Saltwater Heart

Hear my cry, O God,

     listen to my prayer;

from the end of the earth I call to you

     when my heart is faint.

Lead me to the rock

     that is higher than I.

--Psalm 61:1-2

I’ve been praying over the past week or two for wisdom. I mean, who doesn’t want to be wise?

So of course, the whole time I was praying this, I was experiencing short term memory loss; I would pray in my car on the way to work for wisdom, and then I would get there and get really frustrated, angry, or impatient. I may have cussed at my computer this week. (No children were in the room, you’ll be glad to know.) I also may have complained about a few people. ….Ok, a lot of people.

I’ve gotten angry about small things, or self-critical about small things, and actually enjoyed indulging irritation and self-pity. I reacted suddenly and rashly to my emotions rather than the truth, and my saltwater words (see James 3:10-12) poisoned my speech, so that I was closing the way for God to give me the wisdom I asked Him for.

Here’s the next verse in James, coincidentally: Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. (3:13-15)

Ouch. Direct correlation between words and wisdom (or lack thereof). He just comes right out and says it: earthly wisdom is demonic.

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere (James 3:17).

This definition of divine wisdom is the opposite of how I’ve behaved this week. Seriously--I’ve been like a walking PSA warning against worldly wisdom.

Just the week before, the pastor gave a good sermon on faithfulness. He talked about Joseph, and how he garnered lots of favor on the earth because of his faithfulness in small things. Following the spiritual principle Jesus told His disciples about later, Joseph was faithful in small things, and was put over much.

I feel that I have always been this way as far as work is concerned. I have been very faithful to do what I am asked to do, which is probably why I have had such favor (in addition to the fact that God just gives me divine favor in spite of myself).

So I was feeling good about the whole thing, until he brought up being faithful not just at work, but in relationships. That means acting in faith by treating others with the love Jesus gave us, according to His commandments.

I wrinkled my nose a little bit when the pastor started talking about this. If you are being faithful in relationships, you are not being selfish by indulging in negative emotions; you are not using harsh words toward others (even if, granted, they are not in the room). It’s one thing to be given a task and complete it well. It’s another to daily flee from the devil’s temptation to choose yourself over others, to turn your eyes away from God and glorify the mess inside of your earthbound heart.

Clearly, when you want wisdom, the go-to book is Proverbs. So this week, after the faithfulness sermon, I found this verse, which I thought pretty much summed it up for me:

Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart. So you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man.                           

--Proverbs 3:3-6

Steadfast love and faithfulness are paired in this verse. They work together; they are co-dependent. Steadfast basically just means stubborn refusal to give up your belief in the face of direct attack, so to have steadfast love is to cling onto love with every ounce of strength you have, no matter what—to insist on loving people in spite of what is going on around you….or how you feel. That’s faithfulness—both being faithful to God, and having faith in Him, because you believe Him when He says you’ll be blessed when you love people.

The kicker phrase in this verse: Don’t let them forsake you. In other words, don’t drive them away with your negative words, your self-indulgence. Salt ponds cannot yield fresh water. You can’t have your spiritual cake and eat it too.

Here’s the much more familiar, oft-quoted verse that follows right after this one in Proverbs:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

Don’t lean on your own understanding. Ironically, THAT’S wisdom: to know nothing, and trust the Lord.

Thus says the Lord:

“Cursed is the man who trusts in man

and makes flesh his strength,

whose heart turns away from the Lord.

He is like a shrub in the desert,

and shall not see any good come.

He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness,

in an uninhabited salt land.

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,

whose trust is the Lord.

He is like a tree planted by water,

that sends out its roots by the stream,

and does not fear when heat comes,

for its leaves remain green,

and is not anxious in the year of drought,

for it does not cease to bear fruit.”

--Jeremiah 17:5-8

Thus says the Lord. Blessed is the man who not just trusts the Lord, but whose trust is the Lord.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to cease to bear fruit, even in drought. I don’t want drought to come and find me turned around spitting out saltwater. In order to bear fruit, I have to trust the Lord. This means not giving in to “bitter jealousy” and “selfish ambition.” I mean, I can sit there and indulge in those feelings all day. God won’t stop me. But in order to bear fruit for Him, I have to lay them aside. Those things are just emotions. They aren’t the truth.

For context, here’s the next couple verses in Jeremiah:

The heart is deceitful above all things,

                and desperately sick;

                who can understand it?

I the Lord search the heart and test the mind;

to give every man according to his ways,

according to the fruit of his deeds.

--Jeremiah 17:9-10

The heart is deceitful and desperately sick. Those few words sum up what is wrong with the world. What is the cure, then, for a lying, deathly-sick heart?

Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts. Write steadfast love and faithfulness on the tablet of your hearts.

I think once something is written on your heart, it’s pretty hard to smudge off. Cure that desperately sick heart with overdoses of love, faithfulness, and trust.

So basically what happened this week was that I prayed for wisdom; and the Lord said, “If you want to grow in this, we’re going to have to get a few things out of the way first.”

It’s not that I have been particularly emotionally-indulgent and self-focused this week. I haven’t suddenly gotten worse about this. I think that God just used certain circumstances to highlight these sins in me that were already there. He just gently brought it to my attention. And, I’m sorry to say, I wasn’t very faithful to respond in humility. I saw my behavior, and acted even worse.

I admit it: sometimes I enjoy being angry. Like Jonah, I sit under the fig tree and remain happy in my anger. Or I’ve consciously let my stress and anxiety spin out of control, instead of curbing it, because curbing it was too hard—and, let’s be honest, once you open a box of chocolates and start eating them, it’s really hard to stop. Sometimes self-righteousness—“I have a right to be angry about this! I have a right to be anxious about this!”—can taste just like chocolate, even though it is making you sick.

Enough of this. I will always be irritated and upset by daily things—that’s just life. But I am far too old to indulge my negative emotions. As my good friend Jennifer would say, “That’s just straight-up stupid.” It doesn’t honor the Lord.

