On Faith

April 11, 2017

"By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, 'Through Isaac shall your offspring be had.' He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking he did receive him back."
Hebrews 11: 17 & 18

Faith is a word that carries a lot of meaning in the mind of the Christian. It is by faith that we became Christians. It is by faith that we attempt to live. It is something that we admire in one another and esteem pretty highly as far as virtues go.

We know people who pray about everything from parking places and food to the church around the world and concerns in the lives of people that they know. We know people whose every word of advice comes straight from Scripture. We know people whose very countenance is like a breath of fresh air. We know them and we long to be like them.

Last week, I had three different conversations about faith. As it usually goes when a theme shows up, I didn't go looking for it. Three different people brought faith up and had specific things to say about it. I listened and smiled and tucked the conversations away. Abraham came up multiple times, so I went digging for his story. We've heard it so many times and encouraged one another with it, but it was time for me to go back to look it over with fresh eyes.

Abraham's life illustrates the hand of God in the lives of His people. God tells His people to have faith and then He shows them how. He tests that faith and, if I'm honest, I don't know exactly what that testing looks like or how to recognize it. I only know that I know faith when I see it and that faith in the face of real life is absolutely beautiful.

Abraham believed. His faith prepared him to obey. Time and time again, he didn't know how it was going to work out, he only knew that it would. And that's what we need. We need to be patient. We need to believe. God will make a way, even when there doesn't seem to be any way. What is meant to be, will be.

There's more to this theme and we'll come back to it another day. For now, I just wanted to get some words on faith down. I don't know what you're going through or what you're waiting on. I don't know what God is calling you to bear or to enjoy. But, I know this: God means for His people to be men and women whose lives are marked by faith.

He may keep you waiting. He may call you to endure more than you think you can. Faith is about looking to God no matter what. It leads to obedience and peace and joy. Circumstances can really mix us up, but remembering that they are all in His hands means that we can face them with our chins up and shoulders straight. What is meant to be, will be.

May we have the faith that looks to God and to the day at hand with confidence in His good plan. May this faith stir up the kind of obedience that delights in God even when that seems hard or impossible. May our waiting and enduring and enjoying and obeying make it possible for those around us to say of us, "By faith ______, when ______, ______." It's been said of many before us and will be said of many after us. God is seeing to it. Remember that.

Whose faith do you admire? 

Saying Thank You

Jan. 7, 2016

"...be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ..." Ephesians 5:19 - 20

We had a guest preacher on Sunday who did an excellent job of expounding on Deuteronomy 8 and what happens to those who forget God. The point of his message seemed to be that everything you have you receive from God and that the importance of thanking Him must not be overlooked. 

I'm going to be writing more about prayer on Friday, but you need to know this, prayer is my weakness. As much as I love to talk, it takes effort for me to make conversation with God. While I'd like to think that making the task of prayer into something it was never meant to be is my problem, that might not be the case.

A big part of prayer is meant for thanks. Saying thank you was something that I had to be taught. I was one ungrateful child because I always thought "Well, of course, people would do ____ for me. They want to." If someone WANTS to do something for me, saying thanks seems to lessen the gift in my eyes. Don't get me wrong, I say it a lot, but I don't say it as much as I should. I certainly don't thank God enough and He sent me two messages on Sunday to make sure that I knew that. 

The first message made me realize that just as God never tires of leading His people, He never tires of hearing gratefulness overflow into thanksgiving. I need to say thank you. For everything. Waking up and thanking God for the day is good and right. Saying thank you every time I eat food is not silly or trite or meaningless. I need to say that again: saying thank you is never meaningless. 

Later that day, I got to hear the testimony of Ken. He is 77 and lost his first wife to illness when he was 41 and she was 36. 36 years later, his face still lights up and he still gets tears in his eyes as he talks about her. I sat across the room with tears of my own as he told the story about how there was a clock in his church that had the message "God heals all things in His time" written on the face and how week in and week out he saw that and thought to himself "That is a lie!". He was the preacher and when it came time for him to preach on Ephesians 5 he realized that he thought that was a lie too. God hadn't healed the wound losing his wife had left on him and his three children. Ephesians 5 said to thank God for everything, but he couldn't...

