Tag Archives: God

God’s will, right now

7 Aug

I’m reading a really good book right now called He Leadeth Me, written by Walter Ciszek, an American Jesuit Father who was captured by the Russians during WWII, convicted of being a Vatican spy and spent 23 years in Soviet prisons and labor camps of Siberia. I wanted to share this passage from his book because it is so good.

Background: Teplaya-Gora was the labor camp Walter and a friend, also a Jesuit priest, had gone to in Russia, with the hopes that they could minister to the workers who were also migrating from Poland. But they soon discovered that no one would talk to them about religion at all because they were too scared of the Soviets.

 

Be encouraged to embrace This Day Now, whatever it entails, knowing that God is at work always for your ultimate and eternal good.

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Nevertheless…

2 Aug

For the past week or so, I’ve been encouraged to pray like Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane: honest, vulnerable, submissive.

Jesus asked his Father, “If you are willing, let this cup pass from me.” Even in making this raw, human request borne of fear and pain, Jesus did not sin.

Because he immediately followed it with, “Nevertheless, not my will but Yours be done.”

It’s in that ‘Nevertheless’ that the Lord has been calling me to live lately. He’s shown me that being submissive to His will doesn’t mean not having desires and plans of my own. It means submitting to His will over mine. He’s also shown me that often, I don’t want to have desires and plans of my own because I wonder, “What if they don’t happen? I don’t want to get my hopes up.”

Praying like Jesus means letting my desires, passions, dreams, and longings burn without being stifled. Living raw and vulnerable, knowing that I could get hurt and things could turn out differently than I request. Asking anyway. Trusting that no matter what happens, God always brings good out of bad, nothing can quench His love for me and He is more than sufficient for every need.

It’s actually a good thing that God doesn’t always grant us our requests. If He had granted Jesus his request, we would not have a Savior. It’s a comforting thought that even if I pray these prayers of desire and surrender and am left with God’s will instead of my own, even if His will looks horrible and hurtful and filled with pain, He has a purpose. God bends all of this world’s fallenness and all of Satan’s moves into His own purposes. He wins.

“My God in his steadfast love will meet me. He will let look in triumph upon my enemies.”

“This God, his way is perfect – the word of the LORD proves true; he is a shield to all those who take refuge in him.”

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Waiting with My Heart Exposed

19 Jul

One more post before resuming the posts about our trip to Alaska…

So I’ve mentioned before that I went off birth control and we are trying to get pregnant this year…

Now that the marathon is over, it could happen anytime.

OR it could take a while.

It’s that limbo, that waiting and not knowing, that excitement and anticipation and longing and hoping and wanting it to happen right now so I can start decorating the nursery already…

That’s hard.

I already see that whether the road to pregnancy is long or short, it will be difficult. I can be a tad impatient about big things like this. Which is why looking for houses in Minnesota “just cuz” is dangerous for me. I am constantly tempted to see something I love and panic because we need to get our house on the market and sell it NOW so we can buy that house before someone else buys it first! 

God’s faithfulness reminds me to take a step back and breathe. Remember Truth.

“This God, his way is perfect – the word of the LORD proves true.”

When I was involved in Campus Outreach in college, a common phrase we girls used when talking about boys and dating/marriage was “Guard your heart.” And I got to thinking this morning what that actually means, and how it applies to this situation too. Here are my thoughts:

“Guard your heart” is a call to live in the moment. Instead of waiting for That Day When, you embrace the reality of This Day Now. You offer God the sacrifice of thanksgiving for this day being what it is, right now, and deem it Enough.

In Psalm 118, the psalmist writes, “This is the LORD’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” I don’t think that those two verses occurring together is a coincidence. You could rephrase it: “This day is the LORD’s doing. It is marvelous in our eyes. Let us rejoice and be glad in his creation of this moment.”

Yes, sometimes it feels like you have to search high and low for the things to be thankful for. But they’re there. And the more we train ourselves to look for them, the more we see.

