Category Archives: 1 Christ is All

Jesus loves me, this I know. This category is about Jesus, the Living Word, my prayers to Him, my worship of Him, His relentless pursuit of my heart and His invitation to me to come to Him in Sabbath, my Savior, my Rest.

From Here to Eternity

1 Christ is All, Stuff I Actually Think

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My praying friend, Amy Jo, sent me this encouragement as I prepared to go to Maui to cater/cook for Dare2Share (www.dare2share.org) and a reality show they were shooting (see here: http://www.jeanierhoades.com/stuff-i-actually-think/aloha).  It is from one of the best books of all time Practice the Presence of God: The Best Rule of Holy Life by Brother Lawrence (Nicholas Herman, c. 1605-1691).

“As a humble cook, Brother Lawrence learned an important lesson through each daily chore: The time he spent in communion with the Lord should be the same, whether he was bustling around in the kitchen with several people asking questions at the same time, or on his knees in prayer.  He learned to cultivate the deep presence of God so thoroughly in his own heart that he was able to joyfully exclaim, ‘I am now doing what I will do for all eternity.  I am blessing God, praising Him, adoring Him and loving Him with all my heart.’“

That’s what I was doing in Maui.  And if you’re looking for me – that’s my plan everyday from here to eternity.  I’ve got a head start on heaven!

I was made to praise You, Lord…Jeanie

Read this great book online: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/lawrence/practice.toc.html

A Glad New Year

1 Christ is All, Stuff I Actually Think

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I am impressed that the sender of this old postcard (mailed for a mere one-cent) thought, some 92 years ago, to send a New Year's greeting on December 26.  I wonder if Miss Myrtle did have, indeed, "a glad New Year" in 1916?

I hope you have one!…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  "Forget about what's happened; don't keep going over old history.  Be alert, be present!  I'm about to do something new.  It's bursting out – don't you see it?  There it is!  I'm making a road in the desert, rivers in the badlands…" (Is. 43.18-19 the Message)

Hungry? Empty?

1 Christ is All, Stuff I Actually Think

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Worship and the Word Movement (the ministry I work for) is doing a night of worship this coming Sunday night from 6-9 pm in The Celebration Center at Northern Hills (5061 E. 160th Ave, Brighton, CO).  The theme is: worship+Word+soak.  It's a gathering for people hungry for the Presence of God.  It is the first Sunday of the year to corporately come together to seek Jesus and to receive from Him.

Besides awesome, vertical worship, the Word will be read (by Mary Jean Powers, Dave & Tara, others)- passages on the fear of the Lord and on seeking the Lord, and we'll let the Word speak for itself.

Get more information at www.worshipandtheword.com. 

Unfortunately, there is no childcare available, but consider whether maybe your kids are old enough to start being immersed in the Presence of God, in His Word, and in worshiping Him?  On New Year's Eve, we stayed "in" and babysat the grandkids while our kids were out doing worship at a church in Aurora to bring in the New Year.  GTV was showing The Call Conference and we got to enjoy Jason Upton leading worship just before I tucked Hunter into bed.  I am telling you – Hunter's little heart was receptive and moved by the sounds of worship and intercession. Feed them well.  And don't starve your spirit, either.

Come and be fed.  Come and soak it in.

Reflecting the Glory

1 Christ is All, 2 Mi Familia, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think

Growing up in the 60's and 70's, Christmas trees were much different than they are now.  These days everyone has their very own designer-collection-themed-one-of-a-kind-specially-lit-custom-skirted tree…or two.  But in the 60's and 70's there were only a couple of ways to go: a real tree, which was like 88.920173% of the population, or a you-can-really-tell-it's-a-fake tree.  Ornaments were simpler – mostly shiny, round balls with a few special pieces here and there.  Garland?  Silver or gold, run in either a straight, but descending line or fancily looped.

We had the big C7 lights on our trees in the 60's that morphed into the tiny twinkle lights of the 70s, but since they were so small and we weren't used to that then, they had these multi-prismed, plastic cuffs that fit onto them to reflect more light. 