Let’s revisit that definition of heavenly wisdom from James in the Amplified Translation.

But the wisdom from above is first of all pure (undefiled); then it is peace-loving, courteous (considerate, gentle). [It is willing to] yield to reason, full of compassion and good fruits; it is wholehearted and straightforward, impartial and unfeigned (free from doubts, wavering, and insincerity).--James 3:17

I think that about covers it, don’t you?

The one thing I can say for my negative emotions was, at least at the beginning, they were sincere; but when I began to indulge them, they became lies, untruth, because they weren’t founded in my trust in God. They were founded in my trust that my flesh knew what was going on better than God did—and my belief that I had a right to indulge them.

It’s time for a change. I can feel God calling me to a new level of spiritual maturity—a new pair of spiritual shoes. When you have a worn-out pair of running shoes that don’t work anymore, you can sit down and refuse to go on. Or you can put on the new shoes He offers.

When I began this blog, I compared my journey first to a walk, then to a run. Now I feel like my Father is holding out a pair of climbing shoes. I don’t know if you have ever worn climbing shoes, but they are very uncomfortable to walk in. However, if you are going to climb, you need them. “Put off the old shoes,” Jesus is saying to me. “It’s time to climb.”

Give me a leg up in prayer, if you don’t mind. I’m clinging to the rock that is higher than I.

Are you naked?

After some heavy Bible-reading last night after I posted, I just have to crank out another few pages about something very important. And that something is nakedness.

Nakedness is a pretty common theme in the Bible. Lot’s daughters got into trouble looking at his nakedness, as did Noah’s son. The soldiers cast lots for Jesus’ clothing. All around the world, people wear clothes. They may be different styles and different degrees of coverage, but we all put something on ourselves. We all attempt to cover ourselves in some way. So nakedness must be important.

In yesterday’s post, I was writing about the Garden and the Fall. When Adam and his wife ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the first thing they noticed was that they were naked.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her [like, right next to her, watching her—way to go, Adam], and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

                                                                                --Genesis 3:6-7

Now, these were perfect people. This was a man and a woman made in the likeness of Jesus. And they still did this thing. And when they did it, they, like middle-schoolers having a nightmare about showing up to school without clothes, became hyper-aware of the fact that they were naked.

Their solution to this problem? Sew together a few fig leaves to cover themselves up. If you’ve ever seen a sixteenth-century statue, you know what a pitiful covering fig leaves are.

But don’t we do the same thing? Don’t we try to cover ourselves with fig leaves? When we realize we have sinned, or even when we realize how imperfect we are, we attempt to glaze over our shortcomings by justifying ourselves or self-deprecating……….spiritual fig leaves.

I guess Adam and his wife thought their fig leaves were pretty pathetic too, because the next thing they did was hide.

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.—Genesis 3:8

Um, He’s God….He can see you.

But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”

God already knew what Adam had done…and was seeking his company anyway.

And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

At least Adam didn’t lie here. He probably didn’t have much practice with lying, being originally righteous and all.

God’s response to Adam here is interesting. He does not accuse. He already knows everything. He only asks questions.

He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

As I said before, God already knew the answer to both of these questions. See, Adam and his wife (later to be named Eve) had not ever been accused before, because they had never sinned before. They didn’t know they were imperfect before God, because, honestly, they probably had not been thinking about themselves too much before that point. They had just been enjoying God. But when they sinned by disobeying God, they knew that they were naked, because they knew that they were capable of sin. They knew that, compared to their Beloved, they were flawed, unholy, inadequate—naked.

Adam set the precedent for all humanity in the way that he answered God’s questions. He turned around, pointed one accusing finger at his wife and another at God, and said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”

Adam responded like a little kid who breaks something, points at his sister, and exclaims, “She did it!” From that moment on, we have all tried to justify ourselves by condemning others.

Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?”

And the woman points her finger, too: The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

In case you haven’t noticed, everyone in this scenario is pointing a finger of blame except for God. They’re using one hand to hold up their pitiful fig leaves and another to point at each other and say, “Look…she’s naked!”

I had been wondering why the world is the way that it is—why the world condemns every one of us. Why we blame each other to get out of things. Why we constantly justify ourselves. Why I self-condemn whenever I encounter imperfection in myself. We’re addicted to it.

God took me all the way back to Genesis to explain this: that we all know we are naked, and we are struggling to cover ourselves, instead of asking Him to cover us.

After God questions the woman, He turns right back around and curses….the serpent. The devil was the first one He cursed. I think that shows God’s merciful nature—He knew who was really to blame. Then He laid a curse on His beloved. How it must have wrecked His heart—yet it would be against His just nature not to banish them from the Garden.

But note what He does next. Before He even drove them out of the Garden, …the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them (3:21).

He clothed them.

It was probably pretty nightmarish for Adam and Eve to watch God make clothing. They had never seen death before, and probably couldn’t even conceptualize it. But here He was, slaughtering an animal before them. It was probably horrifying beyond their imagination. But it was how God clothed them. He covered them then, with the first animal sacrifice the world had ever known.

Skip a few hundred pages forward to the Gospel of John. In chapter 8, we find the story of a woman caught in adultery. I bet you know it well. The people pick up stones to kill her, but Jesus says the oft-quoted line, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her” (8:7). Then He bent down and wrote some stuff in the sand. We don’t know what it is He wrote, but many people say it was the Law—all the principles those stone-throwers were supposed to be living by. One by one, they dropped their stones and walked away, until the woman was the only one left. (If I were her, I would’ve already run away…but I guess she was fascinated by Jesus.)

Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”—8: 10-11

Before this, Jesus had been minding His own business—the people brought her into the temple where He was teaching and demanded of Him, “Moses said we should stone her. What do you say, Jesus?” They brought her to be put to death, as was required by the law that came out of the curse on Adam and Eve. 

They brought her there to point a finger of condemnation at her before all, to uncover her nakedness. When Jesus gave His famous response, I think what happened was that the people had to admit that they were naked. And they fled home to feverishly sew together some fig leaves. As for Jesus, He said, “I don’t condemn you.”

