When you’re wondering about God’s heart for wretched sinners

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Some days you wonder if there is any hope for you…the chief of sinners.

For you… for us… there is today. There is Jesus on the cross, telling us God’s heart for sinners, even the chiefest.

 

Look to Him and live, all peoples of the earth.

 

“Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
“Truly I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.”
“Woman, behold your son; behold your mother.”
“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
“I am thirsty.”
“It is finished.”
“Father, into Thy hands I commit My spirit.”

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“This is a trustworthy statement and worthy of all acceptance:

Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.”

I Timothy 1:15

April 7, 2012

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Filed Under: Forgiveness, Redemption

Arabah’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

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I had to reprimand Little Bit first off. That is never good and it went sour right away and she resisted and told stories and then flat out rebelled.

She got sent to my room, which made us late and I had to drop the school child off while still wearing my sleeping top (thank goodness for jackets) and the two younger children broke the drawer on the armoire while Little Bit and I were doing business.

The house was a wreck, I wasn’t dressed, Little Bit was at odds with me and the day had just flat out started poorly.

I ended up getting what I wanted from Little Bit.. She submitted. I am the mommy.

But as I looked into her hard eyes, I know that I didn’t score a victory.

Why do I keep forgetting that my goal is not to win a battle? My goal is to win the war, the war for my child’s heart and soul.

I’m a bigger fool than she is. I’ve screwed this all up.

We get back from dropping child at school and I get down on the floor amidst the scattered puzzles and jumping frogs and Bingo markers and broken drawer with cobwebs on the back. I call Little Bit to me and look into her eyes.

“Little Bit,” I tell her. “I’m the mom and God made me in charge. It is not okay for you to resist and rebel against me. Mommy has to teach you that you cannot do that…but I don’t know that I did the right thing, baby. Mommy isn’t always sure how to teach you what is right. Let’s pray to Jesus, okay?”

I take her in my arms, knowing her rigid body means she is still resisting. We pray.

“Lord Jesus, please help us. Please help mommy to be a good mommy. Please help mommy love Little Bit and know how to teach her what is right. Please give mommy wisdom.”

Mommy is crying, now…and I’m shocked when I feel little sobs against my shoulder.

Little Bit is crying too.

“Jesus, You are Savior and Redeemer. Please redeem the rest of this day for us.” I speak the words and a flash of lightening cracks through my heart.

It illuminates my darkness.

I wipe Little Bit’s eyes. “Let’s have a good day,” I tell her as she softens in my arms.

I return to that flash, that illumination, that powerful word shot through the heart when I called on Him as Savior.

“Today is the day of salvation.”

Oh yes, but it’s true! As long as it is still called today, it is the day of salvation. There is indeed redemption. This day can be salvaged.

If only I can hold on to that!

Like Alexander going to sleep with gum in his mouth and waking up with gum in his hair, and getting his jacket wet, and on and on, so it seems when one bad thing happens, it spawns other bad things.

The day starts off rough…so I’m short with the children, impatient with everyone, critical of friends, insecure about my choices, and it never stops.

It really is a vicious cycle, a trap meant to claim my whole day, bit by bit.

But this, the word of truth. Today is the day of salvation.

I can just stop right here. I can draw a line. There is a Redeemer and He can literally save the day.

No matter how horrible it has been, how terrible my choices, no matter how out of control life has become…our Savior can salvage it. He has given today a name: salvation.

When the tempation comes to cave to the mess, the noise, the chaos, the bad choices, the insecurity,  I have a weapon. I take it up and I speak it out loud and I know that it is true.

The day is saved. I need not wait for tomorrow.

Now if I can just find Alexander to let him know…

December 3, 2011

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Filed Under: Adoption, Redemption, The Year of Conquest, Victory

Friday’s Father

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It’s Friday, and everybody chants ”Thank God It’s Friday”… with plans for the movies or the mall or the local corn maze if it’s October.

Come Friday night, Husband drives downtown into the setting sun.

This is how we spend many Friday nights. While other teenagers are doing silly things they shouldn’t, and other couples are going on dinner dates, and other families are having game nights in their warm houses… Husband, he parks his car at Juvenile Court and checks his belongings at security and gets ushered past the cold steel doors with the loud clicking lock that rings in your ears.

