It’s VBS and kids swarm thick and hot bodies race past me in the hallway, smelling of summer and boy. I breathe deep and I remember… a VBS nearly 3 decades ago, when Ms. Nadine taught our class and we made crosses out of matchsticks.

Dana was in that class too and her family had five kids, same as ours. And Dana’s mom, she walked me out to the car after VBS one day and whispered something in my ear.

“I want my kids to be just like you,” she told me, admiration glowing in her eyes.

And my hungry little heart ate the words up for I was starving.  Any kind of acceptance was food for a deprived and overlooked soul. Somehow, I learned it very early in life, that people like good girls. Parents like them, teachers like them, church folk like them, and after all, those were the kinds of folk I hung around.

So I was the good girl. I was the teacher’s pet and the “Character Award” winner and the child other parents wanted their kids to be like. But there is one secret a good girl carries deep inside~ the stain of sin and the knowledge that she will never really be good enough.

No matter how much performance and approval and acceptance, there is still that hunger.

And Jesus, He has a way of exposing it. He knows just how to bring you to the end of yourself so that you can partake of something much better. It’s the Shepherd’s way to bring his beloved face to face with their longing and lack, and yes, especially their sin.

He did it to the crowds in John 6. He led them to a “solitary place” where there was no food, no provision, no resources. They remained there until their hunger growled and their need hissed and they tasted their utter desperation.

They were fainting for lack of provision. Jesus turns to the disciples and says, “You give them something to eat.”

Not only did they have nothing, the responsibility to nourish others fell solidly on their shoulders. How many days have I felt sucked dry… yet the children are there, the husband, the people who I’ve come here to serve…and Jesus turns and says day after day, “You give them something to eat.”

And surely the true disciple of Christ comes to the place where she lacks and she thirsts and she has nothing. She has responsibilities but no resources.

She longs for adequacy, approval, goodness… but there is only want. There is simply all this growling want, us face to face with our inability to be enough. Staring down cravings of the flesh with empty hands and no back up plan.

Have you been there?

Led by Savior to the solitary place where you see your deep need, the utter sinfulness of your own heart, the inability to ever be good enough much less satisfy another? Be not afraid of where the Savior leads you.

Elyse Fitzpatrick writes of the crowd, “They would have worked, but there was no work to be had that could satisfy such a great need.”

Yes. The good girl, the performer, the fixer…we would do whatever it takes to meet the needs of our heart. Heaven knows we try. But the simple truth is, we can’t.

Then the Messiah spoke: “Have the people sit down.”

And just like that, Christ makes His intentions clear. He never intended for us to be good enough. He never intended for us to do the miraculous. He intends for us to sit down, cease our labors, stop striving and trying and attempting to meet our own needs.

Like the hungry crowd in John 6, “We too have nothing. We have no innate goodness, no righteousness, no wisdom, no strength, no miraculous power to enable us to work hard enough to meet the overwhelming need of our souls. We are completely bankrupt; we’re devoid of the power we need to conquer our sin, to change our nature. We have exhausted all our supplies, and although we are willing to work, there is just nothing that we can do that will satisfy such a wretchedness. We are starving for true righteousness, hungering to be able to meet God’s standards, languishing as we try to satisfy the ever-growing needs of those around us.

But our Savior calls to us, “Sit down.”

Sit Down. Believe.

Sit down and trust that He’s got us covered. He’s handling lunch. He’s got our sin covered. He’s got all of eternity handled. He’s got the lack taken care of.

All we need do is sit down and let Him serve us.

~Elyse Fitzpatrick in her book “Comforts,” a book suitable to use as a 31 day devotional

 

God never intended us to be good enough. He never intended us to do the miraculous. He allows us time in the solitary place to look our lack in the face… so that we know how the need is met. Because yes, it is abundantly met!

We need not be afraid of our hungers, our cravings, our desperation. We need only train ourselves in this, the sitting down and believing.

For this is the work God has for us, to believe in Him whom He has sent.

And as we do, there are leftovers. Baskets full of abundance.

“For Christ is the end of the law to everyone who believes.” Romans 10:4

Simply Trusting Thursdays

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It’s a sticky July morning when we pile into the van and follow country roads to their house. We pass the bank on the hill and the digital sign blinks 99 degrees. Already?

Mr. Ira greets us when we arrive. “My, my, you’ve got your hands full,” he says, referencing the three little ones who seem to have turned into squirrels upon entering their home. They are going from window to window, pressing their faces against panes to see the many species of birds, the fish in the fountain, the hibiscus bathed in delicate peach.