God does hate sin, and He does not want us to run around sinning all over the place. But this is what the Bible says: For God did not send his Son in to the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God (John 3:17-18). When we call Jesus “Lord,” like the adulterous woman did, He is able to put some new clothes on us. Heavenly robes, in fact.

However, most of us react to that by acting like a toddler getting out of a bath: we run around naked, slippery-wet, through the whole house, while our Father chases us down to wrap us in a warm, soft, clean white towel. If we condemn ourselves, we don’t trust in Jesus’ righteousness; we continue to sew our own fig leaves.

Let’s look at the story of the prodigal son. This is a guy who basically told his dad that he wished he were dead so he could have his inheritance, and then he took his inheritance and blew it all on a sinful lifestyle. But then he realizes he should return to his father in humility, asking only to be made a servant.

But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”—Luke 15:20-21

And the father looked at him and pointed an accusing finger at him, right? Nope: But the father said to his servants, “Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet….”

The first thing the father does for the son is clothe him. Not only does he clothe him, he clothes him in his finest robes, and sets his seal on his hand by giving him his ring, and puts shoes on his feet so he has freedom to walk.

Self-condemnation always pours out of self-righteousness. When you condemn, you are saying that you are wise and you know what deserves to be condemned. Even when you condemn yourself, you are sewing together fig leaves, thinking they are adequate to cover your nakedness.

Like I said before, there is such a thing as godly grief over sin, and we should confess our sins. What I am saying is that we shouldn’t dwell on our nakedness. We shouldn’t live in false humility, like the prodigal son. He realized he would be better off at his father’s—and that’s why he returned with a supposedly humble spirit, not because he was genuinely sorry. Yet the father accepted him anyway, rejoicing at his return.  

God knows everything; His wrath against you would be far more than you could imagine. But He has given us His son, so that we can stop condemning ourselves, stop wearing fig leaves and animal skins—and put on the robes made for a holy people. Stop pointing at yourself, justifying yourself or talking down about yourself; confess that you are naked; and put His robes on.

For years, I would experiment with outfits, putting on different combinations of clothing to express the personality I wanted people to think I had. We have all done it. We have all agonized over our wardrobe, trying to look our best, because we didn’t believe His righteousness was enough; or, thinking we were unworthy of attention, settled for frumpy clothing as a kind of false humility, because we were too scared to don His righteousness.

Here’s the Gospel, folks. We are born naked. We know we are born naked. But we don’t have to live under the curse of the Garden, wearing these old stinky animal skins made from slaughtered flesh. We have Jesus’ robe of righteousness. All we have to do is come to Him and call Him Lord.

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

—Jeremiah 31:33-34

No longer do we have to point condemning fingers at one another—or ourselves. He has forgiven our sin, so that we may approach His throne and know Him, just like Adam and Eve did. And in this restoration, in this redemption, we don’t have to be scared when we hear the sound of God walking in the Garden. We are wearing Jesus’ robe of righteousness. And we are not naked anymore.

( P.S., I really hope someone Googles the word “naked,” and this blog pops up.) 

There Is Now Therefore

…set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.—1 Peter 1:13

Grace is my middle name. …I mean, literally: it’s my middle name. I think in general, I’m quick to forgive, quick to extend grace to others. But there is one person that I find very hard to give grace. I know her every thought and motivation, and I can anticipate her mistakes. It takes a lot for her to earn my approval. This person struggles to earn my favor, and in return, all she hears from me is, “You should’ve done more.”

In case you haven’t guessed already, this person is me.

I have realized, under the influence of my high-pressure job, that I struggle with the opposite of grace…. A hairy little thing called condemnation.

Stress brings out your worst qualities, and apparently, I have a paranoia of making mistakes that people will not forgive me for. I imagine these complicated scenarios in which something goes horribly wrong, and it is all my fault. I create situations in my mind in which I damage other people so much that they refuse to love me anymore. I destroy their trust in me.

I know, this sounds like a Hallmark movie and not like real life. Unfortunately my imagination is more in line with Hallmark movies than with reality.

I feel guilty about the fact that I am not superhuman—that I am not everything I expect others to expect me to be. In my mind, I justify every little thing I do, even though no one will ever ask me why I did it. Zealously, I deal with every little inadequacy I see in myself by self-deprecating—telling other people, with my own lips, how bad I am at things. I have to ask 1,000 questions to make sure I am doing everything “right.” I visualize every possible mistake, anything anyone could point a finger at me for and proclaim, “Aha! It’s all your fault!”

Adam is my forebear. Like him, I am thinking of reasons to justify why I ate the fruit before God even asks me. I believe, apparently, in my heart of hearts, that everyone is out to accuse me, to call my bluff. This is why I hold my breath when I see a cop, even if I’m not speeding.

The world is out to accuse us and condemn us. At every turn, it demands that we justify our every action to prove that we are “worth” something. It punishes us when we make mistakes. It judges everything we do, and then condemns us for feeling judged. My generation grew up under a rhetoric of “self-esteem,” where “everyone is a winner”—which was, for us, an unceasing backdrop of hollow noise while we struggled to “be all that we could be,” and failed.

So it is only natural that I would want to protect myself by condemning myself before the world has a chance to.

True, there are a lot of protocols at my job, a lot of things to remember, a lot of mistakes that could turn into a huge headache for more than one person. So a little worry is normal. But I worry less about the mistakes themselves, and more about “letting people down.”

Right about now, you are thinking I am a crazy person. It’s true that my subconscious self-condemnation can go a little overboard. But examine your own heart. I bet you will find some issues with self-condemnation that make you just as crazy.

There is such a thing as godly grief over your sin. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death (2 Corinthians 7:10). This kind of productive, spiritual grief is not what I am talking about, and I’m not particularly aiming to define the “worldly” variety of grief (that’s for another post, folks). I am not really talking about condemnation from sin as much as I acondemning heart, a “spirit of fear” (2 Timothy 1:7) that does not come from God; a recurring guilty thought pattern that constantly hovers over you because you feel you are unworthy.

m talking about having a

“I should have worked harder,” self-condemnation whines. “I should’ve worked longer….someone has a right to accuse me of not caring enough….What is wrong with ME?” 