He goes to talk with teenage boys who’ve given up fun Fridays for gangs, theft, and drugs instead.

He enters the small room and waits. The guard makes the announcement to the boys- turned- men-too-early. Some of them are fathers already, themselves barely into adolescence: “Anybody wanna see the preacher?”

And usually 3 or 4 out of the hundred plus say yes and thank God that someone is there, even if it is only one night of the week and oh, if there were more men for other nights of the week, for these boys who’ve never had a father in their lives.

He never asks why they’ve been arrested. He just lets them share what they want. He’s been a deputy sheriff~ in the past, before the call to ministry. He knows how hard a heart can become and he knows how to help soften it.

He shares how Christ can change their lives. He gives these boys hope. He tells them, “Son, you’ve got to decide what direction your life is going to take. You’ve not had anyone to show you the right way…but that doesn’t mean you can’t find it. Jesus is your answer. He’s the life rope that won’t let you down.”

He shares his story, of how he was going down the same road, getting into all sorts of trouble. Then at 21, God intervened in his life and he surrendered to Jesus and that’s when life really began for him.

And sometimes the boys are ready. They do business with God. Sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes they are confused and still searching…but always they listen.

“Preacher, can you explain to me the grace of God?” the boys ask, time and time again.

Husband, he comes home broken.

He aches for the loss these boys have experienced. They’ve not seen or known a father. They’ve not been given the chance to see the Father…and isn’t it through incarnate flesh that we really see what the Father looks like?

So he goes and for an hour or so, he is Father’s hands and feet, Father’s words and touch, Father’s breath and life.

He stretches…reaches…touches…

He breathes hope… and then hopes it catches.

And we wonder what more we can do and why is it always so little?

I look at my own four little ones and I wonder, am I explaining to them the grace of God? Does my life, my responses, my energy, my presence, my availability explain God’s grace? Do they know deep that God is good?

Do they daily taste and see that the Lord is good from the home structure and environment I lay out for them day after day?

Am I a Father-mother to them?

No, this isn’t about bashing myself up for all my failures, for they are many. It is about praying, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Your Name…”

Because to hallow His name means to live in accordance with His character. It means to abide in His love. It means to be the instrument of His nature, to allow His very essence be expressed through me. And we are to live “hallowed” because He is hallowed. We express His very divinity.

So I fall to my knees and I beseech “O Father, Hallowed be Your name!! ”

Husband comes home on a Friday night and the kids are in bed and I ask him how it went and he sits on the couch and says, “I only got to talk to one tonight. They were so busy, so busy. So many boys coming in….”

“But he listened and he asked me to tell him what God is like.” His voice cracks and who can bear such a weighty task of reflecting God’s glory? Us? We are all but jars of clay…

“I think he understood, I really do. I think he saw Jesus.”

And in heaven, a prayer is answered. Grace given to the sons of men, a response to sinners saved by grace. A Name is hallowed and a life is changed and joy, it rises; and I can’t wait to beseech on knees again.

O Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Your Name.

October 21, 2011

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Filed Under: Grace, Honoring God, Missions, Redemption

“Momma, What’s a Messiah?”

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It’s after we take Communion (we’re from the south. We call it the Lord’s Supper~ smile) that the questions start. “Why are you eating that? Can little kids eat it too?”

We explain the body broken, the blood poured out, and I snag wonderfully on that phrase “which is for you” written in red.

After lunch, I tuck little ones into bed for a nap. “Momma, what’s a Messiah?” youngest daughter asks.

Momma is standing ~ still in her church clothes ~ by the bed and she can’t help but dramatize for two pair of eyes what a Messiah is. I stretch out my arms and swoop down to gather air, like I’m saving someone. “A Messiah is a Savior, a Rescuer, Someone who helps us when no one else can.” I begin.

“You see, sin tells us that we will be happy if we obey it…so we do.” I creep up close to the bed and eyes are watching me, alert. ”Then sin tells us, “HA, ha, ha! You are mine now and you can’t ever get away from me!” Against my will, my hands are tied behind my back and I’m locked up and I struggle but I can’t get freed.

“And sin takes us and locks us up and puts us in prison and we can’t get out and we look for help, but no one can help us.”

