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The Writing of the Christmas Letter

8 Dec

When I was in high school, my parents wrote a Christmas letter every year.

But they never mailed it.

They always started arguing over what it should say and how they should jump the hurdle of the “I” and “We” pronouns when just my dad was writing it.

So the letter never left our house.

I love receiving Christmas cards so I was excited last year when I was finally married (finally an adult!) and could write a Christmas letter. We are doing the same thing this year. I am designing it at work (“on my break”) so that I can use Adobe InDesign. I heart that program.

Tonight, Travis and I were going to edit the letter that I had written. He didn’t like the way I had described our skiing adventures (couldn’t stand having me make mention of using my parents’ old ski equipment) so I changed it. But I added the detail that we had gone skiing 3 times in April (which is very strange to me coming from MN) and Travis promptly said “No, that’s too much detail.”

I immediately took offense because Travis is always making fun of the way I tell stories–I give names of all the people I mention as well as the lifelong history I have with them; I set the scene; I narrate. I tell stories in about 10 times the amount of time it takes Travis. (But do I get on him for leaving those details out?)

I know Travis pokes fun at me out of love (I like to think it’s one of my cute little quirks) but tonight, it just made me mad. I just about broke our keyboard. Travis left the room and only came back after much persuading by me.

We continued on, me still very angry, and Travis replying with those sarcastic comments that push my buttons in all the wrong places. I called him a mean name under my breath and that just took the wind out of his sails.

He went and watched TV. I felt bad so I went to apologize. I turned the TV off. He turned it back on. I turned it off. He turned it on. I turned it off and threatened to unplug it, which would make him have to reprogram it after we plugged it back in. He agreed to leave the TV off. 

I apologized for the namecalling. He told me that the Christmas letter was fine as it was (though a few days ago, he said that he wanted to reword the part about him). I asked him if he was sure. He said yes. I repeated the question a few more times and he answered the same.

“It’s fine. You did a good job.”

A comment that appears to be a compliment but is really just a cop-out so that he doesn’t have to deal with me anymore.

I retreated into the office and shut the door. I could hear that he had turned the TV back on. “Ouch. He didn’t even feel the need to apologize? He could just get on with his night like nothing happened? WHY are guys like that? WHY doesn’t my husband understand that I need to be loved right now? I know God is the only One who loves me perfectly…so I should just be content. But it hurts when he does that!”

After about 20 minutes, Travis came in to the office and apologized. He said that when I call him names, he feels completely defeated. I told him that I understood. After all, isn’t that what I’ve learned through reading all those marriage books–that men need respect above all?

I’ve often wondered how married couples make it through all of this “Ness” without the hope and forgiveness found in Christ. If I didn’t have the Holy Spirit and didn’t have the example of Christ to follow, I would…well, I don’t even want to know what I would do. It’s hard to be a sinful person married to another sinful person. But it’s worth it. And it’s possible. God’s grace is amazing.

So the Christmas letter will be edited, printed, and mailed after all. Hooray!

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Sharing the Good News

16 Nov

This weekend has been a culmination of sorts. It was the Dare 2 Share Invincible Conference in Denver. I was at the event for the whole weekend and while it was physically draining (I’ve had an incurable headache all day), it was spiritually nourishing. Not only did my personal relationship with the Lord benefit (which I will talk about in a little bit), my job became ever more valuable.

Over 7,000 people filled the Pepsi Center for the conference. That’s a lot of students. And I have to tell you, it is beyond amazing to see these young people on fire for Christ. Not only are they fellow members of the body of Christ, they have found something to live for, a purpose for their lives. I can’t help but think back on my own life. What would my life look like if I had discovered that purpose in high school or even junior high? I have no doubt that if I had been invited to a Dare 2 Share event in junior high or high school, I would have rolled my eyes and said no. But maybe I would’ve gone…

There are hundreds of kids just like me (when I was that age) at our events: disinterested, apathetic, cynical, hopeless. And they leave the conference believing in their souls that Christ died for them. They leave with hope. They leave with the knowledge that, no matter how many people in their lives don’t love them, God loves them. And best of all, they leave with a burning desire to see their unbelieving friends come to know Jesus as well.

