Do you resent or accept your ‘boundary lines’?

December 16, 2021

Maria Envy, God's Discipline, God's goodness, God's Sovereignty, Gospel, Hearing God, Psalm 16, Trusting God , , , , , 1 Comment

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely, I have a delightful inheritance. I will praise the LORD, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. Psalm 16:6-7 NIV

Where Mike and I lived in Western North Carolina, we frequently would pop into a gift shop on Main Street called, Pleasant Places.  We bought our squirrel-proof bird feeder from these nature-loving owners and always enjoyed chatting with them.

This morning I was thinking of David, who joined the top ranks of ‘Who’s Who in Israel’s History’, who penned this Holy Spirit-inspired truth about his boundary lines. That led me to reflect on my life.

I started out my young adult life with a desire-fueled goal. At age 18 I already knew I loved learning and speaking other languages as well as adapting to new cultures.  I calculated that the most adventure-packed international career I could choose would be the Foreign Service, also known as the State Department.  I was fully aware of how challenging it would prove to be selected.  So, I chose to apply for an ROTC scholarship to help fund college, knowing that five years of military experience as an officer after graduation could make my candidacy more appealing

I even majored in Russian and Russian Studies to increase my value to the State Department. But my intended trajectory completely changed when I met Mike that summer after graduating and getting commissioned as a new second lieutenant.  He and I had been assigned to the same basic officers’ course for the Military Intelligence branch. Within 6 weeks I found myself saying ‘yes’ to his marriage proposal and we were wed in April 1980.

I chose life with Mike over my original career path, thereby changing the trajectory of the rest of my life. Do I regret that quick decision?  No, not in the least. Do I ever feel sad when I survey remaining longings for overseas living adventures?  Yes!

But I can say with heart-felt conviction that my boundary lines, much narrower than I imagined I could want, have been good for me. The Lord really does know what he is doing.

The most significant example of how God’s plan turned out far better for me comes from early on in our marriage.  We were 24 and were confronted with the gospel message for the first time. We might have heard what Jesus did in the denomination we grew up in, but not in a compelling way.  This presentation clearly and immediately drew us to respond with a hearty ‘YES!’ to God’s offer of salvation, lordship and forever fellowship.

I know that without Mike, I would have stopped going to church.  I never attended an Episcopal church my four years at the University of Virginia. Yet, there must have been a flicker of authentic Holy-Spirit desire in me, for meeting Mike who did attend church faithfully, intrigued me. I joined him each Sunday morning for church and brunch afterwards.  As long as I was with him, I went willingly.

But I know that had we only dated and parted as friends in December 1979, I would not have continued going to church on my own.  Services frankly bored me.

Furthermore, I would have likely continued along my self-centered, sexually-immoral, career-focused path with little thought about church or the things of God.

What would my life be like now, at 64? I do believe I’d be a believer as I am now.  But I am grateful for four decades of following (erratic as it has been for long periods) Jesus.  I don’t doubt that eventually God would have gotten my attention. Probably in a painful way, like an inconvenient, unwanted and shaming pregnancy. Instead, he had drawn me with ‘cords of kindness’ through that quick decision to join my life with Mike’s. 

I keep going back to my ‘pleasant’ boundary lines. I trust God, and especially when he has written in Psalm 84:11 ‘No good thing do I withhold from those whose way is upright’.

When those inevitable wistful dreams resurface, when I envy others for getting to live overseas and speak other languages, I remind myself that:  HAD IT BEEN A GOOD THING FOR ME, then the Lord would have ordained it.

What do you expect? And are you content?

January 24, 2021

Maria Contentment, Envy, Hebrews 13, Matthew 20 , , , , , , 1 Comment

This week I write about one sanctification issue that God patiently brings up time and time again: contentment. The other topic has to do with expectations.

 Friends, we do NOT serve a boring Master! I’m finding that Jesus likes to change things up for me, keeping me ‘on the hot griddle’ as my mom used to say. She employed that as dating advice when I was a teen.  She was trying to teach me that men did not like the predictable. I don’t know if that is true about men, but it turned out to be absolutely the case when I taught middle-schoolers and older teens.  The brain craves novelty!

As it turns out, Jesus is the most novel teacher I have ever had!

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Hebrews 13:5 ESV

This morning I saw a way into contentment by asking: ‘What do ‘I have’ already?’  Well, I have Christ!  And He will never abandon me.  So, maybe a way to ‘do’ contentment is to desire what I already have, namely the living, indwelling Spirit of Jesus.

