Fish Tank of Love

I have been a Christian since I was nine.  I have been through many different stages, but I first knew Jesus as my Lord and Savior when I went forward at camp that year.  I don’t remember anything other than it was a service and I went up at the alter call, but I do remember that I felt different. 

My first visit inside the doors of a church happened pre-birth.  We were there for church, prayer meetings, Sunday school, potlucks, ice cream socials, business meetings, and, well, everything.  I grew up in the church; and, in prayer this morning, I was really challenged thinking about this life experience.  Some of the constant religious doctrinal drone worked against itself.  Instead of relationship, it created what has been labeled for me, “spiritual white noise”.  Much of what I should have clung to, I could not hear anymore.  It is like visiting a friend’s house when all of their children are speaking at once, and no one notices…or, it is like visiting my house when all of our dogs are barking and we don’t notice.  Valuable information is just lost into white noise.

This morning I was sitting on the concrete patio with the sun on my face.  God, figuratively, kept holding up my face up to Him, and I could not look away.  I realized that much of what has stuck, the essentials of the faith, I got the hard way.  I have recreated the wheel of relationship with Christ because I (my prideful responsibility) could not separate valuable information from rhetoric. 

The truth is that we all have to recreate this wheel to some degree.  We all need to freely understand what we are looking at.  Jesus wants for us to know what we are doing when we enter into His family.  Christianity is the hard way, not the easy way to live.  Some people enter into it with head knowledge and no faith in its transcendence.  In other words, we understand the words, but we do not believe that it actually crosses into our reality.  It is a distant God with distant thoughts and distant love.  Some people are very aware of spirituality but the have no knowledge of God.  It is the emotive experience that drives them, but not its relevance to anyone before them. 

I have been both.  I have been arrogant enough to think that God would leave me alone, even if I was acting out my will in His name.  I have also been arrogant enough to think that my feelings dictated His actions.  I have been confused about spiritual issues for much of my life. 

Meanwhile, while widdling this giant wheel of mine.  The struggle most relevant to me has always been love.  I have been very confused about God’s love.  I was indoctrinated with songs and gold star scripture verses, but I never really understood the love of Christ.  My most effective strategy has been letting God teach me about His love, first hand.  I understand now that He is the one who wanted to show it to me all along.  I just had to ask.

Think of a fish tank, a big one.  I can be a bottom feeder and live my life stuck to the side of the glass eating mold and being swatted in the head by my swimming friends, or I can glide effortlessly in the entirety of the tank.  I can experience the whole world that is at my disposal.  I have all that I need to sustain me while floating in my own underwater world.  That is what this love is like.  It is closer than my breath.  It is around me and through me; I swim in it and dive in its depths.  Everything that I am, it is.  I am not a bottom feeder with my back to the action.  I belong to Him, surrounded by Him; He is present.

I have been asking lots of questions in prayer.  You don’t have to grow up in the church to experience this “spiritual white noise”.  It is a part of many experiences.  When the big theological words get thrown around, a lot of that becomes just spiritual white noise.  It must be said that although this is my perceived experience, it is not necessarily God’s reality.  The name that God gave to Moses was, “I, I am.”  Even back then, He was reassuring people of His presence.  This morning He held me there, in front of Him telling me how present He is in my life.  His love might have become the backdrop at times in my life (my perception), but He shows me that He is and was (I am) invasively and aggressively present.  His love is the foreground (reality), whether I understand it or not.  I am swimming inside of this picture that tells of His love. 

Lord, thank you for your unfailing love.  Show it to us today in specific and clear ways.  Surprise us and let us delight in this present love.

The Path of Impossibility

Acts 13:44-46, “The next sabbath almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord.But when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy; and blaspheming, they contradicted was spoken by Paul. Then both Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, saying, “It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken first to you. Since you reject it and judge yourselves to be unworthy of eternal life, we are now turning to the Gentiles.”

