Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Carrying Burdens

The past few months, God is teaching me what it means to bear a burden and to have to lay it at Christ's feet every morning in order to function, in order to focus on today.  When I don't, this thing completely hijacks all my thoughts, energy, and sometimes even my joy.

But the Lord's resounding, "Do not worry.  I am faithful."  is like water to my thirsty soul and puts to death every anxiety.

All glory to the King who brings peace to our hearts.  He is good and he is faithful.
Lay your burdens at his feet.

Sunday, September 14, 2014

'Jesus Loves You' is not Just an Overused Slogan

We have seen 'Jesus Loves You' on cheesy bumper stickers and buttons and bulletin boards, and if you travel to Texas or Indiana or somewhere like that you can feel a little bombarded by the phrase that it almost loses all meaning.  But what is amazing, I mean AMAZING is if you could only catch the tiniest glimpse of the real truth, it would transform your life.

Before I was really a Christian, and by that I mean before I really believed in my heart that Jesus came to save the world including me and that I was created to follow him, I had this problem I couldn't reconcile. You see, I could see the potential people had, including my own potential, but people were always falling short of it.  It would really upset me.  As a teenager, I watched friends make really awful decisions that hurt themselves and others, and it would eat me up because I knew they were better than that.  I was hardest on myself, however, and every small mistake, every small word that I said that cut someone down, would be on continuous replay in my mind.  The fact that I constantly fell short would immobilize me with depression and the fact that I was immobilized with a self-absorbed depression instead of being selfless would make me even more depressed.  This dichotomy (between the way I saw people and the way people actually were) made me seem self-loathing and judgmental.

But what's beautiful and crazy is that the pieces of our character that can cause harm are actually characteristics created in us to be used for God's glory once Jesus begins to transform our hearts.  What is true is that people do fall short.  In Romans 3:23, it says "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."  Somehow, even before I was living for Jesus I could see this was true.  And now, I continue to see people's potential, but it is something greater than before because God allows me to see people through his lens- the individual person he loves and who he created them to be.  It is so powerful because it enables me to love people beyond what I am capable of on my own.  Sometimes I am so overwhelmed with the love I have for people that I totally freak them out.  If it's a man, sometimes it just gets awkward.  If it's a person who seems utterly unlovable, well, that's when it gets revolutionary.  That's how strong and powerful and sweet God's love is for his children!

What I've come to realize is that walking with Jesus is a lifetime process.   But the most incredible part of this process is that the transformed version of myself that I am becoming is who I was created to be, who I truly am, and how God, my Father in his sweet love for me, sees me.  The reason I am not who I'm supposed to be is proof of the brokenness of this world.

And sometimes I get the privilege of looking at a child of God and seeing who God created them to be even when they are lying in the dark, captive by their brokenness.  It's a humbling and incredible gift- those glimpses.  It's like a window into heaven and I pray that all his children know the freedom and light that the radical love of Jesus brings.  And sometimes I want to just look them in the eye and say, 'Jesus loves you.'  It can feel like an overused slogan but the tiny glimpse of how much Jesus loves you is an overwhelming, life-changing, universe-shattering truth that our hearts and minds cannot even contain.  So I leave you with this:  JESUS LOVES YOU.  And may you marvel at those words as if you never heard them before.

Monday, May 26, 2014

Countless Drops in Countless Buckets

"What can you even do there?  How does you going even help?  It's like a drop in the bucket."

These words, angry and fearful, hurtled at me and struck me like an arrow in my side.  I had been planning my second trip to Haiti.  It had only been three months after the 2010 earthquake, and scenes of the unimaginable inundated every news station.  Here I was, facing my mother in the kitchen, embroiled in another fight about my trip.  My parents and brother were incredulous.  They regularly looked at me like I was insane or naive, and in their minds, my inability to listen to reason frustrated them to the point of angry arguments.  I sometimes dreaded going home, and the tension made me feel like something was slowly crushing my insides.

I watched the same news as they did, but I was not afraid for my safety; I was not afraid for my life.  I had already been to Haiti, to Mission of Hope, and knew the organization's commitment to taking the necessary precautions, but most importantly, I was confident in God's protection for me.  Still, I believed that the commandment to honor my parents was not to be brushed aside.  The conflicting thoughts of what I knew to be true were warring in my head.  I thought God was calling me to Haiti, but now I questioned it all.  I left the house that night, driving to escape, crying and praying, calling out to God in confusion and doubt.

"Is she right?"  I asked, afraid to know the answer.  "Is it useless for me to go?  Aren't I just a drop in the bucket?"