Don’t you and I desire what we don’t have? Billions of advertising dollars work to create and fuel longing for something better, newer, different.  Companies invest in creating DIS-content.

But I don’t think I can FEEL content, unless I stoke my gladness over what I have. It’s like appreciating one’s spouse and recounting to him all the precious memories of joy and tender moments you have shared.

Maybe at least on Sundays, we can offer to Jesus our version of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem: ‘How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways…’ And stoke our contentment.

**

I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Matthew 20:14 ESV

Jesus used this scenario to illustrate the ‘last are first’ principle in the Kingdom of God. I wrote in my journal this morning: ‘The early hires got what they expected, but didn’t like it.  The late hires got what they didn’t expect and loved it.

Today is Inauguration Day for President Joe Biden. Four years ago, I watched Donald Trump’s inauguration while eating lunch in my French classroom in North Carolina. Just as the vineyard owner shocked his last-to-be-hired workers, so too God surprised me. Never would I have imagined on that day, January 20, 2017, that four years later I would be retired and watching Joe Biden’s inauguration from here in Alabama.

Maybe God has surprised you, too!  I think the lesson for us is this: Let go of expectations and trust our good, generous and creative Father who doesn’t do things the ‘human’ way.

You never gave me a young goat!

January 16, 2020

Maria 1 Timothy 6, Contentment, Envy, Evil, Gratitude, Holiness, Luke 15, Obedience, Shame, Sin, Uncategorized , , , , , 1 Comment

About that goat reference in this post’s title, can you identify whose complaint that was?  If you guessed ‘the Older Brother’, you know your Bible!  Luke records that complaint from Jesus’ parable in Luke 15:29, to be exact.

Mike has been reading G.K.Chesterton’s book Orthodoxy out loud to us in the evenings.  Chesterton takes some time getting used to; I have to concentrate more and think through his prose, almost sentence by sentence.  In our current chapter the author is addressing fairy tales and what they teach us about reality.  Chesterton points out that main characters tend to complain about limitations imposed on them when they should be in awe, marveling over what they actually have been granted.

For example, when Cinderella challenges her fairy godmother about why she has to leave the party before the clock strikes midnight, she should really be captivated by the sheer improbability of EVEN going to the ball!  Where’s her question about that turn of events?  Did she ever imagine she would dance with the Prince, let alone be magically attired in elegance with a chic hairdo to boot? So improbable was that scenario, especially since she had been forced to sew for her step-sisters after cleaning house all day.

How like us humans, to complain.  If we are alive, it is SHEER gift. If we are believers, then we have hit the jackpot of God’s purposeful favor.  The guarantee of everlasting life WITH God is the only true ‘happily ever after’ fairy-tale ending we all long for. Yet, we seem to have eyes for what we lack, what we haven’t been given.

I know this well.  Though I rarely complain out loud, were my inner chatter publicized, I would feel great shame. The time I spend envying, longing, wishing silently…that’s PURE complaining. Whom do I envy?  Those who SEEM to be doing and enjoying what I think would satisfy me.  Like traveling, living overseas.  (I’m a linguaphile.)

Is there hope for envy-addicts? Yes!  And I am experiencing it.  It’s called God’s School of Contentment. I’ve been a student in this training academy for decades, now.

The point is that this addiction has deep roots, so it FEELS like I haven’t made much progress.  My Father gently AND frequently hands me a new lesson. Like this week.

Today in the notes of my Spanish study Bible (one of my tools for acquiring Spanish!) the writers noted that ‘obeying the Lord tends to mean leaving off one thing in order to receive something better.‘  The passage in question was Abram’s leaving Ur, his extended family, the land and even the familiar pagan gods to go where THE one and only God was guiding him, to receive new land and descendants.

How did the Lord use that explanation in my holiness training? Immediately I saw that I am to LEAVE OFF the sinful, evil pleasure of envy, in order to bolster contentment with my lot, the circumstances which He has granted me.  (A corollary evil pleasure of mine is worrying, but that’s another post!)

Those Bible notes were anchored a few minutes later by a verse that ‘popped up’ in my Prayermate app – 1 Tim 6:6 Godliness with Contentment is GREAT gain.

And just how does God define the concept of contentment?  The Greek word is ‘autarkaa’ meaning ‘sufficiency’. Blue Letter Bible describes it like this: ‘A mind that looks at one’s lot and says: IT IS ENOUGH, what You’ve given me IS SUFFICIENT.’

