Die! Die! Die!

Remember the scene from the Pixar movie, A Bug’s Life, where the little ants are doing a play for the ‘warrior bugs’ and they end with the words, “Die, Die, Die” to everyone’s horror.  Well I heard those words in my head as I wrote this blog.  To my flesh, I say, “Die, Die, Die.”

One of the most painful things about following Jesus is dying to your own desires.  As long as you choose what God wants above what you want, your flesh will cry out.  You will be at war with yourself.  You have to get used to the idea of disappointing your “nature”.  It’s not easy to deliberately put down what you naturally long for in exchange for something that seems unnatural and unappealing at first.  I never get used to this struggle.  Once I seem to conquer one desire, another crops up.  This is not easy.

Oswald Chambers talks about this struggle in his famous devotional My Utmost for His Highest.  ”Where our individual desire dies and sanctified surrender lives” is the title of this devotion.

“One of the greatest hinderances in coming to Jesus is the excuse of our own individual temperament.  We make our temperament and our natural desires a barrier in coming to Jesus… There is actually only one thing which you can dedicate to God, and that is your right to yourself… The one true mark of a saint of God is the inner creativity that flows from being totally surrendered to Jesus Christ.  In the life of a saint there is this amazing Well, which is a continual Source of original life.  The Spirit of God is a Well of water springing up perpetually fresh.”

I find my own desires lead me to a dry, empty well inside of me.  It is a well of deep, unfulfilled longings.  When I deny myself, unnatural as that seems, and take up the Cross of Christ, choose things that please Jesus instead of myself, I find my well filling up with fresh water, fresh ideas, fresh perspective, fresh creativity.  I will have to learn and relearn this lesson a million times in my lifetime.  My flesh has more than 9 lives.  It keeps rising from the dead and trying to make demands again.  ”Oh who will deliver me from this body of death?” lamented the Apostle Paul.  And I can relate to that.

“So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.  For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature.  They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.” Galatians 5:16-17

Take a Risk

My parents have spent the last 8 years or so going to England in the summers so my dad can work on his doctorate.  They stay in some interesting places because they try to save money on their travels.  One of the places is a sort of Mennonite guest house nunnery thingy.  (I’m not sure really what it is.)  My mom took a picture of the sign on the emergency door because it has been her life-long motto, “Do not take risks.”

Sometimes when people grow up in a risk adversive environment they turn into neurotic adults who can’t handle anything out of their control, who fear everything and live with lots of cats.  Other times people move to the opposite pole and become risk seekers.  They run with scissors, cut the tags off their mattresses, and swap chewing gum with their girlfriends.  Or even worse, they move to foreign countries and learn enough of the language to sass back at corrupt police officers and punch pick pockets in the face and eat food they bought from street vendors.  While, I wouldn’t categorize myself as a risk seeker, I have actually done those things and others that I can’t bring myself to tell my mother about because she might never sleep again for worrying about me.

I don’t deliberately go out looking for risk, sometimes I find it lying right in my path.  I’m talking about taking risks for a purpose.  For me, my purpose is to grow the Kingdom of God, and for that I am willing to take all kinds of risk.  I am willing to leap right out of my comfort zone.  I am willing to reach out and touch certain hot topics, for the sake of Christ.  The fact of the matter is that as a living, breathing Christian, there are going to be times when I stick my neck out on the line just living the kind of life that God has called me to do.  The Christian life was never meant to be a play-it-safe investment.  It’s a risk-it-all, put all your eggs in one basket type of hope.

Not everyone will be happy with your choices.  Not everyone will applaud the risks you take when you stand up for something you believe is right, or when you speak up for someone who is a victim without a voice, or when you live a lifestyle that causes others to feel guilty about their own choices.  No, not everyone will pat you on the back for taking a risk for God.  Take it anyways.

Jesus told a story about a rich man who gave his servants an amount of money to hang onto for him.  Two of the servants invested the money and made a profit for their master.  One servant just buried the money until the master returned.  He played it safe.  The master lost nothing, but he was very upset with the servant who took no risks.  At least he could have put the money in the bank and earned interest for his master, but no, he took the safest, easiest route possible and it made his master angry.

You are not meant to get to the end of your life safe and sound never having done anything risky for God.  Putting your trust and hope in God means taking paths that are uncharted with nothing but God’s word to light your steps.  God’s word says, “I will never leave you nor forsake you,” and isn’t that the most secure promise you could ever imagine?  So go ahead, take the leap of faith, risk it all for Jesus.

Is Your Body a Temple or an Idol?

Last year a girl with an eating disorder crossed our path here in Costa Rica.  After she went home, we lost contact with her for a few months, until one day just recently one of our students asked if I had seen this girl’s Facebook page recently.  I had not.  I navigated to her page and gasped at the change in this girl.  Eight months had aged her 20 years!  When I knew her, she looked like a Barbie.  But her obsessive food rules, over tanning, and excessive exercising were already a problem for her. Now, she looked like a leather covered skeleton.

