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.
Maybe it should say, “Read your Bible – it will illuminate the very nature of God and His will and will transform you from the inside out”?
But I sort of like this rather abrupt, attention-getting (true) sentiment – especially for us lazy Christians who are paying our pastors to do all the Bible reading and teaching and for the professional pastors who have so much on their plates they aren’t reading it, either.
“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” Matthew 4.4 NKJV
You are what you read…Be blessed! Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: “The B-I-B-L-E, yes – that’s the book for me! I stand upon the Word of God, the B-I-B-L-E!” One of the first songs I ever learned, one of the first words I ever knew how to spell. What treasure. Thanks, mom!
I already knew that for Easter, I wanted to talk a little about the cross because of this beautiful photograph my great friend, Amy Jo Becker, recently took. One foggy morning in late March on her way to work, she spied this display near 120th & Sheridan in Westminister, CO (Victory Church) and thought to capture it for us all to ponder.
Even now, 2000 years after Jesus’ death on the cross, this representation evokes such such gratefulness and awe in my heart.
Childlike faith…
Imagine my delight when, this past Thursday, Gavin, my 3-year-old grandson, ran into the kitchen, suddenly dropped to his knees on the tile floor and began to exclaim, “Look, Nonna, it’s God…it’s Jesus!”
I thought for a split second we were going to have to open our house for tours because it seemed he had discovered an Easter miracle on my floor. I just hoped it wasn’t the form of Jesus in a sticky dirt spot or something for all the world to see. But then I watched him as he took his finger and traced between the ceramic tiles, first up and down, then side to side: he drew a cross.
How excited, I can tell you, a nonna becomes when she realizes her toddler grandson has become aware of the cross of Jesus Christ, something one writer called “the dividing symbol of all history.”
Then Gavin and I went around the house and looked for the cross anywhere we could find it: between the panels on doors, on my old school-house window coffee table. He excitedly “discovered” my cross collection and became especially excited by my very small replica of the “Christ the Redeemer” statue which stands high on the Corcovado Mountain in Rio de Janeiro. “It’s God! It’s Jesus! It’s the cross!” Gavin would squeal with every new discovery, exhibiting more understanding than many full-grown Christians, I thought.
A little later, Gavin came out of the bathroom having found on a shelf the beautiful tiled cross my friend Marilyn had given me and reverently showed me his “find.” He carried that cross around with him for the rest of his visit while he played.
Max says it so well…The Cross by Max Lucado
It rests on the timeline of history like a compelling diamond.
It’s tragedy summons all sufferers. Its absurdity attracts all cynics.
It’s hope lures all searchers. History has idolized and despised it,
gold-plated and burned it, worn it and trashed it. History has done
everything but ignore it. How could you? How could you ignore such
a piece of lumber? Suspended on its beams is the greatest claim
in history. A crucified carpenter claiming to be GOD on earth.
Divine. Eternal. The Death-Slayer. Never has timber been regarded
so sacred. No wonder the Apostle Paul called The Cross event the
core of The Gospel (1 Cor. 15.3-5). Its bottom line is
sobering: if the account is true, it’s history’s hinge. Period.
If not, The Cross is history’s hoax.
As you ponder Christ on the Cross, what are your thoughts?…
The cross stands against the skyline of all time as the greatest symbol of the central fact of Christianity – the death of Jesus Christ in our place. Yes, He died. Yes, He was buried. But that is only a part of the good news. He didn’t stay on that cross, He rose from death, and oh – what was won in that victory for me – for me!
It’s God! It’s Jesus! It’s the cross! Yaaaay!!!
Joyous blessings to you today as we celebrate a risen Savior, Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: See the cross. Ponder it. Understand it. Thank God for it. Sing some Matt Redman: You led me to the cross and I saw the face of mercy in that place of love…Now that I’m living in Your all-forgiving love, my every road leads to the cross..
What a summer I had last year. I had lost or damaged so many things: relationships, direction, sense of who God actually created me to be, confidence, income, health, peace of mind. My ministry was gone and my marriage was wounded. The only thing firmly in place was my pride, but God was chipping away at it. Who will I be, I wondered, if You take that away from me?
