Yesterday, one of the sisters from my accountability group encouraged me to praise God. In the past, I had heard it before but somehow I missed the "why" so the injunction to "just praise God" came across as ritualistic and made me feel like I was lighting joss sticks again.
But last night, R's why stuck. We praise because it's an act of trust that breaks chains even when we don't know what the source of those chains is.
Then I realized finally that when we praise God, we enter into His presence and nothing can stand before Him. It's a simple truth that is easy to grasp intellectually. But it's only when we are suffering that the experience of this truth becomes real. Step into the presence of God--one step from suffering into His glory--and everything calms down.
I once witnessed with my own eyes how a lady was told by a stranger what she did in secret. A stranger who prayed for her said, "You have been going to fortune tellers. Please stop." She burst out crying and said, "I thought if I didn't tell anyone, no one would know." After I saw that, I thought, "This lady is going to have super-faith for sure." But it's not true. Three to four years later, she's still struggling to trust God to meet her needs.
And the funny thing is, I saw it with my own eyes, and I too struggle to believe that God will meet my needs! I can just imagine Jesus shaking His head at me. Smiling, but shaking His head.
"You saw that with Your own eyes, so why don't you have super faith??!"
In times of struggle--and even in the best of times--our hearts long to hear the gospel story again and again. The story of God pursuing us, even to the point of death.
It's interesting to note now that I'm back to "normal" life, i.e. not having people constantly around me and not having to get on buses, trains, or navigate strange streets that God has been changing things. He hasn't changed things on the outside, but I feel a change on the inside. Compared to previous experiences, I feel so much more peace and rest even if I did go through periods of mourning, grief, and wrestling. I might still go through future bouts of grief and wrestling, but I know with so much certainty that God is working things out in the unseen. This certainty was never available to me before. God gave me words of encouragement from C and non-C in my life, and confirmed multiple times that I only need to be still and that He is the one who fights my battle. My challenge this year: break the habit of looking ahead and "needing" to know what is coming up. This is a tough one. It's something I've always done and "needed." Gosh. Psalm 37:7 Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices!
I didn't realize how wound up I am until I got here, back in a different context, and among friends whose lives are different from mine. Why am I so wound up inside when I know God who created the stars, the seas, and everything in between is on my side? Reading the Word calms my insides like nothing else does. Father's words are truly living and active.
I've been concerned about not hearing from God, and told Him about it when I was brushing my teeth. God spoke through two others even before I woke up.
I woke up about 7ish, and worried for two hours that everything I’ve done in the past was a waste of time. I finally got up to brush my teeth, and I prayed, “Lord, I’m afraid I won’t be able to hear from You, not because You don’t speak but because I can’t hear so You’ll have to be very, very clear.”
After I brushed my teeth, I checked email and saw emails from two different friends. Friend 1 said, “This is very odd, but I think this is for you.” It was a devotional she was reading, and the message was more or less, “Nothing is wasted. In the midst of trials, God is doing something in you, and not just for you.”
Friend 2 said that he was meditating on Ecclesiastes, and thought of me. This is what he wrote:
“I pray that God guards you against thinking of your efforts there as meaningless. They weren't, because I trust they were done in obedience. I pray that God will lead you to take the next step, whatever it is, in joyful obedience.”
Friend 2's email was sent at 1am, and Friend 1's email at 12:10am. God knew that I would be worrying about this for two hours after I woke up, and he knew the request on my heart when I brushed my teeth.
So, He decided to set up His answer to me a few hours before while I was still asleep.
Neither friend is in the habit of sending me their devotionals, and neither friend has their spiritual eyes fully opened. However, that's not all. Here are my sermon notes from yesterday on the Christmas story. I thought it spoke to me powerfully. Genesis 12: 2-3 God may not show you the goal until you are willing to go. God is like a father holding our hands as we learn to walk. The baby may fall but the father is always willing to help. A promise from God created a great deal of tension. The promise of a child at 75. Genesis 15 God comforted Abram by reaffirming his promise. The opposite of uncertainty is not certainty but faith and trust that God will do what He has promised. In the meantime, we learn patience. A delay is not a delay at all but divine timing. Abram chose to believe. Having faith God doesn't prevent Abram from asking for evidence. But the sequence is belief first, then questions. What we see in Abram’s situation: “Faith seeking understanding.” -- Thomas Aquinas God honors Abram’s question and settles him by making a covenant. The consequence of violating the covenant will be like the animals who have been torn in half. Death and destruction. During that time, if the covenant is made between two parties of unequal power, the covenant is one sided, and it is the weaker party who has to walk in between the animals. However, God walks in between the animals instead of Abram because he knows Abram will fail. He chooses to bear Abram's failures even when he knows that Abram will fail to uphold their covenant, and He chooses to honor His promise to him anyway.