It’s ironic that I struggle so much with sharing my faith and yet I work at a ministry dedicated to teaching teens how to share their faith. I know God did that on purpose. Where else would I be continually convicted over the importance of giving hope to the lost, especially teens?

Our President, Greg Stier, is an amazing person. I’ve obviously heard him speak/preach quite a bit and know that since he is very animated and outgoing, he’s a great person to have speaking to a teenage crowd. But more than that, he is an inspiration. He inspires me to evangelize. God created Greg to eat, breathe, and sleep evangelism. He’ll tell you that ever since he became a Christian as a young boy, he’s been going around his neighborhood, around the mall, and now, around the country sharing the gospel. And not just in a preachy sort of way (though he does that too). He has the God-given ability to bring up the gospel with anyone, in any conversation. A guy in my care group also has that ability too. I get so inspired listening to both of them. They remind me that sharing the gospel is not something Christians do once in a while; it’s a lifestyle:

It’s walking through each day with the desire to share the gospel with someone, somehow. It’s seeing every situation and every conversation as a segue into the gospel. It’s seeing the gospel relate to every aspect of life, from waiting for a bus to eating a meal. It’s sharing the good news of Christ with those who are going to hell but don’t know it.

The biggest thing that happened this weekend was that God spoke to me. Listening to Greg speak, I knew the answer to my question, “What does living out my faith practically look like?” God’s answer:

Evangelism.

I’m pretty sure that I knew that was the answer all this time. And even now when I’m sure that it is the answer, I want to go look for a different one, one that’s not so scary and risky. One that I can feel comfortable doing. I feel like saying “God, I said I would follow you anywhere, do anything for You. But this? Anything but this…”

Whenever I think about sharing my faith with our neighbors or my brothers or friends from Travis’ work (since all of my co-workers are already Christians), I get a feeling of dread in my stomach. It’s like I’m back in 9th grade, dreading my next speech in speech class, feeling the impending doom of that fateful day.

But I know that it’s the answer, no matter how hard it is to take. I try to envision the living out of my faith without evangelism and it’s sort of like playing basketball with no hoops. I’m dribbling and running around but when I look up, I see that I’m just playing with myself. Similarly, it would be easy for me to just focus on my personal Christian walk. But when I look up at God, I see that I’m not actually playing in His game, I’m just sitting on the bench.

I want to play. I’m called to play.

But how do I play?

I know places I can start: my neighbor Patty, my brother Brian, friends I know through Travis. But beyond that… [insert big question mark].

I do know that my style of evangelism is going to look a lot different than Greg’s. He’s an outgoing person who speaks his mind…sometimes a little too much. 🙂 I’m not shy but I wouldn’t say I’m outgoing either. And I definitely like getting to know people before sharing the gospel instead of doing cold evangelism. So where to get to know people?

I’ll let you know what I come up with.

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Never good enough

13 Nov

If you asked me or my husband what we fight about the most, we would say something along the lines of “tidyness,” “cleanliness,” “organization.” I am a very neat, organized, clean person. Travis…not so much. He can be organized with the stuff that is important to him…hunting gear, tools… But when I ask Travis to do something in the house (take out the trash, put away his shoes, make the bed), I almost always have to ask more than once.

I’ve learned that he doesn’t not do these things on purpose. Most of the time, he honestly forgets (the other times, he procrastinates until he forgets). I can understand his forgetfulness because I had a similar relationship with one of my college roommates. But when he does remember to do what I have asked, he gets excited and tells me that he remembered to do what I asked him to do! Surely I will be thrilled beyond belief!

Oh, no, I won’t be. You see, I always find something to criticize. Maybe he took the trash out but forgot to put a new bag in the garbage can. Or he cleaned his stuff off the kitchen table only to throw it on top of our dresser. Or he dusted and didn’t put the picture frames back exactly how they were before. Or he put away the dishes but they’re in the wrong place. It’s pathetic that I can remember all these things but I’m a very particular person when it comes to organization. Everything has its place–you can’t leave things sitting out but you can’t put them back just anywhere either.

