All's Well in Heaven, All will be Well on Earth

Tonight, my cup is overflowing.  It is so nice to hear the Lord speak, to feel Him tugging at my heart, drawing me nearer to Him.


Tonight, the veil feels thinner between my sight and His face.  And He is holy, resplendent, glorious and His face...oh, His face is radiant. 


Tonight, I hear the voice of Jesus' blood crying out louder, deeper, and more powerful than Abel's.  Abel's cries for "justice"; Jesus' cries for "grace".


Tonight, I feel invincible. Well, not so much invincible as just a little bit reckless with the things the world and my flesh tell me to protect with all I am.  I want to do crazy things for the Gospel, for the sake of the glory of Jesus' name.


My soul wells up with hallelujahs tonight.  One day, it will not be so rare to be overwhelmed with worship of the Almighty God.  May the Lord hasten that day!

Bright, Brighter

You know those rare and fleeting moments when all the world seems to go dim except for the hope within?  When all of the problems that usually color my life go grey, and instead the world itself is painted with the most vivid shades of enduring reality; when I can almost imagine the world - recreated - and myself - made new.


This song helps me imagine that newness.

This is not the end
This is not the end of this
We will open our eyes wide, wider

This is not our last
This is not our last breath
We will open our mouths wide, wider

And you know you’ll be alright
Oh and you know you’ll be alright

This is not the end
This is not the end of us
We will shine like the stars bright, brighter

Is God a kill-joy? A Note for my high school friends...

God, in His infinite wisdom, has ordered this season of my life so that I work in a high school office. It's a small Christian (private) high school.  I never foresaw working in a school setting at all, let alone a high school, but it's been such a pleasant surprise in so many ways.

As I watch them, I find my thoughts wandering to my own high school days. And I think a lot about the book of Proverbs and Wisdom and the different paths that are laid out before us.

I watch them with a jealous eye. I am jealous for them to make good choices, to moment by moment choose the path that leads to life instead of the path that leads to death.

It wasn't so long ago that I was in high school. And I led a double life in some ways. I was a Christian in a public school. I sensed there were plenty of eyes watching my every move and waiting for a misstep. But I was pretty good at pretending. I don't want to be overly dramatic here -- it wasn't all pretending. I was growing in my faith and I wanted to know the Lord more and more, but I did find myself caught in the snare of secret sin.  Very secret sin.  I don't think I told anyone until I was in college that I struggled at all that way. Unfortunately, no one was really talking about my kind-of struggle -- the sort that seemed so gray, but only because no one was helping me see the blackness. There were lots of black and white rules: No drinking, no sex, no drugs, no cheating, no cussing, etc. I wasn't talking to anyone about it.  Everyone probably thought I was doing great. I was a leader in my youth group, I raised my hands in worship, I didn't do any of the big no-no's that everyone would know about. Meanwhile, there were many tearful nights agonizing over all the things that I so desperately wanted to hate...but did anyway...and maybe I enjoyed them...and even if I didn't, I felt powerless to stop.

I clearly remember often wondering why God was such a "kill-joy"? Why did He have to make things so hard for us?  Why did He set up so many rules  that were so hard to follow? Did He like to see me struggle and fail and be miserable?  Or did He "get off on withholding" from us? 

At that time in my life, I was so consumed with the problem of getting out of the snare of secret sin that I didn't really stop to address those deeper questions. I just wanted to be rescued and to be better. I just wanted to know that I know forgiven. The Good News is that, in Jesus, I was and am and will always be forgiven for all of my failures. That was really good news. Freeing news. Transforming news. Despite all my pretending and all my shame and all my secrets, I was forgiven. I was loved! 

But there was more Good News. News that began to take root in that season when my soul so desperately needed to feel the forgiveness and acceptance of the Gospel, but really started to blossom several years later.

It hit me like a ton of bricks on my honeymoon. Don't worry, I am not going to get too personal here. But I am going to talk about it...because somebody needs to.  

My snare of secret sin happened to be in the realm of sexual purity. It doesn't matter, for my purposes right now, "how far I went" or "if I was a virgin or not" or "what my definition of virginity is", the point is that I went outside the boundaries God set for purity.  Those are all of the wrong questions. Because the standard is not virginity, it is purity. But there are plenty other snares of sin to be caught in and they can also wreak havoc in your life, whether it's lack of submission to authority, purity, drinking, seeking approval of others over approval of God, choosing to manipulate and control others rather than to bless and serve them, performance, pretending, apathy, recklessness, and the list could go on and on.