He sat in his office attempting to prepare to preach the message and trying to get his own heart in order. This was where I lost it in a room full of strangers with not a tissue in sight....Ken told us that he sat in his office just months after having lost the love of his life TRYING to at least mouth the words "Thank you for taking my wife." to God. He said, he remembers moving his lips and not hearing any sound come out. He couldn't say the words. He kept at it and finally, the words came. And he meant them. He truly was thankful to God, even for this thing that he couldn't seem to get over and he realized that God WAS healing that wound. 

Ken wanted us to know that we must thank God for everything. He said, "A lot of people say it's hypocritical to obey God when you don't feel like it, but that's not true. Fake it til you make it and you'll make it." 

Deuteronomy 8 and Ken's testimony showed me that ALL things come from the hand of God and every single one of them come for a reason. We are called to receive them with a thank you because saying thank you puts us in the position of humility. Humility is us recognizing who God is and who we are. Saying thank you is never meaningless. Thank Him for what is good and easy as well as what is difficult and hard and don't be surprised when you realize that you're making it. 

What are some things you can thank God for today?

Have you ever received something from God that you found super difficult to thank Him for?

A Strategy For Beholding God: Consistent Bible Reading

These wait all upon Thee,

That Thou mayest give them their meat in due season.

That Thou givest unto them, they gather;

Thou openest Thine hand, they are satisfied with good.  Psalm 104:27-28

The resolve to behold God is essentially about waiting on Him. To wait on God is to join Christ in looking to Him as our supplier and commander. ALL that we have and are, have been and are being received from the hand of God. We truly have nothing to boast about in ourselves. Nothing. Positioning ourselves to wait on God is even a gift of grace that He grants us.

If we would behold Him, we must be always waiting on Him. Neither waiting on nor beholding God come naturally to us. We are naturally inclined to want satisfaction, but our hearts are master deceivers. Waiting on God is a special kind of waiting. It is about being aware of Him, in communion with Him, and totally dependent on Him. It has been said that we become what we behold. I like to take it a step further and say that, whether we realize it or not, we behold what we want to become. Beholding God is what happens when we truly are positioning ourselves to wait on Him. When our lives are shaped by that kind of waiting, everything becomes a finger that points directly to Him.

The hope of the Christian is the faithfulness of God. We know we cannot earn our way into God's favor...Here too, in resolving to behold God and positioning ourselves to wait on Him, we see His grace. As Andrew Murray says in chapter 4 of "Waiting on God", "...He [God] means His very demands to be promises of what He will do." Consistent Bible reading is one area where the demands and promises of God intersect.

Anyone can read the Bible. Anyone can commit to regular reading time. BUT, what such a resolve accomplishes and whether or not it exists is up to God. Christian, if you would behold God and wait on Him, you must be about the business of getting to know Him. The Bible is His special revelation given and preserved for the sake of His people. The point of today's post is this: We must make good use of His Word.

It is too easy to get caught up in waiting on OTHER things. And that waiting leads us to behold other things.

Choose a time each day, choose a plan, and make use of this means. The meat of God's Word is near, if you would wait on Him and behold Him, you must be about the business of gathering it and feasting upon it and drinking from this well that will not go dry. Check out this article for a list of plans and tons of resources. This is the plan I'm doing in 2016.

I have found that no means accomplishes so much as regular time spent in God's Word. It is in reading that Book that I have come to see God, to desire Him, and to find myself completely dependent on Him. The testimonies of consistent time in its pages have filled little books of their own. 

May 2016 be a year of consistent Bible reading. May God use this grace to fill you with such clear sight of Him that our lives are marked by waiting on and beholding Him.

How are you planning to devote yourself to consistent Bible reading in 2016?

Is this something you struggle with?