As you can guess, it deflates Travis’ spirits pretty quickly when he announces his achievement and I respond with “Yes, but…” It is understandable that his response to my response would be, “I feel like I can never do anything good enough for you.” Silently, I respond, “That’s because you can’t.”

I have been made to realize time and time again that Travis will not do everything I want him to do, exactly the way I want it done. He is not only a different person, he’s also a man. He’s a rational thinker; I’m emotional. He likes to think through every single possibility; I choose the first one that sounds good. He is slow to anger; I am like a firecracker with a 1/8” fuse. All that to say, I do see my sin in wanting Travis to be the male version of me. 🙂

Lately though, I’ve had the thought that I’m just as hard on myself. Nothing I do is ever good enough for me either. Even if I listed all of my accomplishments, I would say “So? Look at all these other things you didn’t do.” If I have one success and one failure, the success becomes invisible…because I failed once. It strikes me as kind of ironic because even though I’m an optimist (in that I’m always hoping for the best) when it comes to every other area of life, I am a pessimist (in that I only focus on the negatives) when it comes to my life (and Travis’ too I guess…but only the organizational part of it).  

So it is with my life right now. I have a very blessed life. I get to spend a lot of time with my loving husband. I have a job that utilizes my skills and interests. I work in the nursery at church. I attend a weekly Bible study/women’s group. I have been redeemed by the King and now have an eternal relationship with Him. But do I feel good about any of that? Nope. Because I’m not volunteering, mentoring, evangelizing, discipling, serving, sharing, the list goes on and on of the things I should/could be doing but am not doing.

It begs the question: what, then, is enough? What could I be doing with my life that would make me think “Yep, I feel like I am doing enough. I am living for God’s glory and this is exactly where He’s called me to be.” Will I ever feel like I am doing enough? Will I ever be content where I am? Or will I always feel this restlessness of not being good enough?

God accepts me exactly as I am, this I know. I am not struggling with how I can earn God’s favor because I know that even if I filled every waking moment with good deeds, my life without Christ would still be a filthy rag to God. I am only accepted because of Christ’s death on the cross.

I read somewhere (I think in Brennan Manning’s The Ragamuffin Gospel) that “God loves you just as you are but He loves you too much to let you stay there.” Not only does that idea give me hope that the Spirit will ever be taking me upward and onward (even if I feel like I’m not moving), it also convicts me that God’s acceptance does not mean my stagnation. Rather, His acceptance enables my change–because it dispels my fear of failure (easier said than done).

A question we talked about in our care group last night was “What if the next 20 years looked like today?” The thought scares me. What if my life is the same 20 years from now? What if I don’t grow? What if I don’t change? What if I never get out there and take a risk? It would be a sad existence for sure.

You may be asking, so why don’t I get out there and take a risk TODAY?

That is a good question… I’ll get back to you.

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All I Have is Christ

9 Nov

My favorite song right now:

All I Have is Christ

I once was lost in darkest night
Yet thought I knew the way
The sin that promised joy and life
Had led me to the grave
I had no hope that You would own
A rebel to Your will
And if You had not loved me first
I would refuse You still

But as I ran my hell-bound race
Indifferent to the cost
You looked upon my helpless state
And led me to the cross
And I beheld God’s love displayed
You suffered in my place
You bore the wrath reserved for me
Now all I know is grace

Hallelujah! All I have is Christ
Hallelujah! Jesus is my life

Now, Lord, I would be Yours alone
And live so all might see
The strength to follow Your commands
Could never come from me
Oh Father, use my ransomed life
In any way You choose
And let my song forever be
My only boast is You

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Living for God’s glory

8 Nov

Oh, how hard I struggle to do this: live for God’s glory. It seems every time I turn around, I have yet another selfish, narcisstic, vain, sinful ambition or motive. Nothing brings these times out like marriage. A few days ago, I listened to a couple sermons on marriage by Tim Keller and in one of them, he says that marriage is used as a santificiation tool. Now, I knew that before I got married, and I do believe God was sanctifying me through Travis even before we were married. But nothing prepared me for this!