“But Jesus saves us, right Momma?” Little voice asks.

“Yes! And then Jesus…the Messiah…He steps up strong and says, “I’ll help. I can do it and I will do it,” and He comes to earth and conquers the prison gates and enters your cell~ yours!~ and sets you free and breaks the chains and leads you out and rescues you. Forever.”

“That’s a Messiah.”

Sweet girl is lying in bed smiling, rejoicing, with her hands covering her face to try to contain the joy, and I exclaim, “That’s why we sing, “Hallelujah! What a Savior!”

Who can help but not burst out with joyous clapping and isn’t this the most glorious news you have ever heard?! We have a Savior! We have a Messiah!

When we are done clapping and praising, she says, “Momma, when I wake up, I want to talk about this again.”

“So do I,” I tell her. So do I.

This Labor Day, we are celebrating our Wonderful Savior, the One who makes it possible to cease our labors and rest in His redemptive work. Hallelujah! What a Savior!

September 5, 2011

Filed Under: Redemption, Shepherding

I am… I AM

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When I awake, old voices haunt.

They’ve been on the prowl, like mangy, hungry beasts just waiting for the moment of consciousness to arrive… then they lunge and sink fangs into one barely aware, one scarcely awake.

I’ve hardly a chance.

Even before eyes open, old messages are there, telling me who I am. Telling me what I’m worth. Telling me how I’ll live this day. They make predictions over me and rob the best of the day from me before I even get out of bed. They take from me life, all ability to impart nourishment and grace to my children. They rob me of warmth and blessing to give my husband.

Outside the sun is shooting orange rays across the sky. I hear finches as they flit about this wondrous day, joyously feasting on seeds they did not produce. Their provisions come from their Creator. They do not worry, just fly.

But to me, the day seems bleak. It stretches before me with foreboding and try as I might, I can’t will my eyes to see it differently.

I start to panic. Feel overwhelmed. Thing is, I’ve started countless days like this. I’ve also looked all over for answers. There have been many perks I’ve fallen back on through the years. Western lifestyles make these a normal part of our lives.

Yet I’ve finally accepted and embraced one simple truth: “You will keep her in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee.”

“Get to Jesus,” I whisper to myself. “Just get to Jesus.”

But how does one really connect her heart to Christ? How does one latch on to the Vine and drink in its nourishment and receive its Life-blood poured out and abide in that place of protection and succor? I need to know because this is where I want to live, where I need to live.

In this, Moses mentors. He faced a day, a challenge, a task, a life purpose, far beyond himself. “Who am I?” he cried to the Lord.

“I AM,” God said.

That’s supposed to be sufficient. “I AM” is sufficient.

And like Moses, every time those inner voices say “look at what I am,” God says, “My child, that matters not! Look at what I AM.”

Inner voices say I am rejected…. but He says I AM Acceptor of the beloved, and I’ve given you a new identity and transferred you to the kingdom of my Son.

With each accusation, I AM is there to counter it.

I am abandoned…. I AM Father to the fatherless, who has taken you up

I am unworthy…. I AM Worthy, and have shed My Worthy blood on your behalf

I am unlovable…. I AM Love, who has wrapped you in everlasting love that cannot fail

I am beyond redemption… I AM Redeemer, who makes all things new and nothing is too difficult for Me

I am a failure… I AM Faithful, who will not allow your foot to stumble and I work all things to the good of those who love Me

I am a mess up… I AM in control

I am too sinful… I AM a friend of sinners and I came to seek and to save lost. It is the sick who need a Physician, not the well

I am unable… I AM able….and willing!

I am faltering… I AM your bread, take and eat! My body is broken and given for you!

My hungry, craving soul begins to take nourishment. The broken body, the blood freely spilled, it imparts life. Trembling, I reach out and lay hold. I bring to lips and swallow down and it is sweet to the taste, like manna.

“I am” thoughts are replaced with “I AM” thoughts and I am well.

Here I will stay.

 

August 17, 2011

Filed Under: Grace, In Christ I am..., Insecurity, Redemption, Seeing God

Why Friday made all our days “Good”

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“If the offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he is to offer a male without defect. He must present it at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting so that it will be acceptable to the LORD. He is to lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it will be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him.”

