God is Faithful; Be Humble

Here I am.  A college graduate.  My last semester I finished with all A’s, even though it was probably one of the toughest and most work intensive semesters I’ve ever had.  Now I am settling into my new life; writing again, Nannying part time for a sweet family and possibly picking up two other little jobs on the side. The Lord has been so faithful to me in the last month.

I started applying for jobs before I had even finished finals, I didn’t hear back from anyone.  I was praying, trusting the Lord that he would help me to get whatever job I was supposed to get.  I asked a gal from Church to be one of my references, and within the day I had my first interview scheduled.  BOOM.

The weeks I had spent stressing about finding a job before Willy started class were all so in vain.  I had found something.  It wasn’t quite what I needed it to be though, we were still going to be a bit short on cash.  But I had two days left open in my schedule.  One day, while checking my Facebook, I just happened to click “View All Messages” which took me to a page where I saw my “Other” messages; (i.e. messages that WEREN’T in my Inbox).  I was shocked to see a job offer, for a one day a week position, that had been sitting idle in this message box for two weeks!  I thought for sure I was too late, but I sent an email anyway.  The position was still available, their schedule seemed to work with mine. Second interview scheduled.  BOOM.  The thing is, if I had seen the message when it came in two weeks earlier, I might have said no, because that alone would not have been enough hours for me.  But I saw it after I had already secured the other part time job, and so, in that moment, it was exactly what I was looking for.

As if that wasn’t enough, God did something else.  The gal at church that got me connected with my first job, offered me a small position in the Children’s ministry as a Floor Supervisor. I didn’t even realize that the position was paid, let alone that I would have what they were looking for.  BOOM.

Opportunities have opened up right and left; the Lord has been so incredibly faithful to me.  And I have been grateful.  But Pride can creep in quickly.  Soon I start thinking about all MY amazing qualities that have caused me to receive such favorable prospects.  I start counting my good merits; congratulating myself on a job well done.  And with that comes entitled feelings.  I feel entitled to this or that from my husband. I expect, I DEMAND service.  I compare my “great qualities” to the not so great qualities of others to keep my Pride boosted.  It gets ugly fast.

I have been praying this last week that the Lord would teach me to be Humble.  I know that a Humble person is the kind of person that others enjoy spending time around; the kind of person that truly reflects Christ’s love to others.  I know that I can only be the beautiful person that I want to be when I have a right understanding of myself, of God, and most importantly, of my position before God.  He has been faithful to humble me this week; through words spoken in love from my husband, to my own awareness of my recent “entitled” attitude.

I am not great.  I am not beautiful.  I am not a good wife, a good friend or a good nanny.  There is nothing inherent in me that makes me desirable for any job or for any relationship.  The only good thing in me is Jesus.

Everything that I am that is good is of Him. Everything that I have that is good is from Him.  He has been faithful to me, because of his own loving kindness.  I want to be the way that St. Augustine describes creation,  ”All things proclaim Him, all things speak.  Their beauty is the voice by which they announce God, by which they sing, ‘It is you who made me beautiful, not me myself but you.’”

If I know what I am; a Sinner Saved by Grace—and then what He is; A Divine Creator, a madman so in Love that He will stop at nothing to restore His Creation to Himself. A God who beautifies and glorifies His Creation for Himself—-then I come to a place where Humility is safe.  Humility is beautiful, because God is faithful regardless of what I do.  Regardless of how I blow it.  Regardless of who I give the credit to in the end, He is faithful.  And He will also be faithful to humble me when I ask.  You can’t lose your beauty when it is given to you; only when you think you are creating it yourself does the illusion of beauty eventually shatter.  So putting me in my right place is the most loving thing that He could do. I am a Beloved Creation—Beautiful because He makes me so.

Relearning (The “Again and Again” Remix)

My life has not been marked by the kind of faith that could move mountains; it is the feeble faith of someone trying to trust, but unsure as to how much they really can.  Perhaps you feel the same. I have been holding on to things; dreams that are not bad in and of themselves, but which become negative when they cause me to doubt my trust in the Lord’s will and in His good purposes for all things. So once again, I’m starting anew. I’m submitting daily my desires to Him; knowing that He sees them, knowing that He cares, trusting Him to take care of me wherever the path leads.  

