Mar 11, 2012 | The Good Word
Sometimes when I’m advising or encouraging someone about a life decision of some sort, I feel the heavy tug to lean on pushing them in the direction that I’ve gone. From a path for getting to the mission field to a parenting method or an I’m-finished-with-school, now-what? I tend to point to the road more often taken — more specifically, the road more often taken by me.
Do you ever ponder why it was that Jesus never healed people the same way twice? Or why each tribe of Israel had its own portion of the Promised Land? It was divided into different sections, different sizes, some east of the Jordan, some west. Some hill country, some bordering the Salt Sea or the Jordan River. It wasn’t equally divided by 12, either. Nor did each tribe receive his portion in the same way. Some received theirs and then went to help everyone else fight for theirs. Others took their time about conquering the other people groups. (Or didn’t quite pull it off completely.)
And even when it came to the actual battles, there wasn’t just one method for taking the land. Marching around the city and shouting took down the walls of Jericho, but an ambush won the battle at Ai.
The lesson in all of this?
Well, I think sometimes we’re going to have to find our own road. And sometimes we’re going to have to let the people around us find their own road, too.
Maybe it’s taking a year off before heading to college to figure things out. Maybe it’s jumping straight in.
Maybe it’s dating for two years before it’s time to get married, maybe it’s two weeks.
Maybe it’s this method of parenting with this child, maybe it’s a different method with another one.
Maybe it’s a conviction about what movies you’ll watch or what places you’ll go.
Whatever the case, we have to honor and respect each other enough to trust that just because someone isn’t taking the road we’ve taken, that doesn’t mean they’re on the wrong road. Now please don’t think I apply this statement to the clear-cut commandments of God. But for those many times in life when the next step’s not clear cut and there’s room for the leading of the Holy Spirit, perhaps we ought to just look for guidance in the Word, offer the best advice we can come up with, and trust God to lead His sheep.
I’ve given the wrong advice before. I’ve tried to encourage others to take my road instead of finding their own.
I’ve also taken bad advice before. I’ve tried to follow someone else’s road instead of finding my own.
But what does the Word say?
For God does speak — now one way, now another — though man may not perceive it. {Job 33:14}
What a token of God’s favor that He is willing to speak to us, any of us. And how true it is that we sometimes just don’t get it! For ourselves, for those around us…we often are like the disciples, hearing His words, not completely understanding the depths of truth behind them. And sometimes He speaks in this way, leads this way, other times it’s that way.
Why does He have me walk this road, and you that road? It is a mystery we may only see on the other side. But let’s decide not to get in the way — and be a stumbling block on the path He is calling someone else to.
Keep your heart sensitive to His leading, keep your life open to His moving — and encourage the leadings and convictions of those around you, knowing that even if it’s not the road you’re called to walk today, it might be the road for you someday.
One of the words from the New Testament translated as disciple is transliterated from the Greek Akoloutheo. It has these definitions:
- to follow one who precedes, join him as his attendant, accompany him
- to join one as a disciple, become or be his disciple with his party
When Jesus extended the call to a person to follow Him, one way of translating it would be that He was saying “Come and walk the road with Me.” So inherent in receiving the call to become a disciple of Jesus was the specific understanding that Jesus was calling a person to walk with Him, to be in His company, and to follow His lead.
He has a road in mind for each of us and, search the world over I’m sure we’ll find that no two roads look the same. The best way for each of us to find our road is to keep on listening to, looking for, and walking alongside Him.
xCC
Mar 8, 2012 | The Good Word
Yesterday I shared the first part of a faith-filled experience from earlier this week. {Here’s part one — read it first, pweas.} I’d been convicted that we needed to change the way we were giving, and we had a big check to write, and writing it was going to take faith. When I talked with the Hubs about it, it was pretty much awesome. And scary. Because…
He didn’t feel convicted about the issue the way that I did, but this is what he said:
“I don’t feel convicted about this the way you do, but I trust your faith and I trust that you hear from God. If you really feel like this is what we are supposed to do, then we’ll do it.”
{Am I blessed or what?}
We’d talked about it on Saturday night, decided to pray about it again in the morning and see what we felt we were supposed to do, and those were the Hubs’ words on the way to church.