If marriage is a sanctification tool, then sanctification happens quite a bit differently than I thought it did before getting married–because I see all my sin coming out, but don’t feel like I’m being “sanctified” from it. I’ve heard it said before “When you pray for patience, does God give you patience or does He give you situations that you have to be patient in?” Marriage is a constant situation that requires so many virtues, all of which I feel I have only a microscopic sliver of–nowhere near the full amount I would need to be a good, humble, servant-minded, submissive wife.

Travis frequently tells me “You’re such a good wife.” While I know that he says it in knowledge of (and in spite of) my sinfulness, I truly feel like I don’t deserve such gratitude or compliments. So I respond “No I’m not.” I fall SO SHORT of who I want to be–and who the gospel says I could be! Just this past weekend, I kept saying and doing things I immediately regretted (over stupid stuff!) and got to the point where I wanted to just go to bed and sleep so that I didn’t have to deal with the stupid, horrible, sinful person I was being.

I know that I’m not believing the gospel. Reading Knowing God by J.I. Packer and listening to those sermons by Tim Keller, I have been shown that I am not resting in God’s opinion of me and in the hope of the gospel. I am living in a “world without windows” as Tim Keller says–meaning I am not living with my eyes set on the hope of heaven but rather set on the concerns of this moment–namely, my own desires, needs, and happiness. When I don’t get MY way, I get angry (and most of the time, I also get even.)

I just read a blog post about marriage and the struggle to believe in the sufficiency of Christ and the gospel by my friend Katie. She wrote, “I know I am being changed daily to be more like Christ, but it seems such a slow process…If I’ve been radically forgiven by Christ for all of my short-comings and for all of the sin in my life, shouldn’t I freely give grace to those around me, especially my husband?” I feel like I could have written those words. Except I probably would’ve said “I know I am being changed daily to be more like Christ…wait, do I know that? It doesn’t seem like ANYTHING is HAPPENING!!”

I have come to realize that while in the bubble of Campus Outreach, I was guilty of using all those truth phrases of the Christian life that have been so conveniently encapsulated into bitesize nuggets (so that the Christian can suavely throw them out in any conversation). Well, that bubble has popped. And all those phrases are still floating around my head–except I no longer know what any of them mean. Oh sure, I could explain them with WORDS. But the practical side of those truths got lost somewhere on the highway between Minneapolis and Denver.

Take, for example, living for the glory of God. I can sort of wrap my mind around the concept. But I can’t for the life of me seem to figure out what that truth means for my life.

Or take Living in light of the gospel. I understand the idea. I also could tell you what the gospel is and why it should effect me. Here is what I would not be able to explain: why it DOESN’T affect me. Why I am left with being the sinful, selfish, stupid person I was before I became a Christian. I know that I will continue to sin as long as I am on the earth. I just didn’t know I would still be so…pathetic.

I feel like I am at a stalemate, like the apostle Paul (oh, what glorious words!): “I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!…There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 7:18-8:1)

The Bible doesn’t mention specifics in its exhortations to “live for the glory of God.” It doesn’t say “To live for the glory of God, you must work for charities in addition to serving the homeless, all while caring for sick animals and doing at least one mission trip every year.” It doesn’t say “To live for the glory of God, you must work at a job that contributes something to the greater good of society.” There are no specifics like that in the Bible. In fact, to illustrate this point about living for the glory of God, the apostle Paul uses eating and drinking, 2 things that every single human must do or else they die.

Even though there aren’t any specifics, I have been trying and trying to discern them for my life–and to no avail. I am starting to realize (through the help of the Holy Spirit no doubt) that the specifics of how to live out the Christian life come out of the principles of the Christian life. I need to understand the principles before I can understand the specifics.

