Men and women are different? You’re telling me!

July 21, 2013

Maria Romans, Sanctification , , , , Leave a comment

 

I should be used to it by now, my husband being annoyed with me!

But after 33 years, I still don’t like it.  I want him to view me as perfect. Trouble is, I’m a woman and I think like one.  The other day we took my car, the one with 118,000 miles on it, to do errands because Mike was going to run it through the car wash.  I had mentioned to him that on our way home, I’d like to go up Rosemount Drive near our house.  Some ladies at the ‘Balsam Babes Breakfast’ (annual summer highlight for a rural mountain hamlet in Western NC) had intrigued me with the story of a cross “just up” the 4 mile road commemorating the life of a Florida man’s daughter.

Seemed like a simple thing: just drive to the top of Rosemount.

I haven’t learned to decipher the Western North Carolinian language.  “It’s at the top of Rosemount” did not mean what I thought it did. In the clean car, we drove off the county-maintained paved road onto gravel, going higher and higher.  We also drove past Mike’s normal point of patience as he maneuvered the car round ever numerous turns.  That’s when he noticed the whining sound connected to the steering.

“Sounds like the transmission is going; climbing this hill isn’t good for the car; hear that whiny noise?” he glowered at me with a growl.

“Oh that?  I heard the same grinding and whining along the flat part of Interstate 40 last month when we convoyed from Newport News!”

After that ‘calming’ explanation, I sandwiched in apologies for leading him on a wild-goose chase.  I was doing my best to empathize with and soften his annoyance.  Did I tell you I don’t like it when he’s annoyed with me?

I continued, “You know, I have to drive to South Carolina on Sunday to catch my flight to the Dallas conference, do you think I’ll make it okay?”

“Hope so…..” he lobbed his annoyance back on my side of the court.

Mike, I’m really sorry…you paid $20 to have my car thoroughly cleaned.  I’d be annoyed too!

**

I won’t relate the rest of the conversation.  We never did find that cross…  I learned not to assume I understand Appalachian directions…..and Mike did some private talking to God later on his daily walk.  But, here’s what GOD did!

Because Mike HEARD a noise that was NOT good, we looked up transmissions on the internet and I called a local place and prayerfully made plans to take the car in on Thursday.   Transmission repairs or replacements are costly and we are vulnerable when it comes to knowing whom we can trust in a new community.  God provided!  The transmission guy quickly determined it was probably a power steering problem and referred me to a local mechanic up the road. (I pinned him down and rehearsed the verbal directions to my satisfaction!)

This mechanic turned out to be a Christian AND honest.  He ordered the part; I brought the car BACK to him on Friday and he fixed it.  Not only was my car prepared to make the drive to the Greenville/Spartanburg airport today, we found an honest local mechanic who can work on both our cars in the future.

Had I NOT led us on a wild goose chase; had Mike NOT been annoyed with the vague directions, the gravel dust and then the whiny sound, we would not have been blessed in such significant ways.

God DOES use all things to the good of those who are His, even annoyance. Why should I be bothered by the very natural reaction of a man living with a woman who doesn’t always think or communicate like he does?  Furthermore, why should we expect to live annoyance-free lives?

Here’s to God’s promise to… “cause all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

When a fellow Christian hurts you

July 14, 2013

Maria Christ's work on the Cross, Forgiveness, Grace , , , , , 4 Comments

“She’s gonna pay!”

Have you ever been THAT kind of mad at a sister/brother in Christ?  I have!

You could have caught me ‘speechless’ the other night, after reading John Piper’s daily reflection on my iphone app called “Piper Devotional” (excerpted from his book Future Grace).

What stopped me in my tracks and made me reconsider the times when I’ve been mad at others was reading Piper’s thoughts on Romans 8:1

There is, therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

What that means is that when someone else in the Church hurts me and they rightly deserve to pay for that offense, the payment has already been made – in the past – on the cross by none other than Jesus.   It HAS to be that way for them NOT to be condemned by God.  The other alternative would be for God to say, “Susie has hurt you?  Just forgive her – ‘cause she’s your sister-in- Christ.  Period!”