I have been reading in Acts over the last week, and it is so intriguing. Sometimes I just need basic answers for basic questions. My husband wants a picture of a hummingbird. He is an excellent photographer and that is a mini-goal of his. Almost every time that I am in the yard, I see one flying right in front of my face. Every time I call to him to get the camera, it leaves. That is an excellent question, “Why do hummingbirds like me and dislike my husband”? There are other more important questions, however, that I do not even know to ask, but when I see the answer as I read scripture, I say, “Yes, that is a heart question for me”. That, in itself, is an excellent reason to read this bible. The Spirit knows my heart and what answers I need. I can recognize the answer without even knowing my need for the question. This is happening a lot these days.

In Acts 13, Paul is talking to the Jews in Pisidia about Jesus. He is making this beautiful plea to almost the entire city (v. 44), presumably many people. He and Barnabas are rejected, as they often were. This is where it gets interesting. They were rejected because of jealousy (v. 45). When I see that I think of the gospels. That was the primary motivation of the leaders that led to the crucifixion of Jesus. It is a strong emotion.

So, as we read on we see a basic answer which begs a basic question. I do not have a common life experience to the audience of Paul. I, also, will never be as lucky as they were, to sit at the feet of Paul and Barnabas…I mean, come on. Yet, as different as we are, Paul says something here that is true for each human. The reason that we reject God is because we judge ourselves to be unworthy of eternal life. Granted this is complex, but it is succinct and inclusive.

First of all, we reject God. So we can even the playing field, let’s just understand that we all reject God in small or big ways. We reject His commands and we reject His love. We reject that He knows us better than we do, and we reject the best that He has planned for our lives. There are many ways that these play out; we judge, we covet, we hate others and we hate ourselves. This rejection says that we are in control, we are the judge. We know what is best for us. It seems kind of silly for the created to know more than the Creator. We are silly people. Remembering this will make us grateful for His faithfulness.

The next is judging ourselves…let’s stop there. We actually stand in judgment of ourselves. That means that I make the decision to use my judgment. I decide to reject God based on my superior understanding of myself. Through my decision making process I declare myself unworthy of God’s gift.

I was just doing some of my mentoring work last night. I am studying decision making. When we look at decisions in front of us, USUALLY, the decision that points to Christ is more difficult. That is why we often choose the other way.

God’s way seems insurmountable most of the time…so how do we accomplish His way? We don’t, He does; it is His way. God is glorified by our decision to do it His way. We will always opt for the easy way that leads to death because we cannot accomplish the things of God on our own. It is intentionally set up like that. So this judgment of myself is limited to what I can see, easy and hard. The decision is between two things. I look at the impossible…eternal life, and I look at the familiar…what I can accomplish myself.

Let’s assume that we choose God’s way, the hard one; it is now in His hands. We don’t have to touch it again. We do what He tells us and the burden is light. Standing in judgment of ourselves is like a death match with our nature. We cannot win. This is why he gives the people in the bible strange and impossible tasks, so they will never rely on themselves. Have you ever tried to overtake a major city by walking around it and yelling? Neither had they (Joshua 6). The impossible is where God is glorified. We cannot do it, so let God have it.

So, we come to the strangest and most impossible task of them all. Believe in Christ and He will give you eternal life. To make this decision, I have to ask what I believe about myself. Will I reject Him? Will I tell Him that I have it all under control and I don’t need help? Will I claim the seat of judgment over my own life? Have I done that well on my own, that I actually believe that I know what is best for me. No, in fact, many years ago, I wrote a prayer of surrender that I prayed every morning. I slid out of bed and said,

I have seen where I can take myself

I have been alone, scared, sick

Only You, only Your power, Only Your love can save me

I had never been amazed, joyful or embraced until I knew You

I cannot do anything by, for, or using myself

I beg for your kindness once again

To take my life and make me yours

I surrender to You because there is nothing else

I know where I will take myself. I have judged my affairs falsely, and I will not reject my Lord. I will not stand as my own judge…frankly, I stink at it. I am only worthy of this Savior…the Messiah because He stands in judgment. It all hangs on that one thing. I cannot be worthy of eternal life, but through the blood of Christ I am because He made that decision. I carry His identity. I am no longer myself. This is no longer my life. Hallelujah. Knowing this, let us choose Him with all of our life. Let us make Him the judge of everything today. We are worthy of His gift because He chose to give it to us. We are the beloved. Let’s live today like we know it.

