Expectations

God healed a relationship that was pretty much at death's door, one that was/is extremely important to my life. Part of my struggle in that friendship was my expectations and the fact that those expectations were not being met. It was not that she was not a good friend to me, she has been one of the best friends of my life, but for two years she wasn't living up to what I wanted from her. The walls grew and the hurt multiplied on both sides, and any time I saw her, the wound throbbed. Finally we talked about all of it and the walls came down, yet we were both different.


This trial taught me that one friend does not have to meet every need in my life. God has given me many amazing friendships, many that I value more than I can say, so all of my “girlfriend” needs don’t have to be fulfilled by one person. It is much healthier that way.


I realize that every time I meet with one friend we talk about God and what He is doing in our lives. With another friend I find the real of life as we share about our families, our trials, and our successes. With another I talk about the struggles of homeschooling as well as the joys. I talk lots of politics with another and so on. The greatest aspect of each of these relationships is our deep faith, but that commonality manifests itself in very different ways with each. Once I stopped demanding (not audibly and not always realizing it) that my friend fill every role in my heart I was able to release her to be who she is in my life, to be my friend.


It is when we replace the one who is our true "best friend" with one of our friends that we run into problems. We do this with our husbands at times, setting them up on the throne of our hearts, and even with our children. Any time we replace Christ with another person or thing, we end up dissatisfied, hurt, alone, angry, and empty. The only one who can meet our deepest needs is our Savior and Lord, but He isn't going to meet our expectations either. He will surpass them, beyond all that we can hope or imagine.

Duct Tape and Glue

"I hate that I can still be so easily shaken, and somehow I convince myself that if I could just develop a healthy enough psyche, life couldn't touch me" (So Long Insecurity, pg 51)

How did Beth Moore get into my head? Is it plagiarism if you never wrote it down?

Seriously, I think "mature" Christian women get down on themselves for getting down. Instead of realizing that we are human, and running to our Father when we are hurting. We try to buck up, make it all better ourselves and end up feeling defective.

"I am broken and no amount of superglue or duct tape is going to keep me together, keep me from splitting apart."

Sad, but that is how most of us walk around, wounded, alone and about to split apart trying to hold ourselves together with duct tape and glue.

But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved...For the Lord will be your confidence and will keep your feet from being snared...So do not throw away your confidence, it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God you will receive what He has promised.

As Far As The East Is From The West

Sometimes I get stuck in the past. I love history, I have a degree in it, so it makes sense that I would enjoy the past, but looking back, holding on to what was doesn’t exactly work well in life. It’s almost like playing the same movie over and over again (which I do with my favorite movies) and never seeing anything new.

If I am real I have to admit that I don’t like change very much. It’s not comfortable, it’s not familiar, it isn’t “safe” and just when I get use to the change, it changes again. So I have to start the process of adjustment all over again, and sometimes I just choose not to play along. I fight the reality, keeping both fists firmly wrapped around the past. Of course I always lose that battle, because I can’t hold on to something that is no longer there.

Relationships are one of those areas for me. They are alive, and ever changing. New people come in and out of all of our lives all of the time. We never know how they might impact us, or what they will one day mean to us. We have new interests grow in our hearts as do those we love, so we have to adjust to changes in ourselves and in others. We have to be willing to change with those we love, so that we can continue to have a relationship with them, and we hope they do the same for us.

This looking backward can really hurt friendships. Too often we want to hold onto what things were once like, look to the past and reject the alterations that are a part of any healthy relationship. This backward gaze also means wounds are remembered. A good memory might be a strength when recalling names, dates and places from history, but it is not an asset when it comes to forgiving and forgetting.

I am a forgiving person, giving second, third, forth, fifth chances, but in order to protect myself I begin to map out the injuries that have been inflicted on me by those I care about. I notice the patterns played out by the person hurting me. I start to defend myself against the pain, and in the process lose my ability to forgive. If I cannot give someone a blank slate, then I have not forgiven them. I am always watching, always protecting, always noticing certain actions, and planning a defense.

There have been times when I have really believe in my heart that I have forgiven a person, only to discover from a bitter comment or a stray thought that I have not. And from experience, I don’t believe I am the only one who struggles in this area.