During the 400 years of silence between the OT and the NT, God was preparing a new covenant, and a new son, God's own son. God's son was the payment when Abram broke the covenant.
I was chatting with a friend and she said today that when we wrestle with God, He gives us understanding and reveals His character. I thought that was a wonderful description of walking in faith.
A close friend's two youngest kids went through stages where they couldn't step on sand. They would go to the beach but have a hard time playing because they would cry when sand touched them or they touched sand.
That must be how God sees me right now. He's brought me to the beach so that I can run around, play, and have fun, but I'm scared of the sand ...
Even I have to laugh at myself.
Friday, October 12, 2018
Daniel 3: 16-18
16 Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to him, “King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter.17 If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us[c] from Your Majesty’s hand.18 But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”
“There
is no way to know who you really are until you are tested. There is no way to
really empathize and sympathize with other suffering people unless you have
suffered yourself. There is no way to really learn how to trust in God until
you are drowning. But we also learn from this story that God is with us in the
fire…. He walks with us, but the real question is—will we walk with him?” (234).
“Christian
peace comes not from thinking less but from thinking more, and more intensely,
about the big issues of life. Paul gives a specific example of this in Romans 8:18,
where he uses the same word, logizdomai,
and speaks directly to sufferers. He says, ‘I reckon that our present sufferings are not worth comparing to the
glory that shall be revealed in us.’ To ‘reckon’ is to count up accurately, not
to whistle in the dark….
Someone reading this might say, ‘You are talking about
doctrine but what I really need is comfort.’ But think! Is Jesus really the Son
of God? Did he really come to earth, die for you, rise again, and pass through
the heavens to the right hand of God? Did he endure infinite suffering for you,
so that someday he could take you to himself and wipe every tear from your
eyes? If so, then there is all the comfort in the world. If not—if none of
these things are true—then we may be stuck here living for seventy or eighty
years until we perish, and the only happiness we will ever know is in this life.
And if some trouble or suffering takes that happiness away, you have lost it
forever. Either Jesus is on the throne ruling all things for you or this is as
good as it gets” (299).
“Suffering
puts its fingers on good things that have become too important to us. We must
respond to suffering not ordinarily by jettisoning those loved things but by
turning to God and loving him more, and by putting our roots down deeper into
him. You will never really understand your heart when things are going well. It
is only when things go badly that you can see it truly. And that’s because it
is only when suffering comes that you realize who is the true God and what are
the false gods of your lives. Only the true God can go with you through that
furnace and out to the other side. The other gods will abandon you in the
furnace” (308). “When things go
wrong, one of the ways you lose your peace is that you think maybe you are
being punished. But look at the cross! All the punishment fell on Jesus.
Another thing you may think is that maybe God doesn’t care. But look at the cross!
The Bible gives you a God that says, ‘I have lost a child too; but not involuntarily—voluntarily,
on the cross, for your sake. So that I could bring you into my family’” (312).
I have to submit a book chapter tomorrow and I have the number of pages, but I know that it needs to be revised for clarity and emphasis. So I have printed out the draft and have to go through it. But every time I do this, my nerves are on edge. Writing is an exercise of faith. Will God save me? Will He guide? Will I be done by the deadline? LOL. Sigh.
I praise You, Jesus, because nothing is too small for your Love, and nothing is too big for Your power.
In my prayer director's discipleship
class yesterday, we had to draw a pie chart of what we spend our time thinking about.
(That’s an awkward sentence but I'm too tired to fix it.) I was embarrassed to show mine because most of my
time was not spent on thinking about work but about the future. If I think about work that’s at least useful, but thinking
about the future is the most useless habit possible. My prayer director noted that that's a response to fear, and she's right.
Loved this sermon by Tim Keller on overcoming anxiety. Here are my notes from listening to the sermon, just in case anyone's trying to decide if they should listen to the whole sermon (yes! you should!):
Keller says that Christians should be experts of joy, but that
our wrong expectations of life leave us ill-prepared to face anxiety.
When we were non-believers, we only had one enemy, and that
was God. But God is a nice enemy to have because all He wants is for you to be
blessed. When we become Christians, we find that we have new enemies; these
enemies are not stronger, but they
are meaner and nastier. We shouldn’t overestimate our enemies so that they are
bigger than they are, but we also shouldn’t underestimate our enemies so that
we enter into battle without being prepared.