I felt grateful to have such a cool Hubs, and at the same time nervous because it was a big deal and I felt like the ball was in my court. So to speak. {Do I use a ridiculous amount of sports analogies?}
In the end, we wrote the big check in faith. I felt so certain it was the leading of the Lord, and I just couldn’t deny it. I knew it was risky because we might not have enough to pay bills later or maybe even to buy food {is that fear talking or what?} — it was giving first and trusting for the rest.
{Still learning to do this faith-walk…I think I make that face sometimes too.}
As we settled into the car for the drive home on Sunday, HH looked at me and said “You were right.”
I asked, “What are you talking about?”
He directed me to take a look at the notes he’d made during church. (I was in the nursery watching the babies so I didn’t hear the sermon.) This scripture was waiting for me to read it:
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil. This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones. Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your crops; then your barns will be filled to overflowing and your vats will brim over with new wine. {Proverbs 3:5-10}
Even though we didn’t know exactly how things were going to work out, we had fresh encouragement from the Lord that they would. And I was so deeply convinced that God was speaking, that I determined in my heart to believe Him even if things didn’t work out the way I wanted them to.
Like the Hebrew boys who faced the furnace and said “Even if our God doesn’t save us, we still won’t bow down and worship you, O King,” my heart was saying, “Lord, I will trust you, even if the furnace is in front of me, and there isn’t a deliverance in the plan. I’ll do what you say.”
Faith, the evidence of things you don’t see yet…
The next morning, things got off to their normal start… the Monday song, breakfast with the boys, getting ready for the day, scooting the Bear to preschool and running an errand on the way home.
The Hubs came into the kitchen mid-morning and asked if I wanted to hear some good news. (He works from home on Mondays.)
“I’m always up for good news!” was my of-course-spill-the-beans-fast reply.
“We were just given a special gift of [thus-and-such].”
{Those brackets are just protecting you guys from knowing the numbers and then calculating our income and possibly feeling sorry for us.}
But that thus-and-such? That thus-and-such was about $90 more than the number we’d written on that check the day before.
Even though the gift had been sent to our ministry account a week and a half before hand, it was only that morning that HH was working on the payroll and saw it.
God wanted us to step out in faith when we couldn’t see the resolution. But He saw it already, had provision on the way — we just needed to trust in Him.
I see it more clearly now, I think, perhaps more than any of the times I’ve held on to faith before. Taking action based on faith is being absolutely confident in something you cannot see, or touch or feel or logically know for sure about yet.
Trust hurts sometimes. It reminds us that we’re not in control of our own lives. Each of these trials forces us to decide whether or not we believe the God who actually is in control is good.
If life has you in the fire and you feel like you’re holding on to faith right now, I encourage you to keep holding on. Because your actions might not make sense to world — but it is absolutely reasonable to put faith in the only thing about this earth that is only always ever faithful. That glorious One who dwells outside of time…the one who created this earth.
Though we may not be out of the woods yet (and I may still have another story to tell about this) my faith muscles feel a little bit stronger today. Thankfully it’s not about my ability to have faith, it’s about my certainty that He is absolutely faithful.
xCC
Mar 7, 2012 | The Good Word
Maybe I’ve got a sign on my metaphorical back that says “Stretch Me.” Maybe God has something big in mind ahead of me and my spiritual muscles just need to jump some more hurdles and do some more high intensity workouts. With multiple repetitions. But this walk of faith seems to keep throwing me curve balls.
Or some other reasonably appropriate sports analogy.
I was asked recently to speak at a Bible study about Faith and Trust. I smiled and thought, “Great. I have all these challenging things I’m facing right now. But God will resolve them before it’s time for me to speak about this at the Bible study, and then I’ll have some great stories about how He met me in the challenges.”
And then some time went by, and a little more, and things weren’t resolved yet.
I still have some time before I am supposed to speak, but not seeing resolution, I began to wonder if maybe I should be looking to learn a different lesson.
{Although this is the Hubs and the Bear, I think it could also easily be a picture of God and me. The walk of faith, one step at a time…}
Alongside just being hopeful that something cool would happen for me to share, you’ll be glad to know I also spent some time actually preparing for the talk. Along with reading other writers’ discussions of faith and belief, I began taking special note of how Jesus spoke about faith, and what God said to His people as He instructed them to have faith in Him as they were moving toward the Promised Land.
And isn’t the Word so amazing in its ability to do this: a verse I’d read in perhaps every English translation of the Bible, and memorized and pondered for years jumped out at me with fresh meaning again.