God is getting through to me
8.10.06 I finally confessed the truth to myself and God:
I need sleep. I am so tired. I cannot find peace or comfort of any kind until I get sleep. There is nothing anyone can offer me that will help me in any way until I get rest. And, God is not going to give me my next directions until, through rest, I am in a better frame of mind.
8.11.06 and the 1-2-3 punch. I sat at the kitchen table with my Bible. The only scriptures I could recall about rest were the commands to keep the Sabbath, a commandment I not only broke regularly, but had some pride in doing because I didn’t want to be seen as lazy, but rather a hard worker who earned her keep. The only scriptures about sleep in my rememberance were the ones like, “…the stouthearted were plundered, having sunk into their sleep,” and when David said he would “not give sleep or slumber” to his eyes.
Even Proverbs taunted me with, “A little sleep, a little slumber…so poverty shall come on you,” right after calling me a “sluggard,” and telling me to “consider the ways of the ant,” hard workers, all of them.
So after the revelation I received the night before, I prayed,God, please show me if this is Your word to merightnow. Could it be true that all You are asking of me atthistime is to sleep, get rest, become renewed? Is Your yoke really that easy? Is Your burden really so light? Could You teach even me to cast aside my need to beand to do and couldYou actually give me rest? (Matthew 11.28-30, please read, dare to believe).
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
1.
God gives His beloved sleep. That thought popped into my mind right after I prayed. I had heard it somewhere (probably a few thousand times…I am a slow hearer). God gives His beloved sleep. Simple, plain. To the point. With some trepidation I searched my concordance. There it was: Psalm 127, a Song of Solomon (the wisest of men).
Unless the LORD builds the house,
They labor in vain who build it;
Unless the LORD guards the city,
The watchman stays awake in vain.
It is vain for you to rise up early,
To sit up late,
To eat the bread of sorrows;
For so He gives His beloved sleep.
Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD,
the fruit of the womb is a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior,
So are the children of one’s youth.
Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them;
They shall not be ashamed,
But shall speak with their enemies in the gate.
I read it. I read it aloud. I wrote it out, word for word. I thought about it. I looked at each phrase independantly and interdependantly. I meditated on it. I thought it through from every possible angle. It was this amazing thing I could barely believe was there for me! I spent an hour and a half at my kitchen table with my Bible just trying to grasp this wonderful news: God gives sleep. He was ok with me getting sleep. I didn’t have to do it all. I didn’t have to make sure every single thing got done before I enjoyed the restoration, the recovery that sleep brings.
It began to dawn on me that “unless the LORD builds ” it…it is futile. “Unless the LORD guards” everything, the watchman (me, usually) is in big trouble. The revelation was taking hold that I was living in the vanity of rising early and staying up late and worrying my head off over everything (the bread of sorrows/anxiety). God had actually given me permission to sleep.
God gave me, one of His “beloveds”, sleep. I wasn’t quite sure what it meant or how I would do it and I knew I was really too busy to do it, but I also knew this was a moment in time I could receive and be changed or ignore and spend the rest of my life regretting. An hour and a half of scripture meditation…I got up to start the dishwasher with wonder in my heart…
2.
The phone rang just as I got up from the table. My firstborn (see photo above), Tara, was calling. I thought maybe I would tell her what God had been showing me through His Word, but I wasn’t quite ready to come forward with the full story. It was the sin of my pride being exposed, after all.
She wasn’t waiting to hear from me anyway. She came directly to her point. She said, “Mom, I have been reading the Word and I feel that God told me to call you and tell you this-” and you are probably not surprised to hear that Tara read Psalm 127 to me…every word of it, stressing, “God gives His beloved sleep.”
That was one of those moments, even now as I write it, I am in awe that the God of the universe had time to make sure I was hearing His plan, His will, His heart towards me. It is so humbling.
