June 6th

Crazy Love Ch 5: Serving Leftovers to a Holy God

My conclusion? Jesus’ call to commitment is clear: He wants all or nothing. The thought of a person calling himself a “Christian” without being a devoted follower of Christ is absurd (p 85).

I know this to be true. I know God wants all of me. He wants me to love Him whole heartedly. I also know that I do a pretty sucky job of putting Him first in my life with all the other distractions. Praise God for his unending grace.

While grace is a good and wonderful thing, I cannot take advantage of that. Yes God loves me. He forgives me when I screw things up (which is more often than I’d care to admit) … but in response to that grace I need to chuck everything else aside and focus on Him, do what He wants me to do, live a life worthy of being called Christian.

The reality is that, whether we acknowledge our wealth or not, being rich is a serious disadvantage spiritually (p 90).

It’s easy to fill ourselves up with other things and then give God whatever is left (p 91).

These two quotes are scary. For one, I know I am rich in many ways. Ways I don’t readily want to give up or let go of. Ways that make me fill up my life with everything BUT God way too frequently. There are so many distractions that lead my focus and my attention away from God. Finding ways to eliminate those distractions is challenging, but I’m sure will turn out a worthy use of my time and resources. I need to give up things that I think are so worthwhile and valuable and in turn focus my time and energy where it really matters, on God.

This quote really hit home:

“Our greatest fear as individuals and as a church should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.”

WOW. This is so not how the world sees things. How do I get my focus back on what really does matter? I’m sure I know the answer to this, focus on God. Spend time with God. Pray. Often easier said than done with all those distractions I mentioned I struggle with earlier.

An exercise that was quite humbling: read the verses from 1 Corinthians 13:4-8; 13 inserting your name every time you read the word “love” … tough to realize that I rarely am loving others well, especially the “unlovable”. I lose my patience. I envy. I do not bear or endure all things.

Then Chan says “Following Christ isn’t something that can be done halfheartedly or on the side. It is not a label we can display when useful. It must be central to everything we do and are,” (p 94).

Prone to do this sometimes, to set Christ aside when “convenient,” especially when pressure or stress strikes hard. This year was testament to that. Always easier to look back and see how you could have or should have done things, but I know I did not do a good job this year following Christ and loving others, especially those students I work with who are unlovable. Those who need my love the most as a reflection of God’s love for them.

I need to seriously rethink where my time, effort and money are going and where they are spent. Do these things reflect my desire to know God more and be more like Jesus? Where I find they are not being put to good use, I will need to make some changes.

April 18th

Crazy Love, Ch 4 Profile of the Lukewarm

I first read this chapter several weeks ago and felt like I was the crummiest Christ follower. Just about everything I read about lukewarm people screamed “that’s just like me” and the guilt washed over me like a tsunami.

After yesterday’s sermon, I prayed that God’s armor protect me as I reread the chapter and asked God to use the examples as a way for the Holy Spirit to show me what I need to work on, as opposed to allowing Satan to pile on the “it’s so overwhelming you’ll fail every time” guilt.

This continues to be a challenging chapter for me. I don’t simply want to do “just enough,” I really do want to be the person God wants me to be. To be invested in the sanctification process. Easier said than done, sure, but there’s where I want to be.

The first thing that challenged me in this chapter is this: “A lot of things are good by themselves, but all of it together keeps us from living healthy, fruitful lives for God,” p 67. My life is full of wonderful things, all of which are extremely distracting. Family. Kids. Technology. Facebook. Friends. Work. Sleep. Movies. Music. The list could go on. One of the things Chan states is a characteristic of lukewarm people is focusing on “life on earth” and not “eternity in heaven.” I think this is a huge problem with all of the available distractions. It’s significantly easier to focus on something I can touch, feel, smell, or that responds instantly. Much more challenging is taking time to spend with God, to listen for His still small voice, to set aside the distractions and read the Bible and pray.

Another lukewarm issue: not loving God as I should. In Deuteronomy 6:5 we are told to “Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (NIV). Right now I’m certain there are things that I love in addition to, sometimes in the place of God. Financial security. Relationships. Material things. This is not okay. God needs to be first.

Pastor Jeff asked us a few weeks back how we are different now that we are Christians, and I’ve been mulling over how I’ve changed (Eph 2:1-10). In what ways have I put on new clothes? Have I really shed the old person I was before accepting Christ’s gift of salvation?? Another characteristic of the lukewarm: not being very different than the typical unbeliever. What sets me apart from those who don’t know Christ? What makes me not just “a good person”?