Thank you, Jesus, for claiming us as your own, for giving us hearts that recognize you. Be my judgment; be in charge today as I rest in releasing my life to you. Thank you for your light burden. Thank you for including us in your kingdom.

Lamentation Meditation

Lamentations 3:22-24, NRSV,

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,

his mercies never come to an end;

they are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.

“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,

“therefore I will hope in him.”

I do not deserve Him. He is steadfast. I can look back at so many times that I have not been steadfast, in fact, I am afraid that I would not even break half on a test. Steadfast. When I am confronted with gossip or when my pride has been wounded, I at least twinge. I desire to act; and all of my resources are calling upon the minions of heaven to keep me from falling. I am movable but He is steadfast, never flinching, never looking to the side, intentional, never ceasing.

I have been prideful in my life. I have refused to let the Lord love me. I struggle with believing that I am deserving of His love, but how I feel does not change who He is. His love never ceases. He will never stop pouring it out on me. It is the very spring from which all other things come. Discipline comes from love, trials come from love. He is jealously in love with me and my heart will find no other resting ground than in His hand. He has shown that His mercies will never come to an end. Believe me when I say, I have tried Him and tried Him. I have said, “yes” and “no”, so many times. Still He is merciful. I cannot understand it. His mercies never come to an end.

Each morning as I get up and I sit in my thinking chair praying and reading His word, I think about the fact that this morning is a clean slate. If I choose to carry yesterday’s accounts into this day, it is my decision. I can end yesterday and every day before that simply by repenting before the Lord. I can loose the people that I hold in bondage to me through forgiveness. I can set them at the foot of the cross for Jesus to work in their lives. I certainly cannot change anyone, nor do I want that responsibility, but I know that He can. He changed me. His mercy is new today, what will I do with it? I will know Him better. I will search the depths of Him through His Spirit. Pour it out on us, Lord.

Great is His faithfulness that He would tolerate me, stand with me, forgive me and love me. Great is His faithfulness that He would watch, as I have spun destruction on all sides of me, and then say, “Enough, my daughter, come and find peace in me”. I was faithless and I was treacherous. Great is His faithfulness as He grows a disciple, a woman, a wife and a home through me. Praise His name.

I was thinking today of when I am satisfied. The truth is I am never satisfied unless I am with the Lord. I am never satisfied with what I do, what I have or who I am. I am never satisfied with what anyone delivers or offers me. Without Him, I carry an insatiable void waiting to be filled by the nearest person or thing. I am only satisfied when I am on my knees, in his presence, offering to Him, existing with Him through my days. It is only then that I am able to walk in this world and know who I am, complete and able.

This is when I know that the Lord is my portion…my soul says it. My soul tells me what it needs. It tells me what will satisfy it. “The Lord is my portion”, says my soul. Oh, how sweet it is to hear that. Praise your name, Jesus.

I will hope in Him. How in these days and in these times I hope in Him. I depend on Him for my next breath in some moments. I hope in His steadfast love. I hope in His mercy. I hope in His faithfulness. He is my portion and my soul sings that truth. He is my hope.

Lord, God, for your own sake you have offered these gifts to us. Father, manifest these brightly in our lives today and always. Thank you for your goodness.

Dorcas Tells All

Acts 9:36-41, NRSV, “Now in Joppa there was a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas. She was devoted to good works and acts of charity. At that time she became ill and died. When they had washed her, they laid her in a room upstairs. Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, who heard that Peter was there, sent two men to him with the request, “Please come to us without delay.” So Peter got up and went with them; and when he arrived, they took him to the room upstairs. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them. Peter put all of them outside, and then he knelt down and prayed. He turned to the body and said, “Tabitha, get up.” Then she opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, she sat up. He gave her his hand and helped her up. Then calling the saints and widows, he showed her to be alive.”