The P.S. to this is, our friends are not fooled nor impressed by our drivenness. Our families do not think we are living our best life just because we are running circles around them doing-doing-doing. They’d love to have us stop, relax and be. My mom still starts every phone call from several states away with “I know you’re busy and I don’t want to keep you, but…” because she knew I was perpetually in a hurried and harried state of the most earth-shattering projects at all times for years.
The problem is, when we are not rested, we don’t allow anyone around us to rest, either, at least not without making them feel inferior. When we’re rest-less, we cause restlessness in the ones we love most. We even make them do things from our endless to-do lists.
Are you blushing with shame? Remember, I’m not judging. It takes one to know one. My poor husband, Dave, hadn’t had a day off in over 20 years, thanks to my lists and projects. Our full-speed-ahead “fruitfulness” wears out the ones we most love.
3.
Later that evening, I pulled out an article about resting in the providence of God that a friend had given to me to read a couple of months earlier. I had read it at least twice. I thought I would check it out again since it was about the Sabbath and I had a newly-increased motivation in learning to keep it, and obey it.
You are sharp enough to have guessed what I found – I hadn’t even noticed the paragraph about Psalm 127 before or the beautiful statement made by the article’s author:
“God knows that His creatures need restoration by rest, and so He not only commands but even invites us to get it.”
God wasn’t being redundant with me. He was making sure I got the invitation! He knows how slow I am to hear and learn sometimes. I mean, this whole thing is in His Word, so actually, since I learned to read, it has been there for me to read and receive. How many times had I run the other way? My husband Dave and God only know.
Two days later, God would issue another reminder as I wrestled with whether or not I would press in to accept this newfound freedom. I’ll tell you about that tomorrow (Sleep, day six). But until then, I want to tell you that I know from experience that the loss of sleep from over-work and anxiety and pressure is overcome by calling on the Lord who calls you His “beloved one.”
If you need to work hard and press in to do something difficult to feel alive, then press in, “make every effort,” to receive the promised rest, as Hebrews 4.1-11 invites us!
Think about what you are willing to give up to receive what God is willing to give you…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF:“I cried unto the Lord with my voice, And He heard me from His holy hill. I lay down and slept; Iawoke, for the Lord sustains me.” Ps. 3.4-5 Even during the most hectic and disconcerting times in my life, I can sleep in peace knowing God will sustain me and has the whole world in His hands…
8.10.06 So I am minding my own business (and my own busy-ness), wondering why God won’t give me direction for my future. I’m living the Type-A life, up in the wee hours and go ’til you drop late at night life, living to check things off the list that never ends daily. I’m physically run-down, emotionally weakened and I am innocently pondering the events of the day (while I stain bricks until sunset, nonetheless). I was remembering how Hunter couldn’t hear from us, receive from us, needed nothing from us until he could get sleep. Just sleep.
I was on my patio as the sun was disappearing behind the mountains and the Old Testament prophet, Elijah, came to my mind.
1 Kings 17 – 21In partial summary, Elijah was a power-house. He had the favor of God and walked in great authority. God used Elijah to tell King Ahab that a drought so severe was coming there wouldn’t even be dew. King Ahab and Queen Jezebel had encouraged the worship of Baal and killed God’s prophets; God was not pleased. Calling down this type of heavenly curse must wear you out because God made Elijah take some r & r, sending him to the brook Cherith where the ravens fed him morning and night and he drank water from the brook.
Elijah got the restoration he needed there and the brook dried up. That was when he got his next instruction: to go to a widow at Zarephath, where he was not only part of a miracle of provision for her (her oil and flour did not run out until the drought was over because of Elijah), but when her son died later, Elijah prayed and God revived him.
Elijah was the guy who set up the public “testing” between Yahweh and Baal with the building of the 2 altars. Ahab had called him a “troubler of Israel,” and Elijah put it back in Ahab’s court by saying that the king was the troubler by allowing the worship of false gods.
God proved Himself like Elijah said He would by showing up in fire on a water-drenched altar while Baal did not show up despite the hours of prayer and self-mutilation of the false god’s prophets.