Heart Check

August 18, 2015

"Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others." Philippians 2:3-4

I've seen these verses three or four times over the last few weeks. Everywhere I turned, they just kept popping up. Sometimes, when you see a couple of verses on a little plaque or quoted on someone's status, you read them slowly and you notice something you've never noticed before. That's exactly what happened to me when I saw it on a printable a the Wednesday before last.

I stopped my scrolling and read it. I let it sink in. "Do NOTHING from rivalry or conceit." NOTHING. Words like that can't be confused for any other word or meaning. When we read words like that, we really must listen.

Rivalry (and conceit) is one of our biggest motivators. If you don't believe me, pay attention next time there is a small child around. Listen to their taunting voice when they're really proud about something, "I can do thiiiiisssss annnnnnddddd yyyyyooouuuuuuu cannnnnnn't." "Myyyyyyyy shooooooooesssssss liiiiiiiiighhhhhht up annnnnnd yyyyyyooooooouurrrrrrsss dooooonnnnnnn't."

We love one-uping and outdoing the people around us. We love getting praise and admiration and applause. When we read verses like these, they serve as great reminders of the wickedness that dwells in our hearts. God put these words in His Bible because the fact is, that on their own, His people LOVE doing EVERYTHING out of rivalry and conceit.

The surrounding verses make it pretty clear: we're to replace our doing out of rivalry and conceit with imitating Christ and acting out of humility with the same mind for the glory of the Father that He had. The encouragement we have in Christ, comfort we have in love, participation we have in the Spirit, and affections and sympathy that are ours in Him are to be the grace that keep our hearts turned toward His example (verse 1).

I'll tell you, I have always been a lover of rules. I don't care how silly the rule is, I'm 99.9% likely to keep it and to try to help others do the same. I'm this way because a) I don't want to get in trouble and b) I want to make people happy. I'm a rule keeper out of conceit. This verse (like so many others) flips my soul upside down and makes yet another aspect of my life centered on God.

"Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure." Philippians 2: 12-13

When I do my rule keeping, I must consciously tell myself that it's about serving those around me and living in a way that will not tarnish the name of God. When my motives are pure (aka not wrapped up in ME), then even my rule keeping turns into a way for me to work out my salvation.

What is something that you do out of rivalry or conceit?

What verses have been following you around lately?

Bible in 2015 Update

This morning, I finished the Bible reading plan I've been working on!!!! I spent most of the month of March in the New Testament and I really meant to write an update sooner, but I never got around to it.

My time in the Old Testament was some of the richest time I've had in God's Word in a long time. It stirred up a fire and a thirst for more of God and built a greater understanding of who He is. I want everyone I know to read through the Old Testament an hour or so at a time (good luck stopping when the hour is up) until they've read it all! Seriously. Do it.

I'm pretty sure it was March 7 when I moved into the New Testament. The Gospels pretty much accomplished the same thing in my soul that the Old Testament got started. Reading about the coming of the Messiah directly after having steeped myself in the REASON for His coming and the PROMISE of it, was the best move I could have made. I tasted the joy that God was delivering to the world in  a new way. Watching the Old Testament be quoted again and again really stood out to me.

Apart from the Psalms, the book of Ruth, and sections of Isaiah and Jeremiah, the Epistles are the part of the Bible that I am most familiar with. I didn't know what to expect from my time there...It turned out, that I became aware of the urgency with which these letters were written. I never realized just how much Paul went through and I didn't have a timeline set up in my head as to the occasion of each letter. Once again, the time that I had spent in the Word made these days that much more profitable. I felt involved in the unfolding of Scripture. I had a grasp as to what the times were like and why each letter needed to be received.

This morning, I read the epistles that were written by other men and then finished up with the very first book of the Bible I ever read as a Christian (Revelation). Holy Week is here and I'm not sure where I'll be in God's Word tomorrow morning, but I know that I'm so glad that I made this commitment to myself.

What are you reading in God's Word this week? 

Have you ever read the Bible from cover to cover according to a specific plan?

