Faith
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Faithful?
Exodus 16 brings us a story that has taken on new meaning to me as of late. As I have been studying and reading, I have come to see more of God’s heart and more of my own lack of trust in it. Exodus 16 is all about food. I have to admit, I love food. But in Exodus 16 we find our newly freed Israelites complaining over a lack of food. They even go so far as to remark they would rather be back in Egypt! Apparently, lack of food can cloud your senses and cause you to wish for slavery once again. (So many other metaphors in that) But most of you can probably fill in the rest. God comes and brings them manna each morning with strict instructions. Gather only what you need for today. Do not save or store for tomorrow. And the few that do figure out real quick that listening to God is much better than waking up to stinky, worm-infested food. It follows that Christ commanded us in Matthew 6:19, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy.”
God was asking them to trust His faithfulness. To trust that today they would be filled and tomorrow God would again provide for their needs. They didn’t have to stockpile or save..just simply trust in God’s faithfulness.
He is still asking us to trust His faithfulness.As I look at my life, I see how insulated it is from trusting in God’s faithfulness. I am not suggesting we all stop saving and live recklessly, but I am suggesting that perhaps our lives are a little too safe. We work so hard to insulate, prepare, and protect ourselves that I think some of us could honestly say we don’t really need God. Ok, we would probably never actually say that, but perhaps our lives appear that way. Perhaps we question God’s faithfulness. We aren’t sure He will really come through. Maybe life experiences have proven that sometimes He hasn’t come through in the way we excepted. Perhaps we are too comfortable and unwilling to stand with Paul when he says, “I know what it is to have plenty and I know what it is to be in want.” Or maybe, we just enjoy the fruits of our labor. And we should..we work hard for them. But we must also remember that those are gifts from God and our not solely for our use. If we use them to insulate our lives to the point of excess and therefore do not really need to rely on God for anything, perhaps we need to step back and question things. Is there someone whom we could bless with our excess? I am convinced that the more we give and rely on God’s faithfulness, the richer our lives will become and the less worried we will be. Our focus will shift from things to people, from temporary to eternal. I know some people that operate as though God is faithful. And I want to be one of those people.
So I ask you and ask myself…
Do you believe God is faithful? Are you living like it?You May Also Like
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February 14th
Or perhaps better known as Valentine’s Day. It’s a holiday people tend to love or loathe depending on which side of the relationship spectrum they may be on. And I am usually on the loathe side. Normally because I just think its silly we spend all this money on overpriced goods to do something we should do every single day of the year-spread love. This year I have been thinking a lot this holiday. Thankfully being so far away, I can avoid most of the hoopla of the holiday, but I have been thinking about how much good the holiday could do. See, its a holiday focused around love. And we have turned into a shallow, superficial love that shows itself through roses and teddy bears, but what if we got back to celebrating love. True, deep, meaningful, neighborly love. Then it wouldn’t matter whether I was single, dating, married, or something else because its not about that.
I John 4 has one of my favorite definitions of love. And the love in these verses comes not from us, but from God. When we focus on the sacrifice that was made for us, we have no choice but to love. It is a natural out-flowing.I John 4 7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
God’s love lives in us. His son died for us. Those should be reasons enough to love others with a crazy love. See, love is so much bigger than we take it for. Love compels me to give my time to others. Love compels to weep and pray for my brothers and sisters being persecuted. Love compels me to think bigger than roses and teddy bears. What does it look like? For me, buying Valentines that go towards organizations fighting sex trafficking. Spending time with some good friends here and reminding myself of the ultimate sacrifice of love made for me. In light of that, there is only room for love to abound and for true love to be spread on a day filled with so much self-centered love.
What about you? What can you do to celebrate the true love of Christ on this hyped up day?You May Also Like
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Joy Not Obligation
Psalm 23:1-3 God, my shepherd! I don’t need a thing.
You have bedded me down in lush meadows,
you find me quiet pools to drink from.
True to your word,
you let me catch my breath
and send me in the right direction.I have been really challenged lately over the matter of my finances. It seems to me that perhaps one reason for my coming to Saipan was for God to challenge me in this whole area of giving and of having enough. And the more I have studied the gospels, the more I see that God’s heart is often so far from mine. He promises us life abundantly. He came to be our shepherd. To give us our daily bread. But we have turned that into a need for new cars, new houses, new clothes, and new gadgets. Sure, most of us good Christian folk will make sure we have allotted out 10% in tithe..but then we take the other 90% and treat it like it is our money to do with as we please. I don’t think that was the idea God was getting at when he said, “God loves a cheerful giver.” See, I don’t think God wants our 10%. I think God wants our hearts. He wants us to submit to Him and to submit our finances to Him. He wants us to make every financial decision based upon His heart. The two greatest commandments are summed up as loving God and loving our neighbors. Shouldn’t our finances be a reflection of lives that follow those commands? And yet, so often we hear of needy brothers and sisters and we simply pray and ask God to meet their needs while going about our daily business. Perhaps God is up in Heaven saying, “Hello, I put you there so you could meet their need.” Because reality is..most of us don’t need a thing. And most of us have the capacity to meet incredible needs. So then the question becomes, why don’t we?