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But the one thing that was so prevalent back then – on nearly every single tree in some quanitity, something that you don't see much, for it has been out of vogue for so long now – was tinsel.  Placing tinsel on the tree was the final, crowning glory – that last touch that suddenly made all the pieces a congruent work of art.  My neighbor's family blanketed theirs with so much tinsel that you could barely make out the colored lights or decorations.  There were friends who would place one strand of tinsel per branch-creating a tree that spoke of scarcity to me – did those people give out presents with the same reservation?

But my mom was the perfect tinsl-er.  She could stand back and look and know exactly the amount of tinsel that was needed and where and would lovingly distribute it about.  And suddenly, we would all step back and look and the tree had all of the tiny streamers of glittering silver tinsel it needed.  It did not need even one more strand.  It did not need less.  It was perfect.

But  tinsel became so passe.  In the late 80's I moved to designer colored tinsel for my trees, which was long, and sleek and came in purple or mauve or country blue, perhaps white.  But by the 90's, really, people, it was so out!  There was no way I would use that stuff!

But then, I got nostalgic.

So – we have THE tree in the living room.  It is well-coordinated and I do believe: lovely, and tells, through the materials I have carefully chosen, my faith story, my celebration of Christ, my decorative taste for Christmas.

But the tree in the family room, full of odds and ends from so many Christmases past, packed with school-made ornaments and artwork from my 5 children, laced with a paperchain and candy canes and C7s burning alongside tiny twinkle-lights in white, yes, but colors, too! – That tree is my Christmas past (lots of "Baby's first Christmas" found here!) and my Christmas present (now I have grandchildren adding to the ornamentation) and it is what I cherish most as I look ahead.  It is heavily-laden.  Stormie asked, "Where are the branches?"

It's true, as I finished I noticed that all of the stuff was was obscuring some of the light.  But I knew just what to do.  I grabbed a handful of wadded, fine, silver tinsel and began placing little tufts of it here and there.  I actually got teary-eyed at the memory of it, but also at the revelation I received, for everywhere I tucked some in, that branch, that little area, suddenly became sparkly and well-lit, as the tinsel reflected the lights on the tree.

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"And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect God's glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord…" 2 Cor. 3.18 NIV

I am Christmas tinsel.  Some may welcome what I bring, others eschew it, but wherever I go, no matter how much darkness was there, I am a reflector and that darkness is a little less powerful. 

No kidding-that is really what I got as I hung tinsel!…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF: I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  I am happy to reflect HIS glory in the heavily-shadowed places I encounter each day.  Unveil, soak up the glory.

Pictured: the family room tree, topped with my own childhood angel-hair angel from 1964

To Be Known – A Powerful Post

1 Christ is All, Stuff I Actually Think

Check out this post in its entirety at my friend, Mandi Kaye's site.  She shares something I am told is called "slam poetry" about a woman who wants some one to see her, to know her.  Amanda so kindly even wrote out the script, which is really a re-telling of Jesus and the woman at the well.  If you can remember at all the first time you found out He just came to save you because He loved you, it will pierce you, man or woman!  It ends with the haunting question: Do you remember where you were when you found Him?

I like this question: do you remember where you were when He found you?

http://www.mandikaye.com/2007/11/23/to-be-known/

Go there.  Watch.  Read.  Respond!

The Stoning

1 Christ is All, Stuff I Actually Think

She was an adultress, a cheater, a sinner.  She was a disappointment, a law-breaker.  She had let so many people down.

Now she was being exposed to the Light of the World.

The scribes and Pharisees brought her to Jesus as He was teaching in the temple.  They'd caught her in "the very act of adultry," they told Him.  They were testing Him, who claimed to be the light of life, the One who, "being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped." (Phil. 2.6)

"Moses, in the law, commanded us that such [a person] should be stoned to death.  But what do You say?"

Would Jesus respect and follow the ancient law?  Would He condone her sin? 

Their purpose, those learned and religious men, was to trip Him up – to find a way to discount His teaching and refute His words.

Jesus says nothing, but stoops down, writing with His finger, ignoring their demand for a verdict. 