The last lukewarm issue that struck me today is something I have always struggled with: sharing my faith with others. Not sure I have ever really felt comfortable bringing the subject up or knowing what to say and fear being obnoxious and turning people off. Even as I type that it sounds incredibly shallow and, well, lukewarm. How many times have I heard Abraham’s story and others? I know that God provides the strength and the words, yet I still hesitate. I also don’t think I have many opportunities, my coworkers are pretty much the only nonbelievers I interact with and when I am at work there is little time to focus on anything but work. What I need to do first is pray for the nonbelievers I know and for opportunities to share with them.

The final quote that struck me in this chapter: “Jesus didn’t say that if you wanted to follow Him you could do it in a lukewarm manner. He said, “Take up your cross and follow me,” p 80. Wow. What does it mean for me to take up my cross and follow Jesus? Seek opportunities to share my story, how God is working in my life, with others. Be truly different and set apart from others. Love God with everything I am. Set aside distractions and focus my time and attention more on God.

This all seems like a lot, but by God’s grace all things are possible!

March 20th

Yikes. Apparently starting back at work got me off track, WAY off track, because my last post was seven, yes SEVEN, months ago, just after starting another school year.

There are all kinds of excuses for that, but really, truly, I am in serious need of rethinking how I am choosing to spend my time. My church is going through Ephesians and over the past several weeks I’ve been feeling little nudges (okay, maybe sometimes a smack in the face) about things I need to change. Gotta love the Holy Spirit doing His best to keep me on the right track.

After this morning’s sermon, I decided when I came home that the first thing I was going to do when I finally got “me time” was spend time with God. When I looked at my stack of Bibles, journal, books, I chose to pull out Crazy Love again, seeing as how I haven’t made it past chapter 2.

This chapter (entitled “Crazy Love”) reinforced some things I’ve been thinking about, due to the prompting of the Holy Spirit I’m certain.

First, the concept of understanding God’s love for me through the lens of how I love my kids. I am of course sinful and flawed in every way when it comes to being a parent; however, I still love my kids immensely, enjoy spending time with them, want them to want to be with me, want good things for them … you get the idea. If I feel that way about my children, as flawed as I am, how much more does God in his perfection love me? Infinitely more. Do I get that? Will I ever? I sure hope so. Baby steps I guess.

Another thought I’ve recently had with regard to my kids … Some days, mostly the really rough and challenging ones, I ask myself why? Why did I have kids? What is the purpose? I am starting to think that as in all things in life, the reason I have been blessed with two wonderful children is so I can better understand God and His love for me. Still letting that sink in.

Back to Crazy Love, Chan brings up the idea that God WANTS me. Hmm. He wants me? I know I NEED Him, but I never really thought of God as wanting me and to spend time with me. Clearly. Otherwise maybe I wouldn’t ignore Him quite so much. Last week I had a revelation. Friends are huge to me. I want relationships with other women, want to spend time with other women, want other women to like me and want to spend time with me. It occurred to me that in the same way, God wants me. To be clear, God doesn’t need me, he wants me. I on the other hand need relationship … but with God, not so much others. First things first. I need to cultivate my relationship with God and then those other relationships that I crave will come. One more reminder to make sure I make time for God FIRST before all the other hundreds of distractions that surface in the course of a day.

One last thought: “God knew who he was creating, and he designed me for a specific work,” (p. 59). This got me thinking. What has God created me to do? Am I doing some … all … none of what he created me for? I don’t have answers, though I do think I am at least doing some of what He created me to do (motherhood, my career helping children be successful in school …) but I’m sure there is more to come. My prayer is that I am open to grow and change as needed to continue to fulfill His purpose in creating me.

August 20th

What really matters? What do I truly care about? Do my actions match up?

This chapter hit me hard. I might just need to read it every day till I figure out how to truly cast my cares on and rest in Him.

Starting work this week was tough. I stressed and worried a lot about my daughter and even a little about my son. Toss in a little what-chaos-might-this-school-year-bring and I was pretty much a mess of nerves and stress. Sure people told me my little girl would be just fine, would drink from her sippy with no problems by the week’s end, but I still worried about it. Looking back I truly wonder why I couldn’t just TRUST GOD. He’s never failed me before. Ever.

I’ve often read these verses from Philippians 4:4-9 and yet I’m not certain I ever truly understood the meaning.

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 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 your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you. (NIV)

I need to REJOICE. ALWAYS. I need to tell God what I’m concerned or worried about and leave my concerns there knowing He will take care of me. I need to stay positive and focus on good things.

Sure, sometimes that is easy and sometimes it seems impossible, but I need to do this in ALL situations and in ALL circumstances.

When I’m consumed by my problems—stressed out about my life, my family, and my job—I actually convey the belief that I think the circumstances are more important than God’s command to always rejoice. In other words, that I have a “right” to disobey God because of the magnitude of my responsibilities.