One of our students who was looking over my shoulder at the time looked into my eyes with a horrified gaze.  ”Do you think that is a sin?”  he asked me.  ”Isn’t our body the temple of the Holy Spirit?”

I pondered for a second.  ”Yes.  Our body is the temple of the Lord.  But some people make it an Idol instead,” I said.  She became focused on having a perfect body and that’s what she did to her temple.  She placed her own body image in a higher priority than relationships with others or her relationship with God.  She found her self-worth in the gym instead of in Jesus.  She was hard on herself and critical of others.  She gloated over heavier women.  She became her own idol.

The world has a twisted version of perfection, especially where women’s body image is concerned.  It is not coincidence.  Satan has a special hatred for women which started in the Garden of Eden.  If he can get us to destroy our bodies, then we are just doing his job for him.  Think about it, Women.  Who controls the Fashion Industry?  Gay men.  This is why the body shape of a 10 year old boy is promoted as the perfect form and womanly curves are to be hated.  We continue to listen to women-haters telling us that we aren’t perfect enough.  In the process our Holy Temple becomes an Idol.

When my son was born, I held a scrawny, muscular baby in my hands and marveled.  When my first daughter was born, I felt the difference in her body shape the second she came into this world.  I felt her squishy bottom.  I noticed the pleasing pads of fat along the back of her hips already.  She was never plump, but she was definitely a girl.  Boys and girls come out of the womb with differences that should be celebrated.

God gave us our bodies to be reverently cared for as Holy Temples, useful for his purposes.  But when we elevate our ideals or our personal projection of beauty above our useful service to God, then we are sinning.  Our bodies are to be Temples, not Idols.

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Renewal

Today I asked for a substitute teacher to take my class so I could participate in a prayer retreat with our mission.  I’m really excited.  Part of me is just looking forward to being with our fellow missionary family for a while.  Part of me is happy for a change in my routine.  But a huge part of me has been longing for some deep time with the Lord.  I have been running on fumes for a while, and I need to fill my tank.  I just want to BE in His presence.  It’s like a date with the one I love!

So in lieu of a decent blog, I have a great quote that a friend posted on Facebook this week.

“We are people who are always looking for ways to stay out of the wilderness, when in reality so much of the best stuff that God wants to do in and through us can only happen in the wilderness. We keep trying to stay away from the only place where transformation can happen. We keep trying to move out from the only place where we can truly meet with God. Wilderness is not always about judgment. In the OT prophets over and over again go into the wilderness so that they can get clarity and perspective, so that they can encounter God. We spend so much time trying to take detours around the ONLY place where we can encounter God in such a way and be completely transformed.” -P. Jonathan Martin

I’m going out to the wilderness for a while, spiritually speaking.  Don’t call me even if you need me.

 

Photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonathankosread/6262245025/”>Jonathan Kos-Read</a> / <a href=”http://foter.com”>Foter.com</a&gt; / <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/”>CC BY-ND</a>

Glass Beach

My friend Mary and I have a shared hobby.  We both love to collect sea glass.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with sea glass, it is pieces of broken bottles and glass that have been rubbed smooth by the surf and sand.  Blue sea glass is especially rare.  By walking up and down a stretch of beach and paying close attention to the bits of shells and flotsam, sometimes a beach comber is rewarded with a pretty piece of glass.

I did not grow up near a beach, so I never knew how much I loved the ocean until I moved within a 90 minute drive of a coastline.  However, Mary grew up in California.  Recently she discovered a beach that is famous for it’s sea glass.  For both of us, the beach is our happy place, our place to walk with Jesus.  The beach has the power to renew a weary soul, and it is special to find a souvenir of sea glass.

As much as I like sea glass, I think God must look down on my foolish collecting of trash and shake his head in Fatherly bewilderment that I would find bits of broken glass to be treasures.  When my sister was little she collected bits of moss and leaves in a dresser drawer.  My parents weren’t thrilled with this, but they didn’t stop her.  Her childish treasures were of great value to her though they just looked like dirt to the rest of us.

It’s probably the same with my sea glass.  From his Heavenly city made of precious stones and pearls where people walk along on streets of gold, God looks down on Mary and me walking up and down a strip of sand searching for broken beer bottles and he just shakes his head and smiles.  ”Just wait until you see what I have for you up here in Heaven,” he’s probably thinking.  Our little treasures really are trash.

This makes me think about our spiritual treasures.  The things that we value and treasure- the way we conduct our lives here on Earth- may end up being nothing but a pile of hay and stubble once we get to Heaven and see what things have true eternal value.  The endeavours and pursuits to which we have given our lives will all come under scrutiny.  Everything will be tested by fire.  What looked sparkly and pretty here on Earth might end up being worth nothing.  It might just serve to feed the fire.