The religious kept asking, pressing the matter like the playground tattle-talers they were.

His answer was short.  "He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first."  Then He leaned over and continued writing on the ground.

And none of them wanted to be the one to start the stoning.  From the oldest to the last, one by one, they walked away until only Jesus and the woman were left.  He looked at her and asked her, Where did your accusers go?  Hasn't anyone condemned you?

"No one, Lord," she answered.

"Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more," the Embodiment of the light-glory of God said to her.  Your sin is not unto death.  I will not serve you a death-sentence, either.  Go.  Be well.  Be whole.  Be at peace.  Find true love.  Live in honor.  Sin no more.

Jesus didn't condone her sin.  God hates sin because it interrupts the beauty and wholeness of the life He planned for us.  God didn't forbid adultry to mess up our good times, but He forbade it because it will hurt us and some one else and probably more than one other person.  It will wreck lives and break trust and hearts and disrupt the peace of homes and rip families apart.  It is violence towards the "one flesh."

People often wonder what Jesus wrote on the ground.  Did He list the sins of the people standing there that were also punishable by death?  I don't know.  Did they leave because they were ashamed or did the encounter with Truth fill them with mercy?

I just know that I have always related to the woman.  I have always been keenly aware of my sin, my inability to measure up to religious standards imposed upon me.  In church life, my imperfections have been publicly touted, I've felt shunned by fellow Christians.  I've read this account of the woman and felt what she must have felt.  I have ranted and raged against the people who told me what a disppointment I was.  I have pointed out the futility of religion and condemned the spirit of religious superiority that hurts people as being no different than the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus' time.

Then today, very quietly, Jesus wrote upon the ground of my heart.  Suddenly I wasn't the woman, left with her head hanging – thinking I was about to die at the hands of the holier-than-thou religious.  I was one of them – I was in the crowd – looking at her:  the Church, the Bride of Christ, the one for whom, because of great love, Jesus died.

In my hand I have held stones.  The church has sinned.  She has been unfaithful and faithless, a disappointment, a cheater.  She has hurt people and broken hearts and sinned against God. And I have stood in the crowd, ready to take my stand, taunting God, "Well – can you see this?  What are You going to do about this?"  I have been one of them.

I opened my hands toward the ground, symbolically dropping the stones I have wanted to hurl with great pain-infused force at churches and pastors and leaders in the Church who have let me down. 

I am turning my hands upward with this prayer, "Replace the stones I have wanted to throw –  with mercy for Your Church.  She has failed.  She has let me down, but show me how I can be an agent of Your mercy towards Her, as You have been towards me."

It is humbling to get a new perspective of yourself and see the enemy you have been flailing against is yourself.  It is humbling….Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF: Repent for the stones that have already left my hands.

The Chosen Treasure of My Heart

1 Christ is All, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, Stuff I Actually Think

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Memories can play tricks on you, especially childhood memories when you were too young to put words to the emotions of an event or your surroundings.  The more you think about it now, the more articulate you become about the emotion you felt – good or bad.  But your facts were so limited.  You might not know the whole story.

I once heard some one say that our past is like a pair of glasses we are looking through at our present.  The things we have experienced color how we see our world, often giving us a less-than-accurate view.  That makes the memories in our hearts, the things we choose to see as our history, our personal truth, powerful deciders for our present and our futures.

A few months ago, I realized that I, a very visual person, was able to remember not only situations and circumstances and words that had pierced me in my life, but I could remember what the room I was in looked like, or what a person was wearing during painful past memories.  I began to wonder why hurtful  words or circumstances from 2 months or 20 years ago could still affect me so strongly – actually gaining strength over time to become such defining moments in my life.  I wondered if I could just choose to remember the other stuff, the blessings, the faithfulness of God.  Why, I wondered, was there so much negative clutter in my mind and memory bank and yet I struggled to remember the goodness of the Lord, shown to me over and over. In reading through old journals and letters, I would come across the most amazing stories of God's provision or kind words of love from people which I had all but forgotten.  I would get so excited reading about all the ways I have been blessed, but had so nonchalantly let slip from my memory.