And who do you think we are thinking about the whole time we are going through this cycle of doubt, guilt, condemnation, and deprecation?

I’ll give you a hint. It’s not Jesus.

I don’t know about you, but I want to be free of this spirit of fear and self-absorption. It’s not who I am in Christ.

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds.—Ephesians 4:17

Self-deprecation is one of the most subtle forms of pride, and, therefore, one of the most dangerous. The condemning heart has a wrong perspective. It is the result of a lack of trust in God.

The truth is, we trust other people more than we trust God. When I walk down the street, I trust the general population not to mug me or hit me with their cars (which I should apparently not do, since I almost got flattened the other day by an SUV). I trust my coworkers to do their jobs so I don’t find myself with extra work.  And these are all other humans, people who also came from the bloodline of the first man—the guy who pointed the accusing finger at his wife when God asked him why he betrayed Him by eating of the fruit. He ate the fruit, in reality, because he didn’t trust what God said to him. Instead, he believed the serpent—the accuser. We trust—we believe—a world full of finger-pointers rather than the One who made us.

There is a deeper evil at work here. You see, if I can blame myself for things, then I am still in control of them. I may have messed up, but I am the person pulling all the strings, no matter how tangled they get. The anxiety I feel is a result of my belief that I am responsible for everything—which is (whether subconscious or not) the manifestation of my unbelief in God.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.—Philippians 2:5-7

When I blame myself for things (most often things that haven’t happened), I am trying to feel in control—counting equality with God “a thing to be grasped.” That puts a new perspective on it, doesn’t it?

Jesus, on the other hand, is completely humble. He didn’t walk around on earth in a cloak of false humility, like I do, speaking about how unworthy He was and how many mistakes He made. When people complimented how good He was at something, He probably didn’t respond with a list of reasons why He wasn’t good at it.  Instead, He probably just shrugged and said something like, “Um…I thought we were talking about my Father?”

In short, Jesus didn’t believe or speak any lies. “His face was toward Jerusalem”—He “was not ashamed,” for He “knew whom He had believed” (2 Timothy 1:12).

And we should have the same response.

And  I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.—Revelation 12:10

So…What part do we have in overcoming the “accuser”? He is conquered by the blood of Jesus, and by “the word of our testimony”—our belief in Him. In other words, when the devil points an accusing finger at you to get you self-focused, you need to remember that the only part we have in escaping this condemnation is to trust Jesus, and confess our trust. Jesus did the hard work. It is finished.

There is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free from the law of sin and death.—Romans 8:1-2 (You were waiting for this verse, right?)

Paul says here that there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus who are good enough, perfect, never make mistakes…right? No. Read it again. “…for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Period. If you believe on Jesus, you’re clean. So stop trying to make yourself dirty because you’re afraid of what   the world might say.

The accuser in the Garden wasn’t God. All He did was ask Adam questions. The accuser was the one who said, “You will not surely die.” It was a lie. But hallelujah, now the law of the Spirit of life has set us free from death! The accuser of the brothers has been thrown down!

I don’t have to self-deprecate to bring glory to God. Do you know who brings glory to God?.......God does. He doesn’t need us to talk about how awful we are to make Himself bigger. Newsflash: He’s already bigger.

Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord (2 Corinthians 10:17). When you are sitting around talking about how unworthy you are, that’s not boasting in the Lord. And what’s more, it’s actually disagreeing with what God says you are. (I don’t know about you, but I don’t really want to disagree with God.) Believers, He has made you righteous through His blood.

Sure, it might be true that you’re inadequate. Actually, it probably is. But when you speak about it, you are not believing wrongly about yourself so much as you are believing wrongly about God. You are saying that you are in control (false), and that you are much more worthy of attention than He is, because you are giving yourself first place in your thoughts. You are saying, in short, that He is not who He says He is—a Father who loves you, and who is worthy of all of your praise.

Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.—1 John 3:18-20

This is one of the most perplexing and beautiful verses to me. That’s why I saved it till last—it’s the punch line in the Great Joke on the devil. John has just finished giving what appears to be a behavioral mandate: love people genuinely, with actions instead of words. By our deeds, by following all the “rules,” we can “reassure our heart before him”…right?...Well…. He knows everything, people. He invented “everything,” in fact. You don’t have to sit there and justify everything you do. He already knows why you did it—whether you tell Him the truth about it or not.

And He loves you anyway.

So stop tangling yourself in a web of your own lies and move on. He knows every sin we have ever committed, will commit, or have thought about committing. YET: no matter how much we have and will fail, we can still “reassure our heart before him.” Why?

Because He is “greater than our heart.” Praise the Lord, we don’t have to rest in ourselves, no matter how adequate and/or inadequate we are; we can rest in HIM. And He is more than enough.

Sight

Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come.—Proverbs 31:25

The Lord has done a magnificent work in me since the last time I posted. I have prayed hard over the past couple weeks about perspective. If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that I was sorely in need of a change of lenses. And I am overjoyed today to tell you that He has heard my cry, and He has answered me.

So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:6-7).

I don’t know about you, but I want to always be of good courage. However, apparently, to be courageous, you also have to be blind.

Talk about a change in perspective. How about no perspective—that’s what this scripture seems to suggest.

Let me back up a little.

Two Mondays ago, I had a challenging day at work and drove home feeling completely inadequate. I was frustrated at how frail I become under pressure, how easily I crack under stress. Then, of course, I got mad about feeling inadequate, and mad that I was immature enough to be mad. I just wanted to skip ahead to some point on this timeline of my life that I was imagining, a place where I have become this super-godly, super-mature, super-put-together woman who loves the Lord and impresses everyone around her with her ability to handle pressure. I wanted to stop being so young.

Clearly this was insane, so I called my therapist: Mom.