It hit me that: "The law" is there to care for us and protect us, written by a Lawgiver who understands that life outside of God's created intent destroys us. 


God is the farthest thing He could be from a kill-joy. 
He's the opposite of a kill-joy.
He created you for joy - to enjoy Him!

He gives us the Law to protect us from going to lesser things - things that promise enjoyment or prosperity or respect or fulfillment of some kind, but that are empty and only lead to more emptiness.


I watch my high school friends with a jealous eye because I am still dealing with choices that I made in high school - choices that led to other choices that led to other choices.  And all choices have consequences.


The Proverbs tell us that there are choices that lead to life and they are choices that lead to death. They speak of Lady Folly and of Lady Wisdom - both call out to us, offering their wares. Folly will destroy us - it steals our joy, damages our relationships, warps our minds, sometimes even hurts our bodies.  Wisdom, on the other hand, leads to the abundant life that we were created for. 


I'm not just talking about those big fork-in-the-road choices, either. I'm talking about the daily choices that shape who we are: how we spend our free time, how we treat the people around us, how we spend our money, etc. When we practice making good decisions day-in and day-out (treasuring the Word, respecting our parents, loving our neighbor, serving others, living with humility), we are better equipped to make good choices when we hit the fork in the road.  In fact, often, we often don't even hit the same fork in the road had we been walking down the path of folly.


So, what if you have already befriended Lady Folly?  What if you've been heading down the path that leads to death?  There is Good News for you. Wisdom still holds out her hand to you. She welcomes you to turn around (repent) and follow her to the path that leads to life.  That path is the fear of the LORD. What do I mean by that? Mostly, trusting the Lord! Knowing the He created the world and everything in it - He knows how it works. And He created you - for a life of enjoying Him and glorifying Him (which happen to be the exact same thing). His heart for you is to care for you and protect you, to see you thrive in the life He's given you.


Folly's charm is deceitful. Her beauty is fleeting. The fear of the Lord - that brings good and not harm. It is more precious than rubies and nothing you desire can compare with it.


Oh, how I pray that each of my high school friends will choose to trust the Lord and His heart to protect them sooner rather than later! So much of what I learned, I learned the hard way -- being burned by folly.  There are easier ways, less agonizing ways :-).  I pray that they will choose - daily and forever - wisdom and the path that leads to abundant life.

More on Losing Myself...

I've been reading about addiction in preparation for a counseling class I'm blessed to be able to take this week.

The instructor writes about "The Last Addiction" in her book by that title -- the addiction to thinking we can save ourselves.  

The Holy Spirit has begun to whisper some of the substances/behaviors I may be addicted, too - broadly speaking, COMFORT and under that category, TV and Facebook, among other things.  But in light of what the Holy Spirit's already been whispering to me, I am seriously addicted to serving my self, the preservation of my pride, and the presentation of an ideal me - to myself, God and others.  

Pride has ALWAYS been a huge struggle for me.  Spiritual pride, intellectual pride, pride about my niceness, pride about my looks, pride about my friends, pride about my taste in music - the list could go on and would continue to become more and more silly and narcissistic.  I guess pride and striving for a sense of identity could go hand in hand.  

The wild thing is, God has done MUCH in my life to humble me.  The whole crux of my testimony is that I needed to be shown that I was actually a sinner - not just a really good girl who messed up occasionally.  And in the past year, He's done much to humiliate me.  The things that He's been attacking have been, often times, so superficial.  And I'm beginning to realize it's been all the more painful, once again, by the double-egged nature of pride: I've been humiliated by the superficial and humiliated to find myself so concerned with the superficial. 

The WILDER thing is, WHO CARES?!  What I mean is, I just need to repent!  To give up!  To turn my cheek to the humiliating situations that arise and to live in continual repentance of this obsession with myself and the need to prove myself.

Introspection can lead to sorrow that is godly in repentant OR sorrow that just leads to prideful despair.  

I spent a lot of my time in full-time ministry thinking of "Jesus, Who humbled Himself"...yet, somehow this wasn't hitting home in my recent humiliation.  I wasn't letting it hit home.  I thought it was far too beneath Him.  To be concerned with status and levels/quality education and clothes and titles and money...I felt too ashamed to associate that kind of humility with the humility that Jesus experienced.  

But I think He did experience it...every moment of every day (YET He was without SIN!).  And a humiliation far beyond what I will ever experience because I could never esteem myself as high as He had every right to esteem Himself.