That, actually, would NOT be fair!  And God is the God of justice, or else he is NOT God!  Someone WILL pay or HAS paid or DOES pay.  One of the privileges of being in the King of the Universe’s family is having Big Brother Jesus cover our deliberate AND inadvertent mean or thoughtless words/ actions toward one another.  How?- in his flesh, on the cross.

When I want to make Christian sister Susie pay, I’m actually saying that I want Jesus to suffer STILL MORE for the harm done me.

Reading Piper’s piece, I actually pictured Jesus softly saying, “That’s okay, Maria, I can take it.  If that brother-in-Christ needs to pay for what he did to you, then I’ll pay for him.  Lay his iniquity on me.  I’m here to suffer the rightful punishment for what he did to you!”

In my scenario, I found myself saying almost with tears:

‘No, Lord, I don’t want You to suffer any more; I will let my brother go, I won’t hold IT against him anymore.”

Talk about injustice!  If my twisted desire, to see him or her PAY, means Jesus has to suffer more, then I don’t want that, especially not just to make me feel better.

Now THAT’s a sure, quick way to drain off self-righteous anger!

So what am I saying?  That they should get off, just because they are Christian?

–      Well, you and I have ‘gotten off’, haven’t we?

–      Are we aware of all the ways we have hurt someone else, another family member of God?

–      And what about all the many ways we have ignored God or rebelled against Him?

Jesus HAS paid it all.  And it did cost Him.

I HOPE that the next time I start to feed some righteous indignation due to wounds from a fellow member of the household of Christ that I can PICTURE Jesus asking me, “How much do you want them to squirm…however much you think they deserve, I’m ready, in their place. Your call, Maria!”    

When life feels blah

July 7, 2013

Maria Attitude, Ecclesiastes , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

I read a blog recently where the young 20-something author said that she appreciates loneliness & pain because at least she knows she’s alive at those moments.

Mike and I were savoring a coffee at one of Historic Waynesville’s ‘café-cum-curio’ boutiques when I asked him how he thought this gal might describe the OPPOSITE of her painful – but alive times.  He offered that maybe she lived depressed in the Ecclesiastes-type sense (Life is meaningless, even and ESPECIALLY after you’ve tasted all of Life’s goodies).  And that pain (perhaps she’s a cutter??) is welcome in the midst of the numbness of depression.

These reflections on pain, aliveness & deadness nestled themselves in the midst of some recent thoughts on ‘blah-ness’.

I’m a peppy, perky optimist 95 % of the time, but the other day I was feeling blah.  Zero perkiness as in “I’m excited about XYZ!”  I wasn’t excited about ANYTHING.

But, God be praised, because of some readings that the Holy Spirit has led me through in recent years, I was able quickly to remember and apply one of CS Lewis’ philosophies:

“The Christian says, ‘Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that country and to help others to do the same.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

When the blahs DO strike, we can console ourselves with the truth that SOON, we will be in a land where there are NO blahs.

In other words, there is NO need to be depressed about feeling depressed.  It’s part and parcel of living in a physically and morally fallen world. Our mental state is more connected to our physical condition than we acknowledge:

  • How did I sleep last night?
  • Do I feel fat this morning?
  • Am I constipated?
  • Am I worried about a twinge or a growing mole?

Our mental state is ALSO influenced by many temporary circumstances:

  • Will we be able to pay our bills?
  • What if our cat Leia doesn’t get better?
  • What if my new job is more demanding than I have anticipated?
  • What if Mike can’t find any paying clients?

Only by talking to ourselves and re-membering / re-hearsing / re-peating God’s truths can we hold on to the correct perspective so we can value the permanent and hold the temporary more loosely.