What Mom told me to do (or, rather, what the Holy Spirit told me to do using Mom) was to stop thinking about my purpose, to stop obsessing over the big picture of my life as this intense mission, and start focusing on my relationship with Jesus.

She also told me to pray in the Spirit. I took that advice, and over the past week or so, I have felt mountains being moved in my soul. You see, we humans are so inadequate that we can’t even hardly pray for ourselves; for we know not how to pray as we ought (Romans 8:26). God has had to pray for me, then answer His own prayers for me. I had no part in the whole process except to receive.

Isn’t God awesome?

I got on a plane last weekend to head to Alabama for a close friend’s wedding, and, while I was suspended in the air, I finally got some time to sit still and further chew on this idea of focusing simply on Jesus. (Kind of sad that God had to strap me down and jet me 4,000 feet in the sky, or however high planes go, to get an uninterrupted word with me….)

It may be different for other people, but for me right now, the “sight” mentioned in this verse in 2 Corinthians doesn’t necessarily mean believing in something that I can see literally in front of me. Like many people with a visionary, passionate personality, I have turned my imagined “mission,” my vision of my future, into a kind of mental security blanket. It’s my default thought, the thing I daydream about. In this imagined world, my future is this neat scenario that plays out: I marry some church planter or something, and we blast off for the kingdom together. It’s a neat little narrative.

It is very easy to daydream when you feel dissatisfied with your daily life. Everyone knows that. You end up living in the future. And that’s why we are often not “of good courage”: we plan too much in the earthly realm, which allows God little room to submit us to His greater plans.

Here’s the bigger sin: visualizing my future all the time not only takes away from the present moment, the time when Jesus always is (I AM is present tense, you know); it also leads me to worship my spiritual growth, my vision for who “I should be”—that person who is “worthy” enough to receive the things that I want for myself. This spirals into self-condemnation: I didn’t do that right. I shouldn’t have made that mistake. I am not prepared enough. I am not organized enough. I…me….my……

Time to get real. I realized that, as I said before, I was angry that I had been reminded of my immaturity. But there was an even bigger issue (as usual). See, I was thinking, in my little earthbound heart, that only “mature” people are worth anything for God’s purposes. My stressful job had brought out a side of myself I didn’t like, and I was feeling that I wasn’t worthy yet of the future I envision for myself. I was believing this lie: that I am not worthy yet of the godly marriage and ministry I imagine; that right now, at this life stage, I’m just piddling around. When I am worthy, when He grants me these things I have envisioned, then my life can really start.

Meanwhile, Jesus is standing right in front of me, jumping up and down and waving His arms, shouting, “I paid a great price for you! Stop living in fantasy land and just let me love you!”

I didn’t realize what a sneaky sin sight could become.

Leave it to Mom to bring the real issue to light when I least expected it.

At His feet….

I’m an artist. Sight is kind of my thing. And this vision is a gift from God. But like all gifts, it can easily be inverted.

My human perspective of the future is completely inaccurate. All the things I visualize for myself are probably never going to happen—or at least, they won’t happen the way I imagine them. If they did, something would be wrong. God always acts in unexpected ways. Read the Bible. Some of His plans are weird, ok? Like Jesus being born of a virgin, then being crucified…and the whole communion, “this is my blood” thing. Everything about the gospel is the opposite of the kind of predictable, world-affirming legend humanity would invent.

Humans write stories they can imagine might be true. God writes stories that only He can imagine. (The pastor did a whole sermon on this today…further confirmation that I needed to write about it.)

So what I’m saying is, God’s plans for me are so much bigger than my own, so awesome and crazy that I can’t even visualize them, no matter how much time I waste trying to do it.

What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him (1 Corinthians 2:9).

And again: He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

The way I visualize my future is the “sight” that I am not supposed to be living by.

So…what is this “faith” thing?

When I was a little kid, I thought I understood faith.  I grew up in a charismatic household where we talked about healing miracles and spiritual warfare at the dinner table. I got the impression that faith was something we did, as humans.  Faith meant, simply, believing hard enough.

I didn’t realize that faith is a spiritual gift. You know what that means? God has to give it to you. And in order for Him to give it to you, you have to receive it.

Here’s the thing: God hasn’t set some great cosmic timer, some agenda, some deadline, for me to “become” something, so that He can rain blessings on me (as if I don’t have enough blessings already); so that He can grant me my heart’s desires. All He wants is for me to sit at His feet.

Literally, that’s all He wants.

It’s hard for our human minds to comprehend that. But it’s right there in scripture.

Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act (Psalm 37:4-5).

Then, two verses down: Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.

I did a double-take when I read that. “Wait…what?” I said to myself. “I thought I was supposed to be doing something here…? You know, ‘committing my way’ and all that….”

Nope: be still.

I mean, maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think “being still” involves scurrying around your life, trying to plan everything.

Good courage….

On the next Monday, Columbus Day, I had another crisis, a much worse one. When I got back from my trip to Alabama, I checked my emails and saw that there was a job prospect opening up in Nashville in arts education. I already signed a contract here, of course; and it would damage my integrity to break that.

But don’t you think I didn’t consider it.

It sounded so lovely: moving back to a city I love, away from this city I have hated. A more predictable schedule. More stability for my future.

I knew I couldn’t take it. But the thought spiraled me down into a pit of self-doubt. What if I was wrong to move here? What if I am completely off-course? What if I misread the direction, navigated wrong, somehow got myself marooned here on this island, thinking it was part of divine purpose when in fact it was just a random breeze? I mean, we all miss it sometimes.

It was a pretty bad day.

Then I prayed and called to my Father, asking Him to give me peace and quiet in my spirit, because I can’t change my decision now.

Thank the Lord that He is faithful.

There is no way I could seek after and catch a sense of peace myself. But I asked the Lord for it, and He provided. In the past week, I’ve had more peace here than I’ve ever had before. I feel like I’m standing on something solid, finally. And I know Who it is I am standing on. He calls Himself the Rock.