Philippians 4:6
6 Do not be anxious about
anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with
thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
Thanksgiving is the key to dealing with anxiety. Why do we
give thanks when we are only presenting a request? Because it acknowledges that
no matter what happens, we trust that God will work things out for our good.
Peace is the confidence of God’s wise control over our lives. We can pray in
this way: “ Lord, whatever you do in response to this request is good. I thank you for it.”
The “fruit”—singular, not plural—of the Spirit can only
come from God. They come as a whole, not as individual traits. You can present
a form of peace—that might really be a form of apathy—and pretend that you have
peace but you cannot pretend to have all of the fruits at once. Someone might
be very self-controlled, but at the expense of joy!
The world (secularism), the flesh, and the devil all attack
us. Secularism is a world-ism, a now-ism where we focus only on what we see in
front of us in the now. The flesh is the desire to be God. It takes many
different forms, but usually manifests itself as a desire to feel in charge, or
to feel powerful and it can exist in the church as a religious form too. The
devil wants to destroy our peace and joy through lies and accusations.
The reason that we become anxious is usually some combination
of the three. When we identify only one of them, we miss the whole
picture. These three things succeed when they are able to get at our assurance
in Christ. We need to remember that our feelings are the result, not the basis
of our salvation. We lose our assurance when we look at our sins more than our
savior.
Instead, we need to see our sadness as a sign that God is
at work in our lives. No one wants to be more like God on their own. It is the
Holy Spirit who puts that desire in our hearts. But we need to remember that
the only way to deal with the world, the flesh, and the devil is to keep
telling ourselves the story of the gospel.
The reason that we struggle with this sadness is because we
are locked into works of righteousness. “I still want to feel like I’m good
enough to be saved.” But we never were were. We need to look at Christ and
stand in him so that our glory is in God. For every look at our sin we need to
take five looks at our savior.
Philippians 4:4-9
4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again:
Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all.
The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about
anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with
thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And
the peace of God,which transcends all understanding, will guard your
hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
8 Finally, brothers and sisters, 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. 9 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.
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
When I woke up, the Holy spirit brought a
memory to my mind. It was of the cross-country drive I took with mother and sister after I finished my PhD. That is a happy memory but it was also a stressful
trip at times because mother got anxious and scared when we drove.
I hadn’t made
the drive before but I had every route planned out, down to the hotels,
camping, and where to do laundry. Literally, every detail was planned and I had
AAA coverage, insurance, etc. If I may say so myself, I’m actually a good
planner and I wanted to show mother and sister a good time. How many people get to go on a drive across the US??
But mother got anxious and angry at points because she was
worried as we made our way over. We passed bright cities but also long stretches of
empty, desolated land. Yes, of course, some parts looked so lonely.
But it was
part of God’s creation and He sees it as beautiful, and I wanted my mom to
enjoy it. Yes, of course, it seemed dangerous at some times (mother was afraid of
bears at Yellowstone!). But everything was under control, and even if something happened, help
would have been available.
My journey right now looks a long like that.
There are long, desolate stretches in my journey but God is entirely in
control, and He wants me to enjoy those parts too—because He is there!
Life can seem precarious right now, but He wants me to enjoy the ride—because He has
everything planned out!
My mom was anxious because she didn’t know
what I had planned, and she didn’t know help was literally, just a call away.
I’m anxious now because I don’t know what
God has planned, and I didn’t know help is literally, just a call away.
But
my experiences last week, and yesterday too, showed me that every time I call,
God answers. sometimes He takes a little while, but He always answers. So I need to sit back, relax, and enjoy the journey because God
knows full well where I'm going.
Giving
thanks is an act of faith. To do so in the face of what we see proclaims that we believe that God is already at work in every situation. And when we take the time
to thank God for already working, we are reminded that He is the author of
all good works. We are participants in the work that he has set into motion. In that posture of submission, we are both humbled and honored to be called co-workers of Christ.
Basically, I don't know why, but giving thanks helps me feel joy when left to my own devices, I feel only confusion and fear.
How can we embrace poverty as a way to God when everyone around us wants to become rich? Poverty has many forms. We have to ask ourselves: "What is my poverty?" Is it lack of money, lack of emotional stability, lack of a loving partner, lack of security, lack of safety, lack of self-confidence? Each human being has a place of poverty.
That's the place where God wants to dwell! "How blessed are the poor," Jesus says (Matthew 5:3). This means that our blessing is hidden in our poverty.
We are so inclined to cover up our poverty and ignore it that we often miss the opportunity to discover God, who dwells in it. Let's dare to see our poverty as the land where our treasure is hidden.