PS - I completely forgot to tell you 

that I was over at Faith's blog on Wednesday.

Please go visit the post that I wrote for her Overcoming Insecurities series! 

Chipping Away At The Old Testament

The last few weeks have gone super well! I started reading my Bible first thing in the morning again. I don't really know how I got out of that habit, but I did. Getting back to it has made a big difference in the rest of my day. I've been working my way through this Chronological Bible Reading Plan. As of earlier this week, I'm officially half way through the plan. If I keep up my current pace, I should be done before the end of March!

I've been reading a mixture of 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles, Psalms, and one of the prophets each day over the past week or so. Reading Scripture in large chunks and in a chronological time frame has really helped to iron out the timeline of Scripture in my brain! Every now and then, I stop to study a map or to find out a little more about a certain time period. I'm grateful to my Mom for her patience and help with these questions of mine! She is a far better scholar than I will ever be and I really appreciate her willingness to pass the wisdom on. 

This month, the theme of sin has been front and center in my studies. As we come up on the season where we remember Jesus Christ's last days on earth and the events that surrounded His death on the cross, God is preparing my heart! The theme can be summed up in this: the wages of sin is death.

Wherever sin is mentioned, it is followed by the call to repent, a course of discipline, or a promise of redemption. I've been shocked at the way the Gospel is promised again and again throughout the Old Testament. For whatever reason, I hadn't really seen it there before in the way that I've been seeing it recently.

So, that's all for now! I'll be checking in each month this year with a little update on my where I'm at in God's Word. I hope these updates will serve as accountability for me and a little encouragement for you!

Where are you in God's Word this week?

How would you sum up the theme of your time there?

2015 In God's Word

Last week I mentioned "The Glory of God in the Good Resolves of His People" by John Piper, if you haven't listened to it yet, I really think you should!

One of the points that Piper brought up was the importance of regular Bible reading. We are really good at letting Bible reading become an item on our to do list. We are even better at letting Bible reading become an item on our I really need to work on this list....May 2015 be a year of resolving to guard against that!

When Stephanie decided to read through the Bible this year, she also decided to invite others to join her. I'm excited to join her and several others in reading the Bible and chatting about it too!

I've decided to continue working my way through the Bible chronologically. My goal is to read about an hour a day at least four times each week. This reading time will be in addition to my regular time of study.

I'm writing today to invite you to join us. Ligonier has all kinds of great plans complete with printables that you can choose from.

Choose a plan, write a post, and come join us over at Stephanie's blog!

The Brain Within Its Groove

October 27, 2014

The Brain, within its Groove
Runs evenly --and true--
But let a Splinter swerve--
'Twere easier for You--

To put a Current back--
When Floods have slit the Hills--
And scooped a Turnpike for
Themselves--
And trodden out the Mills--

Emily Dickinson



A mind IS powerful. If it gets away from you, it is an ugly beast. Unstoppable almost.

Dickinson is content to leave it at that, but her words caused me to continue. The problem of the wicked mind running away and dragging us with it is the real problem behind so much of our anxiety and fear and anger.

 Reading about Zelda Fitzgerald and Isobel Kuhn and even Agatha Christie has let me in on a little secret - I'm not alone in the games my mind plays on me.

I'm not the only one who finds myself very discouraged. I'm not the only one who has times when it seems that the darkness is so overwhelming, there is no way around it. I'm not the only one who looks out at this life and realizes that for all the good, there is a lot of BAD.

I know the power of my mind when it escapes from its groove. I also know the agony that follows.

The best course of action is to not let our minds get away. We must do all that we can to keep them in their groove. Even a fleeting thought, a splinter, and you could be in for yet another "ride". 

What our mind needs is the Word of God working in us by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. Only this Word can remind us of the truth and direct our minds to stay on course. 

Are you into poetry? What's your favorite poem?

Do the words of this poem ring true for you? 

Do you battle fear and anxiety? 

 

I might be back next Tuesday 

with a few more thoughts on this.

In the meantime, let's chat!