Basically what I am trying to say in all this is that God is awesome, because He sent His Holy Spirit to comfort me. I desperately wanted a different attitude, but there was such a bitter taste in my mouth toward Northern Virginia and DC that I just couldn’t bring myself to make positive memories here. So I told Him that. I asked Him to change me. And He did.

Psalm 121:1-2: I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.

Amen!

Don’t let your sight be a stumbling block.

I don’t want to offer vague platitudes here about “keeping your eyes upon Jesus,” or advise you to pray more, read more Bible, sweat and gasp trying to spend enough time with the Lord to achieve this peace, on your own efforts. What I am trying to tell you is that you can cry out to the Holy Spirit to do the work in you—to rescue you from your own vision. Let Him do the work. There is no other way for it to get done.

Toward the end of Psalm 37, we read this: for there is a future for the man of peace (verse 37). I don’t know that this can always be interpreted as “keeping peace” between people; rather, it might refer to being at peace within ourselves. We ought to rest in the peace He gives us. If we do, we can “laugh at the time to come.” And that is how we are always “of good courage”: we trust in the vision of the One who created sight.

Prepositions

“How can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place?”

That’s how the disciples responded to Jesus when He observed that the four thousand-plus crowd of His followers was hungry.

Actually, He didn’t simply observe that they were hungry. What He actually said was, “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way. And some of them have come from far away” (Mark 8:2).

The disciples’ first response was, basically, “Well, what do you want us to do about it, Jesus? There ain’t nowhere to get bread out here. We can’t even bake it. We have nothing with us. What are we supposed to do?”

I mean, I don’t know if the disciples were sarcastic guys, but I have to imagine that they might’ve been here, just a little. The place they were was desolate. That means it was in the middle of nowhere, inaccessible, the country. People had walked a very long time to get there. (Which begs the question, why didn’t they bring lunch? Maybe they did, but I guess they didn’t expect to be so impressed with Jesus that they stayed three days. The PB & J was long gone by then.)

But the disciples were missing the point here. Jesus didn’t say, “Go get some bread for these folks!” He said, “I have compassion on them. They have come a long way to be with me.”

And He was ready to feed them.

Are you in the crowd? Are you drawn so far out into the wilderness that you have to depend upon Jesus to feed you?

If so, just so you know: He has compassion on you. And He will take the seven little loaves you have and make them enough to feed thousands.

I always say this is my favorite chapter of Mark because, less than a score of verses later, the disciples are sitting around talking about how they don’t have any bread.

Um….

I mean, now that I think about it, I guess they had given all they had to the people. But there were seven basketsful left. And Jesus had done this breaking-bread miracle another time before. So as they sat around talking about their lack of bread, He said, “Do you not yet understand?”

In case you didn’t catch that, it was a rhetorical question.

And it’s a question Jesus has to ask me again and again. Praise be to Him, though, because I think that after all this time, I am beginning to understand.

I have been finding over the past few weeks that there’s just not much to me. I reach the end of my own strength sooner than I thought. (Surprise, right? There’s nothing like working 10 hours a day to cure you of your unrealistic perspective.)

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.—Hebrews 4:14-15

That means Jesus was with me when I got lost going to the DMV today; and he was with me, feeling my pain, as I stood in line for an hour, only to find out that I didn’t have the proper documents. (What up, Virginia? Put it on the website!) Jesus was there when I cried out and sobbed in my car for a pathetically long time last Saturday. He was there this week when I was angry or tired.

He is with me right now as I am sitting here terrified to fly by myself next weekend—terrified of making a mistake and ending up in Ohio or something.

Jesus was tempted to be afraid sometimes. But where I fail and give in to the sin of anxiety, He is strong. He has been tempted in every respect as I am—and more.

I know that He looks on me now with compassion, saying, “She has followed me out to this desolate place, and if she goes home, she will faint on the way.” I know He is faithful to act on His compassion, because the little crumbs of bread I have had—a few minutes stolen to study the Word and pray—have been fruitful beyond my expectation, when I have come to Him with a true heart, seeking.

Jesus feeds me with His spirit, if I will stop complaining about how I have no bread for long enough to chew.

I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.—Psalm 81:10

He ransomed me. He paid a priceless bride-price to marry the church. He will feed us.

The Israelites often failed at opening their mouths (to receive food, anyway). This week, I read Jeremiah.  Jeremiah was this sad little guy who had to go tell the Israelites that they were sinning against God by worshipping foreign gods. (I bet he felt pretty desolate most of the time.) Through him, God told the people, “for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13). Then He asked a question (another rhetorical one, actually): “Have you not brought this upon yourself by forsaking the Lord your God, when he led you in the way?” (Jeremiah 2:17).

He led us out here; He’ll provide for us. It’s that simple. Don’t dig your own cistern. It’ll just be a fruitless pit for you to fall into. If you don’t turn to Jesus for your bread, you’re guaranteed to build a broken cistern. By the same token, if you do turn to Him, you’ll have seven basketsful leftover—no matter how “desolate” your location is.

This week has been much better, but last week was really stressful. I was angry because I felt that my job was sucking down 25 hours of my day away and grabbing greedily for more. And, really, as far as the DMV is concerned, I was mad today because I felt that my Saturday had been wasted, and it was somebody else’s fault. In other words, my time was so valuable that I had a right to be furious at the state of Virginia for messing it up.

The pastor I heard last week said, “If there is anything you think you need in addition to Jesus, the devil is probably using it right now to steal your joy.”

Ouch. He said if we don’t know what it is we think we need in addition to Jesus, we should look and see what is causing us stress and anxiety. Then he asked people who felt stressed to raise their hands.

I had to raise my hand.

Apparently, I think I need “my” time in addition to Jesus. (What I need it for, I’m not sure.) The cistern I keep trying to dig is this perfect schedule that I control completely. And it doesn’t give water; it only steals my joy.

To take us back to elementary grammar, I’ve been thinking in personal pronouns: I, me, mine. For a little while, I have forgotten about prepositions.