Faith is not easily won. It is fought for. But we can count it all joy, for the glory to be revealed far surpasses the fight.

So I will not dampen my excitement, or pour myself into something else to be distracted from my heart’s desires. I will sit at the foot of the throne, heart exposed, waiting for God’s faithfulness to prove true, however and whenever.

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Resting in God for Life

1 Jul

{While I’m reading copious amounts of books in Alaska, please enjoy these posts from the archives and random thoughts library of Life, Really.}

–Originally posted January 15, 2011–

God is so faithful.

I had a rough start to this past week. Being back from Mexico, I was confronted with all of the problems I had left behind: namely, my struggle with what I’m supposed to be doing with my life. Again, I was stressed out. It felt like there was a heavy ball of anxiety sitting right on my chest. I felt paralyzed. I had nothing that I had to do and yet didn’t feel free to do anything. I felt like I had to be productive. Like that’s what a good model citizen does – they get stuff done. But I didn’t want to get stuff done. I wanted to relax and read.

Little by little, God has been inviting me to release the responsibility I feel for my life. At first, He showed me I could let go of being responsible for my sanctification. Instead of rifling through my own soul looking for sins that I needed to work on, I could trust God to convict me of the sins that He wanted me to work on.

He then showed me I could let go of being responsible for projects at work. Even though I don’t technically have a job right now, I am helping out at the church and as such, I feel involved enough to be held responsible for things succeeding or failing. But God says that I can release those projects to Him too. It’s not me accomplishing His work – it’s Him accomplishing His work through me. I wrote these points in my journal:

1. God knows what needs to be done and when.

2. I can trust God to guide my day and to provide the wisdom, inspiration, and motivation necessary. I can even trust Him to bring to mind things I need to remember.

3. I can leave unfinished projects in God’s care – this is His work after all. He will take care of it.

4. If and when I fail, I can run to God and He will help me fix the mess. He is a gracious, patient and loving God.

Finally, God showed me that I can let go of what I have perceived to be the things I needed to be doing to live the life I want to live. I had been creating my own religious rules about how to live but God had not empowered me to live those. I constantly felt like I should be doing more than I was doing. If I bought a coffee at Starbuck’s, I felt guilty that I didn’t donate that money to charity. If I spent time reading a book, I felt guilty that I was making myself happy instead of helping someone else in need. I was constantly questioning my motives and constantly feeling condemned by what I perceived to be the selfishness of everything I did. Even the good, thoughtful things I did for others were swallowed up in the notion that they were just drops in the ocean of my own patheticness.

But praise the Lord, He has revealed the truth to me! On Thursday morning, after feeling very discouraged and fed up with life on Wednesday night, God showed me that what had started out as a good desire – wanting to live above the status quo for Christ – I had turned into an end in itself. I was trying to make myself right with God by setting a high standard for my way of life. I only succeeded in making myself miserable. Because I can’t make myself right with God!

And I don’t have to. I don’t have to procure my own salvation because of Jesus and I don’t have to make my life count because of Jesus. For the longest time, I thought that surrendering control meant conceding defeat. Resting in Christ meant that I didn’t care if my life changed – it meant I was ok if I just kept on living the typical American lifestyle. But I did care! So I couldn’t, I wouldn’t surrender. I had to make my life what I thought it should be – because if I didn’t, who would?

I am in awe at God’s perfect timing. Just totally in awe. In the past month, I read 2 books that revolutionized the way I look at my relationship with God: Walking With God by John Eldredge and Soul Craving by Joel Warne. Both authors talk about listening to God, walking through situations with God, talking to God, communing with God. I had never before realized that such an intimate two-way interaction with God was possible!

Because of that new discovery, the idea of surrendering control of my life and my expectations and desires to God makes sense. Before, I didn’t understand how I could let go of control and expect things to still happen. I mean, after all, even though God is sovereign, He is not a puppeteer. I still have to act. So how would anything change if I gave up trying to change things?