O Jesus, most beautiful, most wise, most joyous and joy-giving, the Light of the World, the King of all kings...thank you for humbling Yourself, for making Yourself nothing, for coming as a servant and experience all the humiliation involved in being a man (as opposed to God!).  And thank You for seeking to humble me.  Inside and out.  My heart's desire is most definitely You and Your glory far beyond its desire for my own glory.  May You continue to increase and may I ever decrease.  

Help me to forget myself!  And remember You.  A servant King.  You make me whole.  You make me worthy. You are my joy!  You are my citizenship and my boast and my song.

Identity Crisis

Historically, my strongest spiritual gift has always been encouragement.  Discernment/wisdom and shepherding have also been pretty high on the list, which, I came to discover in college lends itself to loving discipleship.  Then I came to believe that Counseling was the career that it lent itself, too (afterall, it's "discipleship on steroids").  

However, this year has been a journey towards facing the fact that I probably will not be able to get a counseling degree.  Financially, it just doesn't seem like it will happen.

So I've been pretty disappointed.  And at times, I've felt almost depressed. (Which is a little crazy to me considering one of my greatest dreams, marrying a wonderful godly man, HAS come true in the past year).  A counselor once taught me that depression comes from a blocked goal.  Which fits.  In my case, I somehow let getting a counseling degree become a very important goal to me - very important to my future, my identity.  And it's been blocked.  By something as silly as money.  I could write a hundred rants on what I've come to see about what I grew up believing about dreams and money and education, ect., but needless to say, I have bought into several lies that led me to believe I could do whatever I want and I've been disappointed to find that I cannot.

I've been struggling a lot with my identity in the past year.  I never really had much self-confidence or that strong of a sense of self until my time overseas.  I felt that I learned so much about myself...and I think that I did.  But I think in some ways what happened was that I traded in one false sense of self for another.  One brand of overachiever perfectionist for another more spiritual kind.  

So when I returned to America and all of the sudden I didn't have my "Christian I.D. card" as one friend called it, I felt lost.  Maybe more lost than ever.

Okay, all that being said -- as is most cases, there were/are good things going on in my heart that get twisted into sin and idolatry.  I had pretty much the best job ever - being in full-time Christian ministry.  A very difficult but very rewarding job.  And I do think that the Lord has specially equipped me for that job.  And it's a very important job. (So coming back to doing nothing all day long at first, and then serving chicken all day long was an extremely rude awakening).

So I felt lost.  And very sorry for myself.  And very angry at the world...and maybe a little bit at God.


Meanwhile, I've just spent a whole year of my life totally focused on myself because I felt so sad that I wasn't employed full-time helping other people.  Ha, it's almost funny looking back now.  Almost.  


So the other night, at a women's fellowship time we were talking about our gifts and strengths and I realized that encouragement at least USED to be my gift...but had I really encouraged anyone recently?  I've been so focused on not getting to encourage people for a living that I'd apparently resolved that I wasn't able to encourage anyone.  Right here, right now.


BUT I CAN.  I believe now that the Lord wants to use me here.  He did make and shape me in a way to point people toward finding joy in Christ and that doesn't mean that has to be my official job title to do it.  


I don't want to waste my time in Orlando feeling sorry for myself anymore.  I want to do what I know I was made for, right here and right now.  So may the Lord continue to show me people to pursue and to encourage, to disciple and to counsel.  


And may He continue to root my identity in Jesus' complete work on the Cross on my behalf, that I am called a daughter of God, a holy and chosen one, an ambassador in chains.  A worshiper and thus a missionary - near and far.  Whose only I.D. card is the Cross (a.k.a. death to myself and all my pride and life in Christ alone...finding myself by LOSING myself).


Now THAT is encouraging...

Tattoo-able Truths

Ever wind up with mantras from certain seasons of your life?

4 months into living overseas, I realized that I did not really trust God with my desires, with my heart or my happiness.  I did not really believe that He was good.  Or that He would provide for me.  And I didn't understand the way He loved me.  

So I started to tell myself that He was good.  And that He would provide.  And that He LOVED me.  Every day.  Usually a couple times a day.  Whenever I had thoughts that represented my disbelief in those truths.

And it became my mantra. My team and my disciples all knew it was my theme - through most every prayer, through every word of encouragement, every entry in my journal.  

God taught me more in those two years about His goodness toward me and His faithfulness to me and His crazy love over me that in all my 19 years as a believer before.

I figured "God is good.  He will provide.  He REALLY loves me." would make rather long and awkward tattoo, even though, if I were to ever get something permanently drawn on my body - a reminder of those things would never be looked upon with regret.  I tried to brainstorm ways to shorten or abbreviate it, a symbol to represent it, or artistic ways to weave all the words together.  In the end, I decided to put a tattoo on hold because it would've been a bit of a stumbling block to my best Chinese friend.