A quick run through Colossians chapter one: …He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins…and in him all things hold together…For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell...the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory….

And Ephesians chapter one: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing…even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him….In him we have redemption through his blood…according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him…In him we have obtained an inheritance….so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit…

When we feel lost, and when we feel isolated, we must try to remember where we are. And we get there by following the prepositions.

Psalm 23:4 says, I will fear no evil, for you are with me….

I have felt very homesick and alone at various times over the past few weeks. Jesus has been the only one with me in my hardest moments on my hardest days. And God is even more than “with” me by the amazing power of Jesus. He is “in.”

We are not in some “perfect life,” or in our future, or in our past. We are not wandering around in fantasies; and we are not even really in time, actually.

And we are not “in this desolate place” either, beloved.

Here is the beautiful, splendid, ever-amazing gospel: we are IN HIM.

We exist in an entity Who is not constrained by all the little bits of time and physicality that concern us, that upset us, that cause us anxiety, that ruin our days, that make us sit around and talk about how hungry we are.

My time is not important. (Still wrapping my head around this one….) It’s His time, because everything I think, do, and am is in Him.

And maybe I don’t understand that all the way right now. Maybe I’m not sure how not to fall face-first into my cistern. But I know that He who has begun a good work in me will be faithful to complete it (no matter if I have to stand in the DMV line all day). In this I have faith: that over the next few weeks, months, and years, I will burrow much further into the arms of Jesus than I ever have before. I know because He has been drawing me closer by the day, patiently, for my whole life. Glory to God: I won’t faint on the way. He will provide me with spiritual nourishment. My soul will have something to eat, no matter where I am.

By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us his Spirit.—1 John 4:13

There are no qualifiers in that statement. This is how we know, says John: His Spirit is in us. By the Spirit’s miraculous power, Jesus multiplies our loaves of bread.

And John just may have known something about that.

The Underside of His Wings

In the Lord I take refuge; how can you say to my soul, ‘Flee like a bird to your mountain…?’…For the Lord is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face.—Psalm 11

It’s in your worst moments that you begin to see who you really are. But it is also in these moments that God reveals who He is. And this week, praise the Lord, I have seen the underside of His wings.

Here is my life over the past month in bulleted form.

• ·         Leaving home before light every day
• ·         Working weekends
• ·         Nine, ten, eleven-hour days
• ·         Meeting tons of new people (exhausting for a natural introvert)
• ·         Trying to run a reading center and learning as I go, on my feet
• ·         Being far away from everything and everyone I know and love
• ·        Getting habitually lost in the hardest city to navigate in the USA
• ·         Getting lost at night when it is late and I want to be at home asleep
• ·         Being honked at by people while I am lost; or being made to feel like an idiot for getting lost
• ·        A kid shutting down on me this week (two days in a row), and the junior high kids next door messing with my stuff
• ·         Not getting enough time with the Lord (due to many of above reasons)
• ·         Not getting enough time for exercise and relaxation

All of that stuff hit me this week. It’s like it balled itself up into a fist and punched me in the face. And, while I was down, it kicked me hard in the stomach.

That’s why I cried after I almost hit a raccoon. Last Tuesday, I was on my way home from staying late for training at work, and it was getting to be 9 o’clock (this little early-riser’s bedtime). It was very VERY dark on the Fairfax County Parkway (why don’t they have street lights in Virginia??), and I almost hit this raccoon, and I pretty much stopped in the middle of the road. (I think I did actually run over its tail or something, because I felt a bump.) This guy behind me beeped at me. I kept going but thought I was lost, and I began to just sob and repeat over and over to the Lord, “I just wanna go home…I just wanna go home...” while I waited for the light to change. Pathetic? Yes. I admit it.

It gets even better. The very next night, I got distressed over working 10 hour days and still not getting everything done (problems that have since been worked on by my understanding program manager, praise God), and I broke down crying again in bed. Then I was angry that I couldn’t fall asleep because I was crying, so I cried some more. I called my mom and didn’t even say hello. I just sobbed into the phone while she tried to make me feel better.

Again, pathetic, right?

And it gets even better: today, I had to volunteer at the National Book Festival (it’s not really “volunteering” if you are forced to do it), and I got lost on the way and broke down and cried again. (Third time’s the charm, right?) I was so mad. Here I was in my lease car, which has a limited number of miles, driving around this infernal city, so close to where I was supposed to be, and I couldn’t find it.

Earlier in the week, when I’d had to work on Saturday, a pedestrian thought I was not doing a suitable enough job driving and banged her knuckles angrily on my window. (Really, lady? You’re walking. You can’t have road rage.) Where is the forgiveness in the world? Oh yeah…the world hates me (1 John 3:13). To the world, I am just an inexperienced, unknown girl who is trying to make it somewhere, and I am in its way. In the world’s opinion, I ought to be forgotten and thrown into the potter’s field that Judas’s blood money bought, the “burial place for strangers”—the place where it throws all its worshipers when it is through with them (Matthew 27:7).

Thank the Lord that, because of His son, I do not have to be what the world thinks I am.

A couple days ago, the Lord led me to read Jonah. At the time, I didn’t understand why, but today it hit me (the burst-of-light kind of hitting, not the bus-at-eighty-miles-an-hour kind). It was because when I was lost today, I was seething with hatred toward the DC metro area. I called my mom and told her, “I HATE this city. It’s awful. I hate it! I wish it would just burn up—and Virginia too!” Later in the day, when I wasn’t quite so hateful (and I was more sure of my location on a map), I remembered that I am not the only one who has hated a city to which I have been called.

When the Lord told him to go to Ninevah, Jonah got up and ran the opposite direction. At the beginning of the story, the Bible isn’t clear on his reasons for running. He believed in the power of God: he admitted to the other boat passengers that it was God’s wrath against the storm, and even suggested that they throw him overboard. And when he was in the belly of the fish, he cried out to God for salvation and praised Him, even in all that smelly stomach acid and digested food. So he knew what God was up to—he just didn’t want to do it.

