Teacher's Working

So I have realized that as I gear up to teach God's Word to teenagers, God first takes me through the lesson to be learned. This week's lesson: Romans 7 and big fat ugly struggles with sin.

Well, here is a synopsis of the week: Monday, indulged in my two pet sins, overeating and entertainment. Man I binged, it was not pretty. Tuesday was negative, complaining, and gossiping. Tuesday was also in a whole lot of physical pain. Tuesday night wanted to read my Bible, but then I just stared at it on my nightstand. I crawled into bed, realizing this wretched pattern. I confessed it and asked for healing of my sore throat, my physical pain, my bad attitude, and my wicked heart. Wednesday, felt like a burden was lifted. Wednesday night, read about Jehova-Shalom, God my peace. I claimed His name and asked Him to prove it to me. He answered with the best night's sleep I have had in six months. Thursday, teach ninth graders about Romans 7.  I would say he took me through the lesson.

The synopsis of the lesson: We all have our thing we go to, that coping mechanism that allows us to escape and not have to think or feel reality. For me it is food, for others its music, basketball, TV, movies, exercise. Really anything can go in that blank. God calls this worship: when we give our time, money and energy to something and value it more than God. We are then under the authority to whatever we worship and therefore have to live with the ramifications of that authority. If food is what you worship you will become fat, unhealthy, fatally sick, spend money, time and energy on that at the cost of other things.

Paul uses two examples to prove this point: marriage and trees. Like in marriage you cannot be connected to two people at once and so you cannot be connected to both sin and Jesus. Then like a tree, whatever you plant will come out in the fruit. Sin in=sin out. Jesus in= Jesus out. Lastly, we struggle. Rules just make us want to bend and break them. And when we do, we become enslaved. So we live life in constant friction from what we know we should do and what we obsessively want to do.

The solution. Well that will come tomorrow with Romans 8.

Connecting Dots

This week I heard 22 of my students take me through a gospel presentation with me pretending to know nothing about God. Over and over again I heard them say that this whole salvation thing is by faith, you just have to believe. When I pressed further and said it sound too easy. Most of them said, well you gotta do good things too. So there were two opposing dots they were putting on the table. So I have been mulling over how to explain to them the connection.


Dot number one: Salvation comes through faith alone. It is not by works so that no one can boast. We do have to just believe. 


Dot number two: Faith without works is dead. Our obedience is a requirement of our faith. 


As I was reading Galatians yesterday, God connected the dots for me in a simple way.


"What matters is faith working out in love". Love is the key. Faith without action is hypocrisy. Obedience without faith is legalism. The balance: love. 


A man and woman have to have trust or there relationship can go no where. They trust that the other person will be there for them, protect them, not leave them. They trust that when hurt happens the other person will make steps to make it better. They also have to do things for each other. it cannot be one-sided. They both have to serve, give, take, help, support, etc. What binds them though is love. They trust each other which leads to love. They love each other which leads to works. 


So it is with God. We start with faith. We believe He is powerful, He is there, He is our Savior and Sustainer. That trust leads to love. It is our love that makes us want to read our Bibles, go to church, love people, not sin, not be selfish, give up things. God starts the process. He made the way. He draws us in. He proves Himself trustworthy. We respond in faith, in trust. Then He loves us which we respond to with love. Faith without works is dead, because it is faith without love. You cannot trust someone and not love them.   You cannot love someone without serving them and "doing" for them. "What matters is faith working out (that's works) in love." 

The Freshness of Art

I have been writing Bible curriculum for second graders. This project has consisted of the Bible stories I have heard since I was a small child, stories like David, Esther, Elijah, and Mary. I know the stories; I have read the stories more times than I can count; I have taught the stories; I have written curriculum about these stories.