Worry implies that we don’t quite trust that God is big enough, powerful enough, or loving enough to take care of what is happening in our lives.

Stress says that the things we are involved in are important enough to merit our impatience, our lack of grace toward others, our tight grip of control.

Whoa.

When I read this I had to stop, read it again, and then once again. Sure I know worry is a sin, but apparently that never struck me as a good reason to STOP WORRYING. The world revolves around me and my problems, right? While I write that quite sarcastically, that is how I’ve been living life for 31 almost 32 years. I don’t like that word “consumed” but that is certainly how I responded to my circumstances this week. I rarely took time from concern about my life to think about or focus on God or someone else. When something crummy happened my response was, “great, there’s one more thing to add to my stress this week.” What a stupid reaction.

The point of your life is to point to Him. Whatever you are doing, God wants to be glorified, because this whole thing is His.

It’s not all about me. It’s all about Him.

When I errantly focus on myself and stress and worry, I’m doing nothing to point toward God, to give God glory. Is that really what I want to do? How I want to live?

Turning inward is one way to respond; the other is to acknowledge our lack of control and reach out for God’s help.

I need to get better about this worry thing. Sure I might struggle with it all my life but I need to change my first response from worrying and thinking about all the bad things that might happen and stressing about my life and circumstances to praying and trusting God that He will work everything out to His purpose, His glory and in His perfect timing.

August 13th

Yet another several weeks gone by with nothing. Sadly, I have not taken much time in the past month or two to spend one-on-one with God. Aside from the business that results from parenting and having a newborn (who’s not so new anymore, she’s 5mo!) there is all the other “stuff” that I let slowly, easily invade my time till there’s none left.

Over the summer I did participate in a Bible study with a few other moms at my church. It was tough and made apparent how sinful and in need of a Savior I truly am. The study was great and came at the perfect time for me as it coincided with my husband losing his job and us taking “leaps of faith” and really becoming closer to God and each other as opposed to the alternative of fighting and being angry with each other and at God. I hope to get the whole study (since we just met over the summer only a third of the lessons were pulled from the study) and go through it in more depth in the very near future and will blog about that then, but in the meantime, I picked up Crazy Love by Francis Chan on the recommendation of one of the mom’s in my summer study and started that journey this evening.

Most of what is in the first chapter are things I know, things I reflect on now and then. The awesomeness of God, how we see glimpses of that in His creation. When reading and reflecting I recalled a rainbow I saw about two weeks ago. There are no words to fully describe that rainbow, the picture I took looks like a muddy shoe to Cinderella’s sparkly glass slipper. That is probably how I see God, like that picture. Sure I can see the colors of the rainbow, but the brightness of the colors and the hugeness of the bands gets lost in translation. There are so many things I know about God and who He is and what He does and His response to His creation … to me … but those are like little, tiny pixels that don’t add up to much until you have hundreds of thousands of them all put together in a certain order.

I watched the 15 minute video at www.crazylove.com, the companion website for the book and one thing that blew my mind was when he thought of his daughters and how God sent Christ, His SON to die for us. Would I be able to sacrifice my child in the same way. No. Way. But thankfully, God did just that! He was able to part with His beloved Son and send Him to this earth to die in our stead, conquer the grave, and redeem us all. He sent His Son to be tortured and killed so that I could be saved. Nothing I do is worth that love, that sacrifice, but God wanted a relationship with me so He did the unthinkable, unfathomable … and now, what is my response to what He did?

I’d love to say that my response is what it ought to be, but it’s not. Were my response what it ought, I’d spend more time in the Word and worshiping the Almighty.

There’s so much for me to learn.

My prayer is this, straight from Psalm 42:1-2.

As the dear pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, Oh God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go meet with God?

I want to desire God so much that all I want is to spend time with Him, above all the other distractions that the devil may place in my path.

June 15th

Something occurred to me the other day and I just never got around to writing about it.

After giving up on the C.S. Lewis devotional I titled this blog “All About the Journey.” Back in February I had no idea that come May my husband’s job would be gone and our life would take on a dramatic change. I need to take more time to write about this journey, but here are a few things I’ve realized recently in dialoging with others.

1. There have been no arguments between my husband and I through this whole ordeal. We have been on the same page the whole time. Not thinking to pray for unity, we asked people to pray God would make our path clear, yet God provided unexplainable unity any way. Whenever I think of or have a concern my husband’s thought of the same thing and has the same reaction or response that I do. This struck me the other day and I’m grateful for this huge blessing.
2. I have no idea how or why, but I’m fine with the idea that God seems to be moving us on from our life here. Maybe because we had sensed some sort of change, maybe because others are praying for us, maybe because the alternative is more frightening, maybe all of the above, but I am not angry or upset about the possibility of us moving to the Midwest. Sad yes, but also perfectly content with Him having other plans for me.