I see now that change comes out of an intimate relationship with God. As I am walking with God, talking with Him, listening to Him, inviting Him in to every area and experience of my life, I am changed. I sense His Spirit’s leading. I see doors open that I would have missed before. I find courage to do what I couldn’t in the past. This is exactly what I wanted for my life and was so desperately striving after. But now, it is God leading me. It is God doing the hard work. Joel Warne writes in his book that our relationship with God is a responsive one. He leads; we respond.

Moreover, if there is something amiss in my life, something I should abstain from or do differently, I can trust God to reveal those things to me. I don’t have to obsess over everything and continually feel guilty. This has been the biggest relief of all. I can finally put in correct perspective all of the mundane, practical, trivial details of life. I don’t have to question everything anymore! I can live everyday life in faith that when God wants to change something, when He wants to move me, He will reveal that to me. And He provides the courage and grace for obedience on top! So now, instead of asking God to show me what He wants me to do with my life, I pray:

“Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there by any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!”(Psalm 139:23).

I cannot undermine enough what a revolutionary shift in paradigm this is for me. I feel like I had been going through the motions of life in black and white but now I am rejuvenated with vigor and eagerness to engage in life in Technicolor! Because my life is what it is because of God. And I can rest in Him for wisdom, guidance, sanctification. I can trust Him to do in my life what I have been desiring – because He desires it even more than I do!!

GOD IS AWESOME!!

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An Encouraging Word

10 Jun

There is unspeakable comfort – the sort of comfort that energizes, be it said, not enervates – in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love and watching over me for my good. There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench his determination to bless me.

– J.I. Packer, Knowing God, pg. 42

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Breathe in freedom.

1 Jun

When your body is challenged in yoga and weight lifting, the natural response is to hold your breath. We need to be reminded to breathe with the movements. Inhale, lift. Exhale, lower. Inhale vitality. Exhale tension. It may not seem like it at the time but breathing actually makes the postures and exercises easier because it gives you something else to concentrate on than just the muscle fatigue and supplies your muscles with oxygen.

I’ve been thinking about this the past couple of days because I realized that this applies to life too. This week, I have felt tired and lazy. And I found myself emotionally gritting my teeth to “just get through” the week – essentially, holding my breath to survive.

But is that really what God wants for me? Are I really reduced to just gritting my teeth to get through life?

The trouble is that I associate the fullest life with being on top of things, things going my way, falling into place, being easy.

The fullest life is still available even when life isn’t that way (which is often). Even on the days, weeks, or months when things are hard, I’m tired and feel overwhelmed, and everything feels like a burden. Instead of holding my breath to survive, I can breathe through life’s challenges with God. 

Just like holding my breath doing a Half Moon, it seems easier and less painful to not think too much and just go through the motions. To not care. To resign myself to life being crap for the next few days.

In reality, I’m making the situation worse. And when I actually think about what I’m doing, it seems ludicrous. Why do I think that hard situations are easier to handle without God?

It’s because I think He’ll make me (wo)man up and deal with the situation. And the last thing I want to do is deal with the situation. I want to escape, withdraw, ignore.

What I forget, though, is that living in dependence on God is where I find joy always. Not just when I feel up to it, or when life is going well, or when I’m naturally happy. Always.

I also forget that living in dependence on God doesn’t require me to feel me up to it, or life to be going well, or me to be naturally happy. In fact, living in dependence on God comes most easily when I am starkly aware of my weaknesses and insufficiency. When I feel too small for something too big. When I’m struggling with the same thing yet again. When I’m having trouble even mustering up the energy to not give up.

I find freedom in acknowledging reality. Instead of shutting down and going through life on autopilot, I can admit that the situations I’m facing are affecting me and that it’s not all coming up roses. Jesus promised us peace in the midst of difficulty – not peaceful circumstances.