That very thought leaves me completely empty-handed. I have seen increasingly more over the past year how completely incapable I am of discerning any spiritual truth without the Spirit’s guidance and prompting. Each time I blog, pray, read, or think about these things, I am left without my own resources, but utterly dependent on God’s spiritual provision in my life. To be sure, without Him, I am nothing.

“Wretched woman that I am! Who will save me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” The gospel is all I got.

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Making my life worthwhile

1 Nov

My past few blogs have been about my life purpose and my feeling like I’m wasting my time doing what I’m doing. Numerous times, my heart’s unrest has called to mind the sentiments of Solomon in Ecclesiastes: “Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.” And by the time Solomon wrote that, he had done GREAT things…and he STILL felt that way!

After more informal meditation on these things, I began to realize that I am restless because I can’t see how what I’m doing today will lead me to where I want to be tomorrow. While praying one day, I also realized that I can’t assume that my life tomorrow will actually look like what I think it should look like–it may very well be completely different. God is the One who orders things, not me.

All this has contributed to a sort of stalemate in my life. I’ve been left with the feeling that I want to do something different but can’t, because I’m not in control anyway. And my life is my life for a reason; even if those reasons involve sin, it’s not ALL sin. God’s purposes triumph even in spite of my failures and weaknesses. So what is the purpose of me being here, doing this?

I’ve been reading Knowing God by J.I. Packer (great book so far!) and I came across this passage the other day in the chapter entitled “God’s Wisdom and Ours”: “The harder you try to understand the divine purpose in the ordinary providential course of events, the more obsessed and oppressed you grow with the apparent aimlessness of everything, and the more you are tempted to conclude [with Solomon] that life really is as pointless as it looks.” When I read that, I immediately knew that that was what I have been doing all this time: wanting to see the big picture; wanting to understand how my present circumstances will aid and prepare me for the times to come; wanting to see what are the times to come; wanting to have some control over my own life and purpose; wanting more than what God has ordained for me in His word.

Packer goes on to write: “For the truth is that God in his wisdom, to make and keep us humble and to teach us to walk by faith, has hidden from us almost everything that we should like to know about the providential purposes which he is working out in the churches and in our own lives.” So while my desire to make my life count more now is a good thing, my desire to make my life count more now in order to make it better in the future, is not. I am not to be concerned with the future–I live my whole life in only one day at a time.

And I should not concern myself with the task of making my life eternally worthwhile–that is God’s purpose and He will carry it out. As Packer writes, my purpose in life is to “‘Fear God and keep his commandments’…trust and obey him, reverence him, worship him, be humble before him…Live in the present, and enjoy it thoroughly; present pleasures are God’s good gifts…Seek grace to work hard at whatever life calls you to do, and enjoy your work as you do it…Leave to God its issues; let him measure its ultimate worth; your part is to use all the good sense and enterprise at your command in exploiting the opportunities that lie before you.”

So I see that my problem has been one of faith: not being able to trust God that He can use me and make my life worthwhile–and make it worthwhile according to HIS standards, because they are surely different than what I suppose them to be. My anxiety over wasting my life is revealed as an inability to trust God in the midst of the questioning and restlessness. My part is to use all the good sense and enterprise at my command in exploiting the opportunities that lie before me–and to leave the rest to God.

Speaking of opportunities, my old boss, Carol Ann, called me yesterday and left a message wondering if I’d be interested in teaching a ESL class 2x a week for adults. My first thought was: “I don’t know how to teach! I’m not capable!” My next thought was: “This is an opportunity that God has laid before me.” My third thought was: “This is my chance to not let fear dominate my desire to serve and make a difference.” I still have lot of questions about the opportunity (training, what hours on what days, length of commitment, curriculum, etc) but I’m leaning toward stepping out in faith on this one (even though it scares me to!). But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I have been going through this soul-searching process, praying for God to open doors of opportunity for me, and then this comes along. I’m still going to pray about it and think about it. But this could be God making my life worthwhile…not because of me, but in spite of me.

