Tag Archives: joy

Finding God in a cold

19 Sep

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Being sick makes me whiny. Self-pitying. Lazy. Indulgent. Compromising.

I sleep in instead of reading the Bible – because “only sleep will help me get better.”

I don’t pray because if I don’t have the energy for a “real” prayer, it doesn’t actually count.

I hunker down in my own little world, waiting for the sickness to blow over.

“Once I’m better, I’ll get back to normal life.”

Then this verse hit me this morning:

“And the LORD will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your  bones strong…” (Isaiah 58:11).

Being sick makes me feel like I’m in a scorched place. A place where I don’t enjoy being awake. A place where I really dislike having to go to work.

God can satisfy me even here.

I had categorized sickness apart from trials. But in reality, sickness is a trial. And if I let all the little trials of this life drive me from God, I won’t be near God very much.

Once again, God is showing me that I need to draw near to Him in times of need, based solely on my Savior’s blood. I don’t need to earn His blessing through my prayers. I can’t earn His blessing.

The question isn’t whether I’m spending time in the Word instead of sleeping, or reading Christian books instead of watching TV, or praying for others instead of for myself while I’m sick. The question is: am I still pursuing God?

Most of the time, the answer is no.

Pursuing God feels like work. It feels like something I need energy for. Something that needs to be done all-or-nothing style. I’d rather just lay on the couch and not think.

“For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14).

God does not set unrealistic standards for me, like I do for myself. I’m the one giving the guilt trip. I’m the one saying that it’s all or nothing.

God says that whatever I have to give is enough. He wants my constant affection, not my perfectionism.

Anytime my perfectionism keeps me from going to God, a red flag should go up. There are no obstacles to God in Christ.

None. Not sickness. Not death. Not failure. Not sin.

“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, not things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height not depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).

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Keeping an Eternal Perspective

30 Jun

This is the first installment of a weekly series I am going to start on my blog called Keeping an Eternal Perspective. Ever since I started back to work full-time at the beginning of May, God has been reminding me to keep my focus on eternity and the rewards He has promised to me there, as well as the blessings I receive by living a life that glorifies Him here.

I wanted to share a story I read in my Girlfriends in God devotion this morning:

A wealthy man prayed and asked for permission to take his earthly wealth with him when he died and went to heaven. An angel appeared to the man and said, “We heard your prayer, but I am sorry. You simply cannot take it with you.” The man pleaded so passionately that the angel said, “Let me see what I can do.” When the angel returned, he reported, “Good news! God has made an exception for you. You may bring one suitcase with you when it is your time to go.” Delighted, the man packed his one suitcase and went on with life. Several years later, he died and appeared at the Pearly Gates where he was met by St. Peter who took one look at the suitcase and said, “I am sorry, sir, but you cannot bring that in with you.” The man protested, “But I received special permission.” Just then, the angel appeared and said, “Peter, it is true. He has special permission to bring one suitcase in with him.” Curious, Peter said, “Do you mind showing me what is in the bag that is so important to you?” With a smile, the man replied, “Not at all” and proceeded to open the suitcase to reveal stacks of gold bricks. Peter’s face said it all, “Pavement? You brought pavement with you?” 

I loved that story because it shows how skewed our view of reality is. To echo one of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis, “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

We are not aware of the immensity of the joys to be given us in heaven: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2:9). We don’t often focus on the joys that come to us in this life as a result of living for God’s glory and not for our own: “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).

Throughout my Christian walk, God has called me to give up good things (like shopping) for greater things, even if that greater thing is only my own personal sanctification. My time reading through 2 Corinthians has reminded me that not only are those sacrifices worth it because they are an outworking of obedience, they are also producing “an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.” I am not fully aware of the work God is doing in my life through these circumstances but the promise that He is using these things to sanctify me and glorify Himself through me is everywhere in the Bible.

So that is where my heart is resting today.

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Unfettered Joy

21 Dec

I just took my dog Katy for a walk and as I felt the sun on my face and the cool breeze on my face, I also felt something I haven’t felt in a quite a while: unfettered joy.

As I walked along the familiar streets, watching Katy’s ears cutely bounce up and down as they do, I had complete joy. As I type these words, I still have complete joy. It’s amazing!