I would admit that so often my spending habits got in the way. I bought this or that and all of sudden did not have the money left. But since my options for spending money are limited here, it has given me time to stop and think about it. And I have realized how incredibly rich I truly am and how much stuff I have that I really don’t need. But ultimately what I have found is a joy that comes from being in relationship with Christ, not from buying a new outfit or the latest ipod. See, in giving, I have found that I am blessed far more richly then I could have ever imagined. In worrying less about what I have and more about those that have not, I have found a love and a desire for Christ and for others that I cannot explain. So for the next few months my goal is to figure out how to make it stick. How to keep this lesson stamped in my heart when I am back in a world bombarded by ads and people with the newest, latest, greatest, and trendiest. I think I know the answer.. it comes from aligning my heart and life with God’s heart and life. When you are able to see things through His eyes, the world becomes a much clearer place and giving becomes a habit and a joy, not a dreaded obligation.
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Vulnerable Post #1
I am in the middle of a study called “Economy of Love.” It is an excellent study done by Relational Tithe and Shane Claiborne. It is a movement to act counter-cultural and to decide to have enough. To live in a community where today we have enough. Not always everything we want, not always new clothes, cars, toys, or gadgets, but a community where everyone has enough. I am going to keep posting questions and quotes from the book because they cause you to think.
“The model of incarnation is that Jesus moved into the neighborhood. Jesus entered into the struggle, was born in the middle of a genocide (Matthew 2:16-18), and struggled through poverty and pain even up to the point of the cross. And that’s the model we are called to follow.”
Not sure you are rich? Go to www.globalrichlist.com and see where you are located in terms of world wealth. It might surprise you.
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Coach basketball?
Sure! Why not? No one else is ever going to ask me to coach a sport, which is perhaps wise-but while I am here, I might as well take the opportunity! I really like coaching. Its so much fun to work with students in an environment where they have chosen to be there vs. a classroom setting where they are forced to be there.
So the fourth grade teacher and I are helping coach the junior high girls basketball team. I should say, she is coaching, I am helping and together we sorta have some knowledge on the sport. I can’t play it, but I understand somewhat how it should be played. And the girls on our team are very much beginner players so we have lots of room for improvement! Its actually really fun. Yesterday, by the 15th time we had gone over blocking out, they started to get it! We will see what happens in the game today, but I am proud of them for trying. I just have to figure out how to get a little aggression out of them. But we will get better and perhaps we can squeeze in a win somewhere in the season. Regardless, they have a lot of spirit to play and to try and to often, be very humbled by their opponents.
So go SCS Junior high girls! They are winners in my book!
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Anguish
“And I look at the whole religious scene today and all I see are the inventions and ministries of man and flesh. It’s mostly powerless. It has no impact on the world. And I see more of the world coming into the church and impacting the church, rather than the church impacting the world. I see the music taking over the house of God. I see entertainment taking over the house of God. An obsession with entertainment in God’s house. A hatred of correction and a hatred of reproof. Nobody wants to hear it any more. Whatever happened to anguish in the house of God?”This is the beginning of a very powerful sermon by David Wilkerson. It is a very scary sermon, yet the message needs to be rung out through our churches. Do we anguish? Do we weep and cry and call out in our prayers to God? Or have we become passive? Are we all too willing to send a check, but unwilling to look into the broken lives and faces and hurt with them? Are we willing to seek the heart of God and carry the burdens He carries? Do we weep over the things He weeps over? Or are we merely concerned? Are we content to send some money or follow a story while it is easy? Or are we willing to let it cause us anguish? To deeply trouble our souls? Are we willing to weep over it?Check out the video for the rest of his sermon. Warning: Its very blunt.You May Also Like
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Message of the Arrows
I have been reading The Sacred Romance and I have to say, this book, more than any I have read in a long time, has really helped me see some things more clearly. One of the things the author talks a lot about in the book is the “Message of the Arrows.” That is the lies we believe about ourselves..the arrows that have been shot at us and that Satan uses to render us ineffective in service to our King. Satan keeps us trapped in our small stories through the message of the arrows. And he doesn’t have to do much because we believe them and we often think it is our own inner voice whispering these lies to us. I like how the author put it.