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Too good to be true?

7 Oct

I  just started reading J. I. Packer’s Knowing God. I’ve heard a lot of great things about the book and thought that at this stage of my Christian walk, when I am struggling to understand the practical implications of salvation and the Christian life, that it would be a good book to read. After all, Packer says in his preface that instead of balconeers who just muse upon things they experientially know nothing of, “this is a book for travelers, and it is with travelers’ questions that it deals.” A traveler is out there experiencing and doing.

But I have gotten to chapter four and the book has convicted and saddened me of how much I don’t know God. It’s not that I have been living a sort of exterior Christianity or that my desire for God isn’t authentic. It’s that I don’t understand. I don’t get it. It’s kind of like a calculus problem for me: I can understand the basic idea, I can even follow someone solving a problem, but I can’t for the life of me solve a problem correctly on my own.

As I was reading tonight, I came across this part in chapter 3: “What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it–the fact that he knows me…He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when his eye is off me, or his attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore, when his care falters…God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love and watching over me for my good…his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me…”

As I read that, my heart stops. My throat gets tight. I can hardly believe it’s true. Literally. I can feel in my heart that being loved by God like that is my ultimate desire. I was made for God’s love–to live in it, thrive in it, and be transformed by it. But my heart seems so…closed right now. I keep waiting for salvation and a relationship with the God of the universe to make sense, for me to really understand why and how. How I want it to be true!! And deep in my heart of hearts, I know that it is. But I don’t believe it enough for it to transform me. The knowledge of that truth has no impact on me except for making me fall on my knees before the Father and admitting that I cannot understand anything about Him without the aid of the Holy Spirit. Truly, God’s ways are higher than mine and without His enlightenment, everything about Jesus and salvation is utterly confusing and incredulous.

My heart is saying, “Yes, this is the truth and love that I have been longing for,” but my mind is questioning, “Doesn’t it sound a little too good to be true?” My mind has been asking that very thing for the past several months. I believe that God has me questioning these things for a reason, that He has chosen to withhold understanding for a purpose, and I can only pray that this season will bring me into a deeper knowledge and understanding of Him in God’s time.

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Faith and Justification

4 Oct

While reading the Bible today, I came across James 2:24. This is a sticky verse and no doubt, the verse that has caused some Christians to rip the book out of their Bible completely. It says:

“You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.”

But in Galatians 2:16, the Apostle Paul writes,

“…we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.”

At first glance, those verses seem to be in opposition with each other, huh? But I believe that the book of James is in the Bible for a reason and when you take James 2:24 in context, you can see where James is coming from and what he is getting at.

The verse is very pragmatic. It doesn’t deal with the spirituality mumbo jumbo that floats around in the air and never comes to fruition in something tangible. What James is saying is that if you say you have faith, and yet that faith doesn’t affect you at all or cause/motivate you to do anything differently (things contrary to human nature, like thinking for others, being merciful, generous, kind, and honest), then your faith is pointless, useless, and essentially dead.

I think of Galatians 5:6–

“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.”

So our actions don’t justify us but they aren’t unnecessary either. Faith + Works does not equal Salvation. However, Faith does equal Salvation + Works. A true faith will result in works, which is what I think James is getting at. He uses the example of Abraham and his son Isaac–Abraham had to do the WORK of almost sacrificing his son but the action was motivated by and done in FAITH. Abraham could have just said “C’mon God, You know everything. You can see my heart. You know if I have faith or not. Isn’t that enough?” But he didn’t say that. He obeyed God in faith. He tied his son up, put him on top of the altar and wood, and raised his hand to kill him. God stopped him just in time because Abraham had proved through his works that he had faith.

As I have been questioning the practical implications of faith for the past several months, these verses were very interesting to me. I see here that faith alone doesn’t change anything practically. I can’t just think good thoughts and hope (cross my fingers) that things turn out how I want them to. That isn’t faith. That’s just wishful thinking, which has no power whatsoever. But when my faith is working in me, it leads me to do something, to engage with the Truth and let it influence and change my behavior and outlook.