And the good news is that those moments when we DO feel alive/hopeful/ excited, they are VERY real fore-tastes of life to come.  They’re not meant to taunt us but to reassure us and make us long all the more for eternal life with the happy triune God.

Love rolls downhill

June 30, 2013

Maria Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Love, Trinity, Uncategorized , , 1 Comment

“Love me, love my dog!” were words we often heard when we would have dinner with my dad.  He had 2 spoiled poodles that he adored.  And that love was definitely requited!

It seems to me that God, the Father exhorts us likewise:  “If you love me, then you’ll love my Son!”

I’ve been reading a book about the Trinity.

And already, having enjoyed my way through the introduction and into Chapter 1, I’m hooked!  Michael Reeves asserts straight away that a primary characteristic of God is His Fatherhood.  He’s always been Father. And for Him to BE Father requires God the Son to have eternally existed as well.

We know that for God to BE God means that He doesn’t change.  What follows then is this:  He couldn’t have been single God who created the Son, thus adding ‘Father’ to His résumé.  God as Father and God as Son have co-existed since eternity.  (I won’t expand this discussion today by delving into God the Holy Spirit)

Of course I pray most often to God as Father. Furthermore I know that the Bible is replete with references to God as Father.  Yet, I’m seeing divine Fatherhood in a wholly/holy different light.  I’m noticing how often God is really called Father in both the Old and the New Testament. Although more developed in the NT, the Fatherhood of God is nonetheless THERE – for example:

          “The LORD your God who goes before you will Himself fight on your behalf, just as He did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness where you saw how the LORD your God carried you, just as a man carries his son, in all the way which you have walked until you came to this place.” (Deuteronomy 1:30-31)

          “But now, O LORD, You are our Father, We are the clay, and You our potter; And all of us are the work of Your hand.” (Isaiah 64:8)

So….you say, what’s new about that? Just that, Father-love is different than love between equals.  Hear me out…I’ll try not to be heretical or introduce the idea that God the Father and God the Son are not one.  They ARE one and they DO exhibit the same essence and same nature, BUT…their roles are different.

·         The Father loves the Son and the Son delights to obey the Father. But it doesn’t stop there.

·         The Son loves the Church and the Church is called to lovingly submit to/obey the Son.

·          Husbands love their wives and wives are called to delight in respectfully and lovingly helping (and submitting when necessary) their husbands.

·          Moms love their children and children are to respectfully and lovingly help and submit to their moms. (Dads are to train their kids)

·         Humans love their animals and their animals, if well trained, will devotedly and joyfully follow their masters.

In other words, love flows downhill.

I used to feel guilty because I sensed that I loved people unequally.  For example – I always knew my mom loved me with an intensity that I didn’t reciprocate. Yet when I became a parent, I understood that kind of love.  I think Mike and I love each other differently, too.  And we definitely love our cats MORE than they love us. (Think about our fears as our pets age!)

What does the fact that God loves us more and differently do for our security? (Take as a given that His love for us is qualitatively/quantitatively beyond our capacity to imagine.) For one thing, it lifts the guilt I have always felt?  And I feel more reassured and secure that God’s love won’t ever depart from me.  He can’t NOT love me;  it’s His nature to love His children.

I’ll leave you with this question– How do you see love between friends?

 PS:  I’ve just started a blog entitled about Logic for the ordinary person – in it I discuss in bite-sized measures what I have learned from teaching formal and informal logic to young teens.   Surprised by Logic

 

Christianese – even the Bible is ‘guilty’

June 23, 2013

Maria Colossians, Hebrews, Hope, Joy, Nehemiah, Uncategorized , , , Leave a comment

I used to get so mad at my mother! 