Our God showed up! He honored his prophet!
But when Elijah became the target of Jezebel’s rage after he ordered the deaths of her priests, he ran in fear. He ran in fatigue. He ran in exhaustion. Elijah ended up under a tree taking a long nap, wishing he could just die. That is tired! I actually get that. That is whole and complete fatigue!
When Elijah was awakened by an angel and told to eat, he found a freshly baked cake and a container of water by is head. He ate it and then went back to sleep. He wasn’t praying for purpose, begging God for his next assignment, ahem. He was just sleeping, then eating divinely prepared meals, then sleeping some more.
The angel woke him up again and told him he needed his strength so he should get up and eat again. THAT food and THAT rest prepared him for the next 40 days of a tough journey. But it wasn’t until after THAT food and THAT rest that he got his next instruction from God and went to a cave where God spoke clearly and decisvely to him.
The study notes in my Bible say of 1 Kings 19.11,12
“The Lord did not reveal Himself to Elijah in the spectacular ways by which He had shown Himself to Moses. To this discouraged, despondent old prophet, God responds in gentleness.”
God did speak to him again, not in a great strong wind, or in an earthquake or even in a fire. God spoke in a “still small voice,” or a “delicate whispering voice.” Had Elijah not been quieted by a time of rest, had he remained in the endless, noisy cycle of boldly prophesying and working hard at it, he may have missed it – the very thing he needed most.
So here I am on my patio staining those ever-loving bricks on a hot summer night, remembering Hunter’s cries, pondering the prophet Elijah and it was becoming clear: I need sleep. I am so tired. I cannot find peace or comfort of any kind until I get sleep. There is nothing anyone can offer me that will help me in any way until I get rest. And, God is not going to give me my next directions until, through rest, I am in a better frame of mind.
B I N G O !
God got through to me.
This new idea, this thought that I neeeeeeeeeeeded sleep began echoing through my mind. I even dreamed about it. I was going to need proof that this was actually true and by the next day I was ready to find out. But for the moment, fireworks were going off in the sky of my heart like I was being granted some divine permission to indulge myself in something that was good for me – that God might still be pleased with me even if I wasn’t running myself ragged. Could this be true? What if I am not on my hyper-vigilant watch at every second – will the world cease to revolve correctly? Sadly, I would soon find, I had been living with somewhat of a God-complex. How embarrassing.
You may be thinking, “Good grief, of course sleep is from God. Of course He wants you to live a rested life. I have no trouble sleeping and not feeling guilt about it.” Wonderful! I wish you’d clued me in (though I probably wouldn’t have understood, anyway).
But some of you, my friends and family, are so tired you can barely read this. You are holding your world together for all you are worth. You are pleasing everyone and getting everything done and you dare not skip a beat or disaster will strike. Rest is most definitely not a state of mind. It is a place in which you can live. Think about these:
“Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest…be diligent to enter that rest…” Hebrews 4.1,11
“When you lie down, you will not be afraid; you will lie down and your sleep will be sweet,” Proverbs 3.24.
On day 5, I will tell you what I found in black and white right there in the Bible about sleep and how God was trying to make sure I heard it fully, and actually had been for some time.
Hunter needed it, Elijah needed it, and it turns out, I was sorely in need of sleep, too.
Deliver us from from striving & our self-reliant pride, Lord. Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Working for the Kingdom of God does not exempt me from His commands concerning the Sabbath and keeping it holy. It is pride to defy it. Word to all my friends and family in ministry. With love!
I had one of those sort of everything-in-your-life-changes-and-you-weren’t-expecting-it crisis events last summer, which I will not go into right now, but suffice it to say, I suddenly had “time on my hands.” In theory, I could relax, get some things done around the house and catch up on projects if I wanted to. Everyone I knew, especially my family – my kids and husband and my mom – kept telling me God was giving me this “opportunity” for some much-needed rest.