Today, I walked into the company that has hired me to do write about these stories. My friend and editor showed me the visual aids that are to go with these stories. Growing up with flannel-graphs and cut out animated representations of Jesus, set me up to expect something just a little better than that. My breath was taken away when I saw them. These were no flannel-graphs. Artists, real artists, had captured the humanity in the stories. I was transfigured as Mary humbly before Gabriel received the invitation to come further up and further in. I cried as I saw visually fire coming down from heaven and consuming Elijah's altar. The light from it was captured onto the faces of the onlookers and the beauty of it was transformational. Through these amazing pictures these old hat stories were fresh and new and lovely and awe-inspiring.

I was struck anew with the idea that God loves artists. They have a very necessary place in His kingdom. For they imagine and create. They in themselves portray God's image so well. And their creations make the old come alive. Pictures draw us in and touch deep places of the heart. So artist friends... please create, don't stop creating. You are needed and valuable.

Cheetos vs. Scalloped Potatoes

I love scalloped potatoes and ham. Oh sometimes I just get a huge craving for it! This one meal represents so much for me. My mom used to make it for my birthday meal. So scalloped potatoes and homemade applesauce make me nostalgic. When I indulge and make a batch I am instantly filled with thoughts of home and love and acceptance.

Sometimes all I crave is scalloped potatoes and ham. I will think about it all day, sometimes all week. One day, as I was filled with one such craving, I looked in my pantry. None of the supplies necessary for my coveted dish were there, so I reached for the nearest substitute: a bag of Cheetos. Cheesy, yes, but so completely deficient from my craving.

God often builds in His own object lessons into my day. This was a big one. For the last week, I have been dissatisfied, moaning, groaning and feeling a severe and uncomfortable distance between me and God. I guess you could say I was craving Him. Well, my Bible has been untouched instead I have watched movies or read a novel. Somehow looking back I have tried to satisfy my craving (that He can and will fulfill) with greasy, cheesy, fingers. Cheetos Gospel.

prayed for

I will express on here what I could not do earlier tonight in verbal words. My heart is full. Tonight at small group an amazing man of God asked to pray for me. He prayed exactly what I needed to hear. It's got my wheels spinning and my heart racing. I desire to know more of Jesus... to see more of His kingdom... to hear His words... to be transformed before Him. This was the heartbeat of the prayer that God would make me dissatisfied with this world and make more desirous of His world. So thank you John. I said thank you then, but I want you to know that several of the things you said penetrated really deep.

Lessons from St. Patrick

As I drove through town on Thursday, I noticed a couple of women decked in revealing green dresses, green feather boas, and sparkly green jewelry. They were on their way into an Irish pub to celebrate the holiday with green colored food and drinks, and other revelers equally clad in green attire. The fleeting thought came to mind, "what a strange way to celebrate a saint."

That night I wondered at what a proper way to celebrate a saint would be. So first I looked up a bit of history on this Irish symbol. Wikipedia is great for such things. I was blown away by what I found out:

Patrick was the son of a high Roman official stationed in Britain. When he was 16, he was kidnapped by Irish marauders and sold as a slave to a cruel man. He spent six years in servitude where he learned the Celtic tongue, the intricacies of the druid rituals, and where he learned to pray. In one of Patrick's surviving letters he says, "After I reached Hibernia I used to pasture the flock each day and I used to pray many times a day. More and more did the Love of God, and my fear of Him and faith increase, and my spirit was moved so that in a day [I said] from one up to a hundred prayers, and in the night a like number; besides I used to stay out in the forests and on the mountain and I would wake up before daylight to pray in the snow, in icy coldness, in rain, and I used to feel neither ill nor any slothfulness, because, as I now see, the Spirit was burning in me at that time".


Through the direct guidance of God he fled his cruel master and went back to Britain. There he studied and became a priest. The passion for Ireland fostered in his time of service never left him. When the opportunity rose, he went back to the land of his imprisonment. He began his ministry there by paying his ransom price to his old master and then sharing with him the grace of Jesus and the freedom He offers. He proceeded to minister to the people of Ireland for some forty years. 


Today, this humble missionary who gave up all that the name of God would be praised, is celebrated with green beer and skimpy green dresses. I pray, instead, that God will allow me to celebrate this saint by growing in me the heart of St. Patrick: a heart of prayer, a heart of passion, a heart of forgiveness, a heart of boldness, a heart of sacrifice, a heart that beats wildly with the desire that every knee would bow to the King of Kings. 