She was one of those happy Christians (this was in the days when I was NOT a believer) who would spout:  “The joy of the Lord is my strength!”  Those words seemed to make sense to her. Not only did I have NO idea what they meant, her enthusiasm just pissed me off. (Sorry for the irreverence!)  She seemed naïve and Pollyannaish.   Did she mean:

  • The fact that the Lord has joy…..that…. somehow…. translates into strength for me?
  • If I can somehow tap into and siphon off some of the Lord’s joy…..I, too, can feel strong?

What in the heck is the connection between joy and strength?

Turns out that her saying was NOT just a catch-phrase; it’s an actual Bible verse, i.e. Nehemiah 8:10

Even after I became a Christian, I still didn’t know what it meant…… really!

Only in the last couple of years have I come to understand:  

–setting aside of worries or troubling situations to focus on what I have been given as an adopted member of God’s forever family IS the ONLY path to joy.( Going round and round gnawing on my problems doesn’t produce joy!!!)

— and that being content or happy about the sheer FACT of being in UNION with God produces strength for any circumstance.

–‘glad and glee-filled’ to belong to Christ puts me in a different category above my problems.

— from such a different plane/angle (I KNEW 10th grade geometry would come in handy!)  I am equipped with a qualitative different perspective.

Therefore, the problems either diminish in power/severity…… or disappear, hence STRENGTH.

There are many other snippets of Scripture that are like that: code words without apparent interpretive amplification to connect them to a meaning.  Take for instance this one from Paul in his letter to the church at Philippi, “To live is Christ, to die is gain” (1:21)

We can figure out the 2nd clause without much trouble: when we die, we gain Christ’s visible presence because we’re with Him.

But what do those 4 words signify: TO LIVE IS CHRIST?

I was helped this month by an article in Tabletalk Magazine (June 2013, pp 64-65).  The author, Trip Lee, is a Christian rap artist with Capitol Hill Baptist church who talked about all the other idols one could have that provide meaning for life: wealth, worldly success, sex, family, physical fitness, social justice…..But what, in fact,  provides ANY and ALL meaning is Jesus.

That made sense!  (Check – another Bible phrase deciphered!)  It’s like saying, ‘the meaning of my life is Jesus; the organizing principle of my life is the person of Jesus; what I live for in life is Jesus.’

When I got to talking with Mike about this, I suddenly understood that ‘back in the day’ of parchment, scrolls were rare and limited; you HAD to write in an efficient manner – kind of like our tweets.

I’ll close with one of my favorite short scripture nuggets that I recite to myself each morning as both comfort and anchor for the day.  Christ in me, the hope of glory: (Col 1:27)

What does that mean?

“We have this hope as an anchor for the soul” Hebr 6:19

  • “Christ in me” – as a qualitatively new creation (spiritual DNA got changed at the New Birth), I have God in me, as much as if my molecular structure was permanently altered.
  • “the hope”- since God is IN me, I am assured, I have a 100 % God-backed guarantee (God does NOT lie, or else He wouldn’t be God) that I will be with Him.
  • “…of glory” – not only will I be face to face with God’s glory, I will also somehow be a partaker/ sharer in this über-celebratory love feast.  I will be…..  fêted, praised, appreciated, fussed over, lavished with abundant love & attention in quantities that are overflowing – hence glorified.

What are some of YOUR Bible phrases that you have translated or are still puzzling you?

My Fears and God’s Faithfulness

June 16, 2013

Maria Faith, Fear, James, Uncategorized , 1 Comment

Job and his three ‘friends’

I think we are scared to articulate our fears because of Job’s observation, “That which I feared has come upon me!”  Job 3:25

I am so very grateful that all the things we worried about (worry – repent….worry – repent….) did NOT happen.

Each time the ‘what-ifs’ attacked, we would discuss them and place them in their proper context that started like this, “Yes, we are scared that:

–      our loan approval won’t go through at the last moment, or will be delayed, or they will ask for some documentation that we don’t have

–      the cats will get loose, or old Leia will die from the stress of the move

–      the back-to-back closings won’t come together in the correct sequence

–      our buyer will back out at the last moment

–      the moving trucks won’t make it up and around the hairpin turns (can you say, “26-foot moving truck!”)