It becomes clearer later in scripture that Jonah just simply hated Ninevah. He thought it deserved what it had coming. In short, he wished it would burn up and be destroyed.

He did what the Lord asked, proclaiming judgment on the city. When they all repented, “it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry” (Jonah 4:1). Why would you be angry when people repent?

Honestly, I think Jonah was angry at God, at least partially, for interrupting his life to give him this assignment he didn’t want. That explains why, when the Lord first approached him with it, he fled “away from the presence of the Lord” (Jonah 1:3). When the Ninevites repented, Jonah said (quite melodramatically), “O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live” (4:3). This because people repented. But all the Lord said back in reply was, “Do you do well to be angry?” (4:4)

What a jerk Jonah must have been. But now, as I look upon the city to which I’ve been called, I understand the fears, stress, and pure exhaustion that Jonah must have felt. He felt things were unfair. He felt he was called to do more than he could do. Then, when the Ninevites repented, he was probably embarrassed because he had been walking around telling them they were going to be destroyed, and then they weren't. He felt angry, so angry that he probably cried and screamed, “I wanna go home!”

Apparently he actually enjoyed being angry, because he just sat himself down on the edge of the city and stared at it with an evil eye, “to see what would become of it.” God made a plant grow up over his head to shade him. Then He caused the plant to wither. Jonah complained (of course), and the Lord said, “So, you’re going to mourn over this plant that you didn’t even tend and care for, and you don’t expect me to have compassion on this great city where there are 120,000 very confused and lost people?” (4:11)

Scripture does not record Jonah’s reply, but the question is rhetorical. It's so rhetorical that that's where the book ends, with a question mark. Go look if you don't believe me.

Do I expect God—the God that I know, the God who is so full of mercy and patience—not to have compassion on this city? That is why He sent me, and other believers, here in the first place.

I don’t think I have “fled the presence of the Lord,” at least. That’s a step in the right direction. I actually came here the first time and didn’t have to be swallowed by a fish. However, the devil has been trying very hard to show me that I am not welcome here. He has been trying to get me to hate this city. And, on several occasions, he has succeeded. I must admit, although I do love my students, I have never loved living here; at best, my attitude toward the DC metro area has been neutral.

If you hate a place, you don’t have much compassion for it, and you certainly don’t care if its people get saved.

But even though I was crying with hatred today, I don’t want to just go sit on a hill and watch DC burn: not because I love the city, but because I love Jesus. And if He wants me here, I will stay here.

That’s the sweet part of this. God knows that my life is hard. He knows because He lives it with me.

Keep me as the apple of your eye;

Hide me in the shadow of your wings.

Psalm 17:8

The more adversities tear me down, the more He climbs into my soul right with me and builds me up. His mighty wings surround me, and I grow more faithful, not less.

Every day this week has had to be an act of complete surrender. I know I can’t do what I am called to do without Him. No one can. I know I will become tired. I will cry in my car. I will be nothing, fit for a field of strangers. So I have asked Him every day—sometimes even with a heart full of despair, or eyes filled with tears of anger—to just hijack my life and make it miraculous, in spite of me.

And I have seen Him working. I have seen Him calm my little spirit inside of me like a mother comforts a child. I have seen Him send people my way to encourage me—strong people in the Lord, building me up at opportunities and in ways I did not expect. Just today, after I arrived at my volunteer post and was suffering from a bad attitude (see last post), I prayed for encouragement. Who should come up to me but a fellow Mississippian who just happened to be a minister as well? She gave me a good word of encouragement. How He cares for me! If He didn’t, come to think of it, the devil wouldn’t waste his time attacking me. Thanks for the compliments, devil.

I belong to Jesus. Although I may not be having the time of my life, and although my life is hard to wake up to sometimes, nothing can touch me. I am free to sing praise to my God. How awesome is that?

We will never find peace or wisdom from our own minds. As Kenneth Copeland says, that’s like “trying to fish in your bathtub.” There’s just no peace there. I know, because I have fallen into the black hole of my own mind this week. All it has to offer me is a worn-out cycle of stress and anxiety. And there is certainly no wisdom there. When we need peace and wisdom desperately, we can find it only in Christ.

I’m not trying to be cliché here. I’m not saying, “Just say a little prayer, and peace will come fall on your head like pixie dust and sparkle around your ears.” What I am saying is that when that seven-year-old student is sitting there with his face in his elbow, unresponsive, we have to say to the Lord, “What is it that I need to do now, Lord?” When middle-schoolers disrupt me and I am angry, I have to ask the Lord to love them for me. When I am lost and distressed and don’t see how things will get better, I have to cry out, “Jesus, I still believe that You are sovereign in this, and I resolve to follow you.” If we turn to Him, He will tell us what to do; He will comfort us. I am proof of that. Praise God!

Life is hard. It is especially hard for people who follow after Jesus. He said it would be (Matthew 7:14). “…they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kinds and governors for my name’s sake,” said Jesus (Luke 21:12). But in the very next sentence, He stated simply: “This will be your opportunity to witness.”

Praise God, that I have the opportunity to witness! I am not just a third party. I have seen His mercy and His triumph. I am not afraid of the devil’s persecutions, because I am following the man who got out of the boat and walked on water in the middle of the storm; I am following the God who came down to earth to touch dead and dying people and awaken them to life. If I did not follow this God, my only choice would be to follow my fears and listen to the world, and, instead of walking on water in a storm, I would be thrown overboard and swallowed by a fish. Ew...bad alternative.

Life isn’t what I expected. If it were, it would be a life of my own creation, and not God’s.

So here is another rhetorical question for you: Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?—1 John 5:5. I pray that you find victory in that.

**Speaking of prayer, I’d like to ask for prayer for my sister, who is having a difficult time adjusting at work and feeling confident. And, of course, you can always pray for me, that I do not submit to anger, but instead go about the work He has assigned me with zeal. I admit, this week looks scary to me. But I know whom I have believed (2 Timothy 1:12). He is good.