“We simply live where busyness, or apathy, or struggle with circumstances that won’t change occupies most of our energy. And the enemy it perfectly happy to leave us is such a place practicing our religion. We are already defeated. The lion, if he roars at us at all, only does so internally about certain things we need to get under control or keep hidden in regard to the smaller stories we are counting on for life.”We come to believe that the things people say of us are true, the small story we are living is the only story we will ever live. We count on them for meaning and for identity. We struggle to keep them in order and perfect, all the while becoming exhausted and empty. We feel a deep longing for more inside, but we push it back down to the inner places of our hearts because it is dangerous and uncertain to explore this longing. The first step to rediscovering our passion and addressing that longing is to recognize those arrows. What is the smaller story you have been living out? What lie has Satan trapped you in to believe this is it?
The smaller story that has been playing out in my life: mediocrity. I have come to believe I am average. That I not good enough or smart enough or pretty enough or athletic enough or compelling enough to reach for my dreams. And the thing about the arrows are, they get reinforced. I was always almost on homecoming court. I always almost had the top grade. I never tried out for a play because I thought I wasn’t good enough. So I filled my life with whatever I could find to seek some sort of separation. One area where I felt above average. Unfortunately, I still carried around the identity of being average. Even if I may have excelled, in my eyes, I never saw it. I just kept buying into this story that my life was just average. But I couldn’t shake this passion. This longing that life wasn’t supposed to be like this. I just never know what it was that I was looking for or missing. I figured this just part of life. But what I have to learn is that my identity does not lie in the message of the arrows. My identity lies in the sacred romance God is inviting me on. Its scary and risky and will be a journey that is anything but average. See, in His eyes, I am anything but average. In His eyes, I am worth pursuing, worth loving, and worth risking His Son’s life for. I don’t want an average life. I never have. But Satan whispers in my ears the lies that say, “You are just average, you have nothing special to offer.” I am unpacking those arrows. Digging them out of their lodging place. It’s surely not easy. They have been there so long its a painful process. Yet, until you address the message of the arrows head on, they will always have a hold on you. Until you recognize where the message is coming from and that the message is false, you will continue to believe it. I refuse to believe it any longer. I will not allow Satan to keep me trapped in the small story I have been living when God has a grand plan for my life. I have no idea what that will look like, but today it starts with learning to identify who I am in Christ and with living out that identity with gusto, life, love, and enthusiasm.
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My Newest Endeavor
I John 4:18 says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out all fear.”John 10:10b says, “I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.”Fear and abundant life do not mix. I can tell you this from experience. I have spent a lot of my life living out of fear. So I decided that moving half-way around the world would be a good chance to work on getting over some of my fears. I have come to be intimately acquainted with Christ’s perfect love and through that have done many things this year that I normally would have too afraid to even attempt. And boy have I lived an abundant life! Who knows, you might even find me on a surf board before this year is up. 😉The current task: Swimming. I have had a deathly fear of water for many years. Sure, I might swim in a pool providing I could touch the bottom, but I HATED to get in any type of lake or ocean. I also hated having my head under the water. That fear has caused many a panic attack and fit of tears in my life. However, God must have a sense of humor because He moved me to an island in the middle of the Pacific ocean. And not only that, but He moved to an apartment on the beach on a beautiful tropical island in the middle of the ocean. Thus I figured I should just face this fear head on and figure out how to defeat it. It has been a slow battle, but the final step was asking a lady from church to give me swimming lessons in preparation for a triathlon I would like to do in March. I do know how to swim, I mean, I wouldn’t drown if you threw me in the water, well, at least not from lack of being able to swim. I might from fear:) But I want to be able to swim in a race. I had my first lesson Saturday and it went great! She is the most amazing teacher and so so patient with me. Sunday I went out and swam for as long as I could and got up to a whole 40 seconds without stopping. But determined to win this battle, I got out in the ocean again today and was able to swim for 70 seconds without stopping! I swam for about 13 minutes total. I know, not impressive to most people. But for me, it was huge. You see, 6 months ago, I wouldn’t have put my face in that water if you paid me. Today, I managed to keep it in the water for 70 seconds straight. Slowly I am beating down that fear and replacing it with confidence. Perhaps it is unrealistic to think I will be able to swim 750 meters straight in two months, but I am sure going to try! Tomorrow we are going to try for a minute and a half straight! 🙂 -
Is God good?
War. Poverty. Sex trafficking. Child soldiers. Homelessness. Failing economy. Unemployment. Sickness. AIDs. Global Warming. And the list could go on. As I read the news and follow the stories, as I look at my own life and my own struggles, I am often brought to this struggle… Is God good? In fact, I think it is probably something most people struggle with. Whether we admit it or not, deep in our hearts lingers this question. Is this God I trust in good?I have never read the Chronicles of Narnia series, but I know one scene from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe like the back of my hand because it so often comes up in discussions of whether God is good or not. The children are getting ready to meet Aslan and Susan asks if He is safe. Seems like a logical question when one is preparing to meet a lion and the answer “yes” is of course the one you would like to hear. Yet the response given is this, “‘Course He isn’t safe. But He’s good. He’s the King, I tell ya.”