–      the house in Newport News will be damaged by the movers carrying out furniture

–      the house in NC will be damaged by the movers carrying in furniture”

…and continue with one of us reminding the other:

“But God has shown Himself faithful in the past, by…..”

And we would tick off numerous answers to difficult needs in the past

Why are we afraid to hope that something good will come to pass?  Is it because of our 24/7 news culture that blasts wave upon wave of human pain, natural disasters & examples of our evil hearts?   My faulty reasoning goes like this, “Why should I expect to receive anything good when so many people are suffering?”

Thankfully, God has taught me HOW to correct my thinking through the example of the psalmists, the prophets and some of Israel & Judah’s good kings who proclaim how loving and good our God is.  Aren’t you über-glad and grateful that we belong to a GOOD God and not an evil God?   We take His goodness for granted at times and at other times fear that our allotted blessings have been used up.

Here is how I should more accurately reason each morning when I awake and need to dispel the ‘Eeyore thoughts that hover:  “Maria, if God saved you when you were indifferent to Him, how much more will He lavish His loving gifts on you now that you are in relationship with Him as His daughter?”  We have to go from the greater to the lesser.  Jesus’ substitutionary death on the Cross was a much more difficult and loving act for God than coordinating our move!

Today is Fathers’ Day.  The ultimate Father who delights to give His kids good gifts is who we worship as our Eternal and Holy God.  When men are fathering at their unselfish best, one can get a glimpse of how God delights to cover us with His love.  We just have to magnify that little speck of human love by infinity.

So here’s how God did more than we dreamed of hoping as we still cast cares on him daily and sometimes hourly:

Moving Day - thank you Lord for these 2 men and their chainsaw

1)    The day before we closed and moved in, we had our walk-through with the couple who built and lovingly tended this mountain home.  During our two-hour briefing, they gave us the phone number of a Mexican man who clears land and has a chain saw.  The next day, as we drove up the hill, keys in hand and cats in the back, we greeted the first obstacle: a fallen tree from the previous night lay across the road.  It proved heavier than we could budge.  We prayed and then I called the chain-saw man.  Abel & a helper ‘just happened to be’ across the highway clearing some brush and weeding for the Balsam Post Office.  They arrived in 10 minutes, drove back to Waynesville to fetch their chainsaw. Within 45 minutes that tree was chopped and dispatched. Thirty dollars paid for a provision of grace long-ago earmarked for us on 14 June 2013.

Moving Day - Here comes Truck # 1 up the gravel rd

2)    Our only neighbors had a truck blocking our descent on that same ‘day-before’ visit with the sellers of our house.  We met Marcia as we asked to have the truck pulled in so we could get by.  The driver of that truck rued the entry into our area and said the drop off and narrow gravel road with jutting rocks made it difficult to maneuver past.  When I mentioned that a same-sized truck was coming the following day and going further UP the hill with switch-backs, he said, “God bless them!”  Of course, that experience caused Mike and me to go round and round with the fear of the movers NOT being able to make it up our hill.

So imagine our surprise when one of the drivers called not 24 hours later on D Day (delivery day)) and said they were up the gravel road at the fork and wanted to know which way to go.  They had already passed the jutting boulder- what a blessing to see them coming up the hill!  Only one glitch at the end caused some more desperate prayers, but God provided planks that the previous owner had left in the basement!

Moving Day - Planks helped get out of rut

Thank you ALL for praying so faithfully and encouraging us.  I believe that your prayers provided the raw material for God to bless us.  I love how Jesus’ brother puts it (as translated by the Amplified Bible) “The earnest (heartfelt, continued) prayer of a righteous man makes tremendous power available [dynamic in its working].” James 5:16

Through the challenges of the past 11 months, we have seen God answer one need after another.  When we’ve been in the dark, we ‘did what was at hand’ and trusted that He would provide more info on the morrow.  That’s basically Elizabeth Elliot’s philosophy of ‘how to know God’s will’ – prayerfully and in reliance on Him, do the next thing at hand.

