Take Joy

I receive these things periodically, but don’t normally post them.  Today I sensed this was for a broader group:

This is a day of grace.  If you have been struggling with something for a while and have felt unsure of how to walk forward or have been weighed down by the heaviness of what you’ve had to carry, today set your eyes upward.  Look beyond the dark, seemingly immovable thing, focusing not on the burden and its size, but on the God who is far bigger and more powerful than what you face and His size. 

Let joy and peace come in where other things have drained life from you.  Soak in His promises.  Be refreshed and rejuvenated as you are reminded of His goodness, His power, His intent to walk with you.  Speak aloud who you know Him to be.  Share it with someone you see today.  Read the Psalms aloud if that is helpful.  And give thanks that THIS God is with you and will never leave.  Joy is to be yours today.

Believing

It isn’t that difficult to recognize a believer in Christ.  Their movements won’t be in 100% alignment to His, but they continually lean in to discover and know Him, to draw close to hear His voice and instruction, to get their bodies going His direction for His will to get from heaven to earth. 

They take risks in trying to follow because they think He meant what He said and they try to live it out.  They are aware that what He envisions will always be beyond their understanding, and following Him will stretch them to be more in His likeness, so they expect to be challenged if they are doing the things of heaven.  They practice the principles of the Kingdom.  They truly believe that He is active, that He is interested in people truly being free and whole, and they want to be part of that process. 

Romans 10:9 says, “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’, AND believe with your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” 

It goes beyond what we say we believe. Believers hoist the sail of their life to be moved by Him.

What will we put on the line, expecting His promises to be true, His word to be good, His power to be present, His will to be done as we dare to really follow?

Know and Go

Speaking truth is stating the greatest reality.  But it isn’t enough to say it.  It is identified so that action can be taken which is in alignment with it.  It is then that the world is restored.  

The Road You Choose

We are made to be together.  We are made for relating.  Which makes it oh so challenging to not join the crowds that stream to popular trends.  It starts getting lonely to live in a place that begins to be more isolated.  It is not pleasant to see the backs of people you care about walk away.  Yet, sometimes in doing so, you get the company of One, which, my friend, will feel more like home than you’ve ever experienced.

There will never be a lot of companions on the most difficult roads.  It is narrow, not because it is restrictive, but because crowds will not go that way so the path has never gotten wide.  It is bumpy, not because He makes it so, but because not many have walked there to pack down the ground, let alone pave it to make travel that way more swift.  It is steep, not because He designed it to be difficult, but because it has never had enough traffic that someone decided to drill through the mountain to get everyone more easily to the other side.  Don’t expect it to be smooth.  But never believe that you are alone.

We hopefully don’t choose the less-traveled way just to be unique or heroic.  What we give ourselves to should be considered with care.  It doesn’t get us anywhere good to fight the mainstream just to stand out.  But when our heart, mind, and spirit all have weighed in to call us forward, we shouldn’t be surprised if there is some space around us.  You may think it is because few have walked this way and that is partially true.  But it is also because God is vast and He is present. 

Living By Promises

Eat these words...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi6ajpwPIpo

Oiled Hinges

My belief in God does NOTHING to MAKE Him God.  But my faith will change how I live.  My response can open the doors for Heaven to come to earth.  My trust can alter the events of life as I believe He will be and do what He told us, waiting for His promises to unfold.  My obedience as He speaks and directs brings the presence of God into the realm of the situations.  He IS God.  But my alignment with that truth matters in the outcome of what I have opportunity to engage with.

How Much Room Will I Give Him?

I was created by a Father who loves me immensely, who designed me to be part of His family.  I was made with His huge vision to do the good works He’s planned for my life.   He’s put me together in time and space with DNA and the raw materials of abilities for the accomplishing of His work.  

My mission is to live out those opportunities as life unfolds, and to understand that this invitation to be in the pulse of Heaven will be life to the fullest.

So my choice becomes giving the King a tiny corner as the “religious” part of my life, or to open it up as wide as I can grow into for Him to do as He wishes.  He is not having the role of King of my life if I only give Him a little space to work with.

Remember

“Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart.”  Proverbs 3:3

This verse seems to be a charge to continuing doing good in the situations that arise around us.  It is a pointer to keep the best expressions close and to live with them flowing in our lives, to develop them as foundations of who we are. 