As I have delved deeper into the heart of God, I have learned something. Following God isn’t going to be safe. In fact, perhaps the Christian life should come with a warning. Hardship up ahead. And if we ever doubt that, we just have to take one glance back at Job to know that perhaps today might be the day that everything goes amiss. Pretty depressing take on it. But that isn’t the end. See the thing is, following God may not be safe, but it is secure. We can trust that God’s heart is good. We can trust that He is pursuing us. He loves us. He wants to be intimately acquainted with us. And He wants our lives to bring Him glory no matter what on earth happens. I have found that the more I pursue God, the more I fall madly in love with Him. The less I question what He is doing and the more I question what I am doing. If God is good, then I can trust His heart. I, then, just need to align my heart with His. I want to weep over what He weeps over. I want to rejoice over what He rejoices over. I want to love those He loves. And I want to continue drinking in His presence, even when I can barely find it in the midst of life.
So, I finally came to the conclusion that God is good. And everything in my life went crazy. I had a real decision to make then. Was I going to continue to trust that God is good? Or was I going to blame Him for the hurt and the pain and the confusion and the lack of direction? I decided that I was simply going to trust. I wasn’t going to question His heart. In that, I found a peace I have never felt. I found love. I found acceptance. And I found that life falling apart was the necessary step for God to rebuild it the way He wanted. It was the push I needed to truly let my heart become one with His and to respond to His leading. I still have no idea where His leading will take me, but I am confident that He will lead me on each and every step and this journey we take will be one of adventure, love, and of course at times, intense hardship that once again requires a serious look back into the heart of God. Thankfully, He continues to prove that He is good. And I will continue to have faith in His heart.
(Thoughts from The Sacred Romance. An excellent read!)
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A Voice for the Voiceless
Proverbs 31:8 says, “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.”I was able to listen to a webinar this morning put on by the Christian Alliance for Orphans and Tom Davis, CEO of Children’s HopeChest. The topic: Sex Trafficking.Granted, probably not what most people want to wake up and spend an hour listening to, but something that is heavy on my heart because I believe it is something that is heavy on God’s heart. I think it breaks His heart in ways we cannot imagine. And it is something that breaks my heart in ways I never thought possible. For me, it is not a bandwagon I am jumping on. It is a passion to see justice served and lives restored. It is something I am fully prepared to devote my life to in one capacity or another. And right now, that looks like spreading awareness.I normally hate statistics because I don’t think they convince people of anything, but perhaps they can paint a clearer picture of the seriousness and scope of this horrible industry.-Sex Trafficking is the 2nd largest global crime raking in over 32 billion in “profits” each year.-Predications state that it will surpass drugs to become #1 sometime in 2011 because, unfortunately, humans can be sold multiple times.
-Only 1 to 2% of girls are ever rescued from sex trafficking.
-Only 1 in 100,000 Europeans are every convicted of sex crimes.
-Every two minutes another child is captured and enslaved in this “life”.
We live in a world that has amazing technological advances, health care advances, and wealth beyond imagination. And yet we also live in a world where slavery is the highest it has ever been at any point in history, people are dying from starvation and lack of clean water, and children are being lost, sold, killed, and infected with deadly diseases. And the problem is hitting closer and closer to home. Dan Rather did a very in-depth study on the problem of sex trafficking in Portland, Oregon.-you can check it out here. It is not something we can ignore anymore.It’s a huge problem. It is very easy to get overwhelmed. To think, “I am just one person.” But that’s all it takes..one person. One person to start a movement. And if everyone stopped thinking, “I’m just one person,” imagine what we could do!
So, what can you do? What can just one person do?
*Educate yourself. Find out more about the issue. Check out Children’s HopeChest, World Orphans, or the Christian Alliance for Orphans.
*Educate others.
*Network. If you want to get involved, see if there is a local Human Trafficking Task Force in your city. Find out who is involved in the fight and how you can get involved.
*Keep up with the news. This blog was just posted today- 2,000 Haitian Orphans Sold as Sex Slaves
*Give. When girls are rescued it can cost over $1000 a month to rehabilitate them and educate them and give them a better life. Give towards the rehab side or sponsor a child to keep them in school and clothed and fed.
*Buy products made by rescued girls. Check out fashionABLE, Stop Traffick Fashion, or Made by Survivors
*Pray. Pray for the girls. Pray for justice. Pray for the workers and the organizations. Pray for leaders to rise up and say enough is enough.
Ultimately, do something. Whatever it is. Take a step. Pray. And follow God’s leading. I believe this is an issue we should all care about. And awareness is the first step.