Knowing me and Mike, we will still battle fears, but we have MORE examples of God’s faithfulness to refer back to.  “Remember when/how God…..” are words that you all probably say a lot too.  It’s good to build a track record with God – of His mighty works.

Reflections on unplugging and prayer

June 9, 2013

Maria 1 Thessalonians, Prayer, Uncategorized 2 Comments

I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a little sin, what my husband used to dismiss as ‘little ole- lady sins’.  His former scoffing about gossip and ‘bad thoughts’ demonstrated the very common dualistic view of sin that society holds.  It goes like this:

What I do is just human and little and easy to overlook, but what the Hitlers and child molesters and ‘greedy capitalists’ do is serious and unpardonable!

That division acutely reveals our cavalier attitude toward our sin and our low regard for God.  Little do we realize that all sin is the sin of unbelief.  All sin attacks and affronts the God of the universe’s sovereignty, holiness and goodness.

Likewise, there is no such thing as a ‘throw away or little prayer’. As Mike and I are unplugging and saying goodbye to friends after 23 ½ years in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia, God is allowing me to see the fruit of some of my prayers.

I have two categories of prayers:  The first involves those conditions & situations which are desperate or needs of friends and family most precious to my heart. For those prayers, I pound on God’s doors like the imprecatory widow unceasingly begging the unjust judge for mercy and justice.  The second group of prayers relate to people more peripheral to my life.  I encounter this group less frequently and consequently much time passes before I can update prayer-need statuses.

We are all relieved when God mercifully grants one of those ‘biggie’ prayers.  But if you are like me, I am often surprised by the results from my ‘little’, less frequent prayers.  Those are the ones that are written down, but I probably cycle through praying for them maybe once every 3 weeks.  (the easiest way Mike and I have found to track all prayer is with Prayer Mate – see link here for details  iTunes app )

In the space of one week, God has gifted me with news of 3 of those latter cases – people whom I see maybe once a month if even that.  I’ve tracked their lives over the years and have been praying for ‘impossible’ situations that God has now unraveled miraculously.

# 1 – My hairdresser’s daughter has been abusing her body with drugs, alcohol, cigarettes and sex. There was NO relationship between mother and adult daughter despite years of mom’s rescues.  But ‘miraculously’ through the kind intervention of a truly caring boyfriend who alerted the mom, healing has come to this young 25-yr-old gal.   She enrolled in a residential de-tox facility for a month and has been ‘clean’ for 60 days.  My friend feels like she has her daughter back. She knows that there are no guarantees, but she is very encouraged and sees this as the marvelous blessing from God that it is.  I’ve been praying for this daughter for 4 years!  So why was I so surprised when God actually answered that prayer?

#2 – A grocery-store cashier who lives in my neighborhood had a husband whose body was wearing out through the abuse of no exercise, no job, poor eating and resentment.  When I asked her how her marriage was going (this gal fumed steadily at the toxic lifestyle of her husband), she responded with the good news that he had lost 20 pounds and was making better food choices.  As a result his attitude and HER attitude had both improved. Again, I almost couldn’t believe it!

#3 – Three days later, I ran into a widow whose grandson in the Navy had been OUT of contact with the family for 2 ½ years.  Each time I would see this fellow walker, I almost hated to ask about the young man for whom I had been praying.   The family had even hired a private investigator to verify that he was still living! When I stopped to catch up and say good bye to Pat, she told me that her grandson was home!  He had apparently called up his dad (Pat’s son) out of the blue, asking for money for a bus ticket.  He was now living with his dad and looking for a job.  He seemed to be ‘normal’ according to my friend, although he hadn’t shared why he had withdrawn from his family.  She did offer that it might be related to PTSD from his time in Iraq.