But for almost 20 years now, I’ve also read this verse to mean another thing as well.  The Israelites were often in trouble because they forgot the works of God.  They got sidetracked and didn’t keep in view what He had said, what He had done for them, what He had called them to, even the promises He had made.  I realized that remembering was a pretty important element in walking forward well.

I had been cleaning out my closet and came to a jewelry box that held a small silver charm that some cousins in Spain had sent while they were living there.  Fittingly, it was a matador.  And also fittingly, God spoke to me when I looked at it.  “What I call you to do, do boldly.”  I needed that message that day, and I sensed I needed to remember it.

That day began my decision to try to keep in view what God, in His faithfulness and love, was teaching me.  I decided to literally hang it around my neck as the proverb says.  There is not a lot of worth in remembering any good acts that I do, but it is immensely beneficial to remember His care for me, and what He speaks.  So I bought a silver chain, fastened my tiny matador to it, and little by little began to add symbols of the more significant lessons He was teaching me.  Many days this necklace is part of my attire, and any morning I put it on, I am reminded again of how faithful He has been, how much He has taught me, how persistent and patient He has been while I keep leaning in, stumble though I do. 

I am sharing this to encourage you to find some way of collecting the stories of His love and faithfulness to you.  It can be through a pile of stones, through the writing of your stories, or any other way that is meaningful to you.  Better yet if it is something you can share with others. 

We all have events and days and seasons that can knock the wind out of us.  Having something tangible to remember His work in our lives can be a powerful tool, a handhold of strength so we don’t forget what is true.

Be Ready

I am to be an “all-in” person.  I am called to love and grace, mercy and justice.  Scripture instructs me to boldness and quietness, strength and tenderness, compassion and truth, joy and bringing broken hearts to a Father who cares.  I am to persevere and rest.  I am to have patience and to persist. 

You see the challenge.  All are good if the right thing at the right time.

This triune Father, Son, and Spirit are infinitely wise.  As I draw close, as I seek, as their guidance is at work in my life, the ability to walk in step with what they are doing becomes a reality.  I certainly won’t always get it right, but neither can I simply reason my way to knowing what to do when.

I must lean close.  I must let scripture soak me and learn its truth and ways.   I must keep one eye up as I go through my days to watch for His signal.  I can be attentive to the shift of the Spirit’s movement and respond to His often-subtle rhythm as well as His bold directives. 

It is an amazing invitation to be asked into the heart and work of a God who loves His creation and is endlessly pouring Himself into the cracks of our lives.  He applies balm and He prunes.  His fire will bring holiness.  He will water us with grace.  We can be participants in all of it if we dare to go where He will call us.

Give It Up

The work of the enemy is to try to get us to trade good things for lesser ones,  solid things for feeble ones, truth for lies.  He’s really good at it.

He didn’t win his own battle with God, so his great work is to chip away at our own destiny by persuading us to embrace the substitutes instead of God Himself and all He has for us. 

He succeeded with Eve and Adam by challenging their memory and understanding.  “Did God really say…?”

He tried it with Jesus at the end of 40 days when the Son of God should have been weakened by the lengthy fast, but it became very clear that He had not just given up food for almost seven weeks, He had chosen something more nutritional and feasted on truth.  For when the devil arrives, Jesus is not tricked.

Satan tried to get Him to trade in dependency on God for self-satisfaction.  He wouldn't do it.

Satan attempted to push that very position then by having Him do an experiment to prove God’s care, but Jesus wasn’t seduced to create a situation of His own making. 

Satan then tried to get the Son of God to worship him in exchange, he said, for the world.

Jesus had given Himself to leaning into truth, to standing on truth, and no matter how enticing Satan’s offer could have been, He wasn’t buying the lie that the substitution would be to His advantage.

The enemy wants us to trade in the good stuff for things he drapes with thin veneers of immediate gratification, with “just this once won’t hurt” tales, with dozens of varieties of excuses and reasons why going that way or doing that thing won’t matter.  It’s a lie. 

Once we’ve bitten the worm on his hidden hook, he begins to reel us in with pride (I can conquer this), with shame (I don’t want anyone to know I was duped), and justification (“I won’t let this do much damage”, or the popular “I’ll start dealing with this tomorrow.”)  Meanwhile, we’ve just traded in one more day of a better life and we start to be insulated from truth as we keep adding bricks to our wall of defense and the hope that we can take care of the issue by ourselves, when the increasing wall only lessens our ability to see clearly.