But I didn’t rest. I couldn’t. Especially since I suddenly wasn’t working at a paid position, I felt it was very important not to be lazy. For whatever reason (a type-A dad? our culture? guilt?), the scriptures in the Bible about laziness and the sluggard blink as neon signs in my head. When I “consider the ant…” I see that those little boogers just don’t stop.
Consider the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise. Proverbs 6.6
My value for years had been wrapped up in how much I could accomplish, how busy I was. I couldn’t remember a conversation with anyone important in my life that wasn’t about how much we were doing, but how much we weren’t getting done. I had been on an out-of-control roller coaster performer for my entire professional life and even when given a pause, a chance to float in the pool, I could not change the pace.
So, when this “time” became “available” to me, I filled it like the mad-woman, restless, Type-A maniac that I was and worked harder than ever cleaning, mopping, washing walls, scrubbing floors, edging the lawn – by hand!
By hour 12 or 13 in the day, I would be so sore I could barely move, but I didn’t want God or anyone else to catch me being lazy. My “time off” was killing me! The thing is, I hear people, especially women, talk about getting an extra day for themselves and yet they fill it with garage cleaning or some other big project and would never think about doing something restorative. Even though God used the 7th day to rest, we keep going like those annoying Energizer bunnies essentially refusing to enjoy the day to rest or “sleep in.”
So I know I am not alone.
When did you last sleep, really sleep, and wake up completely refreshed and restored without feeling guilty about it? How many years have you been rest-less?
Our local Safeway has a used book table to raise funds for a non-profit group. One morning by chance, I picked up a book, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial & Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives. by Richard Swenson, MD. Here is what I saw as I leafed through it that made me wonder if there might be another way to live and convinced me to pay the 50 cents for it…
“We must have some room to breathe. We need freedom to think and permission to heal. Our relationships are being starved to death by velocity. No one has time to listen, let alone love God. Our children lay wounded on the ground, run over by our high-speed good intentions. Is God now pro-exhaustion? Doesn’t He lead people beside still waters anymore?
Something has been stolen from us that we can’t quite name. Who plundered those wide-open spaces of the past, and how can we get them back? There are no fallow lands for our emotions to lie down and rest in. We miss them more than we suspect.”
I had a sense God might be trying to chase me down and teach me something, but He’d have to catch up with me first!
My body was breaking down. New physical symptoms of unhealthiness were cropping up weekly, one thing affecting another. My marriage and all valuable relationships were badly damaged, starving to death in the wake of my obssesive activity level. I wished I could be Mary in my relationship with God, but I could only understand Martha – somebody has to do the work!
But God in His grace was about to shine a light to expose my pride and sin against the Sabbath and also give me the gift of sleep – a gift I could have had earlier and one you get to have, too. This is a good thing. Believe me when I tell you.
Go ahead and yawn…imagine real rest, a blessing from God if ever there was one, Jeanie
I was once a TYPE-A personality, I have been told. I just thought that I was a really great multi-tasker who was highly productive.
Professionally, I was rewarded for being a retail manager who could get more done in less time, using less people, making more money. I needed very little sleep (so I was convinced) and never took work breaks. I was proud of working 16-hours days 7-days-a-week and was able to “persuade” those who worked with me/for me to do the same. Not only did I break the 4th commandment regularly, I did it with pride – sure that my world wouldn’t keep spinning if ever I wasn’t controlling it.
I did not know a crash was coming. I did not know I was living deeply in sin. I knew the Bible taught on rest, and that Jesus had promised rest for the weary, but I had decided that rest was just a state of mind, that if you could get your mind into a state of calm and rest, that was all you could hope for in these crazy days we live in. I didn’t know about the depth of the physical need for sleep. I didn’t know that God doesn’t think you’re lazy if you sleep and that the scriptures actually have so much to say about it.
For the next several days, I’m going to share my story of how I found out the Creator, the God of the Universe, was commanding me to rest, and SLEEP. It turns out these are gifts and so wonderful!