As humans, our inability to truly forgive makes long term relationships difficult to maintain. All of us hurt each other all of the time. We have sin natures that rear their ugly heads at times and dictate our actions. When that happens we sin against those we love. If they are unable to let go of the hurt we have caused them, the relationship will not move forward in a healthy manner. As years pass with unhealed wounds, defenses go up higher and higher.

As I considered the way we remember, the way I remember, and the pain reliving actions others have taken against causes us, I thought of Psalm 103:12,

...as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.

When I looked up that Psalm and I read: The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love, He will not always accuse nor will He harbor his anger forever, He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth so great is His love for those who fear Him: as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.

As I read those words, I was struck by something. God will not always accuse us. He won’t, once we have surrendered our lives to Christ and accepted His payment for our sins, accuse us for those sins EVER AGAIN. They are gone, He wont’ remember them, He won’t protect Himself and guard His heart against us. He forgives us and removes our sin.

Yet there is one who accuses, and roams the earth to dig up “dirt” on all of us. He attempts to sully our names, going before God like he did when he attempted to accuse Job of being less than he was. Satan is always dragging up our pasts. He is the one who uses those sins against us, and if we let him he can use those sins to make us doubt our worth before God. But that is the reason our God put Psalm 103 in the Bible, as well as the book of Job. The accuser of the believers can accuse us all he wants, but it’s never going to stick because Jesus already paid for our lives and nothing we have done, nor will ever do will separate us from the love of God.

You might be wondering how this relates to my love of history and my inability to adapt to change, well I realized that if I am unable to let go of the past, I am unable to forgive, and if I can’t forgive, I can’t love others with a heart of abandon. If I am always protecting myself, walling off to protect my heart, well I won’t let anyone in and I surely won’t go out to them. By not letting go, I am playing the role of accuser, even if I am not accusing anyone openly, I am accusing them in the conversations I have in my head and those conversations separate me from others. I realized when I don’t forgive, that I am aligning myself with the accuser.

But, if I live like my Father, I accept people at face value. I forgive them, and remove their transgressions toward me as far as the east is from the west, never throwing those hurts at them again, either literally or in the deep recesses of my mind. I set them free from their sin, and in the process set myself free.

Jesus came to set the captives free. He didn’t just mean those bound by sin, He also came to set those free who have been hurt by sin.


Is there a person, maybe a spouse, a parent, a child, a sibling, a friend, a co-worker that you need to really forgive for a sin (maybe years of sin) they committed against you, and not just forgive, but forget. Forget, and let the wall you have built around your heart as a defense against further pain fall, in order for you to move out of the past and into a new life, a healthy life with the ability to grow deeper, closer relationship with those you love, as well as with those you haven’t yet met.


Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits – who forgives all your sin and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. Ps. 103:2-5

Confident Humility

As Lloyd preached a few Sunday mornings ago, his words resonated with the experience I had had the day before. You see, I took a chance at something, I never take chances, and through my story you will see that I don’t actually believe in chance. I entered a contest and attempted to win a new car.

I was standing in the parking lot of a car dealership in Phoenix for three hours. I was by myself, well not quite true because one of our family’s really good friends was in the cow suit, but I didn’t really hang with him much because he was kind of busy. Okay, I digress. I was standing there for many hours waiting for “chance” to play out. I was one of 105 people called to come to the event in which each person would have an opportunity to try and start a new Kia Sorento.
Out of those 105 people, only 66 showed up and put their name in the hat to win the car. There were 66 keys placed into a large jar. Each contestant was given a raffle ticket when they arrived. Half way through the event, the raffle ticket numbers were called, determining the order in which we would choose our key. As each raffle number was called, I continued to wait. The first twenty were chosen, and I prayed, “Lord, that is okay there are a lot of keys and I don’t think being one of the first twenty is necessarily a good thing.”

But when the numbers reached forty and I still didn’t have a place in line, well I was a bit more discouraged. I looked around, knowing that my God leaves nothing to chance, that if He wanted to give me that new car He would no matter my number in line. He is the God who even controls the outcome of a dice roll, right, so He was in the drawing of the raffle numbers too. I was becoming discouraged because I was pretty sure He was saying “No” to the new car.