This passage struck me this morning. I remember as a kid thinking about the unfortunate translation of Tabitha to Greek, which only sounds bad in contemporary English. I giggled every time I heard the name Dorcas (the emphasis is actually on the last syllable, if that helps). It means gazelle, which paints quite a lovely picture of any woman. She probably had quite a presence. She was obviously a faithful woman. This morning, I found myself desiring to be her. I want to be that effectual. I want to be so relevant that people actually want for me to come back from the dead. Am I bordering on self-worship?

So, first we hear that she is a disciple. She is a disciple named Dorcas, who was devoted to good works and acts of charity. By what this passage says, we can assume that she was a patron of widows, amongst other things. That is such a noble assignment. Widows and orphans have a rich place in throughout Jewish tradition and into the early Christian church. I hope that we can say the same for our congregations now. Dorcas was an effective woman. She was going to leave a gap in the hearts and activities of the church. That is a powerful legacy, even more when you have been brought back from the dead.

I am being entrenched in the area of order, mostly because I ran across some materials, unintentionally. This is not a bad thing, although it does make us all catch our breath, doesn’t it? This morning I was given the verse, “for God is a God not of disorder but of peace (1 Corinthians 14:33, NRSV)”.

God gives order for peace; peace and order are linked together, one begets the other. I can have peace in my home with order. I have been reading Donna Otto and Emilie Barnes. They challenge you to make a Life Statement. Then, my mother and I talked this week and she is reading another book talking about, essentially, a living epitaph. You know those things in your life that just keep coming up…well, mine is life statements and goals. I made my statement after a few weeks of praying and writing. I was so glad to finish it. I was sitting over breakfast in San Diego a week ago, and it just came out. It took so long for me simply to decide who I wanted to be; how I wanted to be remembered. What does God want for me to accomplish in this world and what will my legacy be? He gave it to me one word at a time.

In one of our recent discussions, my mother flat out said, not for the first time, “You are involved in too much”. Every time she says it, I know that it is true. She said it because I told her things that I desire in my life and I feel that God desires in my life, and then I contrasted it with what I was actually up to. Apparently, we have a shared gene that uncontrollably mutters the word, “yes”, when anyone says, “Could anyone (fill in the blank)”? So, I am prayerfully analyzing what should be in my life and what should not be in my life. I desire order in my life that allows the things of God to fulfill my identity and purpose. I desire that everything else goes away. Now I have to kick those things out.

Dorcas’ purpose was written down for eternity. She is one example of what I am striving for. She devoted herself to good works and acts of charity. I bet that she understood this about herself; in fact, I bet that she did it without a life statement. She probably did not try to do children’s nursery, the book reading club, prayer groups that meet on multiple nights, and every bible study that is offered. She devoted herself to two things and she was remembered forever for her diligence to them.

My mother also tells me that you can’t have it all. You have to choose the things that you really want, and do a few of them really well. This takes a lot of prayer and maybe the loss of some dreams. I will not be a marathon runner or tri-athlete in this lifetime. Although I have seen a movie of my triumphant win in my mind, after my back surgery last year I do not believe that this movie will ever make it to celluloid. I will not be an artist; I live this vicariously through my husband, lthough my mother did tell me that I was extremely promising after I did my self-portrait as a freshman in high school. I now will allow myself to be a fan of other’s art and let that 20 year dream finally rot. As long as I live with our pets and love them past the spoiling point, I will never have a completely clean home. If we have children, I will really never have a clean home.

I am at the point. I need to choose and devote myself. I need to understand that I am simply a vessel for the Potter and allow myself to be fulfilled and used by the unpredictable abundance of Him. He does not work under the shotgun effect…shoot and splatter. He is precise with His resources. I need to allow His order into my life into my home, so that I can be flexible enough to deal with this world. Coexisting with this order will be the gift of peace to people who touch my life because it will be tangible and intentional. Thanks Dorcas and mom, for inspiring me today to live out my purpose.