And I know it’s from God. I’ve been reading Walking With God by John Eldredge and it has really changed the way I think about my relationship with God. There are a lot of things I could mention but I’ll just focus on one: spending time listening to God in my quiet times. When I first became a Christian, I soaked up everything I could about the Bible. I spent hours reading and studying it. I prayed little. Over the past year, I have started praying a lot more. I pray out loud most of the time – a lot of times, I do it in the car instead of listening to the radio. I still do both of those but now I’m learning to listen. To not just tell God my side of the story but to hear Him speak directly to me. (If you want to know more, read the book.)

But this morning, as I was writing about the things the book had brought to my attention about myself, I felt myself getting anxious about spending so much time with God because I had planned on starting work at 8:00 and it was now past that time. One of the thoughts Eldredge writes in his book is looking at the fruit of a thought or action in your life – you can determine where it came from (God or Satan) by looking at what the outcome is in your life. Well, the outcome of whatever I was worrying about was anxiety – definitely from Satan. So I asked God, “Why am I always anxious when I’m spending time with you in the morning?”

This what I discovered:

“Even though I have been praying more often and being mindful of God throughout the day, I have been asking God’s blessing and strength on all the things that I have undertaken. I view my life as my responsibility – I need to make it count. I view each day that way and am stressed out as a result. I need to trust God that He will get done in my life (and every day) what He wants to get done. He is the One sanctifying me. I just need to follow His lead, cooperate with what He is doing. I had made an agreement that God wouldn’t help me so I had to do it myself. I wanted so much to be holy but felt like I continued to fail, so instead of waiting on God to help me, I forged ahead and tried to make myself holy. But here’s the great part: It’s not up to me!”

This was the little dark cloud hanging over my head that wouldn’t let me have complete joy. I still thought everything was up to me. I felt responsible for everything in my life. For making it all work. For making it count. For becoming Christ-like. But now I see that I can relax and just follow Christ’s lead. He knows what I need, better than I do. He will guide me into the areas of my life that I need to work on. I just need to rest in His finished work and in His promise that He will sanctify me.

As I am experiencing this joy, I am very thankful – thankful that God has shown me He cares about my joy, cares about my understanding of what Jesus has done for me. In this process of sanctification, He isn’t helping me – I am helping Him. He is the One doing all the work – I’m just cooperating. God is awesome.

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Understanding joy

20 Dec

Yesterday in church, it dawned on me that I have been viewing my sins, failures, weaknesses and such as bigger than the Cross. I have been prevented from being joyful because while the gospel indeed is incredible, my sins and failures are still there. And in an effort to maintain mindfulness of my sinfulness, I have been living in light of my pathetic-ness, rather than in the light of the gospel of Christ’s sufficiency.

I had an idea of an illustration for this. I actually drew it and if our printer/scanner was working, I would totally scan it and insert it into this post but alas, I’ll just have to describe it. The first picture is entitled “My perception of my sin” and it’s a giant boulder and peeking around the top and sides, you can vaguely see a cross in the background. The second picture is entitled “Reality of my sin in the gospel” and it’s a giant cross, with a tiny little pebble in front of it. The gospel – Christ’s atoning death and resurrection motivated by love for me – is so much bigger than my sin, shortcomings, and failed attempts at being who God says I am.

When I stop looking at myself, I can see the lie of “You have nothing to be joyful about” for what it is. No, in my sinfulness and failures, I don’t have much to be joyful about. But when I turn and look at Jesus, I see that I have everything in the world to be joyful about. Christ is so much bigger than me! Christ’s sufficiency is enough for all of my lack. I don’t have to go through life bemoaning how much I suck. I can focus on my victorious life in Christ. The hard, tough, icky stuff doesn’t go away overnight but I can view myself as a conqueror of my old nature in Christ.

That’s something else I realized – I have been thinking that sanctification is something I need to do. I need to sanctify myself. That’s part of being a Christian, right – crucifying the old self and its fleshly desires? But 1 Thessalonians 5 says that God is the One who sanctifies us – “He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.” I have been taking the responsibility of my holiness upon myself. What a task!! No wonder I have felt overwhelmed and completely incapable!! How can one who is unholy make oneself holy? Answer: They can’t. Only Another Who is holy can make me holy.

I still feel slightly confused but I am thrilled that God has shown me that I can be completely, utterly, 110% joyful in Christ, not because I’ve achieved anything or reached my goal, but because of what Christ has done for me. The gospel is the reason for our joy. And even our sin and failures should not take that away from us.