I wondered how could I forget blessing so easily and remember offense just as easily? I do believe the enemy of our souls (the soul being our mind, will, and emotion) is out to distract and defeat us.  And if that is true, I was beginning to realize – he was winning his fight against my heart in too many ways. 

I picked up a notebook and wrote at the top of the page: The Chosen Treasure of My Heart.  It would be a place I'd write the good remembrances of my life.  And because I also want to esteem and honor my parents, I even titled a page for each of them: The Chosen Treasures, My Memories of My Dad and The Chosen Treasures: My Memories of My Mom.

Just like that – I am re-calling my true history by remembering and being grateful for the abundance of blessing I have lived in.  I don't do it well or right every second, but I have just decided  – I have very little "RAM space" left.  I don't have the room in my brain to remember every little thing.  That being the case, I am CHOOSING what I want to remember!  My "past-glasses" prescription is changing.

My heart?  Reserved for treasure alone!  This is what I choose.

It is kind of what God did.  He chooses to forget our sin.  It is at the bottom of the sea of forgetfulness!

Blessings…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF: "Finally…whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy – meditate on these things…and the peace of God will be with you." Phil 4.8, 9 NKJV

And remember – He forgets…

I have written about my quest for the chosen treasure before here and here.

Things that Hurt the Heart

1 Christ is All, Stuff I Actually Think

Being disappointed.

Disappointing.

Being misunderstood.

Misunderstanding.

Being treated harshly.

Being harsh.

Being ignored.

Ignoring.

Being despised.

Despising.

Being deceived.

Deceiving.

Gestures.

Gesturing.

Being dismissed.

Dismissing.

Not getting an apology.

Not apologizing.

A word.

A look.

A sigh.

A rolling of the eyes.

Sarcasm.

Disinterest.

Distance.

Silence.

Apathy.

Carelessness.

If I kept a record of the wrongs – the times that hurtful things pierced my heart inflicting pain – against the times I have been the heart-wounder, I wonder which way the scale would tip?

NOTE TO SELF: "…He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows…He was wounded for our trangressions and He was bruised for our iniquities…By His stripes, we are healed…"   Both the pain I have internalized and the pain I have carelessly doled out – He prepared for it all.  He covers it all.

Throw away records against others.  Work on clearing my own.

It once was lost, but now is found

1 Christ is All, Stuff I Actually Think

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Yesterday I found out how prideful and snobby I have always been about people who lose their Bibles at church, of all places!

That's because that is where I found mine (missing since August 19, see here).  It was right on the eye-level shelf of the Lost and Found closet.  And as I spit and sputtered trying to explain how odd it was for me to have left it there – unfathomable, unbelievable, I realized I am really so full of disgusting pride.

But now I also have gratitude to whoever found it and placed it safely where I should have already looked, for goodness' sake.  And it's like home.  Weird, but using other Bibles, even ones that were at one time "the" one for me, it was more like I was just "visiting."  I "ate lightly" for the past 3 weeks, turning the pages carefully and respectfully, but without the vigor of laying hold of what is mine, all mine. 

And this morning, I could see how I have lagged, again, in really hiding God's Word in my heart (good ol' memorization).  As I gratefully held my Bible, I realized there are Christians around the world who, if they lost their copy, would not have lots of other ones to fall back on, but they'd have only what was in their heart.  My heart is no where near full enough of the Word of God yet.  So, I am thankful for how freely available His Word is to me.

The worst thing the rebellious Israelites had to have ever heard was: "'…the days are coming', says the LORD God, 'That I will send a famine on the land, Not a famine of bread. Nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD…they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the LORD, but shall not find it.'"  Amos 8.11-12 NKJV (By the way, it took me 10 minutes to find this scripture because I was sure it was in Hosea – so I can't really find everything I am looking for right away as I previously posted.  Pride.  Again.  *sigh…)

We're blessed.  God has given us His Word, just given it.  "The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood."  If we are starving for a lack of the Word of the Lord in our lives, we really have to question why?

Thank-You, Lord for The Word (Jesus) and that I got my Bible back…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  The Law (the instruction, the teaching) of the Lord is perfect…