Drawing away from Pat and continuing to walk the ‘loop’ in my neighborhood, I daubed my eyes as tears flowed over the goodness of God.  He had allowed me to see the fruit of some of these ‘half-hearted/ almost unbelieving’ prayers.  These petitions, although faithful, certainly were not of the ‘robust’ caliber.  But it was a good reminder to pray on, without ceasing, not depending on the strength or fervency of my prayer life, but depending on Him who WANTS to answer our prayers.

Do you remember when your children started to walk?  How you praised them for each tentative step they made.  Perfect balance wasn’t your standard.  You cheered on every feeble attempt to move independently.  In the same way our Heavenly Father boasts of our less-than-perfect prayer life.  He says to the Son and the Spirit, “Look at how my daughter is counting on me to intervene in the life of her friend!” He marvels, “Look at the confidence my son is placing in me to bring peace into his chaotic situation!”

So as Mike and I complete our final days here in Newport News, Virginia, we are encouraged to continue to pray for new friends we meet in Western North Carolina.  Lord, remind us & grant us the desire and impulse to greet You each morning, ‘Rejoicing always, praying continuously and giving thanks to You in all things’.

 

Snacks for the Weekend 7/8 June 2013

June 7, 2013

Maria Uncategorized Leave a comment

1. Are you struggling with FEELING like God loves you?  Read this – Preaching Grace to Yourself

2. How to stop comparing yourself with others – Battling insecurity

How difficult is humility?

June 3, 2013

Maria Humility, Idols, Uncategorized, Zephaniah 2 Comments

So many counter-intuitive truths in the Bible:

-It is better to go to a house of mourning than to a house of feasting (Eccl 7:2)

-If someone takes your tunic, give him your shirt also (Luke 6:29)

-Happy are the poor in spirit for they have the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt 5:3)

-God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6)

 As Tullian Tchividjian, pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church puts it, the way up is down.

I’ve been thinking a lot about humility these days.  The brain is funny (and so again is the Holy Spirit as He works with the brain and our seeing).  Once your brain widens the filter to notice something, you start seeing that very same something all over the place.

My friend and I have been reading a book that including a chapter on humility and submitting to God.  Another friend gifted me with a book about purposefully humbling one’s heart when God sends suffering.  “Father, are You trying to communicate something to me?”

Earlier in the week, I ran across this two-word sound byte from God’s Word:

  “ …..seek humility……”  (Zeph 2:3) – it’s just a bit of Zephaniah’s advice to the people of Judah in around 625 BC.

Why would anyone CHOOSE to seek humility?

  • Only to avoid having the God of the Universe as your enemy
  • Only to avoid falling
  • Only to get more grace

God is so pragmatic. He WANTS us to seek rewards. He WANTS us to count the cost. He purposefully offers incentives.  We are stupid when we don’t do what is in our own best interests.

**

God always seems to illustrate His commands with real-life examples. Just last week He gave me a ring-side seat to witness the payoff for humility through my husband’s vocational life.  Mike just retired from 32 years of government service.  He has fought hard to make a difference on a daily basis.  But divine providence, aka God, has constrained him most of those years. In fact, I would say that Mike has enjoyed only about 2 years of government work.  One year involved him researching, writing and then presenting a briefing multiple times to senior leaders.  This cutting-edge intelligence analysis focused on the Soviet military’s tech threat in the 80s. Mike loved that work.  The job that followed was equally satisfying.  After some schooling at the Army’s intelligence center and school, he taught current doctrine to successive classes of senior leaders. The other jobs wearied him.  Right-brained, intuitive introverts who like to think don’t find their home in bureaucracies.

Why would God keep him in jobs that frustrated him?  In hindsight, I can see the rich blessings that have come from this L-O-N-G vocational desert.