Only things done for God will last.  Only pure motives will survive the scorching heat of the Refiner’s Fire.  The Apostle Paul essentially said, “When I think about all the great things I have accomplished, I consider them nothing but trash compared with the immeasurable honor of knowing and serving God.”  All our great accomplishments are nothing but a handful of sea glass compared to serving the Lord.

A prayer from a coward’s heart

“Father, I want to know thee, but my coward heart fears to give up its toys.  I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from thee the terror of the parting.  I come trembling, but I do come.  Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that thou mayest enter and dwell there without a rival.”  ~The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer

Sometimes we say to our children, “You don’t need to know why I am forbidding something- you just need to obey.”  Sometimes God says the same thing to me, his child.  I just need to obey God.

I don’t always see things like he sees them.  I don’t always agree with his commands.  I don’t always LIKE what he’s told me to do.  I don’t enjoy putting to death my flesh.  It’s not a pleasure to carry my cross.

However-

I obey.  Perhaps begrudgingly, perhaps with a bad attitude sometimes, but I obey.

Some of those spiritual muscles are not used to being flexed and exercised.  Some of them have become weak and unaccustomed to being controlled.  I need to practice a movement, repeatedly, concentrating on correct form and execution, repeating it until it becomes reflexive and automatic.  I build up my muscles by repetitive actions until they become a part of who I am.  I do not enjoy the exercise, but I do it.

Hopefully this will get easier with time and practice.  Hopefully I will find joy in obedience.  But right now, I grimly set my hand to the plow and faintly trust that Jesus knows better than I do.

The flame of my faith is just a flickering candle, not a mighty blazing inferno… not yet, not here.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast and compliant spirit within me.

Indescribable God

We are guilty of thinking too much of ourselves and too little of God.  Expand your perception of God and your perspective on all your problems will change.  Your problems are very, very small in the indescribably large hand of our very, very big God.  After God spent 4 chapters “asking” Job if he understood the world and the universe, Job knelt humbled and speechless before God.  Who is like our God?  No one!

Job 38:4-33

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
⁵ Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
⁶ On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone—
⁷ while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels^[a] shouted for joy?

⁸ “Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,
⁹ when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,
¹⁰ when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,
¹¹ when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt’?

¹² “Have you ever given orders to the morning,
or shown the dawn its place,
¹³ that it might take the earth by the edges
and shake the wicked out of it?
¹⁴ The earth takes shape like clay under a seal;
its features stand out like those of a garment.
¹⁵ The wicked are denied their light,
and their upraised arm is broken.

¹⁶ “Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea
or walked in the recesses of the deep?
¹⁷ Have the gates of death been shown to you?
Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness?
¹⁸ Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?
Tell me, if you know all this.

¹⁹ “What is the way to the abode of light?
And where does darkness reside?
²⁰ Can you take them to their places?
Do you know the paths to their dwellings?
²¹ Surely you know, for you were already born!
You have lived so many years!

²² “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow
or seen the storehouses of the hail,
²³ which I reserve for times of trouble,
for days of war and battle?
²⁴ What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed,
or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth?
²⁵ Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain,
and a path for the thunderstorm,
²⁶ to water a land where no one lives,
an uninhabited desert,
²⁷ to satisfy a desolate wasteland
and make it sprout with grass?
²⁸ Does the rain have a father?
Who fathers the drops of dew?
²⁹ From whose womb comes the ice?
Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens
³⁰ when the waters become hard as stone,
when the surface of the deep is frozen?

³¹ “Can you bind the chains^[b] of the Pleiades?
Can you loosen Orion’s belt?
³² Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons^[c]
or lead out the Bear^[d] with its cubs?
³³ Do you know the laws of the heavens?
Can you set up God’s^[e] dominion over the earth?

 

 

Is God Enough?

About a month ago I heard a sermon about the woman at the well (John 4)  and I can’t stop thinking about her.  Jesus takes time to talk to a woman who was really messing up her life, and I identified with her… not in the exact same way, I mean, I haven’t had a string of husbands and adulterous relationships.  Jesus met her at the well during the heat of noon when thirst was a natural conversation starter.  He pointed out the fact that her life was like a dry, empty well.  She had a deep, emptiness in her that she was trying to fill with relationships.  That’s what caught my attention.

One night while sitting on my balcony watching the city lights, the Lord started to speak to me about that gaping emptiness inside of me too.  Sometimes I feel loneliness as a tangible force.  Like the woman at the well, I throw things into the yawning abyss to try to satisfy the ache.  I circle around Facebook searching for “human” connection.  I browse the internet reading blogs and news articles just killing time until I can sleep because it’s better than sitting here listening to the beating of my own heart.  Distractions.  For some people the distractions take the form of music, work, sports, TV, video games, going out night after night, or worse vices like addictions.  We all have an ache we can’t fill.  We all should be able to identify with the woman at the well.