I looked around knowing everyone had at least whispered a prayer to win the car, and I began to consider those around me who probably needed the car more than I did. Some people had several kids, others were young, just staring out, and one guy was in the military, just back from basic training. All in more need than I was, but that is when the knowledge of God’s love for us, for me, really hit my heart.

At that moment, when I was comparing myself and my value or worthiness to all those around me, I was filled with utter peace and a quiet joy. I was so thankful that salvation isn’t a contest. It is a free gift and there isn’t just one shot to win it either. Every single one of us is at the same level of “need”. The amount of money we have does not lessen our need for Jesus, actually according to Jesus, it might increase our need. But God doesn’t look down from heaven and say, “Okay, that one is worthy, and that one isn’t. That one really needs Me, but that one doesn’t.” He doesn’t roll the dice and say, “You’re in, and you’re out.”

Instead, He says, “I love the WORLD.” He loves every single one of us, and wishes for NONE to perish. Isn’t that amazing?!? I don’t even think we can comprehend His ability to see us for who we are, who He made us to be without comparing us to anyone else. We might have a little bit of that kind of love toward our kids, but in our humanness, we still look around at others and contrast our kid’s strengths and weaknesses with others. But our Father doesn’t put us into categories or groupings like that. He loves us…neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, but all are one in Christ.

So, when Lloyd preached that God does not just love us, that He likes us, I thought back to the day before and knew that was totally true. He likes us so much He wants a relationship with us no matter who we are. It doesn’t matter what we wear, what we drive, where we live, what we look like, how we speak, or even the sinfulness of our hearts. He wants to KNOW us! He wants to spend time with us. He likes us.

It is very possible that most of the people at the event last Saturday were Christians, because it was a KLOVE and Chick-Fil-A sponsored event, so it wasn’t like anyone had a leg up on anyone else, an in with the “Big Guy”. We were all there because He had chosen us to be, and when I was chosen 61st in a group of 66, I knew if He wanted to, He could give me the right key to start the car. He delighted in all of us that day, and probably heard from a lot of us, more than He has in a while. So, when I wasn’t chosen, and found out number 31 was the number of the day, I was okay with that, because I found out, through the three hours of time that at first felt wasted, a new aspect in my relationship with my Father.

Why was number 31 chosen that day? I don’t know. I don’t know if her need was greater, if she needed a miracle in her life to strengthen her faith, or if she simply needed a new car, but what I do know is that my Father doesn’t love me any less because He didn’t give me the car.

I can live my life with a confident knowledge that I am loved, and if any gift is worth all others, it is the gift of love. Because I am loved, I can freely love others. We can walk through our lives with confident humility, loving as well as liking others because our Jesus first loved us.

Light in the Darkness

Our world seems to live every day in the dark. There is a search for meaning, hope, a hero in the hearts of the people all around us, and sadly a few have given up and are willing to exist in the darkness, not even trying to find a way out.

It is into this same kind of culture that the Light burst forth 2000 years ago. How bright the light of Christ appears in such a dark world. The darkness that we now live in is the perfect place to bring forth the Light.

Take heart my friends, we are the hope. It is to us that Jesus gave the great commission. God into ALL the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and I am with you ALWAYS even to the end of the age.

Jesus totally knew that Twilight would claim the hearts of His daughters; that movies like Transformers would present lustful images to His sons taking them to places of desire they should not be taken to; that the youngest among us would be fed a line of hopelessness from a movie about Wild Things.

It is into this age that He chose for you and me to live, and it is those of us who hold the name Christian that He chose to bring the light into the darkness. Don’t get me wrong, we are sooooo flying upside down, but we have the knowledge that our Savior lives and that He is at work all around us.

Paul experienced life just like we do at times. When he walked into one of the most immoral city in the Roman Empire, the city of Corinth, the Bible says that he entered with fear and trembling. Now this was not a metaphor for how he kind of felt inside. No, Paul was physically shaking when he entered the city gates. He was all alone at the time. Silas and Timothy were still hanging out in Berea, and Paul had just left Athens, failing to see the Spirit move among the people of that great city even after he delivered one of his most eloquent messages.