“God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”

“Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

“We have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all…a ransom for many.”

“No one takes it from me, but I lay my life down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again….I will love them freely.”

“The Son of God loved me and gave Himself for me.”

“God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God…to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the One He loves.”

(Today’s morning scriptures from “Daily Light on the Daily Path”)

April 22, 2011

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Filed Under: Redemption

How to Make the Bitter Sweet

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“I’ve got a big ol’ steel cup of bitter,” she told the ladies group.

“Five kids, homeschooling, a controlling husband, a home based business. The demands never end and the resources are never enough.”

Another spoke up and shared her waters, the lot she’s been given, the bitter she can’t get down.

Who hasn’t come to the waters of Marah? Bitter waters aren’t potable. Our human condition cannot stomach such.

The ladies in bible study all turned to look at me, like I would have some answer for them.  Um… blank. I was thinking of Marah and I mumbled something about Exodus 15 and grew silent, hoping someone else would step in and take it over. It’s all I had.

I went home and looked again at the place Marah, where God “tested” His people.

I’d seen it in my own life; I’d heard it from the ladies at group; and now here it was in the scriptures: we come to the bitter and ask, “What are we to drink?”

The question implies we anticipate a change. This water hole isn’t going to cut it, surely God is going to take us down the road to a new, fresh, clear place where we can drink and be satisfied.

We expect God will make things better by changing location, circumstances, or by giving a quick fix.

But He doesn’t.

“…the Lord showed him a tree…”

He shows us “the Tree,” the wood that when brought to bear on the bitter turns it to sweet.

But oh, wait a minute.  I’m seeing something here. It was at the bitter waters that God revealed Himself as “The Lord, your Healer.”

Surely it is the bitter of life where God makes Himself known to us as The Great Physician as well… if we can get past asking how our needs are going to be met and let Him do what He does best.

The Physician begins by “testing” us.

“…and there He tested them.” (vs.25) The Healer gives His people a stress test!

The waters of Marah are a test to determine our condition. Here, our Healer God evaluates our health and exposes the hidden.

Have your bitter waters brought out complaining, grumbling, negativity, and short-sightedness in you?

{Ouch. That stress test hurt.}

That’s okay, because He isn’t done yet.

Next, the Physician gives a prescription.

“There He made for them a statute and ordinance…” (vs 25)

When I reached the words “statute” and “ordinance” I got down on my knees in astonished praise. Statute means “a prescription, a specific decree.” Ordinance means “a decision, the act of deciding a case and giving a proper, fitting, customized plan.”

God tested His people with bitter waters to determine what the proper RX should be.

The lasting prescription He gave was the cross, the wood in the water.

So blown away was I by this that I googled it to see what else I could find. “What is the statute God gave in Exodus 15:25?”

I asked this of a computer.

This is what came back:

“The leading of Israel to bitter water, which their nature could not drink, and then the sweetening or curing of this water, were to be the statute (the Rx) for Israel by which God would always guide and govern His people, and a judgement (a decision, a custom fitted plan) inasmuch as Israel could always reckon upon the help of God and deliverance from every trouble.” Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the OT

Right there at Marah is where God, the Great Physician, revealed His prescription for bitter waters that can’t be stomached. When I am facing a moment in my day when I just. can’t. get. this. cup. down….there is a solution.

I can apply the Cross.

God doesn’t lead us to another water hole to drink from. He shows us how we can drink from any water hole, praise God! no matter how bad it’s waters are. He tells us, “I’m not changing a thing, I’m giving you a lasting ordinance, a foul-proof way to make your bitter waters sweet.

Two and a half weeks later,  I’m reading Galatians 6 and Paul says, “May it never be that I would boast, except in the cross…” and my ears perk up and my heart opens wide and I can’t wait to see what Paul has to say about the Cross, that beam of wood that makes the bitter sweet.

“…through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.”

It’s what Paul says next that astonishes me most. “And those who will walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them.”

Is he talking about the regulation? The lasting ordinance? THAT rule? The Exodus 25:15 one?

The Cross changes everything. It makes the bitter sweet because absolutely nothing is “old.” Behold, all things have become new!