“Let children be children,” Mr. Ira says as we fret about the prints we are leaving behind. Mr. Ira, the one who does all the cleaning. “Lawanda will be down shortly,” he says, then gives us an update. “She looks better than she is. By looking at her you wouldn’t know anything is wrong. But when I cut her eggs in the mornings…” Mr. Ira trails off and my heart goes soft at this man who stoops low to carry another, who cooks special meals and cleans up sickness and cuts eggs.

“Her hands and feet are blistered, fingers numb. The doctors say there’s nothing more they can do, we’ll just keep taking the meds.”

Ms. Lawanda does look good when she comes down. You wouldn’t know that her liver is full of hot spots and under her left arm there’s a lump. Jackson takes the children for a look at the wonders outside while I talk with these two precious ones. She tells me it’s been five years and the meds she’s on now are better than the ones before and that’s enough about her, how am I?

I choke back the tears. I don’t want to talk about me. I want to go to my knees and I want to serve them really the only way I can, with beseeching prayer. I struggle through the questions, trying to tell them what we are doing, where we are headed in a few weeks. Then Jackson returns and the four of us huddle around the sofa on our knees. We’ve somehow made a circle, hands and hearts entwined.

As we pray, Ms. Lawanda says it soft, “Yes, Jesus” and Mr. Ira is heaving big sobs, a broken man drawing water from the Well. It’s the Spirit who interceeds. Joshua 1 is what He’s pressing on the heart, out the lips. “Every place on which the sole of your foot treads, I have given it to you, from the wilderness to the setting of the sun will be your territory.”

And I see those blistered feet beside me, red and swollen and painful from the journey through her wilderness, and I know…this place she treads, though hard and rocky and painful, it is “given” to her.

That makes it a gift.

And it says it right there: Every inch, be it the glory of the sunset or the dryness of the desert, or the everything in between…every inch is gift.

“Oh God!” I cry on behalf of dear ones, “Give us vision! Restore faith where it has faltered, for You have given this land. We don’t understand, Lord…but help us believe.”

And when prayers are over and Mr. Ira just shakes silent with the burden and the blessing, he wraps arms tight around me and I know this is gift. And when we all walk to the car, Mr. Ira looks at me and points over to the guest house. “You see that, girl?” he asks. “Yes sir,” I nod back.

“That is where we meet every Friday night and call down the heavens, like we just done inside. With you all headed back overseas, He’s on me to start meeting for you again.”

And I realize in a very real way, I may be a small reason for the cross. I see the brokenness in this couple, the five long years of pain and struggle and unknowns. I see the burden of the cross they bear. The cross causes awareness of the desperate need, but perhaps even more than that, it drives one to agonizing prayer.

Something niggles inside, words that need a hearing…

Jesus in the Garden, the cross pressing closer,  Jesus went to the Garden to pray. He asked His disciples… to watch and pray. The words are there, finding their way out, “Could you not tarry with Me one hour?” The cross presses us to prayer and prayer paves the way for the kingdom of God to come in power.

Voices in the wilderness preparing the way of the Lord.

This gift, this wilderness, this cross, it is the bearing and the laboring and the unleashing of the kingdom of God. The gift is the invitation to participate in redemption.

Yes indeed, I and the people I’m going to live among may literally be thousands of reasons for this painful cross. It all converges, the nail scarred hands, the blistered feet, the tears in the Garden, the words whispered, “Not my will but Thine, thy kingdom come.” The tarrying, the invitation, the gift.

The unleashing of heaven.

But how can we bear with Him if we do not believe? If we have no vision for the victory, the purpose, the glory, no vision of the drawing near being accomplished through the cross? No vision of the rent veil, the bowed knees, the throngs before the throne? In the bearing of our cross do we not understand how we fill up and flesh out the sufferings of Christ?

Surely His people perish for lack of vision.

We return home and I stand at the sink before a pile of dirty dishes, the cry for faith on the lips, the prayer for vision of the joy set before. The flesh is weak and eyes are prone to fail.

Come morning, the children and I gather for quiet time. I open the Sarah Young devotional and read:

Jump In With Both Feet

“Look at the new thing I am going to do. It is already happening. Don’t you see it? I will make a road in the desert. I will make rivers in the dry land.” Isaiah 43:19 ICB

“You must always trust Me,” He whispers. “Because even in the desert~ and you know that wilderness is gift~ I will make a road. And even in the dry land I will make rivers for you. Jump in with both feet! Don’t try to hobble along any pathway from Me on one leg, half hearted and half believing… because you can trust Me.”

And I look down at my own blistered feet, weary and worn and unsure. I jump. I jump into the path before me. Both feet driven by trust.

Simply Trusting Thursdays

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