As I pondered what the Lord was showing me, I felt him say, “Let me fill you.”  He said that to the woman too.  ”Let me fill you with Living Water so that you will never again thirst spiritually.”  I hesitated.  He asked me, “What are you afraid of?”

“Lord, I’m afraid that you won’t be enough.”  I have not found anything yet that is enough.  So I felt like if I give up my stop-gap measures, the dam will break and nothingness will come rushing in like a vacuum- sucking me down like a black hole.  I looked up at the stars.  Somehow by pondering the bigness of the Universe and the smallness of me, everything was put in perspective.  I am small.  My emptiness, though it feels big to me, is nothing to God.  I am guilty of constructing a very small view of God.

Things in the Universe are so far away, so large yet so spread out through the vastness of space, that we use something called a Light Year to talk about distances.  A Light Year is how far light can travel in one Earth year.  The magic number is 5.88 trillion miles per year- that is a Light Year.  Scientists have calculated that the edge of the “known” Universe is 98 billion Light Years away from Earth.  So if you could travel at the speed of Light for 98 billion years, then you would come to the edge of the what we think we “know” of the Universe… and it most certainly expands farther than that.  Feeling small yet?

Think about this, the Bible says that God holds the whole Universe in his hand- that he measures the sky with the palm of his hand.  So if you could travel 5.88 trillion miles per year for 98 billion years… you might reach the edge of God’s hand.  “Do you still think I’m not enough?”  God asked me.  I lay down my arguments in humble awe of His Greatness.  Like Job, I am speechless in response to His Majesty.

If you want more awe inspiring thoughts about our Universe, watch this YouTube video of Christian speaker Louie Giglio.

100 years of Walking with Jesus

Just a reminder that today’s story is a repost from my Facebook page from last Sunday.  If you don’t want to read it again, just come back on Thursday.  I’m cooking up a good one!

Sunday in church there was a woman who was 106 years old. I didn’t notice this tiny little white haired woman until the pastor drew our attention to her.  He asked her to tell about when she met Jesus. I couldn’t hear the first part very well since she didn’t have a microphone, but basically when she was a preschooler someone taught her the verse about Jesus saying, “I stand at the door and knock…” and told her that she needed to forgive her enemies. Those are deep concepts for a preschooler.  But she asked Jesus to come in to her heart and has been walking with Jesus for over 100 years!

I wanted to scoop her up and hug her.  My husband asked me, “Do you really think she is over 100?  She doesn’t look like it.”  I reminded him that his own grandma had turned 100 last summer and she still looks the same as ever.

I think this was a wonderful inspiration for all the children’s pastors and Sunday School teachers and nursery workers out there. Those little ears are listening!  You might not see the fruit of your labors, but your reward in Heaven will be great.

Hold You?

Every morning when my alarm goes off at 5 a.m. I breathe these words before my feet roll out of bed, “Lord give me strength for today.”  I wake up in pain and there’s nothing I can do about it.  So it’s best to forget about it and get on with my day.  But I ask for help from my Father God.  He slowly infuses me with the energy and strength I need to make it through today.  He has taught me to be thankful for my weaknesses because they force me to rely on Him more.  

He has promised to help me when I call on Him.  And He’s glad to do it!   He is drawn to weakness because it is the white canvas on which He paints His beautiful pictures of mercy, grace and bounty.  With Jesus, I have enough.  With Jesus, I can do today.  Tomorrow I will ask for more, but today He will give me enough of what I need right now.

A friend of a friend posted this on FB the other day.  I liked it because it is how I view my walk with the Lord.  I grow weary as my little legs pump twice as hard as His long strides.  I ask him to hold me.

Hold You?
The other day I was watching a friend’s little 2 year old daughter. We went for a walk down to a nearby swing set so we could play. As we walked down the street, this little gal’s chubby fingers clasped my hand as she took two steps for every one step I took. She trotted along like this for sometime, chattering on about “swing” and “mommy” and “mammie and papa” and “birdies”.

Then she inquisitively said these two sweet words, “Hold you?”

She was tired. She was weary. The sun was shining, she had exerted all the energy her little legs could muster.

Her question was simple.

“Hold you?”

“Do you want me to pick you up?” I asked her.

“Yes.”

I picked her up and began to carry her on to our destination.

Today Jesus will do that for me. I am tired, I am weary. The sun is shining, I have exerted all the energy my little heart can muster.

My need is simple.

“Hold You?”

And He picks me up and carries me to our destination.

“. . . in the wilderness where you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a man carries his son, in all the way that you went until you came to this place.” Deut 1:31

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