The Cross gives Purpose. I am dead to ordinary. I am dead to meaningless. I am dead to empty mundane tasks. Everything is new and full of purpose. There is no ordinary. Whatever I do, it is eternally significant.

The Cross gives Presence. The Cross is the Bridge by which I leave the ordinary, the bitter, and enter the Divine Sphere. I am dead to the world and alive unto God. I have access to Divinity at all times.

The Cross gives Power. It is not about me “doing” something, like circumcision of old. It is simply living by the rule that I am indeed a new creation because of the cross of Christ. I am not helpless. The Cross is the “power of God.”  (see I Corinthians 1:17-18)

It is not something to be understood with the head, but accepted with the heart.

“Even so, consider yourselves also dead to sin, and your relation to it broken, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Romans 6:11

March 29, 2011

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Filed Under: In Christ I am..., Life, Purpose, Redemption, Victory

The 3 R’s of God’s Classroom

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I hear his story on the radio, on the way to take oldest to school.

His name is Matt and a car accident changed his life. He lost the ability to read.

Every time he sat down to read, he just could not put the words together. “I don’t understand!” he kept crying.

They told him he’d never finish school.

But he decided to try. He submitted himself to a program in which he re-trained his brain to read letters on a page. For over a year, he re-trained.

He had four hundred and eighty something days straight of migraine headaches.

It hurt. He pushed on.

It was hard. He pushed on.

It was agonizingly frustrating, re-learning something a completely different way, when he’d already done it the easy way years earlier.

He pushed on.

He can read now. He graduated with honors. And now he’s pursuing an MBA.

The story comes on a day when I want to give up. I’m oh so tired and the grueling work confuses the mind, sweat stings the eyes.

The story concludes on the radio and the Voice speaks to me: “I told you these days would come,” and I remember nearly a year ago, when He first gave me my prognosis.

I was sitting in the audience, waiting to hear the preacher, thinking the Word would come once the announcements were over. But no, there was one who had something to say and He spoke through that one.

The one had limped down the aisle to the podium, dragging his leg behind him.

His words were just as slow, forced out of a mouth that couldn’t keep up with the mind.

He barely spoke two sentences before he ambled back down the aisle, but in the span of those two sentences our mutual Maker spoke loud and clear, with no faltering and no stuttering. “That’s you,” He told me.

It was so powerful and so out of the ordinary that I told my husband about it that evening. “Yes, I know the young man,” he told me. “He calls himself “Marine 4 Christ.’”

I was so taken by this connection God had made between me and this young injured soldier, that I googled him. “Marine4Christ.” I found the connection in listening to his testimony.

Like Brandon, I am a wounded warrior. Years of abuse and spiritual bondage left me wounded and paralyzed, in a coma of sorts… Dead weight to those who cared for me.

“You are awake now,” He said to me that day as I watched Brandon’s story. “Like Brandon, I’ve redeemed your life too.”

“Now. If you are to get well, you too will have to relearn everything.“

Relearn Everything.

I knew it would take hard, agonizing work. Grueling days, hours, moments. Impossible odds. Days when I’d say, “I can’t do this anymore.” It would take a team of people around me who pushed me to do what I felt simply and absolutely impossible.

But if I was to get well, if I wanted to live again, I would have to re-learn the ways of Grace. I’d have to learn how to eat again, how to work again, how to stand up and walk.

I’m still in the classroom. Today as I wondered if I’ve made any progress at all, God showed me that I have at least learned what the 3 R’s are in His classroom, and I’m giddy with the knowledge:

1. Receive- The way to eat is to receive. Receive all of God’s goodness and grace and to do that, one must open up, let go, do the opposite of what comes naturally when one has lived on life support. “Open wide your mouth and I will fill it.”

Open up, take in, swallow down. Receive.

2. Rest- The work of God’s classroom is to rest, the cessation of self striving and self effort. To move the spiritual body means letting Him be the one to both give and fill the prescription. He is in me both to will and to work.

Resting in God’s Kingdom classroom is not passive! “Labor to enter into that rest…” (Heb 4:11) Entering rest is perhaps the most difficult work of all.