I think that the danger of living a life that seems fairly “stable” or “content”. Not that we shouldn’t be happy with where we are in life; we should!  God has already blessed us so infinitely! But the danger is that we start depending on ourselves and on other people for the little things, since they seem so small and manageable.  And then when those little things keep coming back to haunt us and repeatedly attack our hearts, the people in our lives don’t know what more they can do for us–then frustration grows and tensions rise and we sin against each other because we are trying to get things that the other person never had to give.  

When the little things become big things we don’t understand why that close person can’t help us as they once did.  The solution: we need to not forget that we STILL need Jesus every day.  We still need His grace in our lives to show us how we will overcome the challenges that we face. Nothing is too small for Him; every care and concern that weighs down your mind is important to Him. Not because He too sees it as a matter of life and death as we so often exaggerate our trials to be; but because He cares about our hearts. I’m relearning that this week.  I invite you to relearn with me.

It seems obvious, trust the Lord in everything; but I think the obvious is where I soften neglect to take care of myself and my relationship with the Lord, and it is also the most shameful because I am riddled with guilty ”should’s” and “shouldn’t”s of where I think I ought to be in my walk “by now.”  It causes me to neglect that piece of the relationship even further instead of getting real with myself and admitting— I am not trusting the Lord right now—even though I know He has brought me through much darker days in the past, and that He will undoubtably bring me through again.  But once we admit it, the spirit of humility and the acceptance of His love will bring us through to the next place; and we can begin again.  

I heard something encouraging this weekend as I went to a prayer class with my Dad for Father’s day.  The teacher said that the reason it seems like we are always going back over and over again and struggling with the same things is because we are spiraling upwards; “Further Up and Further In!”(C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle) We are NOT in the same place we were before; we are not the same people we were before.  God has been doing a great work in us, and we are not powerful enough to undo it with one stint of lack of trust. He is working towards even greater goals for us, and we will have to revisit these struggles again and again until they are completely underfoot; but His spirit will always be with us all the way up until the day we get to see Him face to face.  He will not abandon the work He has begun in us; and if that isn’t enough to make you stand up straight despite any and all failures, I don’t know what is.  Don’t be afraid to relearn something this week.  It’s humbling.  It’s good for the soul.  And if you haven’t been reading my blog: I do it a lot.  

Blind for His Glory

If you’ve lived on this earth for any length of time, you know about the problem of painful circumstance.  You know how hard it is to understand why God would allow such a thing, why you? You may begin to wonder whether you did something wrong, what it was, how you could make up for it.  This is the question of Christianity that will always be causing people to struggle; both those who follow Jesus, and those who do not.  How and why does God allow pain and difficult circumstances?

I was reading in John 9 a few days ago, about the man who was born blind.  ”His disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned,’ said Jesus, ‘but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.’”

It is all for his Glory, that His work may be displayed in our lives.  Now, I don’t think that this is necessarily the only reason why God allows pain and hard circumstances.  I think another equally important reason is that He is trying to draw us closer to Himself, to cause us to lean on Him instead of our own fragile strength—but of course this in itself will also bring undeniable Glory to God.  The good news is, that though our suffering and our subsequent trust brings glory to God, that is not the only way He is glorified in our suffering.  He is also glorified in our Healing.

“Having said this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. ‘Go,’ he told him,’wash in the pool of Siloam’…so the man went and washed, and came home seeing.” (John 9:2-7)

God wants to bring us closer to Him, so that he can heal us!  And when He does, we will be twenty times stronger, more bold, more lovely, more hopeful, more joyful than we ever were.  God doesn’t delight in our suffering, but he does allow it all for His good purposes.  He is in control.  And He will also be in control of the beautiful transformation that will occur in your heart as you begin to love and trust him more.

So if I am blind, let me be blind for His glory; that I may praise Him in my suffering—and if it be His will to heal me, then let me see  for His glory, and let me praise Him in that as well.

What is IN you?

Two weeks ago we started going through a marriage study called “What did you expect?” by Paul Tripp with our life group.  Tripp says something really interesting in the first part of this study that I thought would be worth while to note for the benefit of everyone, not just believers who are married.