Thank you, Lord, for giving us the option of peace in our lives. Thank you for giving us the desire for your purpose. Give us the strength to be truly effective in our lives. Tell us where we belong and where we do not. Close doors for us and open others.

Talking Animals

Paul is such a great patriarch, isn’t he? He loved the followers of Christ. He loved the people who he had helped convert. When he heard that a church was doing well, he was joyful. He was like a proud papa. When a church was doing poorly, though, watch out. He was like a disappointed papa. In 2 Corinthians, he tells of his fear for this congregation. 2 Corinthians 11:3, “But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by its cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” With the same spirit, I am afraid of this for myself and for everyone that I know. We have a mighty enemy. Help us, Lord.

The serpent deceived Eve by its cunning. Revelation 12:9, “The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.”

I put this in, just in case there was any question who we were dealing with. How uncomfortable does it make you to hear that ‘his angels’ were thrown down with him? There are lots of them. I have not counted, but my experience this week tells me that there are many; either that, or there are a few that are really busy. But that is not all, Satan can take many forms. 2 Corinthians 11:14, “And no wonder! Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.” Do you feel uncomfortable, yet?

He deceived Eve. How did he do it? Genesis tells us that the snake simply said that God lied to her. She would not die if she ate the fruit! That is the silliest thing that Satan had ever heard. No, no, she would be like God, knowing good and evil. And in a moment, she was able to experience good and evil. Do you think that she was uncomfortable, yet? Before this, there was no sin that she could experience. Her creation was given a boundary that let God take care of the evil, solely. Eating the fruit was opening the portal to the experience of evil. God knew what a mess it would be when we could experience it. We are not created to understand evil, to productively interact with it…do you understand it? It is cunning.

How does it play out in our lives? It plays out in our thoughts. I don’t know about your thoughts, but mine will follow anything that is shiny. My friends know to ask me very few questions, because I tend to answer all of them at the same time. I enjoy being analytical; in fact, I feel like I should don a crystal studded pocket protector at times.

I have no trouble seeing how Eve could become obsessive over the one thing in paradise that she could not have. The tree was a freak show because it was different from all the rest. I, also, have no problem seeing how her husband sat with her, speechless, and just ate what she gave him. My husband eats anything that I give him, too.

If you had no exposure to evil, you are not thinking analytically about a lying, talking snake. There could have been many talking animals in the garden. I have to believe that because she did not get caught up on the talking snake. If a snake were talking to me, I would not care what it said. I would check myself in somewhere. I certainly would not eat anything that it recommended.

Satan is no longer trying to get us to eat apples, but he is still trying to disprove God’s character. As he does with everything, he wants to veer our thoughts just slightly off course; it does not take much. He wants to make us desire other things. He tells us to look at the one tree that we cannot eat from and stare at it, while the world passes us by. The goal is to move us slightly from sincerity. When I say to God, “I trust you”, do I mean it? Do I trust Him with every moment, every desire of my heart, every tragedy that I will experience? The goal is to move us slightly from purity. Is my heart pure? When I continue to hold that harmless grudge, or when I obsess over what God has set outside of my experience, can I maintain purity of heart?

Paul had it right. Our pure and sincere devotion to Christ is the prize. Our thoughts are being fought over at all times…our mind is the battleground. The small decisions and obsessions are the victories for Satan. Enough small decisions will open doors to experience things that were never meant to be our burden, just like evil in the life of Eve. If only we had a talking snake to go along with each temptation, we could see them coming. We don’t.

2 Corinthians, 10:4b, 5, “We destroy arguments 5 and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ.”

Thank you, Lord, for your sovereignty. Thank you for being our advocate in the battle for our thoughts. Lord, give us strength to have pure and sincere devotion to you. Take each thought captive and let it glorify you.