Paul felt rather useless when he entered Corinth, but he did something that a lot of us DON’T do when we feel we have failed. He surrendered his life fully to Christ, to know nothing except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. No too often, when we feel that God has not used us, we withdraw, go into a hole, take our toys and go home. But not Paul. He sought more of Jesus and kept going, not worrying about the result.

Corinth was the home of the cult of Aphrodite, the Greek god of love and lust, because of this the city was filled with sexual immorality. One of the ways that the Greeks worshipped at the temple of certain gods was through temple prostitution. It was into a very dark world, filled with immorality and idolatry, Paul walked into when he entered the gates of Corinth. Yet, through his faithful preaching and teaching and that of other men of God, the city was forever changed as the Light of Christ entered its streets.

Every day we have the chance to walk into Corinth. Kids are put in our paths who think that salvation means picking up the trash in the neighborhood to help save the planet. They need to know that work is good, but it isn’t the answer to eternity. They need to be loved for who they are, and shown Jesus.

There are teenager girls dying to talk to us about how wonderful Edward is, so we need to engage them. We need to say, “Ya, Edward’s cool, but he isn’t real, and even if he were his salvation is death, but there is someone so much more wonderful, who loves you and defeated death. Jesus is the answer to all your heart’s desire.”

There are young men so captivated by the images on a screen, that they live lives no different from those who once worshiped at the altar of Aphrodite. They can't have a real relationship with a woman because they have been made to feel less than as men. These young men need to experience the love of God, and then their lives can be saved.

The world seems so dark at times that I just want to keep the doors locked. I don’t want to be faithful to anyone but my own little family, to keep it safe from all the wrong in our culture, but that is not how we are suppose to live. We are to be lights in the darkness, to stand up for the innocent, to share the love of Jesus in the smallest way to every person we meet, and who knows, that Light might hit just one person's heart and drive the darkness out! So, if you are sad about what is going on all around us, know that He has chosen you for just this moment in time. Take heart, He has overcome the world.

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

Flying Upside Down

A whole generation of girls believes the greatest men of our day, are a 90 year old vampire, who looks nineteen and a teenage werewolf. Girls (and not just girls) swoon at the thought of knowing men like them. They have no repulsion toward the bloodletting that one of the characters indulges in, nor do they recoil at the idea of a wolf sleeping with a woman. Their hearts throb in anticipation as a vampire sneaks into the room of a girl their own age every night without anyone knowing, and they don’t even seem a little bothered by the werewolves “imprinting” on little girls.

Our world seems to be flying upside down, as Dallas Willard pointed out in his book The Divine Conspiracy. And the sad thing is that the culture doesn’t even care, because there is not right side up. There is an emptiness, and a searching among us. Yet we are looking and searching in the dark, finding the darkest things to cling onto for survival, longing for some supernatural being to save us from our mundane existence and add excitement to our lives. Thing is, that Supernatural Being died and rose again 2000 years ago to save us, yet we ignore Him in favor of the "undead".

Funny, we are even willing to embrace someone else’s vision to gain our own hope of salvation. That is right, Stephanie Meyer had a dream about a vampire that led her to write the Twilight series, and through that dream came T-shirts, and discussion groups, and pilgrimages to the small town of Forks in Washington State.

At least in the pages of the Twilight books, there is the hope of some sort of redemption. One that is seriously misguided, with eternal damnation as the end result, if by some strange happening death might actually take a vampire’s “life”, but still it is there.

Sadly, I have discovered that there is a part of the world that does not even have a false savior to give them hope. Part of the world is living in such utter darkness that they don’t even believe that there is a way out of the bleakness of human existence. They visit a place called Where the Wild Things Are, and discover there is no redeemer, there is no better tomorrow, there is only pain and sorrow.