We substitute food instead of hungering of things we won’t persevere for.  We substitute porn for the patience to wait for a good relationship and the investment in a healthy one.  We substitute a myriad of other things for the better, more valuable, and truly satisfying ones.  We’ve all done it to one degree or another.  We trade in treasures for Satan’s stupid gag gifts.  We’ve been duped.

There is something built in to the very word substitute that should help us get a better handle on this.  Sub means under/beneath/lower.  –Stitu, statu, and statuere have to do with position.  A substitute is typically putting something “less than” in the position of the more beneficial thing. 

Satan is the master of bad trades.  Don’t let him seduce you into giving up the best that God has given you for thin plastic knock-offs while he dances off with your soul.  He loves to take our good inheritance and run off with it.  He will happily grab your crown and sit you there wearing a dunce hat.  He will steal, kill, and destroy you if you allow him to.  Today, start asking the loving Father to restore you.  Ask Him for wisdom and strength to start saying no to the one who will ruin you and to take hold of the truth that God is endlessly faithful, eternally good, and powerful beyond measure to reestablish your life.  It's His specialty and His greatest desire.

God did what it would take for you by making the greatest exchange of all to cancel the power of Satan's work, His Son's life to have you.  He will not stop working on your behalf for your victory and His joy.

Covered More Than We Think

Yesterday a situation arose that was pressing in on me.  I felt the heaviness in an area that is really difficult for me and was not dealing with it well.  I have intentionally practiced faith and I believe that God means what He says, but was feeling the treadmarks of this thing running over me. 

God had a rather humorous gift for me when I arrived home.  Someone had left a set of sheets in our mailbox.  Certainly untypical.  The fabric was really soft.  The pattern was white background with little squares of gray and black sprinkled like confetti all over it.  The message was clear in the face of this exact day:  He covers me above and below.  He is a soft place for me to land.  He is the background of all the landscape I will ever walk.  When all the challenges of life come, He is always the wider, bigger truth.  I can rest there. 

I don’t know how this situation will resolve, but I was more than aware that God is not absent from the equation, that He is not blind to the need or to my struggle in it.  He sees and has gone before me.  He is over me as protection and under me as support.  I am safely wrapped in the security of His provision.  You are too.

Time to Build

We do well to consider the past.  We notice His faithfulness, we see better from this side of the events, we realize that tragedies didn’t stop us from growth in new ways, we are aware of the actions of others that have blessed us and been used for good.  We are encouraged by the truth that we’ve made it to today.

We do well to consider the present.  We pay attention to the movement around us and make use of the opportunities for good.  We can be more awake to choose to give in the now instead of waiting for more convenient moments.  We can give our best now, knowing that tomorrow, whatever is left, we can still give the best of it.  We don’t need to hold back from what we can do today.

We do well to consider the future.  We can live faithfully now to build a place we will want to reside when we get there.  We can trust Him today as a way of planting seeds for our own future years.  We can prepare, because there will be needs there too, by living out today the things we want most present down the road.  I’d like my days ahead to be strong from a foundation that is full of faith, trust, and hope that were built as I really lived them day by day along the way.  

Crush

I wonder if Adam was already beginning to slide from his responsibility and Eve was already getting distracted from her role by trying to get his attention.  The stage so easily set to see how far she could go before he finally would notice and speak up.  I suspect it wasn’t the first time that Adam had started to hold back.  And Eve got roped into the enemy’s net by her own frustrations.  There she was, moving little by little and standing now so close to that tree that God had told them not to eat from.  Then the tug of the serpent’s tail started to coil, then constrict her thinking because she let her own thoughts and concerns move right in and get the best of her. 

Surely, she thinks, Adam will speak up.  Surely she continues, watching and waiting…surely, she hopes (moving closer and closer to her own demise) …SURELY…she is tired and getting angry and really frustrated.  But Adam doesn’t speak.  He doesn’t fight for his family.  And Eve realizes that she now has this piece of fruit in her hand.  She wants to hurt something back.  She thinks about throwing it.  But then she just wants to feel the crush happen.  She hears the whisper, “that’s fair.”  And she sinks her teeth into its flesh. 

Oh, dear God, she has eaten the fruit.  This is not where she intended this to go. 