For example, if I am anxious about something and I read Romans 8:28, nothing happens unless I 1) choose to believe that the verse is true and 2) choose to bank my hope on that promise. When I let that verse change my outlook, it is faith at work. It is easy to say “Ah, everything will work out.” That’s pretty much just crossing my fingers and hoping that the cosmic forces of the universe will align all circumstances to my favor (and how likely is that?)

Banking on God’s promises is different than wishful thinking. Why?

1) Because God is real. God IS reality. Nothing and no one is more real than He is.

2) Because God loves His creation and His people. He pays attention to every little detail of my life.

Why do those 2 points change things?

1) That God is real means that there is an eternal being who is sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. If God isn’t real, then there is nothing controlling this universe and frankly, that scares the $#&* out of me.

2) That God loves me (Romans 8:37-39) means that all of His promises are true–they all find their Yes in Christ (2 Cor. 1:20). I wouldn’t want to bank everything on a God who didn’t love me or made me earn his love. But God tangibly demonstrated His love for me through Christ’s death on the cross. Romans 8:32 says:

“He who did not spare His own son, but offered him up for us all, how will He not also with him graciously give us all things?”

Since God has already sacrificed the hardest and most precious thing for us, why would He withhold anything else?

So then, faith is taking those truths and LIVING THEM. When I truly understood in 2004 that God is real and that He loves me, my whole paradigm shifted. As a sinful human being, I (obviously) must remind myself of these truths every day and CHOOSE to let them change me. As I am transformed by the renewal of my mind through God’s Word and prayer, I become less and less conformed to this world and more and more conformed to my Savior.

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Not just wishful thinking

14 Sep

For the past 5 or 6 months, I’ve been going through this period of questioning. Not questioning that God exists or that the Gospel is true. I still believe that He does and that it is. My questions have been more about how the truth of the Gospel affects me in my everyday life. This post in March and  this one in June explains some of what I’ve been struggling through, specifically what I wrote in my March post:

“Why does it matter that God cares for me? That I’m released from the bondage of sin? If I’m having a hard day at work and pray to God for strength, how does my prayer really matter? How does it change my circumstances? If I say that I’m relying on God and drawing down strength from Him, does He really do anything for me? Or are those words just a human attempt to make life a little easier, to make hard times a little better, to deceive ourselves that ‘everything is going to work out for our good’ when the dice could really fall either way?”

In my other posts, I came up with 2 reasons (out of many, I’m sure) why the Christian life does work and why it does make sense in some weird doesn’t-make-sense kind of way. One was that after we are reborn as children of God, we have the Holy Spirit inside us, who gives us the ability to do, believe, and say things we wouldn’t have done on our own. The other was that it isn’t about me getting random strength from God to go through tough circumstances, as if just the existence of God is enough to alleviate anxiety. Rather, my confidence and trust in God is based on real circumstances and real promises.

I was praying about this the other day, still struggling through it. Because even though I get these flashes of understanding, they go away after a while and I’m left still wondering how the Christian life works. For some reason, I can’t get past the question of why it all matters. “Jesus died for me and I’m going to heaven; what difference does that make right now?”

It’s funny how I know the answer to that question. I can read about it because it’s all over the New Testament. But my heart says “So what? Why does that really matter for this moment?” As in, why should knowing that God loves me make me feel better? He’s up in heaven and He’s the God of the universe. How sure am I that He really cares about every detail of my life? If everyone on earth hated me, why would it make me feel better that God loves me?

Again, the answer is obvious but my heart-response is missing. I don’t believe questioning is a bad thing and I don’t believe that my salvation is in any way jeopardized by these thoughts–after all, I do still believe that Jesus is the only way to heaven. But it’s a weird thing to be unsure about things you took completely for granted before.

Anyway, the real reason why I am blogging about this (again!) is that the other day, I read this in The Purpose-Driven Life: “Our hope in difficult times is not based on positive thinking, wishful thinking, or natural optimism. It is a certainty based on the truths that God is in complete control of our universe and that he loves us.”