Following that description I read one final thought that deepened my desire to practice this trait:

  • without this contentment I will do today’s deeds NOT as an expression of Christ’s all-sufficiency but in order to make up for some deficiency I feel.

So, same message from a couple of different sources.  To top it off, Regina, my spiritual reading buddy, sent me a Luther quote earlier this week. Scrolling through her texts I found it again: “To obey is better than……. miracles.”

Isn’t our Father good!  He doesn’t give up. He keeps after us to make us ultimately happier through holiness.  The obedience in view here, this day, is thanking God for my boundaries, my lot. Being satisfied, being content with what He deems best for me is part of that holiness training.

Meditating on half a verse is enough

June 22, 2019

Maria Envy, Food, God's Glory, Meditation, Proverbs 30, Psalm 16 , , , 2 Comments

Proverbs 30:8 Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me

Just that a portion of this verse was enough to teach and encourage me!

Mike and I read through the Bible each year, following a chronological plan.  That means sometimes we are reading 3-5 chapters at a time.  We gain so much by studying and discussing God’s storyline year after year.  More sinks in through the repetition.  But it is also good to slow down and meditate on just a small portion of God’s Word. I did that this morning from our assigned chapters, Proverbs 30 and 31.

Here are some riches I gathered from 10 minutes max of thinking and checking the Hebrew of the highlighted snippet above:

  1. Feed me: The writer understands that we are incapable of feeding ourselves in the spiritual sense.  He asks God to nourish him.  The Hebrew word for ‘feed’ means a tearing into little pieces.  I pictured an animal momma preparing bite-sized morsels for her young.  I need to remember, that daily, even hourly dependence on God is how I am to live.
  2. with the food: I can think of all the wrong kinds of ‘food’ I am apt to grab.  Others’ life’s circumstances that look ‘happier’ and travel photos that I wish were mine, to name two.  Neither promote contentment nor rest and trust in Jesus.
  3. that is needful: Again, another corrective: I’m not wise enough to know what is needful, what is good.  But God is! The Hebrew for ‘needful’ has the sense of: proscribed, appointed, assigned.  Reminds me of the psalmist’s assertion about pleasantly placed boundary lines in Psalm 16: 6
  4. for me: Ah, the individual love that our Father gives us.  What I need is different from what you need.  Sure, we all need God’s rescue, His heart surgery, and sustaining grace. But because He fashioned me and placed me, an individual, in THIS epoch, in THIS geographical area, in THIS family, in THIS physical body, He knows precisely what I require to grow more holy, like Jesus. His purposeful arrangement of circumstances and events are what He calls GOOD for me.  Remembering this fact, I let out a breath, and settle down into His care.

What was my overall take-away from meditating on just this partial verse?  That I can unreservedly submit to God, that He knows just what I need, at every moment, and that He gives me the perfect quantity of chosen circumstantial ‘necessaries’.  All to the end of preparing me to share in the happy glory of His forever Kingdom.

The few minutes of this kind of deeper engagement with a small portion of text makes me more apt to recall His sustaining Word throughout the hours of this day.

 

 

My seat….

July 17, 2016

Maria Contentment, Devotional Bites, Envy, Ephesians, Future Grace, God's Purpose, Heaven, Jesus Christ, Union with Christ , , 4 Comments

Ephesians 2:6

And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.

My Seat

Thank you, Father, for raising me from the dead and giving me new, different and everlasting LIFE. Thank you for the seat you have assigned me.

I didn’t pick this seat. You selected it for me.

I’m sorry for all the times I compare my seat with others’, longing for a different one. Forgive me for the many times I get out of my seat, just like those squirmy boys in my French class.

Help me to trust that You know just what I need in a seat.

May I practice sitting contentedly in my seat. After all, I’m going to be spending a long time next to my older Brother and knowing how kind and loving You are, I bet my seat will turn out to be just the one I would have picked out had I known all the facts. Amen.

The twin evils of smugness and envy

March 1, 2015

Maria 2 Peter, Envy, Freedom, Galatians, Humility, John, Micah, Repentance , , , , 1 Comment

I was feeling smug. Admiring my ability to juggle this and that. Compared to others.  Evaluating myself next to another sister. He pulled me up short. As realization of sin spread, so did horror.

Juggling life

“I repent, Lord! Forgive me! I see! Truly! I humble myself. You don’t need to do anything else to get my attention. Seriously!”

 

For what had flashed across my consciousness about God was this:

“You, the all-wise and infinitely good God, have perfectly arranged this fellow Christian’s plate with the appropriate palate of weaknesses, strengths, characteristics, bents, abilities, talents, habits (good and bad), circumstances, and experiences all intended for her to grow in the knowledge and love of your Son. Every piece on that plate of hers is necessary to her sanctification and growth in holiness. You planned each one, the good and the ugly!”