  • He has been protected from the danger of work becoming an idol.
  • Safe from the siren’s lure of ‘work harder to climb the ladder’, Mike has had the time to invest in his sons.  Present for ball games, swim events, theater performances and parents’ nights at school, Mike communicated to Graham and Wes that he loved them and cared about what they were doing.
  • Long hours of rich dinner-time discussions, background music playing, exposed the boys to conversation, argumentation and the world of music.  The daily dinner hour provided a relaxed forum for all of us to practice the art of reason and articulating our beliefs.
  • Working for the government guaranteed Mike both the means for periodically taking a couple of hours off to catch games, but also time for family vacations.  God blessed us through my dad who was financially able to share trips with us.  We travelled to Europe, Alaska, and the Caribbean and Viet Nam Veteran reunions with Pop. Thankfully, Mike had vacation days to be with us.
  • No chance of a swelled head.  Not seeing much fruit for his labor kept Mike pressing in to God, crying out to Him.  We both prayed hard, day after day, to understand why he was so stymied in his vocational desires.

All those circumstances humbled Mike.  Hence his (and my) surprise at the accolades he received from multiple sources in the weeks leading up to and the day of his retirement ceremony.   Colleagues and supervisors started gifting him and taking him to lunch as his last day drew closer.  Then at his official ceremony, the speeches by his two big bosses affirmed him by detailing his unique contributions.  There was also a short movie prepared by our son Graham that included all sorts of family photos and video messages from Mike’s mom, favorite cousin Terry, son Wes who is deployed and his dear brother, Steve. From the perspective of time, the overview of Mike’s life let him (as well as others) see that his life since age 18 HAS been rich. Friends and family who travelled to witness/share his retirement also gave testimony to his contributions. The cards, presents and remarks were all pure gift.  This was evidence of the impact that Michael has unknowingly made these past years. 

God DOES give more grace to the humbled.  And this MORE exceeds what one ‘might’ lose by not trying to ‘make it.

Seek humility?  Doesn’t sound like fun, but who are we to know best? As Graham was saying last night in a moment of shared reflection, “It’s exhausting trying to make a name. How do you know when you’ve done enough?”  But the humble way, which involves serving others and putting others first, turns out to be easiest.  As we start to go lower, God gives us help and praises us for our stumbling, impure efforts in that direction.  Like an encouraging parent applauding his little one taking that first step, our heavenly Father praises us for all our faltering steps toward self-imposed humility.

It’s not rocket science figuring out what we have to do to earn God’s highest praise:  “Well done, good and faithful servant!”

Snacks for the Weekend 31 May/ 1 June 2013

May 31, 2013

Maria Uncategorized Leave a comment

1. Using President Lincoln as an example, Mike Metzger shows us the value of memorization – Outsourcing our Memories   

2. I loved this real-life example of how the Gospel helps with those crazy mornings which tempt us to feel sorry for ourselves –

How the Gospel gives hope in the midst of chaos

3. Here’s a quote that gave me pause – Christianity was never meant to be a list of principles to which we conform our behavior; it is living reconciled to God in active communion with him every day. Many believers, however, miss this incredible facet of our relationship with him. Thinking God has given us guiding principles to live by, we grow accustomed to living days or weeks without ever listening to hear what Father has on his heart for us. We make decisions by listing pros and cons, instead of sitting down for any extended period to ask that he make his desires known to us.
Wayne Jacobson

4. What do you say to someone who uses some chapters in Acts to argue that the early Church practiced and taught socialism? – Sell all you have and give to the poor?

5. Final quote for a restful weekend – Our job in this life is not to go off on our own and get busy, busy, busy, work, work, work, trying in vain to produce fruit. Trying to love people on our own will lead to a life of frustration. Our responsibility is not to produce the fruit of the Spirit on our own. Our responsibility is to have a relationship to Jesus Christ and to let God use us. It is a life yielded to Christ. It is a life of rest.
J. Delany
Abiding in Christ, Chapter 7, Used by Permission.

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