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Changing “I can’t” to “I can”

19 Nov

The title to this blog post might sound like some self-help mumbo jumbo but let me assure you it’s not. I rejoice that this is a real spiritual truth. The statement might be the same in either case but the basis behind the idea is completely different. With self-help, you chant this mantra to yourself, trying to change the way you approach life without any solid reason to expect life to be any different. Nothing guarantees things will change once you start to “look on the bright side of things.” (Optimism only gets you so far.)

But with God, this is a profound life-changing realization.

Let me explain:

This past Wednesday, I had my job interview at our church (I’m applying to work in the office). I learned that they are going to announce the open positions at the church meeting this Sunday to see if anyone else is interested and are hoping to make a decision in time for the new person to start at the beginning of the year. Which means I am going to have to keep working my current job for potentially the next month and a half.

My first reaction upon learning this was no different than my reaction when I first heard that YCS was willing to keep me on until the end of December: “I can’t handle another 2 months of this job! I need out NOW!”

In the past few weeks, I have noticed that I think this kind of thing a lot. When presented with a task that I’d rather not do, whether it be cleaning the house or making dinner, I think, “I just can’t do that right now. I don’t have the energy for it. I’m so tired.” When confronted with my own sin, and feeling like a failure yet again, I think, “I can’t be a good Christian. I can’t be loving and selfless. I’m never going to be the kind of person I want to be.”

This defeatist mentality is sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more I feel like a failure, the more I fail – because I don’t believe that I have the power to change. I am just a victim of myself. And if God doesn’t magically change me, I’m doomed to being this way the rest of my life.

But that was not the way the Apostle Paul approached things. He had the same frustration with his flesh – “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out” (Romans 7:18). Paul was frustrated at his inability to do what he wanted to do, but he recognized that there was a separation between his true self and his flesh. His true self delighted in the law of God but his flesh was waging war against his spirit and making him captive to the law of sin.

I have been trapped there. The sins and failures of my flesh have been making me a captive, robbing me of my understanding of God and the gospel. I have fallen prey to the lie that it is not just my flesh committing those sins – it’s me. I am the bad person, the failure, the hopeless sinner. There is nothing good in me, period. These lies pull me down into a dark pit, the light of God’s glory and love growing continually dimmer and smaller. “Who will rescue me, liberate me, free me from this body of death?”

The glorious answer is, Christ! Christ rescues me, liberates me, frees me from myself. From my sins, my failures, and my mistakes. Moreover, He not only forgives me and wipes my slate clean, He also gives me a new spirit and a new heart, enabling me to conquer my sin and live a victorious life. Now, in Christ, I can say that I am not a constant failure. I don’t have to question my every motive and intention – because I am redeemed, I have good desires. I love God. I delight in the law of God. I am a godly woman. I am a loving person. I am selfless and sacrificing. I, the chosen and beloved, am being conformed to the image of Christ.

I learned recently that because these things are all God’s will for me, I can pray for them with authority – meaning, I can ask in prayer and believe that I have received them (James 1:5). God will not withhold His love, His patience, His wisdom from me. “No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11).

It has helped me immensely to see the power available to me through the Spirit because of Christ’s resurrection. His death provided salvation – His resurrection now provides the power for sanctification. Instead of being riddled with thoughts about how “I can’t” be the person I want to be, I now live in the power that I CAN change, I CAN be the person God has called me to be, I CAN live for His glory and make Him proud. I have the same power living in me that raised Christ from the dead!!

While I still believe that God doesn’t want us to feel good about ourselves apart from Christ (because we would be deceiving ourselves into thinking we don’t need a Savior), I do believe that as redeemed children of God, we are called to feel positive, hopeful and encouraged about who we are in Christ. After all, it doesn’t seem right that we should constantly loathe and despise the temple of the Holy Spirit. If God loves us as He sees us in Christ, we should love ourselves in Christ.

Christ Himself uses victory as motivation for perseverance: “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Just like Christ’s triumph over evil should give us hope despite evil in the world, our new natures in Christ should give us hope despite our sinful flesh. Because we are guaranteed progress in the Christian life if we so desire it, because we have the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit aiding our efforts, we should be all the more motivated to strive after godliness and holiness.

“And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord'” (1 Corinthians 1:30).

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Seeing through the lies

5 Nov

This week started off rough. I was still struggling with not liking my job and feeling too disinterested and exhausted to do anything besides eke out some work and then read or watch TV. Naturally, I felt guilty at this lack of productivity – “just one more way I suck,” I thought.