He used the illustration of a newly opened water bottle; saying that we are the bottle and whatever comes out as a result of “stress” (in this case, shaking the bottle from side to side) will be what was already IN the bottle; in this case of course, Water.  He then related this to spouses, and said that whatever comes out of a person as a result of any stressful situation–be it your spouse sinning against you, someone else sinning against you, a difficult circumstance etc–can only be what was already IN the person to begin with.  He talked about the heart in this way, relating back to the biblical truth that out of the heart the mouth speaks, and he said that in this way WE are the problem of our relationships, because no matter what the situation, what is in us is IN us, and that will dominate the way we handle our circumstances.

It’s a hard concept to grasp I think, but it is certainly applicable to any human relationship. We are responsible for putting our trust, our identity, our life enough in the Lord’s hands that even the greatest struggles can be responded to with grace.  Of course, none of us will ever get this right all the time.  But it definitely brings forth the idea of personal responsibility that is so lost in our world, and especially in our American culture.  The good news is that we are not expected to do this alone.  And I could not be more grateful, because so often what is IN ME is my self-idolatry which demands that all my needs be met as a requirement for my acting kindly.

It is very eye opening to consider oneself in this light. Everything that comes out of you, for whatever reason, was already IN you. What is IN you that you wish wasn’t?  That you aren’t exactly proud of?  Do not despair!  If you know Jesus, you also have something IN you that will Redeem all the rest.  And if that isn’t good news, I don’t know what is!

May we no longer look blindly at the sin that quickly triumphs when we choose to point the finger at someone else. This isn’t to say that the circumstances weren’t negative, or even that the other person is INNOCENT, but that we also are responsible for how we handle each piece of life.  May the God of all grace fill us up to overflowing with His love, grace, and mercy for others, and for ourselves today.

Welcome to Domestic-And-Darling

Hello Everyone! I would like to introduce you to my new blog,   Domestic-And-Darling, where I will be posting various highlights of home-life alongside crafts, recipes, organizational tips, etcetera!  This blog was started as a companion to this blog, and though I will continue to post here as well, I have begun to get ideas for posts that really don’t have too much place amongst the content here.  Enjoy my home-life postings at domesticanddarling.wordpress.com and keep reading!

Who I Am

I was reading Luke 4 in my quiet time this morning, and I had an interesting thought while reading this section about the temptation of Jesus in the desert that’s sort of revolutionary.  Revolutionary enough that I felt it was worthy of a blog post, even though it has been such a horrendously long time.

Are we people who know who we are?  With humility? Are we secure in our identities and in who God made us to be, not feeling the need to prove it to anyone?

“The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” Luke 4:3

It is true what Jesus said, that man does not live on bread alone, but I think that part of His ability to resist this temptation was his security in who He was.  He didn’t feel the need to prove it to Satan that He was the Son of God: He knew who He was and with an incredible humility, used the words of His Father to rebuke the devil.

How would we live differently, if we knew and accepted who we really are?  I know that acceptance like this has been almost impossible for me most of the time. I am dissatisfied.  I think if I can just push on and ‘do better next time’, that somehow I can prove myself to be a tree that bears good fruit.  And while that desire in itself is not a bad thing, the false belief that I will somehow “arrive” at a place of eternal blossoming success–and the guilt that follows when, of course, I fail–all this comes from an inability to accept myself as Jesus has already accepted me.  I am a sinner, who needs a Savior, and Jesus Christ came because of His great love for me, to give me everything I needed.

Sometimes Satan gets under my skin with the pretense of driving me “to do good like the Bible says”, but really, he is just waiting for an opportunity to eat me up alive.  The guilt and self-loathing that I experience when I fail is only from this father of lies, not from the God who already knows every sin I have committed, and every sin I will commit, and who loves me anyway.  I am not living in the freedom that Christ has purchased for me; I am flying back into the cage.

I’m sure I’m not the only one out there who feels this way.  Sometimes, it feels much more convenient to believe that someday I will finally “get it right”, but I am starting to realize that it is not this pressure I lay on myself that will ultimately mold me into a woman of God.  Only the freedom that Christ brings can do that.  I long to be a woman with the kind of humility Jesus had.  I want to accept who I am, a child of God who is beloved in His sight, despite her constant stumbling.  If I can’t be perfect, I want to live freely in my imperfection.  I want to live with the freedom to admit mistakes, and then–with humility and love–try to make it right again as much as it is up to me.