I stop trying to change reality. Once I acknowledge the tough circumstance, I stay there. I don’t try to change, fix, or manipulate it. That’s God’s job. My job is trust. This is the challenge I come back to time and time again. Asking me to live with God in the midst of my weaknesses and insufficiency is like asking a dog to walk on its hind legs. It’s not impossible but it takes a lot of work to actually stay there because it’s not my natural inclination.

I focus on the moment and give thanks. In yoga, you breathe with the movements to get your mind focused on the here and now. Stop thinking about all the things you’re going to do later in the day, all the bills and laundry and dishes piling up at home. Live in the now. Jesus told us this too: “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:34). I especially like The Message’s paraphrase:

“Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.”

And the best way to live in the moment (I’m discovering) is to give thanks, for everything. Specifically. Audibly. Remember God’s blessings. Remember His faithfulness. Remember His grace.

This post wouldn’t be complete without a quote or two from Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts:

“Life is so urgent it necessitates living slow.”

“Life change comes when we receive life with thanks and ask for nothing to change.”

…………………..

When I really think about it, the life Jesus bought for us on the cross is STUNNING.

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Five Years

19 May

Five years ago, on May 19, 2007, I married my favorite person.

Spring will always remind me of the excitement I felt during our engagement. I’d wake up in the morning and stare at the ring on my finger. “It’s true. This is actually happening.”

In some ways, our 4.5-month engagement flew by. There was a lot to do, buy and plan but things fell into place quickly and easily. I tried on 4 dresses and decided this was the one:

We got married at the north campus of the church we had been attending, surrounded by lots of trees and flowers:

We had our reception at a historic old farm, now right in the middle of a suburb:

(My brother and sister-in-law got married there the following year!)

But in other ways, our engagement seemed to last forever. Even just a few weeks seemed like an eternity until I could spend every single minute with my best friend and wake up in the same bed as him.

But that day finally arrived and it was magical. My parents are to thank for that. They were SO generous and made sure that our wedding was everything we had dreamed it would be. The flowers, dress, decorations, food, everything was AMAZING. Thank you Mom and Dad for making our special day so perfect!

I am thankful that I was able to just enjoy the day. Whatever happened, happened. If things didn’t go according to plan, that was ok. Because at the end of the day, we were MARRIED and were going to spend the rest of our lives together. (I did, however, get slightly irritated at Travis when a slow song came on and he didn’t come find me to dance!)

But as all married couples know, the wedding day is the easy part of marriage.  After the excitement winds down, you realize that you’re still the same two people with the same old problems.

That’s where God’s grace comes in.

If it weren’t for God’s grace…

Well, I’m scared to think of where Travis and I would be today if God’s grace hadn’t been actively at work in changing me. I am a different woman than the one Travis married 5 years ago. And praise God that I am! It has taken me FIVE WHOLE YEARS to be able to cheerfully and willingly serve my husband. To desire his happiness more than my own. To set aside my own desires and expectations to please him.

“This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.

This is the day that the Lord had made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

Edited to add 5/23: I should also mention that our marriage is where it is today because God has been actively at work in changing Travis. He is so slow to anger, quick to compassion and incredibly sweet and thoughtful. He has changed the way he does things (like the dishes) because he knows the way I like them done. A marriage takes two people working together with servant hearts and many a conflict has been avoided by Travis kindly taking notice of and avoiding the things that tip me over the edge.

I am thankful every day to be married to such a wonderful, loving man. I truly do not deserve him. I don’t deserve any of the blessings that God so abundantly lavishes upon me. But He still gives them to me. The Giver loves to give, and gives in abundance, as if He had nothing else to do but to give and give again.

Today, I tell God that His gift to me has not gone unnoticed. I am thankful to the depths of my soul for His giving me the love of my life.

I can’t wait to see how God shows His faithfulness to us in the next five years.