Radical Follower

I just finished the book Radical. The last chapter is on four points to live radically: pray for the whole world, read the whole Bible, give your money to a specific cause and spend significant time outside your context, all while being part of a community that is seeking to do the same thing. This book ending coincided with a sermon in church about the cost of discipleship. My pastor shared verses that are hard, verses about taking our cross, loving God more than family, giving up everything, counting the cost and following Jesus. Jesus sure wasn't trying to start a mega-church for He said things that were unpopular and uncomfortable.

So I have to ask myself what does God want me to sacrifice? What is the cross I must take up? I am a bit of an extremist, so I go to these crazy pendulums. Maybe I need to never see another movie, maybe I need to commit to waking up at 4:00am every morning, maybe sugar should never again touch my lips, maybe, maybe... In some contexts I think He will ask me to do something extreme, but right now, those don't feel right. So what is it?

A quiet message keeps getting repeated: It's time to stop hiding. Coming out of my cave right now feels so much more risky and painful than giving up sugar or movies or sleep. I don't fully know what it means just yet, but I do know I've been hiding. So coming into the open, exposing my vulnerability feels well, vulnerable. So the pain of these words tells me my cross to take up. He longs to exchange my ashes for beauty, my mourning for oil of gladness; He longs to call me His oak of righteousness. But none of this can happen in my isolated cave, where my heart is more than guarded, it is stone-walled.

So here is my declaration: I am willing to follow Him to death, especially death to myself. I am coming out of my cave of hiding. I will show my weakness, my beauty, my heart to the world, inviting others in, not walling them out. I will expose myself to rejection and even ridicule so that others may see my heart, the home of my Savior, and thus be invited to sup with Him. Even as I type these words, I am filled with fear... but this is my cross. I will pick it up and follow Him.

Waters

Today my heart strings were pulled as I watched water pouring over Japan. A short video with no sound caused tears to well up. So much destruction in so little time. Seeing videos of ships being tossed like toys made me think of a verse that says God sets the boundaries for the waters and tells them to go no more. In looking it up, I came across the following verses:

"If he holds back the waters, there is drought. If he lets them loose, they devastate the land." Job 12:15

"Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name... the voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the Lord thunders over the waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is majestic." Psalm 29:2-4

"He gathers the waters of the seas into jars; he puts the deep into storehouses. Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the world revere Him." Psalm 33:6-8

"The Lord reigns, He is robed in majesty. The Lord is robed in majesty and armed with strength; indeed, the world is established, firm and secure... The seas have lifted up, Lord, the seas have lifted up their voice; the seas have lifted up their pounding waves. Mightier than the thunder of the great waters, mightier than the breakers of the sea- the Lord on high is mighty." Psalm 93

"Who shut up the sea behind doors, when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garments and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, 'This far you may come and no further, here is where your proud waves halt?" Job 38:8-11

I was struck that these verses and so many others are so closely tied to God's sovereignty. He is in control. The waters are a huge proof of it. He sets up the boundaries for the waters. He tells their proud waves that they can come no further. Every once in a while we see Him open the floodgates, move the boundary lines and allow the waters out of their place. When His voice thunders, His creation obeys. The result: 60,000 people lost their homes, 5,000 people lost their lives.  His creation tells us two things: He is powerful and He is God. Our response should be fear and worship. If He can cover half a nation in water at the sound of His voice, surely He is God and He must be worshiped as such. 

I'm struck by the ease of the deep's obedience. The oceans obey Him, so why don't we? God gives us a reasoning mind in order to look at creation in it's raw destructive power and see Him, and yet we use our reasoning mind to deny Him, rebuke Him, excuse ourselves, and shake our fist in His face. All He asks is that we worship Him as God and thank Him, yet we so often do neither. So today I see the waters, I see the hand that moved them, and I worship the Creator in fear and trembling. 