3. tRust- The walk of the godly is to trust. The just shall live by faith. Just as each step is an act of free falling, so walking by faith is learning to free fall through my days, letting God-legs catch and sustain.

This is what it means to re-gain the ability to walk.

On a day like today, I wonder if I’ve made any progress at all. I wonder if I can pick up and just. do. today’s. part. Then I hear Matt’s story and I remember Brandon’s story and I know that like them, I can do it too. My life is redeemed and my Physician won’t forsake me.

And He’s placed me in just the right environment for me to re-learn, with people in my life (especially the 4 children!) who will push me and force me to new limits. I just need submit to His plan and keep practicing.

One day, I’ll be eating on my own. I’ll have full range of movement again. I’ll be walking.

And today? Well today I’ve moved one day closer.

Have a great weekend, dear friend, you who have happened upon this place today…

March 25, 2011

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Filed Under: Life, Life in the Spirit, Redemption, Spiritual Disciplines, Surrender, Victory

How to Redeem Hard Seasons of the Past

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It’s early morning in February when it wakes me up growling, sends me running to the bathroom and before the hands of the clock travel yet an hour, I’ve been there 10 times and body is spent, weak, empty.

The kids will be waking soon and I wonder how I’ll do it, sick like this.

Loving Husband will get oldest to school on his way in… but I’ve got 3 preschoolers at home.

How in the world?

I lay there feverish, weak, doing all I can to drag self to the toilet…again.

It’s not just the fires of body that burn me up. It’s the fires of hell that burn most: “You are 900 miles away from family that could help. Everyone else has somebody to call on.”

“You never stay anywhere long enough to build lasting, meaningful relationships.”

“You’ll live your whole life like this, no one to call on when you need help. Alone. Isolated.”

“Aren’t you getting tired of  living like this?”

And I fester on what I don’t have, what my kids are missing, all the what if’s, and I give Husband the hard cold summary version of what I’m thinking as I watch him buckle belt through loops at the foot of the bed:

“I know God’s grace is sufficient for this…but I’d rather have someone with skin on to help with the kids while I’m laying here like this.”

It’s horrible. Wicked.

And true.

The summary that has defined the hard places of my life and the places I don’t particularly care for. I’d rather have provisions according to me, not God graces, thank you very much.

I’m ashamed of the wicked truth; but glad for finally uncovering the putrid, because now it can be cleansed.

For days I wonder why? Why do I insist on God meeting needs my way, God doing what I think is best and needed and right?

Do I not know Him? Do I not trust His goodness? Do I not believe in Grace Gifts?

Yes, there is some of that.

But there is something worse. There is a root and a reason why I can’t see God’s grace as better than people with skin on. God uses Romans 1 to brand me, searing the wound, inflicting pain. The beginning of healing.

“For though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God…” Rom 1:21

Yes, that would apply.

I know God…but at times I fail to celebrate Him as God, especially when times get hard.

I haven’t always carried that knowledge of God into my dark places, taken it up like a rope as I’m lowered into the pit, tethered myself to the Light of the world.

I haven’t always fulfilled my responsibility to intentionally honor God in each place.

But I know it now… When I fail to deliberately acknowledge the Truth about God’s goodness when the sick beds of life tell me something different….I become a blasphemer. I “make the Truth about God inoperable.”

I exchange the truth of God for a lie, the glory of God for an image of my own making.

And I think I can do this without consequence??

Isn’t this what clouds my vision and becomes the reason why I can’t see grace in the moment, my foolish heart darkened?

Isn’t this the path to destruction, a choice of my own choosing?

Oh why, WHY,  do I apply scriptures to the heathen without seeing myself in them?

We are each without excuse. (Rom 1:20, 2:1) You, Arabah, You!

The passage convicts me and exposes me and sears me and I thank God for the breath in my lungs that allow me life long enough to come to this point of recognition and for the kindness of God even here to bring me to repentance.

So if this is where I’ve gone wrong, in failing to celebrate Him, to magnify Him, to ascribe lustre, to extol ~ If I’ve failed to hold on to Truth about Him in hard places, then this is where I go back and “re-do.”

It’s right there at the beginning of Romans. We each have broken down at this point. Like it or not, we can’t go on to the Faith of Romans 4 or the Spirit quickening of Romans 8 or the manifestations of the Spirit controlled life in Romans 12 without first passing Romans 1.