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Loving Who I Am

17 May

The past month has been on the rougher side emotionally for me. Last Thursday morning, I was reminded why.

Ingratitude. Rejecting God’s grace to me.

Man. It’s a hard fight to live in truth. The slide back down into lies is easy and short.

But once again, God has reminded me of the truth.

And so far, I’m still living in the glorious freedom of truth:

I. AM. LOVED. BY. GOD. IN. CHRIST.

That truth, and that truth alone, is life-changing.

My flesh wants to add qualifiers and exceptions and clauses and caveats.

There are none.

My flesh wants to make it more complicated, more needing of explanation, more detailed.

It isn’t.

It’s so simple, and yet so difficult, to live there.

But this truth… this is worth fighting for. Worth spending my life ruminating on. Worth clinging to at the expense of other noble thoughts.

“The true Love Dare. To move into His presence and listen to His love unending and know the grace uncontainable. This is the vault of the miracles. The only thing that can change us, the world, is this — all His love.” (Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts)

Today, love who God created you to be — because He loves you.

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Week 11 Training: 4/30 – 5/6

8 May

I guess I spoke too soon when I said that I hadn’t missed a training run. Because now I have.

It started off with shaving a mile off two of my mid-week runs last week. And then last night, I totally blew off both my run and the cross-training I was going to do in lieu of my run. But it was for a good reason – we got new couches! Our friends sold their house to travel the country as a traveling nurse (the wife) in an RV so they gave us their couches. The evening was spent rearranging furniture. I’ll post pics soon. We like the new setup a lot (and are praying that the dogs don’t destroy the couches like they did last time).

Anyway, here’s last week’s training rundown:

Monday: 3.04 mile easy run (35:56; 11:49/mile); 45 minutes easy yoga

This was supposed to be a 4 mile run.

Tuesday: 8 mile run w/5 x 800 (1:37:45; 10:51/mile)

800s: 5:04, 5:08, 4:54, 4:40, 4:34. The first couple of 800s were done at a comfortably fast pace. The last couple, I was really pushing it. The rest of the run was at an 11 min pace.

Wednesday: Rest

Thursday: 2.5 mile easy run (31:15; 12:18/mile)

This was supposed to be a 4 mile run.

Friday: 16 mile long run (3:14:18; 12:08/mile)

Saturday: Rest

Sunday: 45 minute walk with pooches

………………………..

This training week really tested my mental resolve to run a marathon. This was the first week when I actually doubted my ability to do this. That run on Friday, and specifically Mile 2, really freaked me out. “What if I can’t run this marathon? Maybe my body just can’t handle this. What if I’m tired for the rest of my training plan? What if my legs feel like this until the race?”

Obviously, I’m not giving up and I’m taking practical action to get my legs rested up. But I’ve felt God challenging me.

It started the Saturday I ran 15 miles – when I stopped at the gas station between my warmup and the half marathon course, the gas station guy asked me, “Do you run happy?” At first, I was really confused. Then I realized I was wearing my Brooks running shirt that said Run Happy. I laughed a bit, said “Yeah I do,” and left.

But his comment stuck with me. On my warmup, I had been thinking about how tired my legs felt and how I didn’t know if I could run 13 more miles. “I don’t know if I can do this.” That phrase sounded like something I’ve said about the Christian life. “I don’t know if I can do this.” I’ve discovered that the remedy to that is to depend on God – because guess what? I’m not expected to be able to do it. God wants me to admit my need and look to Him for strength and sufficiency, not within myself. Why would running be any different?

And that’s where I get hung up. For some reason, I have a really hard time believing that God cares about running. It’s the same way I had felt about my eating habits – my struggle seemed so trivial, so vain. Why would God want to be involved? How could I ask His blessing and help with something that is clearly my own undertaking or doing?