After women’s group on Wednesday, I drove home crying. I just couldn’t understand why I felt so tired and lethargic. Why I couldn’t even muster up the strength to hope in God or have faith that things would get better. I had hit rock bottom and couldn’t do anything but stay there, calling out to God for Him to rescue me.

Well, no surprise, He did. Yesterday morning, I read Philippians 3:12-14 where Paul talks about not being perfect but pressing on, forgetting what lies behind and straining toward what lies ahead. I realized that I have been drowning in discouragement and despair because I have been focusing on my failures, resulting in either feelings of defeat or self-pity.

I have been believing lies in pretty much every area of my life:

When I see something I haven’t done, Satan takes that failure and says “See? You’ll never change. You just suck too much.”

He uses my stress to say “See? You can’t handle this. It’d be easier to just give up and watch TV all day instead.”

Satan takes my desire for rest and relaxation, turns it into feelings of laziness and says  “See? This is all you’re good at. Look at how much other people accomplish – you’re pathetic.”

Satan takes my spirit’s desire for Christ-likeness and says “Don’t even try. It’ll never happen. You’re incapable of living that way.”

Satan takes any glimmer of hope or joy and snuffs it out saying “That doesn’t make any difference – look at all the other areas in your life right now that suck. You have absolutely no reason to be happy or hopeful.”

And even after recognizing this yesterday morning, and feeling hopeful that I can finally combat these negative emotions because I know the root and cause of them, Satan says “You can’t fight this. You’re too weak, too tired, too pathetic. You disgust me.”

These lies are so subtle because they’re based in truth. I am incapable of changing and being like Christ in and of myself. I have failed to live the life I feel God has called me to. But I can’t stay there and focus on that. I have to move on, to focus on what I can now be in Christ, what He makes me capable of.

These are some of the truths I am using to combat these lies:

1. I am not hopeless or without hope – GOD is my hope.

2. I am indeed powerless to change myself but GOD IS NOT – He is for me and is working in me according to His perfect will.

3. My past failures have nothing to say about my present worth or future potential – only the CROSS of Christ does.

4. I am free to enjoy life and find joy in God and His blessings because I am freed from my sin and failures. “The glory of God is man fully alive.”

These truths have helped me see that when I snap at Travis, instead of beating myself up and lamenting that I’ll never be a good wife, I need to turn to God in prayer, acknowledge that I sinned and ask Him to give me grace to be a better wife.  I need to have faith in God to make me be who He says I can be in His Son, and not dwell on all the ways I don’t measure up. I can find motivation and energy to fight against sin and for joy in the victory that Christ has already won against sin and death. I am fighting a winning battle. There is guaranteed victory, and even guaranteed progress.

I am still working through the implications of these truths and I’m sure I won’t be completely free from the temptation to believe the lies for a while. They had pervaded practically every facet of my life. But Christ dwells in my heart through faith so I have confidence that He will give me the grace to believe His truths and to fight for joy.

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Happiness is from God.

18 Oct

Yesterday, I would have had reason for being frustrated. Travis’ mom, dad and brother are out here for elk hunting and I, for the 3rd year in a row, have to miss the majority of their stay because of work. This year, I had to leave on Sunday morning in order to leave for Vegas – we’re putting on our last race of the season, Pumpkinman, this coming Saturday. I am SO ready for this season to be over and to have some time to relax and not feel the temptation to be stressed out.

But yesterday, as we were driving through the mountains on I-70, I couldn’t help but feel joy at the beauty and freshness of the fall day. Granted, it’s still in the 60s, even in the mountains, but it’s about as near fall as Colorado gets at this time of year.

As I felt that joy, that lightness of spirit, that hope in the future and rest in the present, I realized that I had not had that feeling in a VERY long time. And it dawned on me: joy is from the Lord. I do not have joy in this life, I do not have rest, peace, or hope, without Jesus working it in me. I can finally thank the Lord for all the trials and dark nights I have gone through in the past year because I see now that I do not have hope or joy in this life if it isn’t in the Lord.

A similar thing happened to me in my marriage. During our first year, I grew very bitter toward Travis due to a long stretch of misunderstandings and different affection styles. I was often dismayed and broken over my lack of love for Travis. What I had though would be an exciting time of life was really just… HARD. And while I remained committed to Travis and our marriage, I didn’t feel love for him.