The rest will have to wait till Part II since naptime is over for today.

May 30th

Interesting thought. Well, interesting to me and hopefully to the 2 people who read this.

My 2mo daughter was crying this morning. She was hungry. As soon as she got what she wanted, she was perfectly content and happy. Had I not fed her, she would have continued fussing till she got what she needed.

Made me think of my relationship with God. How often do I cry out to Him and continue doing so till I get what I need? He tells us to ask and we will receive (Matthew 7:7-9), but for some reason I often don’t even ask, let alone ask on a regular basis!

Another thing, I need to be fed in order to grow spiritually. Often, there are so many things that I stupidly let replace that hunger. Breastfed babies eat 8-12 times a day. Sometimes, she always seems hungry. I need that same hunger in my life when it comes to drawing closer to God. Hunger that makes me cry out to Him till I am satisfied. He is always there and will never ignore me crying out to Him.

Now to make the time to follow through and draw closer to my Savior.

May 24th

From Life! Celebrate It by Luci Swindoll.

Energy. Something I so often lacked with just the 3yo in the house and now even more so with an infant! Thankfully, most nights we get some pretty good stretches of sleep, but the energy is still often lacking.

This devotion was a good reminder of where my strength should really come from.

God.

There are often days when I wake up exhausted but I ask God for the strength to make it through the day and He always delivers.

What an encouraging verse from Isaiah 40:29: “[God] gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might He increases strength.”

As Luci states:

Scripture tells us that God not only has his own power and strength, but he’s given that same power to us. He enables us to have energy when we tap into his. David says to God in Psalm 31:4, “You are my strength.” And again in Psalm 27:1, “The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”

No matter what life brings, lack of sleep, financial difficulty, moving across the country, parenting challenges, a stressful job … God will provide me with the energy I need to make it through each day He blesses me with. Thank you God, for strength when I feel weak and helpless. May I continue to call upon You when I face whatever challenges You place in my path.

May 23rd

I don’t want to get up and get my devotional book and have wanted to post and talk about this song for several days, so here you have it, my theme song for the month of May … and maybe the rest of the year.

Move by MercyMe

I’m not about to give up because I heard you say
There’s gonna be brighter days, there’s gonna be brighter days
Won’t stop I’ll keep my head up, no I’m not here to stay
There’s gonna be brighter days, there’s gonna be brighter days

I just might bend but I won’t break
As long as I can see your face

When life won’t play along
And right keeps going wrong
And I can’t seem to find my way
I know where I am found so I won’t let it drag me down
No, I’ll keep dancing anyway

Gonna move, move
Gonna move, move
Gonna move
Gonna move

I’ve got to hold it steady keep my head in the game
Everything is about to change, everything is about to change
This hurt is getting heavy, but I’m not about to cave
Everything is about to change, there’s gonna be brighter days

I just might bend but I won’t break
As long as I can see your face

When life won’t play along
And right keeps going wrong
And I can’t seem to find my way
I know where I am found so I won’t let it drag me down
No, I’ll keep dancing anyway

I’m gonna move, no matter what may come
Gonna move, gotta move to a different drum
Gonna move, no matter what life brings
Gotta move, gotta move to a different beat
No matter what may come, gotta move to a different drum
No matter what life brings gotta move, gotta move to a different beat

With job issues and all the changes looming on the horizon this song fits everything that’s happening perfectly. There’s no need to give up or feel hopeless, God is always with me. He’s got a plan and no matter what goes on I can keep my head up and dance knowing He’s in charge and good things, brighter days, will come if I stay close to God, follow Him and let Him work in my life. Praise God that even if everything is about to change, I won’t break, and He will never leave me!

Thanks MercyMe, for the perfect song at the perfect time. GOD IS SO GOOD!

May 22nd

From The Buzz by Thelma Wells.

When you look at everyday life as a gift from God and as your gift to him – and as one little piece of the puzzle of purpose God has planned for you from the beginning of the universe – then each day can be an exciting occasion for discovering the divine appointments God has for you.

What a thought. Or at least a different way of looking a the little things in life. Sometimes the boring, everyday stuff of life can so easily get boring, get me down, get me annoyed or even angry. But there’s a reason for everything and maybe I need to pay more attention to how God is at work, how He might be using me, what He would want me to do. Every moment is His anyway.

Often, right now, many of these divine appointments are with my family, my husband and children. What a huge things to consider, especially lately when the 3yo has been driving me nuts. I need to change my response to him and treat him differently, he deserves that of me.