But first – we must determine: are YOU a TYPE-A personality, or living like one? Take the test below
You are commonly characterized as “driven”
You have a strong sense of time urgency
you experience free-floating hostility
you control others
you are agressive
you thrive on competitiveness, a need to win
you have a tendency toward self-destruction, self-loathing
you’re a hardworking, multi-tasker
you out-produce others around you with similiar jobs (even as parent, etc)
you experience chest pain or cardio vascular episodes
your friends and family joke that you are a workaholic
you just think you’re highly productive and committed
you score high in every category on spiritual gifts tests
you are commonly heard asking, “Do I have to do it myself?” because no one else (absolutely no one else) can do it as well as you
having a day off stresses you out
you ache everywhere, but won’t let on
it is all just a house of cards and could crash at any time, but you are making sure that doesn’t happen
If you can answer yes to 4 or 5 of these, you are slowly, but surely and oh-so-needlessly wearing yourself totally out. If you answered yes to 6 or more you are a raging, driven, TYPE-A, work and pain-addicted, adrenalin-junkie, prideful, commandment-breaker.
Hey. I’m not judging you. It takes one to know one. I SEE you!
“TYPE-As…do have a problem with work addiction. They do not notice the lack of balance in their lives, for they are too pre-occupied with leading our national charge toward production, expanse, and success.
TYPE-As…refuse to rest; to them it is an enemy. Also, those around them are made to feel weak if they desire a pause. Consequently, life is full-speed ahead. they work hard, they play hard and they even Sabbath hard.” from Margins
I am getting ready to tell you why it is not only OK to rest and sleep for rest, but God commands it. Who wants to argue with God? Not me…anymore.
Blessings…be at rest, Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: “There remains therefore a rest for the people of God…” Hebrews 4.9
In the book of Philippians in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul gives his personal biography of a totally miserable, religious past (miserable because anytime getting close to God is dependant on what wedo and how wedo it, it is a cumbersome load). In the spirit of chapter 3, verses 4 – 6, I hereby submit my own biographical history outlining the stupidity I once clung to (that is me in the photo – a Pharisee in the making! )- that somehow I was worth something to God, valuable to His kingdom because of my own good works and where I came from.
The book of Jeanie’s stupidity 3:4-6:
I had lots of confidence in my value to the kingdom of God because I was born into a Christian home to a ministry family. My first full sentence was “I’m gonna go to church” and I was a church girl among church girls. I was a Christian of the Pentecostal persuasion (others had some of the truth, but we had more, thus the term “full-gospel”). All of my siblings and their families are in the ministry. Many aunts and uncles and cousins are in full-time ministry. Concerning the law and attempting to get God’s favor by my own self-suffiency, I could totally relate to Pharisees – working hard to keep it, and hoping for those heavenly brownie points because of it. Zealously striving for favor for my performance and being a “good girl,” I was devasted when the less-holy were blessed. I grew up to attend Bible College and marry a pastor. And then I set out to raise my own bunch of good, Christian kids.
I am so grateful for my godly heritage, the roots I have. I love the stories of how God made Himself real to both my mother and father, each from Godless homes, how He changed everything in them and through them. Many, many people are walking in the redemptive grace of God today because of the choice Ross & Norma Moslander made to follow Christ.
But oh, my goodness, I have to work at not allowing these things to become a snare to me and to others. I have to keep dragging my pride to the cross.
I am in awe of the person who did not have the salvation message and cross of Jesus Christ served up on a silver platter, and yet they live in the full joy of knowing Christ without any of the doctrinal, or religious baggage that can so easily beset us. People with a “past,” who come to Christ knowing how badly they needed a Savior and that they have no chance of impressing Him with their works or religious reputation just blow my mind. It reminds me of Christ’s teaching that “The first shall be last and the last shall be first.” We often judge a person’s qualifications to lead in the kingdom by where they came from, how they were raised, who they are related to. God’s criteria are different. It is all about the heart. God is looking at the heart!
But thank goodness, like Paul, I have been knocked off my religious high-horse (although I have the amazing ability to run it down and remount it at times, yikes!) and I can now see all that stuff for the rubbish it is. What I once thought were assets, I now see as liabilities. My passion is to know Christ and to somehow, finally – totally getover myself. What a relief.