But last week, I was reading the prologue of John and then some commentaries about it.  (Did you know that John 1:1-18 is a chiasm and it's climax is verse 12: "Yet to all who received him, to those who believed on his name, he gave the right to become children of God"?  I wouldn't have picked that out as the climax, but it is pretty dang awesome that we can become children of God.)  Anyway, in verse 14 John describes Jesus as being "full of grace and truth" and the commentary pointed me to an Old Testament counterpart of that couplet that first shows up in Exodus 34:6-7 ~ probably one of the most beautiful passages EVER about Jehovah God (indeed, He did say it Himself :-D):

 "The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin..."

The Hebrew for love and faithfulness is hesed we'emet and it shows up several times in the OT (Jos 2:14; 2 Sam 2:6, 15:20; Pss 25:10, 61:7, 84:11, 85:10; 89:14...the Psalms are my favorites).  The commentary says "The 'love and faithfulness' that constituted the glory of God proclaimed to Moses is now found in the Word incarnate.  What was proclaimed to Moses by the Lord as he passed by has now been seen, embodied in the incarnate Word, by the eyewitnesses. 

Our God does abound love and faithfulness.  Have I ever been a beneficiary and recipient of that compassion, graciousness, and the forgiveness of my sins.  And I have seen, though through a veil, grace and truth come together in Jesus.  I know they will follow me all the days of my life. 

hesed we' emet. That fits much nicer on my wrist or foot, ha. But more importantly, it's a beautiful summary of God's character.  His heart toward me in Christ is love and faithfulness.

Hallelujah!

pilgrim in a home land

I remember the feeling well.  The last Sunday evening spent worshiping in Georgia before I went for a second year in Asia, and I felt cheated.  Cheated out of singing my favorite praise songs, led by well-rehearsed and skilled (paid) musicians for another year.  Cheated out going to a fashionable job in fashionable clothes, then getting off work and going to fashionable restaurants with my friends.  Cheated out of leading a "normal" life in downtown Atlanta.  

I remember we were singing songs about laying down our lives and surrendering all we were for the sake of Jesus.  And the feeling of being cheated morphed into accusation toward the young adults around me.  Why was I the one who had to go?  Why was I the only one being asked to really lay down my life here and leave for Jesus' sake?  Why was God sending me away?

To this day I still barely understand what was going on in my heart that day.  I knew I had to go.  And part of me - a very teary-eyed part of me - mourned what I was leaving behind.  Part of me was having a hard time with actually laying down and surrendering the things and people that I loved and that offered me comfort day in and day out.  Then another part of me - the part that the cheated-feeling part tried so hard to ignore - knew that I had to go.  Because there was nothing more important.  Nothing better.  No better way to spend a year (if that was where I was wanted).

I had this feeling again last Sunday.  I was just minding my own business and all of the sudden some song about laying down my life was upon me and a wave of bitterness came over me.  Namely at myself.  Because I haven't been doing a wonderful job of this recently.  I've been letting other things, good things like work and my husband (and also not great things, like the snooze button and TV), take up lots of my attention and my thoughts and even my dreams.  But I didn't like this bitterness towards myself, so I turned my attention back to those around me.  I plan on going back overseas one day.  One day, I'll sell my belongings or give them away or put them into storage, say goodbye to my family and friends and lay down my life again.  What about these folks?  Do they know what they're singing?  

I shared these thoughts I knew were not pleasing to the Lord with Aubrey on the way home.

He reminded me that God is probably not as honored by bitter missionaries as He is through the joyful homemaker or lawyer or garbage man.  

I wonder how much He's honored by bitter a part-time secretary/part-time Chick-Fil-A cashier?  

I know I'm meant to be a pilgrim.  I see no other option for my life.  But I think this year, or this couple of years, may be about learning how to be a pilgrim in a home land.  How to cross cultures when the culture I'm suddenly clashing with is the one I grew up in.  And how to be a joyful pilgrim.  Whether I am crossing cultures in Asia or Orlando.  Whether I am brought low or have an abundance.  Whether I have plenty or I hunger.  I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. (Philippians 4) I can be a joyful pilgrim, here or there. 

Either way, I'm still not there yet. I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. I'll clash a little here and a little there...but I can still be joyful.  And yes, the homemaker and the lawyer, if they press on toward the goal, they will clash and yet they can be joyful, too.

Because our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

Therefore, my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and my crown, stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved. (Philippians 3)