That really spoke to me because it is what I have been leaning toward these many months but not been quite able to believe. When you think about it, if the Bible is true, then it is indisputable that God is in control of everything and that He loves us–enough that His own Son would not only die for us, but absorb the complete wrath for our sins as well. It’s an amazing thought. Another amazing thing is that the God of the universe communicates with us. He wants to have a relationship with us. He is present in our world, in ways that we are so ignorant of.

While writing this, I kept thinking of Hebrews 11:6–“And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” Faith involves 2 things: 1) believing that God exists and 2) that He rewards those who seek Him. God is perfect and holy so if He wants us to believe that He rewards those who seek Him, it must be true.

And the best part about that verse–we can draw near to God.

According to this verse, God draws near to us too: “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.” (James 4:8a)

This is another verse that I love:

Blessed are those you choose
and bring near to live in your courts!
We are filled with the good things of your house,
of your holy temple. (Psalm 65:4)

It continues to astound me that God chose me to know Him, to receive joy in this life and eternal salvation in the next. Our God is an awesome God.

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A morning thought

12 Sep

I was thinking this morning about my friend Charlotte. She’s going through a stage of life right now where there are a lot of unknowns and what she had been expecting to happen in her life isn’t happening (she was going to go abroad but then got married!)

It reminds me of a time in my life when things were very up in the air. And I absolutely hated it. I bucked against almost the entire time I was going through that stage–which just happened to be about two years. It was when I was dating Travis. I knew 4 months into our relationship that I wanted to marry him. I had never been more head-over-heels, butterflies-in-my-stomach in love with someone. He was everything I had ever wanted in a man–and there were even things about him that pleasantly surprised me. I remember thinking on more than one occasion that I didn’t know someone could be so wonderful and amazing.

But he was a little more conservative and cautious in his emotions. Looking back, I know it was very good for our relationship because he was very level-headed and has a strong character–he doesn’t get swayed by emotions or abandon his convictions because of a certain set of circumstances. So even when I pressured him numerous times to say that he wanted to marry me, he wouldn’t–because he wasn’t ready.

The reason why I had such a hard time with waiting and not knowing was: 1) unbelief in the goodness of God and 2) I had been hurt a lot in high school. I didn’t trust Travis. I had never dated a guy (including the boy I dated in highschool who I thought I wanted to marry) who made decisions while thinking about how they would affect me. All the boys I had dated were selfish and immature and would act impulsively at the drop of a hat, scarring my heart in the process.

So those 2 years of waiting in suspense, of not knowing whether Travis loved me enough to marry me or not, of wanting so desperately to be married, were honestly the hardest years of my life. Travis and I are very different people, who both came into our relationship with a lot of baggage from past relationships and hurts. We remarked numerous times during our dating relationship that if we didn’t believe in the sovereignty of God, if we didn’t believe that we were together for a reason and that our relationship was bigger than just the 2 of us, we would not have stayed together. But we clung to God and the hope of His plan for our lives–we went forward in faith, waiting. I did a LOT of waiting on God during that time. I cried out to Him daily, sometimes hourly, about my fear and my heart.

There was a quote that I repeated to myself over and over again during that time. It was written by Elisabeth Elliot as part of a bigger poem but the part that really resonated with me was “And so, not even for a light to show the step ahead, but for Thee, dear Lord, I wait.” Faith is walking forward in the darkness and trusting when nothing is certain or makes sense.

Here is the whole poem (this is what I emailed to Charlotte this morning):

I wait
Dear Lord, Thy ways
Are past finding out,
Thy love too high.
O hold me still
Beneath thy shadow.
It is enough that Thou
Lift up the light
Of Thy countenance.
I wait–
Because I am commanded
So to do. My mind
Is filled with wonderings.
My soul asks “Why?”
But then the quiet word,
“Wait thou only
Upon God.”
And so, not even for the light
To show a step ahead,
But for Thee, dear Lord,
I wait.

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