I just hope I can make this my daily prayer.  The liar is very good at luring us believers into this cage of idealistic self-expectations that allows grace for others, but never for ourselves.  Today, I am deciding to own who I am–all of it–and to live in the freedom that Jesus so desperately desires to give to me.

Do you know who you are today?  I want to encourage you, that if you know who you are and accept what Jesus has already done for you, for me, for all of us–that despite what the liar says about your faults and failures–you will finally begin to live in that freedom, and to truly become the person that God always intended for you to be.  As we are rooted in the nutritious soil of scripture and of truth, it is the freedom of the warm sun rays of God’s love, the rain of His instructive spirit, and His necessary pruning, that will make us into trees that produce good fruit.

A Belated Holiday Reflection

Hello everyone!  My Christmas tree is still up so I hope it’s not too late for you if I make a few belated holiday reflections.  In the midst of the post-holiday let down, I hope that this post encourages you.  Christmas is a time of year that should stick with us because if we are in Christ and He is us, then Emmanuel— God with us—is still the season today on January 5th, 2012.  I would like to share a few thoughts about what God has been teaching me through this lingering Christmas season.

This year I was incredibly touched by the Little Drummer Boy song which I used to think was weird.  I was like HEY! there was no drummer boy mentioned in Luke 2!!  But I am happy to report that as of this year, I finally get it.  And I’m sure it dawned on you faster than it did on me, but we are the little drummer boys.  We have nothing worthy to bring before a king, but we play or best for him, and he smiles at us.  All for you KING JESUS!  That is the drum beat of our hearts as we live each day to praise and serve him, not in the “showy” things we do, but in every…. literally EVERY breath we take we are to praise His name and do it all for Him.  This is a lesson that He has certainly been trying to teach me lately.  I realize that in the cage of my perfectionism I can do all the right things for all the terribly terribly wrong reasons, but if I do everything…every tiny teeny thing for Him alone, He smiles at me.

I have realized recently that this “doing it all for King Jesus” thing is not only for Him and His glory either, though that of course it a huge part of it.  But we were made for this kind of worship because it is GOOD for US.  Weird to think about isn’t it?  Doing everything for Jesus is actually Better for US.  Why?  Because when I focus on doing everything for Him, it forces me to acknowledge on a daily basis that I am broken and that I cannot even DO everything for Him on my own power, when I give Him all the glory for my success and let lie my supposed failures; it is then that I find peace and security in His unconditional and everlasting Emmanuel love for me.  Because *radical concept* He Loved ME enough to come in Human form, in the form of a Baby, to DIE for ME and this He did already knowing how I would fail, how I would succeed, and how I would congratulate myself for successes that did not belong to me at all.  He knew already the pain that I would put Him through in the constant battle of accepting His love and trusting Him, but then turning once again to my own devices which demonstrated that my trust only lay in my fallible self, and that I believe the terrible lie that I must be Perfect to be Loved.

But despite all this He came.  And He is among us now; Emmanuel, God with us, and that kind of Christmas is for every day.  If that isn’t good news I don’t know what is!  So this is my new life resolution;  to live every day conscious of my need for Christ, of His great love for me, and for every breath I take to be an act of worship to Him.  But I am… imperfect.  The even greater news of this new life resolution is that His love for me does not depend on my perfection and every mistake I make will force me to love the Lord God more for His inestimable mercy, and to thank Him even more with my drum, with my little gifts, from the depths of my unworthy heart.

Playground Worship

When I was in grade school, the cool things to do were to clog the blue slide with as many girls as could fit, and to wait in the forever long line for a turn on the swings.  I wasn’t too fascinated with either of these things when I first began public school in 4th grade, but every once in a while I just felt the need to fly.  I would wait in line, hoping that the bell wouldn’t ring before I reached the swing set.  And when my turn came I would pump my legs as hard as I could, and I would tilt my head over the tops of the heads of those below, over the buildings, over the horizon; and I would wonder at the beauty and the blueness of the sky.