She Speaks Conference

Last year, my mom excitedly returned from a conference. Not really knowing what it was all about, and thinking it was like most other women's conferences, I half-heartedly listened to her excitement. It didn't take long, however, for me to realize that this was a conference unlike others, and my interest was greatly peaked. She Speaks Conference ( http://shespeaksconference.com/ ), taken from Proverbs 31:26 is a conference where Christian women who have journeyed through book publishing, public speaking, and women's ministries gather for the purpose of teaching and training. It is a time where new authors, speakers and leaders can learn from those who have walked the road before them, but also meet with people in the business, like publishers and editors, in hopes of taking steps to long held dreams. With this description, not only was curiosity peaked, but I was in awe of this amazing opportunity.

I love to write. In many ways, this blog has been the most energizing and life-giving exercise for me. I have discovered over the last year that God has made me to write so that I will enjoy it, so that others will enjoy it, and most importantly so that He will enjoy it. I am overwhelmed at the prospect of getting my thoughts, my writings out into the hands of readers. I am overwhelmed mostly because I know so little of the process.

So to hear of a conference where someone who loves the Lord and has been where I am will walk me through what this could be, is just as life-giving as writing this blog. I want to go to this conference as a declaration that I want to be a writer. I want this scholarship (http://lysaterkeurst.com/) as a declaration that God wants me to go to this conference and therefore also wants me to be a writer.

 She Speaks button

Love Equals Sacrifice

This week I heard the simplest and coolest message I have heard in a long time. A local pastor came to chapel. He had everyone do three simple hand motions: a heart, an equal sign, and cupped hands that are giving something away. With them, he had the tag line "Love equals sacrifice". The message went something like this...

When we love something, we sacrifice for it. When we love a guy or girl, we sacrifice time and money, friends and other things in order to spend time with and invest in that other person. Because we love them, we sacrifice for them. Our parents know this, and that is what they fear when we say we love someone; they are afraid of what we will sacrifice. This principle plays out in other areas of our lives too. If we love basketball, we sacrifice our time, our weekends, our physical bodies will even taken a beating for our love of the game. Whatever we love, we sacrifice for it. God gets this concept too. John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave..." He loved so much, He gave the ultimate sacrifice.

So the question is: we say we love God. We say it all the time, but if we do love God, what are we sacrificing for Him?

Deep conviction landed with this simple question: What am I sacrificing for this God that I say I love?

Radical

I have heard a lot of people talking about the book Radical by David Platt. It seems like the next fad book much like Prayer of Jabez was in high school, Desiring God in college and the Shack most recently. I am skeptical about buying and reading these fad books, but usually curiosity gets the better of me and I do. I try to keep an open mind, unswayed by the comments I've heard all over facebook or twitter. So Radical fit into this mindset. I went out and bought last weekend.

I have to be honest on first reading, my feelings were so different than the raving I heard from others. I thought if this guy really wanted to live a radical lifestyle he wouldn't be preaching at a megachurch. It took well into chapter three or four for me to get the message and for me to change my thinking, my judgment about this man. See, I judged him to be a self-proclaimed hypocrite. He touts ministering to the poor in a rich community. So here is me saying I was wrong. By chapter five I was sold and now by chapter eight I want to sign on the dotted line, sell everything I have and move somewhere, anywhere to preach the gospel.

What really hit me was the treatise on Romans. See, it is guaranteed that if we preach, they will hear, many will believe and call on the name of the Lord. It was encouraging to hear that when I preach the gospel in my Bible class, they all are hearing, many will believe, if not now, than later down the road. I believe with all my heart that in my class sit future John Pipers, Bruce Wilkinsons, and David Platts: world changers, violent men (and women) who will/are forcefully advancing the kingdom of God. But I was hit that the only place where the message cycle breaks down is if we don't preach. We are guaranteed hearers and believers, but only if we preach. So I want to preach. I am willing to give it all. So here is my renewed stand and prayer: Lord I will do anything and go anywhere to preach the gospel and advance your kingdom.