And You have done the same for me. Who am I to boast about this or that as though they were due to my efforts and smarts? All along You are the one who has traced out our paths? And more pointedly, who am I to complain about the potholes in the road if they are according to Your will?

“Father, I see that this constant comparing of me with others produce either envy or pride and both are evil! Deliver me from these sins, please! Pride says: Look at me!  Envy says: You are a bad God not to give me what I want/deserve!”

Since that day a week ago, He has continued to show me that He does indeed ordain and govern all circumstances. Because He is in charge of every molecule in the universe I can trust what He commands me to do:

“He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, and to love kindness and mercy, and to humble yourself and walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6-8

Not evaluating, not judging the circumstances of others is wise. That’s God’s business. Do you remember Peter’s comment to Jesus as told by John after Jesus appeared to his eleven disciples post resurrection?

“So Peter seeing him (John) said to Jesus, “Lord, and what about this man? Jesus said to him, ‘If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow Me!’” John 21:21-22

Several times a day as my smug-o-meter rises, (that is – when I awake to this sin), I put myself back in my place. I say to myself:

“Maria, you have died! And the life you now live, you live by faith in Jesus. (Gal 2:20) That is to say – you move and live and have your being attached to Him. If there be any good in your life, it is only good because of Him. So give it up, this thinking that there is something good in or about you alone!”

That truth not only humbles me, but it liberates me. Since all that is good in me through faith is a gift, I don’t have to worry about earning it. And since Jesus has given me the most costly gift, Himself, I can trust Him to give me any and all such that He deems good for me for godliness and life (2 Peter 1:3)

PS:  When I caught myself later on in the week doing my ‘I’m-so-good dance’, I realized that God was showing me a specific way to PRAY for this fellow Christian.  Again, I repented.  We are all different, intentionally.  He has arranged each of us in the Body of Christ as He sees fit.  Therefore, we are to encourage and pray for one another. It’s in our best interests, after all.  Another gentle smack-down!

Envy – that invisible sin

March 30, 2014

Maria Contentment, Covetousness, Envy , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Envying a bigger fish

 

 

 

It snuck up on me awares. First one friend’s good news, then another’s and finally a third – all in the space of 2 days.  Before I knew it, my coveting was in full bloom!  Thankfully , the Holy Spirit was on duty and drew my attention to what this was;  pure and simple – ugly SIN!

Funny how men are quick to confess their struggle against lust and women their indulgence in gossip.  But covetousness? envy?  – who admits that?  But you know that it must be a biggie, to have made it on God’s Top Ten List.

10 Commandments

 

 

 

What we wish we had that we don’t is also an indicator of our idols – the things we worship.  I’ve heard it said that the act of worship bookends the commandments – at the outset, the proper and exclusive worship of God, the Creator and at the end, the prohibition of worshipping the created.

So what did I do, a forgiven sinner who was forced to look her sin straight in the face?  I repented.  And again each time the longings flooded or floated back. Finally, when I had time to examine at length these desires full-on, God led me to a helpful way to put them into perspective.

If we are Christians, then we have been invited and vetted to permanently partake of the eternal heavenly feast, hosted by Jesus in His Father’s Kingdom.  That experience which will go on forever will literally be out-of-this-world in its magnitude and ability to satisfy and provide multi-dimensional joy the likes of which we can hardly begin to imagine.

Heavenly Feast

 

 

 

 

So whatever it is that I long for HERE on this earth is piddly in comparison.  The image that came to mind (thank you, Holy Spirit!) was of someone complaining about their snack in comparison to a friend’s snack, when all along we will both soon be dining at Buckingham Palace or the Biltmore Estate.

Biltmore

 

 

 

Envy is damaging because it destroys our contentment in God.  It keeps our focus OFF of God and on to lesser stuff.  It sets us up for the corrosive thought that we DESERVE something.  When all along as a pastor friend of mine likes to say, “What we deserve is Hell!  The fact that God offers us a pardon is astounding enough.  Everything else we get is a gift.  And that’s a lot of gifts!”

So maybe I’ll have some of my fleshly heart’s desires satisfied here on earth and maybe I won’t.  But the time spent here is a blink of the eye.  I love the way CS Lewis contrasts the length and satisfaction of life on earth to that of eternal life with the Father:

“But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle  

Dream has ended CS Lewis

 

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