“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” {Heb. 11:6, NIV}
or
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” {same verse, NKJV}
This must mean that if I am supposed to speak about faith, I am supposed to speak about the process, and not the end result. Because faith is being sure of what we’re still hoping for. Faith is trusting that we are going to see something that we don’t yet see.
Who hopes for something they already have? {Unless they’re waiting on a bunch of boxes that are sailing across the ocean with most of their worldly possessions inside…I suppose that was having faith that they would make it here.}
We hope for what we don’t yet have in our hands. We hold on, and wait with hope, for something that hasn’t happened yet.
And faith is the stuff that keeps us holding, keeps us trusting, gives us a sense of knowing — it is coming. It will happen. He is faithful.
One of the big areas where we’ve been challenged to trust for a long time now, and where we’ve been especially holding on to faith recently, is in the area of finances. Part of the Hubs’ salary comes from the missions organization he works for, but part of it he raises himself. {In case that doesn’t make sense, that basically means a team of awesome and generous people financially support us, often on a regular basis, to make our ministry possible. [The same way we were supported as missionaries in Scotland and South Africa.]}
Each month the numbers are different, and each month I get the same sense: the Lord wants us to trust in Him. Although it feels like it’s a harder way to live than going out and getting a nine-to-five with a consistent paycheck, I consistently sense God saying You are where I want you. I want you to keep trusting Me.
Not long after the Hubs and I married, we decided to add an additional percent to our tithe each year we were married. So it increased from 10% to 11% to 12% and so on. We’re now at 14%, and though the first ten always goes to the church, we subtract our gifts to Compassion (sponsoring a child) from the other 4%, and then consider where the rest should go. Because our income is different every month, and we have to know the full amount to calculate the 14% and deduct the Compassion gift, we usually wait until the end of the month to figure it all out and write a check.
But a while ago I started to get a little uneasy about that process. God clearly demonstrates His desire, throughout Scripture and in no uncertain terms, to be first in our lives. From the beginning, He was pleased with Abel’s offering because he brought the firstfruits of the harvest. He told the people of Israel that the firstborn of all Israel was His — the first lamb, the first son. And in exchange for the first son of every family in Israel, He accepted the Levites as His set-apart people…I’m going off on a tangent now.
Where was I?
All of these firsts make a lot of sense to me. Because giving God the first means that you trust Him for the rest. If the first lamb that your sheep gives birth to is given to God, you are trusting that God will bless that sheep to have more lambs, which will provide for your needs in the future. If you give God the first fruits of the harvest — the first crops, for example — you are saying you trust God that you will be able to harvest the rest of those crops, and there will be plenty for you and your family.
He tells us to seek His kingdom first and then what? All these things will be added…
So I had a strong sense of conviction that we were putting our tradition in front of God’s command, which was very Pharisee of us. It seemed clear that we ought to immediately give that first ten percent, our tithe, and then we could calculate the other four at the end of the month, our offering.
But here’s where things got challenging. Since we’d been doing it our way for a while, we had our February amount to give on Sunday. And we get paid a significant part of our salary at the beginning of the month. So we were about to pay the February amount, and then go ahead and heap in the March amount, too. Which was like doubling things up at once. Yikes.
I just clearly sensed the whisper of the Lord about this — trust Me. Let go.
This post is getting kind of long, {Hello, word count tipping the scales at 1,184} so I’m going to pick up on this story again tomorrow. But to sweeten the cliffhanger, I want to say in one sweet section of the story to come, for perhaps the first time in as long as I can remember, the Hubs looked at me and said, “You were right.” It was a big deal.
Will we trust the Lord and give? Will the Hubs feel differently and veto my conviction?
And can I ask you: Are you being challenged to have faith right now? (If not, do you think there’s anything wrong with that?) If so, what’s keeping you holding on?
xCC
P.S. Do you have any clue what that title was trying to allude to? Am I a nerd? Or OLD?
Mar 6, 2012 | The Good Word, The Parenthood
I had a bit of a laugh this morning, thinking about the old saying that who you really are is who you are when nobody’s looking. And though I wasn’t laughing in the midst of the situation that led me to think about it, I do think there’s some truth to it. Would you like to hear the tale? Well, good.