I often think about the quote from Eric Liddell in Chariots of Fire: “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure.” Well, God didn’t make me fast but He did give me a love for endurance sports. When running doesn’t suck, I really do love it. So why wouldn’t God care about it?

It’s my own mental block so I won’t go any further into my own struggle. I believe that the truth (whether I can truly buy it or not) is that God cares about everything we care about. There’s nothing too trivial or menial or vain to Him. And He wants to be involved in every single aspect of our lives, whether that is running or reading or cleaning our house or working at our job. Especially when it’s something that I spend so much time doing, thinking about and writing about. I want to involve God in my running, despite all of my objections about why He shouldn’t want to or why it’s “not worthy” of being prayed for.

So I’m praying for it. I’m acting in light of what I objectively know to be truth, regardless of how I feel subjectively. I see that training for a marathon can be an opportunity for my faith to grow. Instead of entertaining “What if’s?” about my ability and race conditions, I can run to God in faith. Faith that He will sustain me to race day. Faith that no matter what happens, God is ultimately the one in charge and is actively working everything together for my good. Faith to remember that running doesn’t define me – it’s something I do but it’s not who I am. 

I’m also praying for the grace to be thankful. That’s what was so convicting about the gas station guy’s comment – Do I run happy? Well, actually, no I don’t. Most of the time when I’m out running, I’m complaining and whining (to myself) about this ache and that twinge, my slow pace, the bug swarms, the d@mn traffic, the stupid gits in my way, etc. etc.

There’s a verse in 1 Timothy that reads:

“For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.” (1 Timothy 4:4-5 ESV)

Thanksgiving is the key to receiving things in faith. So my desire above all, more than a fast pace or race goals or a perfect training plan, is that my running – and life – would reflect how grateful and thankful I am to God for His provision. It’s His blessing that I have the time, energy, resources and desire to be out there, pushing my physical body to its limits. It’s His blessing that I haven’t gotten injured or sick. His blessing that I get to run my first marathon in Alaska, of all places.

Circumstances don’t create joy or rob us of it. It’s our perspective that does.

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Handpicked by Love

25 Apr

When work is maddening and I am angry at the world…

When I longingly look out on a gorgeous day from inside an office icebox…

When I rush yet again from one thing to the next, feeling frazzled and exhausted…

When I grumble that I have a job that I don’t feel passionate about…

This quote from Elisabeth Elliot’s book, Keep a Quiet Heart, helps me remember that God has lovingly handpicked the circumstances of my life:

“When there is a deep restlessness for which we find no explanation, it may be due to the greed of being – what our loving Father never meant us to be. Peace lies in the trusting acceptance of His design, His gifts, His appointment of place, position, capacity. It was thus that the Son of Man came to earth – embracing all that the Father will Him to be, usurping nothing – no work, not even a word – that the Father had not given Him.”

So often I cause the loss of my own peace by rejecting the life God has given me.

“This isn’t what I want” is the refrain that echos through my ungrateful heart.

A verse that I have been repeating to myself over and over is “The meek shall obtain fresh joy in the Lord.” It reminds me that joy does not come from getting my own way. It doesn’t come from my life looking exactly like I think it should. It doesn’t come from deciding my own destiny, forging my own will, or determining my own struggles.

Joy comes from accepting.

Accepting that I’m not in control. That not being in control is a good thing. That even though my current circumstances seem to plead the contrary, God only has good things planned for me. 

But I can’t accept these things if I don’t have faith. Faith is believing that God will do what He has promised. Which turns my mind to another verse:

“I call out to God Most High, to God, who fulfills His purpose for me.”

Even on these days when it feels like life sucks, and I don’t know why I’m doing what I’m doing, and I feel like I’m spinning my wheels, I cling to the truth that God is RIGHT NOW fulfilling His purpose for me. My life has meaning. I am here for a reason, even if I don’t know what it is. I only need to focus on delighting in the LORD and He will accomplish the rest.

“He who calls you is faithful; He will surely do it.”

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