Laying aside all human achievements in exchange for the free grace of God, Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: “Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ.” Phil. 3.8 NKJV
“Rain” with Rob Bell. Check it out here (11 minute video)
[This link no longer available] http://www.nooma.com/Shopping/ProductDetails.aspx?ProductID=270&Mode=WMV&PMID=122
UPDATE:: This preview is available now, though:
“Description: Things don’t always work out the way we want them to or the way we think they will. Sometimes we don’t even see it coming. We get hit with some form of pain out of nowhere leaving us feeling desperate and helpless. That’s the way life is. Still, it makes us wonder how God can let these things happen to us. How can God just stand by and watch us suffer? Where is God when it really hurts? Maybe God is actually closer to us than we think. Maybe it’s when we’re in these situations, where everything seems to be falling apart, that God gets an opportunity to remind us of how much He really loves us.”
It’s worth watching to the end. Try to imagine the view from the safest place of protection now, from the hiding place, so very close to His heart.
Be blessed in all things. Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF:
“For all that has been, Thanks! To all that shall be, Yes!” (Dag Hammarskjold)
“When you’re young, the future seems limitless, packed with inifinate prospects and choices, B-plans and C-plans in every direction. It was not so scary to lose back then. Recklessness is a form of virtue when you’re first inventing your life. You stand the chance – if you go for broke – of unearthing an authentic existence. Loss is an afterthought, like death, when you’re young: heartbreaking, but distant and not yet your problem, as you careen through decades of unwrinkled plenty.
“Then one day you wake up and see you’ve been dreaming. Some tragedy shatters your shell of blind faith and allows paler, more grown-up truths to to seep in, the unavoidable costs of living. The trance of forever comes to an end. There’s not always more where that (fill in your own blank) came from. We begin to perceive, in a gimlet-eyed way, that often there’s a great deal less. Facing our limits, the coarse truth of endings, what remains becomes more precious to us, the families and lovers, possessions and passions we call our own. Subtraction is no longer taken so lightly. Beginning, of course, with the loss of time.” – Mark Matousek
2006 was not the year I thought it would be. I can think of many people who might secretly feel the same. There’s been a whole lot of shaking going on. Things recently grasped in confidence have been torn from our once-sure grip in a fierce wind-storm of purity and pain; both the breath of life and the wind being knocked out of us. In restrospect, it has been the best of times and the worst of times. What I have loved to the point of obsession, I have also lost, as God has humbled me and demanded my full attention, for He does not share His glory.
It can be anything, really, that jolts us, makes us realize we no longer possess something we once thought we owned: a friendship, a spouse, position, title, monetary security, respect, reputations, jobs… I sort of lost a church family and dear friends, a job I loved and my identity – because I had placed trust in the wrong things. I am old enough, spiritually and chronologically, to have known better. Yet this year, I have seen a shaking in ministry reminiscent of the one in the late 80’s as televangelists were exposed in humiliation on shows like Nightline or Larry King. But this time, it has been close to home, in me and in people who have my deep love and respect. There is a purifying that hurts, but it is grace. God asks us, will you humble yourself and repent of your pride (your self-sufficiency)? If we won’t He will. He will humble us under His mighty hand.
For me, I think maybe the loss would not have caused as much agony if I’d gone willingly – answered the call to humble myself instead of waiting for the judgment for resistance. But it is grace. He is cutting off in me those branches that are not producing the fruit He created me to produce. He is pruning the branches that are producing so they will produce even more. I am older. I have less time than I did in my brave twenties or strong thirties. He is shaking everything that can be shaken in me so that that which cannot be shaken will remain, for His Name and glory, for His acclaim in the earth. I am spreading my arms out in the middle of the whirlwind and watching the dead branches fly.
Be encouraged. God is not through using you. Blessings, Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Haggai 2.5 NIV “And my Spirit remains among you. Do not fear.” This remains.