Among the happy findings inside the boxes that have arrived from South Africa is the seat that fits into our stroller. I have to explain our stroller for this to make sense. When we were expecting the Bear nearly four years ago (Wow!) the Hubs took on the fatherly duty of stroller research. After a significant amount of reading and googling and reading some more, he settled on the Quinny Zapp
. Quinny is a European brand that seems to be gaining presence in the States. This particular stroller (which we found used on ebay for a steal of a deal) was particular useful for its combination of sturdiness and compactness. (Ours looks slightly different from the model I linked to there, but that’s the general idea.)
The two things that sold us on it were 1) it is small enough to fit up into its own tidy little bag and slip into an overhead storage compartment on a plane and 2) you can remove the seat, and with some click-in adaptors, insert the infant carrier into the stroller frame. So this stroller worked for us right from the Bear’s infancy into his toddlerhood.
Mayhaps you remember seeing ginormous preggers me, and Agnes, walking the Bear with our little stroller?
Anywho. That seat the Bear is sitting in was out when we moved, and went into the boxes that would come across on the ship, because we were using the infant carrier for the Tank, popping that in and out at the time.
Now this morning the temperatures were very chilly, but the Tank was very fussy. I think he might still be teething. I knew it would be a good idea to get him out for a walk, but I wanted to make sure he would be plenty warm with the temps in the 30s (well below the double digits in Celsius). The Quinny has an accessory that whoever we bought it from on ebay threw in at no extra charge. It’s called a Cosy Toes, and it straps into the stroller, but it’s kind of like a sleeping bag to keep the little one extra cozy. We thought Awesome…this will come in handy in Scotland! But I can hardly remember using it there.
Even though my Mom has let us borrow an umbrella stroller, I wanted to slide the seat back into the Quinny and snap in the Cosy Toes to take the Tank for a walk and keep him warm. {Doesn’t slide and snap sound like a simple process?} I’d never done it before, since the Hubs assembled the stroller the first time we got it, so I googled the instructions and got to work.
While Tiger Tank crawled around me on the floor, I began a procedure which took at least thirty minutes and left my arms shaking by the end. The instructions were the kind that just have pictures and numbers and lines, but not words, and even if I do have half a PhD, they were dang hard. I was getting really, really frustrated trying to figure out what was supposed to slip in and snap in where and do-I-have-to-slip-all-these-in-at-the-same-time and oh-no-should-I-have-snapped-that-before-I-snapped-this and is-this-the-most-ridiculous-stroller-known-to-mankind?
With the baby whining and fussing and me trying to pass him a few more bites of this or that to keep him happy, I eventually managed to get the seat properly installed, maintaining my cool with exception of me turning my face to the ceiling on one occasion and shouting the only expletive uttered throughout the ordeal: Fart!!!!
That was shortly followed by a Lord, please help! Not long after that I managed to get it done.
I then spent another five minutes trying to figure out how the ginormous shoulder straps were supposed to squeeze through the tiny slits to get the Cosy Toes properly put together with the seat. (Brute force succeeded in that case.)
I eventually squeezed the Tank in, and, praise the Lord we still had time to go for a short walk. My hands were shaking by the end of it and I probably needed to get out of the house for a moment even more than he did. He enjoyed the stroll, and I enjoyed seeing a big woodpecker and watching sun rays stream through tree branches, and the fresh air was indeed a good way to calm my antsy nerves.
I reflected on how easy it is to let frustration bring out the worst in you — for even a simple trial to bring you to your knees and have you crying out to the Lord because otherwise you might get angry and throw the stroller in the trash can, or just give up when pressing in for just a little longer would bring you success.
I remember Jesus speaking faith-words to His disciples, knowing He would soon be leaving them:
“Indeed, the hour is coming, yes, has now come, that you will be scattered, each to his own, and will leave Me alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me. These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” {John 16: 32 & 33, NKJV}
There was never a question about whether or not we would have trials and tribulations in this life. Life is hard, and Jesus clearly told us you will have tribulation — but in Me you can still have peace.
And if nothing else, I think there is a great deal of value in letting those refining fires work like a mirror — giving you an insight into who you are, perhaps how far you’ve come, maybe that you still have a distance to go.
A few years ago I would absolutely have thrown in the towel and decided to wait until the Hubs got home so that he could do it for me. A few years before that, I would not have made it through something like that without using some foul language, and probably then giving up even if I didn’t have a Hubs to come do it for me. But there is something to be said for squaring up to a challenge — a big one or a small one, fighting discouragement and pressing in to achieve something.