Thanks to God and His work in my life, that has changed immensely. I am more in love with Travis now than I was when we got married and I now recognize that the love I feel for him is totally a gift from God. I do not have love in my heart naturally, not in the face of trials, struggles, frustrations and annoyances. Like in the song, Jesus My Only Hope: “Though I am dry and barren, By grace this love springs forth.” But it took me going through that period of dryness, of lovelessness, to recognize that my love for my husband is totally from God.

It’s good for God to redirect my focus like this – from looking into my own heart and wondering why it’s so barren, from looking at my circumstances and wondering why they don’t make me feel blessed, from looking at others who seem so happy and wondering why I can’t be more like them – to HIM. God is my joy. God is my meaning and reason for living. God is my strength. God is my help. God is my planner. God is my life.

I can finally notice the changing colors on the trees and bask in the sunshine and crisp fall air while finding joy in the little things of life because I am trusting God with the bigger things. Like my friend Katie Stromwall said, “He gets glory through our trust.” If I am truly desiring to glorify God with my life, I will trust Him.

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My new blog look

13 Feb

As you can clearly see, I have updated my blog’s look and name. I had my last blog look since I started my blog back in 2007. Not only was it time for an aesthetic update, I felt like my blog name no longer accurately portrayed what my blog was about. (For those of you who don’t know, it was called Learning and Loving It.) While I am still learning, I can’t honestly say that I’m loving it. That is, I love it only insofar as it is a means to an end: knowing Christ more. I don’t loving learning (especially hard things!) for learning’s sake.

So when I contemplated what my blog is about most often, these words came to my head: honesty. truth. God. faith. reality. questioning. trying to figure things out. life. confusion. hard stuff. emotions. body image.

I wanted my blog name to capture that life isn’t a bowl full of cherries but it’s not a bitch either (to borrow a popular phrase). It’s a process. You grow, you shrink, you step forward, you step backward, you succeed, you fail. But through it all, those who have Christ, have “a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain [into the presence of the Father], where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf…” (Hebrews 6:19-20).

If I’ve learned anything over the last 12 months of questioning, confusion, and uncertainty, it’s that I am a broken human being. It is only through Christ and His gospel that I amount to anything. He is my hope, my inspiration, my calm amidst the storm. He is the reason I get out of bed in the morning and the Person I praise when I go to bed at night. He is my everything.

I have joy in being a broken person because it enables me to see the glory of Christ, displayed most poignantly on the cross, even more.

I have also learned that it is God’s plan to break me…in a good way. Like Kay Warren talks about in her book, Dangerous Surrender: What Happens When You Say Yes to God, God wants me to be “gloriously ruined.” To paraphrase Kay Warren, to no longer be content to live with the focus of my life on my world – myself, my problems, my family, my career. He wants my eyes to be opened to the reality of this world – evil and spiritual warfare – and to engage in battle wearing the full armor of God.

Being broken isn’t easy or fun. It’s hard. It hurts. But it’s worth it. Jesus said that “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” (John 15:11). Jesus also said “So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you… Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” (John 16:22, 24).

Jesus promises us joy. Moreover, He promises us HIS joy. What is His joy? It was His joy that motivated Him to endure the cross (Hebrews 12:2). Just as it was Paul’s and John’s joy to see their “children” in the faith walking in the truth of the gospel, so it is Christ’s joy to see us reconciled to God and co-heirs with Him. In Ephesians 1:18, Paul prays that the Ephesians (and all believers) would have “the eyes of our hearts enlightened, that we may know…the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.” The only reason Christ died on the cross was to save us. He had perfect intimacy with the Father and the Father with Him. They didn’t need us. But they wanted us. And Christ’s death and resurrection – and the Holy Spirit dwelling in me – enable me to want God too. As the song All I Have is Christ says, “If you had not loved me first, I would refuse you still.”

I have Christ’s joy in me when I keep my eyes focused on heaven and God.

Colossians 1:11 says, “May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.” My qualification in the inheritance of the saints gives me joy.

1 Peter 1:8-9 says “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” Jesus is my source of joy.

I have joy in God when I turn from focusing on myself to focusing on God and the gospel. Often times, that shift only happens by God breaking me, making me die to myself and enabling me to live for Him and His purposes.

This blog is not called Happiness in Being Broken for a reason – happiness is based on circumstance. Most of the time, being broken does not make me happy.

This blog is called Joy in Being Broken because joy is a deep-seated emotion borne out of hope, truth, and faith in the gospel. True joy is only possible in Christ.

That’s what this blog is about.

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Free to love God in all circumstances.