The swings became a place of playground worship. They were a quiet place for me, a place where I felt close to the God that I knew was looking down at me from those puffy  white clouds, from the infinite blue, and who at the same time was inhabiting me with His holy spirit.  It was a time of comfort.  This was the place where I hummed, I sang—tunes and words of songs that I had never heard of before, and that i can no longer remember.  When I was on the swings I always felt that I might just float right up, up and away to heaven.

In the middle school years the swings were still a constant retreat for me.  When I needed to get away from fickle friends and the fickle world I would sit and swing my heart out, and it always made me feel so much better; so much closer to God.  In high school we didn’t have a play ground, but before my sophomore year we moved to Highlands Ranch and there was a park with a swing set only ten minutes walk away.  This was when it became more intentional.

When I needed an escape, I would go to Spider Park with my Ipod. I would listen to worship music, I would come alive.  Often I would find there was no one around, and I would take off my shoes before walking across the wood chips to the swings. I would think about Moses taking off his sandals in the presence of the lord.  Sitting there with no one to hear, I would belt out the songs that had been singing to my heart.  I would pray. I would ask the questions.  Sometimes, I would even dance.  This is as close as I could come in my urban world to worshipping like David did; I only wish I could be as unashamed and as in Love with God as he was.  But I have recently begun to reflect how strange it was that all these times of such devoted communion occurred on a playground.

This is my theory:  the playground, for me, is a place of unadulterated innocence where I can easily remember that truly I AM a child of God.  All other places require me to be someway or another, without remembering with the childish innocence that still lives in my heart; that in fact I am a child of God and He longs for me to simply Be in His presence. I think that everyone probably has a place like this; a place where they feel closest to God—a place where they feel totally laid bare before Him.  The challenge is to find that place and to keep going there.  Maybe its simply a place in your mind, or a way of preparing your heart.  But what I would like to encourage each of you this weekend and next week, is to find that place or REMEMBER that place (mentally or physically) of worship, and go there in response to God’s incredible, undying, passionate, powerful, terrifying, insane love for you.  You won’t regret it.

I myself am in desperate need of some playground worship after a time where busyness has controlled my time with a death grip.  But finals are over.  I have some room to breathe.  And I’ll be darned if I’m not going to BREATHE IN DEEP in everything that I do.  And I will remember that spirit of playground worship.

Write about Writing

Hello everyone, I just wanted to thank you for tuning back into my blog since I have been so MIA recently.  And I wanted to take a post to write about writing.

I have learned a heck of a lot this semester, especially since I have been taking three writing classes, two of which were Intermediate Poetry and Intermediate Creative Non-fiction.  I enjoyed both of those very much, but I must say that it’s been interesting juggling the two very different disciplines within the field of creative writing, and then the additional discipline of a Composition class.  I think it’s safe to say after this semester that I AM A WRITER!  Isn’t that exciting?

I’ve gotten pretty jazzed when learning about how to publish, how to get an agent, write a query letter etcetera… but the most important thing I have learned this semester would probably be that you won’t get it right the first time.  Writing seems to me now a challenge entirely constructed of sheer will power to try, try, try again.  It isn’t about the first draft, it may not even be about the second draft.  You may be five drafts in before you get the piece just the way you want it to be.  And that’s okay.  It’s about attentive re-writing; that’s what can make or break your stories, your poems, etcetera.

Of course that isn’t to say that every once in a while you won’t have a moment of divine inspiration where it seems like a lazer beam just shot out of heaven and zapped your brain with a brilliant idea.  I know that’s happened to me a few times.   But, the humility that it requires to submit your drafts to the careful attention of a fellow writer, to take the critiques both good and bad; to plug through for a second draft even when you feel like you might as well throw the whole story about because it sucks….  that’s tough.  That’s perseverance!

I don’t think I ever really realized how much perseverance there would need to be.  And that is certainly something that God has been teaching me this semester through my writing classes;  that we have to persevere.  That if we make a mistake, the only thing to do is to try to mend it as best you can.  We are all clumsy creatures, and it doesn’t help that we place so much undue pressure on ourselves to be perfect, when in fact, we never ever will be.

So to all you writers out there; do it from your heart—and don’t be afraid to go back, fix tweak as you need.  We will almost never get it right the first time.  And that’s okay.