Sometimes the race of faith we’re running is one with hurdles on the track. We will gain the strength to make it over the next hurdle by jumping this one, not by trying to run around it. Even if we stumble on this hurdle, we can still learn something that will be useful when we come to the next one.
Can you imagine someone trying to run a 400 meter hurdles by scooting around each hurdle? How much would that slow them down — if it were even allowed? Would they have to go back and go over each hurdle properly before it could be said that they completed the race?
Are you willing to embrace the trials in front of you, trusting that God will not be wasteful with them? Can you trust that God is not slack concerning His promises, and though it may be a mystery, still there is value in a hard time, a tall hurdle, a season of wilderness?
Rejoice at how far you’ve come. Get excited about where you’re going. Trust that in Him – by His divine power – you have everything you need for life and godliness. {2 Pet. 1:3}
This was the end result for today’s efforts, and I can definitely say it was worth it:
xCC
Mar 3, 2012 | A Repat, The Good Word
We’ve been doing a little unpacking around here. Those Eighteen Boxes {you know, the15 boxes, two bikes and a guitar} finally made it here to the Carolinas, eight months to the day after they were closed up and sent off to sit patiently on the docks in Cape Town, waiting their turn to squeeze into a container, board a big big big big ship (as we explained it to the Bear) sail the seas, decant, detox, retruck…whatever the steps were on this side that got them here from New York.
It has been a stranger experience than I expected. I’ve been reunited with this…
{Remember when my last Bible’s Genesis made an Exodus and Thomas Nelson Publishers sent me a new one?}
{In case you’re wondering, I travel with a sweet little yellow 4 x 6 picture-sized Bible because this big one is too big for international adventures — for the sake of the Hubs’ back!}
And the Bear has been reunited with this…
though he looks much bigger with it now.
And I put Blakey in these just-arrived pajamas that were once the Bear’s a few nights ago and my heart hurt so bad!
Blakey is filling these out several months sooner than Bear Bear did…but the Bear had a lot more hair going for him…somehow I suppose it all balances out.
Even after giving so many things away before we left, I am almost appalled at how many articles of clothing there are in my closet. And I haven’t even finished unpacking.
I may have liked it better when the choice of what to wear was much simpler.
But the strangeness of this experience has come from finding myself celebrating these things that were ours all along. I’ve been pulling out all this clothing that was once the Bear’s, now the right size for Blake, and I’ve almost been in tears over it.
{My favorite beach pic of the Bear ever…and now this little shirt is on his brother, and TIGHT!}
So I see it in a way I never have before: we are ridiculously blessed. Though there is indeed so much more to life than clothing or the remaining plates from our wedding china or my cookbooks and garlic peeler and the Bear’s first bike, still these things are rightly seen as gifts from a gracious God who has provided for us with exceeding abundance.
And perhaps it took this separation and reunion to really see it.
Have you ever thought about all the things we probably have to be thankful for that we never take notice of?
As the Pentateuch — the first five chapters of the Bible — came to a close, the Law and instruction for the people of Israel, preparing to enter the Promised Land was given. Along with those consistent reminders to Remember God’s Goodness in the great and mighty acts he performed on Israel’s behalf, Moses also pointed out the simple provisions of God, more reasons to trust Him, to listen to His leading, to obey His word, and trust that blessing would follow.
Moses pointed out:
“For forty years I led you through the wilderness, yet your clothes and sandals did not wear out.” {Deut. 29:5}
I wonder if they ever thought about the fact that their clothes and shoes didn’t wear out. Did the Israelites even notice that their clothes were not getting thread-bare, their sandals not losing tread? {Would I?} Or did they get up in the morning and say, “Well I guess it’s this outfit again…” {I think I’d fall into this category…}
It’s an easy thing, getting so distracted by what you don’t have that you forget to be grateful for all that you do have.
And I suppose sometimes, as Sherlock Holmes once put it to Watson, “You see, but you do not observe.”
My fresh attempts at observing the gifts of the present and giving thanks are breathing new life into my every day. We could never possibly say thank You enough to the God who has gloriously planned our enjoyment of His glory for all eternity. But for our own hearts, perhaps we ought to try.
xCC
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