10 Feb

After being reminded of truth last weekend, my time at work has been much better. When tempted to get annoyed or frustrated, I remind myself of truth – that I can glorify God regardless of circumstance and that being gracious and patient is glorifying to Him.

I have been reading Waking the Dead by John Eldredge and his whole book is based around the quote by St. Iphnaeus, “The glory of God is man fully alive.” For several months, I have struggled with an Ecclesiastes perspective on life: everything is vain and a striving after the wind. Why eat? Why make the bed? Why buy clothes? Why enjoy music? Why exercise? It’s all seemed so pointless and such a waste of time.

But John Eldredge says that it is through the heart reawakened by the Spirit of Christ that we truly connect with God. Living life fully is doing what you love, seeing those things as gifts from God and revelations of Him. I have wanted to believe that for so long but it seemed to good to be true.

Tonight at care group, the worship leader, Cathy, thanked God for revealing Himself to us through sunrises, songs, and Scripture. I recalled reading in The Sacred Romance (another John Eldredge book) a long time ago about God wooing us, about Him speaking to our hearts through specific, tangible things. Again, this seems to good to be true.

But then again, it’s God. Nothing with Him is too good to be true because things more amazing than I can imagine are true with Him. He proved that with the gospel. “He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?” Including love notes throughout the day. Including pleasurable moments, little things that we enjoy.

John Eldredge writes in Waking the Dead, “Everything you love is what makes a life worth living… A life filled with loving is a life most like the one that God lives, which is life as it was meant to be.” This makes sense to me, because if God’s glory is shone in a man (or woman) fully alive, then their heart is engaging with the things of this world around them.

Just as Travis and I were driving home from care group tonight, I was telling him how freeing it was to know that enjoying things in this world is good because they reveal God. I am free to enjoy things because of what they represent – they are the shadow but the substance is to come.

More than that, God has created me specifically to like certain things. There is a reason why I like sunrises, spring mornings, summer nights, grapenuts with bananas, honey and yogurt. He designed me to love reading, writing, and to have deep thoughts (sometimes deeper than I’d like). He created me to be more of a one-on-one person than a crowd person. He created me to be better at thinking through writing than speaking. He decided that I would prefer individual sports like running and triathlons over team sports. He gave me my love for funny movie lines, cute animals, and my wonderful husband (who cooked soup for tonight’s care group!).

The enemy wants to keep my heart indifferent or apathetic. He wants me to drift along in this life, skirting the fringe, finding no meaning or value in anything. He doesn’t want me to engage, doesn’t want my heart to feel. I will close with these quotes from The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis:

“Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made all the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. Hence we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable.”

“The deepest likings and impulses of any man are the raw material, the starting-point, with which the Enemy has furnished him. To get him away from those is therefore always a point gained; even in things indifferent it is always desirable to substitute the standards of the World, or convention, or fashion, for a human’s own real likings and dislikings.”

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Little joys

28 Oct

Ever since my restless post a week ago, I feel like I’ve been more aware than usual of little things that I enjoy, as if God is reminding me that life is supposed to be enjoyable and not just an endless journey toward an ever-heightening goal.

I enjoy crisp fall weather, soft cool breezes and lazy sunshine.

I enjoy writing (in my blog!) and talking to old friends (talked to one of my college roomies last night).

I enjoy taking care of my husband, buying groceries and washing clothes.

I like cooking new recipes and trying new things in the kitchen.

I like keeping a steady exercise schedule and eating right most of the time.

I like changing things up, like my hair, clothes, or even my blog (thought I can’t figure out which layout I want to switch to!!)

I enjoy my job and the responsibility and sense of importance that it gives me.

I love my husband, all his silly nonsense and the way he loves me like no one else ever has–or will (except Jesus!)

I love learning new things about God, having the eyes of my heart enlightened, beginning a prayer only to have a revelation and sit in silent awe.

I enjoy having holidays and family time to look forward to. (And having the chance to go to Mexico for a week in March!!)

I love cats (though I can’t have one) and dogs (though we’re not going to get one for a while).

I love the feeling of fall and Christmas. Heaven must feel something like a hybrid of those 2 things.

I love hope. Without the hope of a life after this one, none of this means anything. Because without the hope of salvation, this world fades away into nothingness, like it never existed.

I am thankful to God that “according to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…” (1 Peter 1:3) It truly is what makes life worth living and what causes and enables me to strive for more…it doesn’t end here. I have an eternity in heaven.

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