If you are not familiar with Where the Wild Things Are, it is a very short children’s book, about a boy who visits an island inhabited by fantastic creatures called the “Wild Things”. That said the short children’s book has recently been transformed into a motion picture, in which a boy filled with anger and rage flees to the Wild Things, and discovers that they are just as angry and destructive as the place of pain that fills his own heart. He promises them that he will be their king and save them from sadness and pain with his invisible shield, but in the end, they discover that he is a fraud and all their hope for happiness is dashed when he fails to save them from themselves. The boy returns home to his own mother, his own family, with the simple words spoke to or by one of the unhappy Wild Things, “It’s hard to be a family.”

There is no redemption just the reality of the joyless, hopelessness of life to endure until death. That, in the end, is the takeaway the movie leaves the audience. I left the theater utterly depressed, thankful that the sun was out in all of its Arizona glory, and that the Son of God reigns in all of His.

I have always told my children that no matter what story, what movie, what book, or play, that I can find Jesus in it in some aspect or another. But I told them that I was wrong. There was NO redeemer in Where the Wild Things Are. When the Son is absent, then too is His light and all that is left is darkness.

When a vampire is the hero of the young, and a movie for kids is filled with so much “realism” that they leave the theaters in quiet contemplation, we know we are flying upside down, about to take a nosedive into the earth.

The postmodern age looks to darkness for redemption and when it does not find it there, it falls into despair.

The Light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. He was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him. He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him.

Even within the walls and halls of our own churches, a generation is looking to darkness to redeem them. Will we be like the generation Jesus first came to, the one who crucified Him, who were His own, but did not recognize Him because He came as Light.

In Him was LIFE and that LIFE was the LIGHT of MEN!

JOHN 1

Genie in a Bottle, Not

We often see Jesus as a genie in a lamp. We rub the lamp through prayer. We ask for our three wishes so that we can have an abundant life, free from pain and filled with prosperity. We pray in the name of Jesus, and claim all manner of things. We forget prayer is not a magic wand we wave to get what we want. It is instead a means to build relationship with God.

If our child walks up and demands this or that, in a tone of entitlement, we are much less likely to give them what they have so ungraciously asked for. If our kids only talk to us when they want something, or when they get into trouble, we are far less likely to give them what they think they want or lessen their punishment. But if we are in relationship with our kids, if they tell us about their day, the friends they have, how they did on their math test, what they are struggling with in life, what their passions are, who they need help learning to love, we are far more likely to give them what they want. When constant conversation is in place, our kids don’t have to demand their wants, nor subvert our authority when they are in trouble. No, when there is relationship then their wants are known and often given freely. When there is a bond of love, the discipline for misbehavior is consistent, loving, and given with mercy as well as justice.

When we know our kids, and they share their lives with us, then there is respect on both sides not a demanding, spoiled brat, speaking to a parent. When our kids have gratitude for what we are able to give them, then it is much more enjoyable to give them more. So too our Father loves us and wants to pour out abundant blessings in our lives, but He doesn’t want those blessings to be demanded. He wants to freely give to us what is best for us. But if all we do is feel entitled, then we won’t pray to know our Father but instead to get what we want from Him.
If you never talk to those you love, can you really love them? If you never listen to your friends, can you really know them? So too, if you never talk to or listen to your Father, you will never be able to really love Him, you will never be able to truly know Him.

All the things we think we need are worthless without the surpassing knowledge of knowing Jesus.

We often pray for God to remove us from our trials, but in my life, the trial actually produces the fruit. For some reason, we believe that we should have a life free from pain, and if we name our demand and claim it from God, He has to grant our request. I am not sure when the teaching on what it means to be a Christian became so misguided, however. Christ suffered. He asked three times for the Father to take away the need for the cross, but in the end, Jesus surrendered Himself to His Father’s will. We are to follow Christ’s example. We are to identify with Him in our sufferings. It is through His suffering that we know Him most deeply. Apart from Him, apart from what He suffered for us on the cross, we can do nothing. If God does not remove our suffering, it is not because He does not love us, but because His greater purpose needs to be fulfilled in our lives.

The way we can know His love, His will, His heart for us is through a constant attitude of prayer. Not demanding our way, not rubbing the mystical lamp of prayer, but by talking to our God, and sharing our heart with Him. He might not decide to give us a new car, nor take away our pain when we want Him to, but He will walk with us through it all.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Philippians 4:6-7