This is the  “Go” on the Monopoly board of life.

I know it so clearly I can see it, my own life the map. I see the breakdown…the consequences…the blasphemy…the fruit.

I pick up Ann’s book and oh, how I “get” it, eucharisteo. “For though they knew God, they did not honor God as God nor give thanks…”

I want to move out of Romans 1 and I’ve found the exit.

I’m not on sick bed any longer, but I go back to that place, back to burning fires and throbbing heads. I start listing the graces there. I extol the Goodness of God. I start a list of 1,000 Gifts in my life’s dark places.

1.anti-diarrhea tabs

2. snow days and canceled schedules

3. Husband who took up the slack

It’s been years and years~ a lifetime ~ since the dark places in my childhood. But I go back there. I list the graces. I celebrate the kindnesses of God.

74. Momma combing hair

75. leaves rustling in trees

76. night owl outside my window

77. cows

78. memory verses

79. gingersnap cookies

It’s been many moons since that isolated apartment in Asia where I wondered where God was but I go back there. I list the graces. I see things in my mind’s eye, relive the life, but this time I see it differently.

314. Big Bertha (our wind up alarm clock) …

317. finding cheese, thank you Lord!

318. squatty potties…

339. bicycles and backpacks and walking everywhere

340. backs that bore the weight of packs filled with Good News Films

341. feet that blistered delivering the message

342. the chance to go

Oh blessed gifts!

I’m redeeming my past.

I’m also paving new paths for my future.

I’m walking out of Romans 1, deliberately extolling the Gifts, Graces, and Goodness of God in all things.

Romans 12, here I come.

March 2, 2011

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Filed Under: Grace, Honoring God, Redemption

God Surprises

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I knew I was in trouble when I got in the truck with them.

This was not the way things were supposed to go. I was supposed to go visit the new family with my husband. The two ladies were supposed to go visit Amber on their own.

Instead, I was with the two ladies going to visit Amber and what was more, I was to head the visit up. I was the one they were all counting on.

I told them to be ready to present the way of salvation, to be sensitive to what God wanted to do. But I never intended to be the one doing it.

I got in the truck and they chattered away.

I was silent. I was praying.

“Lord,” I prayed, “I know I’m a missionary and I should know how to do this and everyone else thinks I do know how to do this, but you and I know the truth: I don’t know what I’m doing and I don’t know why someone like me has been entrusted with such a precious message and without You, I will ruin the whole thing.”

We arrived at Amber’s house and I wasn’t relying on myself…but I wasn’t sure my feet had found their confidence in God either. I didn’t feel confident.

She welcomed us in, this woman who has been attending our Bible studies.

We chatted for a minute or two and then I asked the question. “What is God doing in your life? For you to be coming to ladies group, God is doing something and we’d like to help however we can.”

I’m not sure how it all went from there, but she was open. She responded. We talked about the way God works and how He provided for us in Christ.

She told us she had never given her life to Christ and we talked some more. We talked about reasons not to believe Jesus, the costs involved, what it really means. Then I asked her, “Is there anything that is preventing you from giving your life to Jesus?”

“No,” she said.

They turned to me, expecting me to go through the scriptures and lo and behold, I hadn’t even brought my Bible!

We all laughed at the surprises of God, me most of all.

I didn’t have my reading glasses either, and couldn’t make out the words on the page, so I just handed my companion’s Bible to Amber and told her where to turn and she read the truth for herself and cried over the free gift of God.

Amber prayed, joining in this circle of women. She confessed Jesus as Lord of her life and I wondered at how easy it is to go from life to death. How difficult but how easy at the same time. How faith comes by hearing and hearing happens when there is one to share the truth and we each are sent to do that.

Because it started with Him. He authored salvation, made every provision necessary for it.

He desires salvation for a lost world. Let’s make it more real: He desires salvation for that lost neighbor. It is from this birthed desire that He sent me, each one of us. He has given us of His authority and His presence and all we need do is go. We need not make anything happen. He’s already done that. “It is finished.”

We just need go.

Lord, we will. We will.

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February 23, 2011

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Filed Under: Redemption

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