“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”  Prov. 4:23.  Never forget the greatest goal of having a heart that has in mind the greatest good and is free to live in that unfettered place.  "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." Gal. 5:1

Missing Grace

It’s so convenient for us, isn’t it, to stand for love in a way that lets us off the hook of having to deal with truth?  We distance ourselves from the more difficult conversations because of the sharp edges that truth often bears.   I’m not talking about meanness here; truth doesn’t have to wield its sword in a decapitating manner and seek to increase the damage.  It’s just that Christians too often don’t seen to know how to deal with truth (unless it is the cake and icing variety), because it doesn’t seem to match with the expectation we have of what we think love sounds like.  The problem with that is that the Bible tells us that Jesus was the glory of the only begotten of the father, full of grace and truth.  (John 1:14)  And the thing about grace is that it can’t be present without truth.  Grace cannot even exist when the truth has not been acknowledged.  

I mentioned here the other day the siblings of Love, so let’s talk a little more about this sister of hers called Grace.  She is a beautiful but undeniably strong part of the family.  She and Truth came as twins, and though Truth is her brother and the more outwardly muscular, Grace has a power that is huge and never shows up where Truth isn’t already standing strong.  They do their best work together.

Grace cannot be somewhere unless Truth has been recognized.  Grace has no purpose if there has been no wrongdoing.  Grace has no role unless some other response would be rightly just.  She cannot function if there is no identification of a problem, because her presence MEANS that there has been a wrong and someone is now offered a good they haven’t deserved.

Do you want Grace to live where you are?  Then be sure that Truth is present there.  She cannot come first.  She has no reason to show up if Truth hasn’t been a guest  already welcomed there.  But ask him in and she will be right on his heels.  She loves to come in to an atmosphere and drape her beautiful work over what could have looked like a staunch courtroom trial. 

We miss out on so much grace by avoiding truth.  We miss the golden edged opportunities for something exquisite to be grafted into the reality of who we are.  We miss the song of heaven if we try to hide our sin behind the leaves of the tree of denial. 

The cross was the full evidence of the truth of our condition.  That was me that killed God.  My sin.  My darkness.  And there He was, hanging the invitation of grace out to me if I would take my own blood onto my hands for just a minute to receive His gift and be washed.

Grace and Truth create an elegant harmony.  They sing a song more beautiful than any other the world has heard.  And when that song begins, we find that Love has arrived in full. 

Available

Integrity is being as able to say “yes” as to say “no,” each in its proper time, and led, not so much by the conviction of the heart and mind as by the nudge of the Spirit who sees all things rightly (far than my heart and mind are able to) and knows what is truly most beneficial in any moment.  

The only way I can follow a paradoxical Christ is to try my best to know His word and to move with the rhythm of truth and redemption and restoration as He brings it.  

My opportunity is to be available to Him in every moment.  My joy is to join in His work.  The work is to preach the good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives, and release from darkness for the prisoners.  

How to Live?

“You are closer to glory leaping an abyss than upholstering a rut.”  --from Easter Exultet by James Broughton

Uncommon Vessels

For some time now I have been intrigued by kintsugi—a Japanese art form that repairs broken pottery by patching the pieces back together with metal-filled resin.  Usually gold is the metal of choice.  The restoration process typically produces a vessel that is more valuable than the original piece because of the presence of the gold.

We all try to patch the broken places of our lives to bring wholeness. We all get to choose how we go about repairing the damage. We are surrounded by tantalizing options, many which only entrap our lives more, so what we use for the repair is profoundly important.  

Rare is the person who opts for the path of a really good restoration, which usually takes patient determination and a slow and steady pace.  Rare is the one who looks at what is of most value and leans in to gain the prize that is in the distance.  Rare is the one who doesn’t hide the brokenness, but is willing to let their life be displayed to reflect the precious material that repaired them. 

The glorious news for us is that today is not too late.  Today we have the option before us to choose well.  Take one really good step.  It will inspire you to take another and before long you will have escaped the prison bars and your chains will be falling to the ground.

Discouragement is likely to hunker in on you and  nip at your heels, but you can turn and look it in the face and remind it of the distance you’ve gone and the goal you aren’t giving up on.  Defeat does not own you. There is a field out there and you get to dance in it.  You get to be a vessel that receives good things and pours them out to others.  You get to live.