Then God answered.  He told me that this is how he chooses to work-- with drops in buckets.  He has filled countless buckets with countless drops since the beginning of time, and he has many more buckets to fill.
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He affirmed my desire to honor my parents but cautioned me about my parent-pleasing nature.  Turning the mirror upon my heart, he taught me that my will must be to first please my Heavenly Father even when that made others upset.  "If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters- yes, even their own life-such a person cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:26)

He also taught me something that shocked me: the enemy can use even the wonderful and godly people whom I love most in an attempt to stop me from fulfilling God's will.  He did not use fear of safety or death, but instead turned to my desire to please, and went after my pride in being the good and obedient daughter.

Jesus told me to follow him, and he would bring peace to the hearts of my family.  So I stepped forward, trusting that God could bring peace to the storm raging in my own home.  Sure enough, over the months leading up to my departure, Jesus told the storm to "Be still," and my parents knew his peace.

Four years later, I write to say that what God says about drops in buckets is true.
Since then, God has amazed me with what he did with that one little drop.  He has multiplied it and multiplied it and joined it with other little drops to fill many buckets.  So I leave you with this charge: Let not feelings of insignificance hinder God's work.  Do not withhold the drop even if you cannot see what good it would do.  It is not always for you to know.  Your Father has many more buckets to fill.

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Blessed are the Lonely

I love Jesus.  I'm single.  I am surrounded by beautiful family and friends, and I am so grateful and blessed.  I trust fully that God has a plan for my life that is far better than anything I could imagine.  That does not mean that I never cry myself to sleep after I spend a day holding a friend's baby.  Or that I never believe that voice that tells me there must be something wrong with me.  It does not mean that I never feel so sick with loneliness that it's hard to move.  I'm still terribly human and broken.  In the past few years, God has taught me a lot about himself and me and love and being single.  Here's some of that story.

"Singleness is a blessing."
Three years ago, those words hurtled at me from a friend sitting on the other end of the couch in her cozy living room as her loving husband and two beautiful children were playing in another room of their apartment. I was in a very raw and painful place in which getting out of bed in the morning everyday felt like a victory. I bit my tongue as I thought, "Thanks but no thanks."

It's not that I didn't believe her, but I wasn't ready for truth.  Something about people telling you stuff like that makes you feel like they're pressing their dirty thumb into a lacerated heart as an attempt to stop you from bleeding to death.  If that's the best you got, please, let me bleed out in peace.

As time went on, I would cling more desperately to Christ, and he taught me what it means to worship "when there's pain in the offering," and it is the truest and most beautiful to worship God because He is God even when everything else feels like chaos and pain.

In the years of healing that followed, I would discover that indeed being single is a blessing.  (I also confessed to my friend that she was right and that I had wanted to punch her years before) Singleness, like many great blessings, is also a cross.  But perhaps most importantly of all, it is a calling.  No, I'm not talking about the lifelong calling of being single.  You see, the church and the world in general often views being single as a limbo for most and a calling for a very few.  It becomes a time of waiting or perhaps searching, but we rarely think of a period of short-term singleness as a CALLING.  Even if we do think that way, we don't act as if it is indeed a calling and a purpose to be used for the kingdom.  Sometimes we ONLY think of it as some type of time of preparation instead of a distinct and ordained time on its own.

It's difficult in my pride to admit that I desire with an ache in my heart and lump in my throat to be a wife and mother. To serve. To love.  To honor God.  I don't like admitting it because I never want to be that girl, you know, the needy one, the husband-hunter.  God is teaching me humility though, and teaching me to ask for prayer.  It is a good and godly desire that I need not be ashamed or afraid of, but I lay it before God everyday.  Still I pray, "Thy will be done," and above even those desires is the knowing that regardless of what my future brings, I choose Christ.

Recently, my church has been preaching on the topic "Crave."  That we should hunger for and crave Christ above all else.  Also, that God created things and relationships for us to enjoy and even crave for the purpose of praise, worship, and thanksgiving to the Creator.  Those things and people should not be worshipped themselves.

One Sunday, as the pastor asked us what we craved most, God whispered, "Blessed are the lonely."  In my loneliness, I crave Jesus.  I couldn't help but smile and praise him and thank him for my loneliness.  Crazy, right?  Being grateful for loneliness?  But he is teaching me to honor him in my loneliness, and in return, he amazes me with who he is and how much he loves me.  I seek Him, and I know that no person or thing could ever fill me as he does.  My cup runs over.