I boasted in my weaknesses? I seldom even acknowledge that I have any weaknesses. Usually I try to sell myself on what I consider my best qualities. But weaknesses? I try to hide them or pretend they don’t exist.

I truly believe that there is a power that comes only through weakness and brokenness that will never come through self-reliance or self-sufficiency. Only when I am weak, when I admit to the world that I am weak, then I am strong. And Christ in me is so much stronger than I could ever be.

What if I boasted in the fact that my social skills are slightly better than nonexistant? That I back down when I should stand up? What if I shout to the rooftops that I am weak, helpless, afraid and utterly broken? Maybe then I am at my strongest and the power that raised Christ from the dead is unleashed in me.

This is so very against the culture that it is unthinkable. But aren’t I supposed to be counter-culture? What if we are too busy fitting in and so much like the world that we have completely lost the power that can save the world? Maybe that’s why Christians are so despised. Not because we are different, but because we are not different enough.

A broken world can’t relate to perfect, holier-than-thou Christians who have it all together. They respond when they see what our brokenness looks like and when God’s grace is able to transform our weakness into His strength. Grace is what the world needs, not our perfection.

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How to Not Marry a Jerk

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This is again going outside of my comfort zone. As in different time zone kind of outside. But I have some things that I need to say after something I witnessed at work.

A girl who is otherwise nice went out of her way to apologize to a guy who had gone out of his way to be a jerk to her because she did something he didn’t like. She barely speaks to me, who goes out of my way to be nice and friendly to her.

My own advice on how not to marry a jerk is as follows:

1) Don’t date jerks.

I know it sounds past obvious, but so many girls will marry the handsome guy who treats them like garbage thinking that her love will change him over time. Since this is a Baptist blog, I will say bull-oney.

Guys are who they are. They generally don’t change all that much. Who you see now is what you’ll see ten years down the road. If you’re thinking of marrying (or even dating to marry) someone, ask, “Can I live with this person exactly like he is now for the rest of my life?” and “Would I be proud to have a son exactly like him?”

I know there will be someone who knows someone who married a frog and ended up with a prince. For every one of those, there are a hundred more stuck in bad marriages or living out the pain and shame of a broken marriage.

Even in Beauty and the Beast, the Beast learns to love and become a gentleman BEFORE the beauty falls in love with him and marries him.

Check how he (the man not the beast) treats his parents and his siblings. Watch how he treats servers at restaurants and cashiers at the store. Especially watch how he acts when he’s angry.

Learn to distinguish between confidence and cockiness. Confidence doesn’t always have to prove itself or show itself like a peacock preening its feathers. Also, know the difference between a man who is willing to fight for you and a guy who just likes to fight. The first will cherish you; the second will belittle you and cut you down and make you feel worthless. He might even abuse you verbally and/or physically.

2) It’s better to be alone than with the wrong person.

Don’t date someone who doesn’t share your faith. Period. You will end up either feeling alone in your marriage or your faith will suffer. And I don’t just mean date a guy who says he’s a Christian. Go for the man of God who strives to be like Christ and who lives out his faith on a daily basis.

Date a man who loves Jesus more than he loves you, not the other way around. If he loves Jesus most, he will love you unconditionally and with the love of Christ. If he loves you most, he will make you into an idol in his life and place expectations on you that only Jesus can meet.

Don’t date just to date. The danger with that is that if you date a guy you don’t intend to marry, you could end up falling for him and disregarding all those red flags and warning signs.

On a side note, don’t go for a guy who is 30-something and still lives with mom and dad. If he mooches off of them, he will mooch off of you. If a guy like that says he loves you, respond with three words in return– “get a job!” I stole that one from Mike Glenn.

Date who you want to marry. I personally believe the best marriages start out as friendships before they become romances. And if you keep ending up with guys who treat you badly and use you, maybe you need to step back and look at you. Look at what vibes you’re sending out, where you’re going to meet people (a bar is generally where you find a real gentleman), and how guys perceive you (as a godly woman or as a flirt who likes to date around). If you hop from relationship to relationship, that will turn off a true gentleman.

Looks and attraction matter, but they’re not everything. Character matters. Kindness matters. Over time, you will see that true beauty can’t be seen with the eyes but felt with the heart. And beauty is who a person is on the inside that shows up in their actions and behavior more that what you wear or look like on the outside.

Men, you have to be just as diligent. But that will have to wait for another blog on another night. Sadly, gender equality means that both men and women can now be jerks.

These are my thoughts on the matter. I don’t claim to be infallible or know even close to everything about love or dating or romance.