Author: Proclaiming His Goodness

I was told recently that I am ‘amazing’ because of something I do every day; but I just shook my head in denial as I thought of all the reasons I am not so ‘amazing’ at what I do. Then as I thought about it later, I realized the ‘amazing’ part of me that this person saw was God’s grace. Instead of letting me stay where I was, God brought along circumstances that have allowed me to exercise a very weak muscle, and His grace has filled in the spaces I’ve been unable to reach. He has written a second part to my story by taking one of my weakest points and strengthening it so I can use it for His glory. When I mess up, it doesn’t mean that all His work has been erased; it is simply more room for Him to work in me. God’s grace is greater than all my flaws and weaknesses.

So whenever my insecurities come knocking, I have something that will make them leave. My weaknesses are still very real and they will be a part of me until I reach Heaven, but God’s grace and power trump them all. And, the next time somebody points out an ability I have, I can point to God’s grace and love. God specializes in taking weakness and manifesting His strength in it.

In the mist of my disabilities… God’s grace

Working in me to transform my weaknesses into His strengths… God’s grace

Like sunlight shining through cracks in a wall and creating beauty… God’s grace

Can I just say, hallelujah! I serve a mighty God, and He deserves more praise than I could ever give Him.

For those of you who didn’t read my last post, I did not fall off the face of the earth; I just took the month of August off blogging because my schedule was too full. Now that things have settled down for me, I am planning on getting back to putting out a post every other week.

I know that the majority of my blog posts have centered around growth in one way or another, but I am going to talk specifically about it this time. Growth is a naturally occurring phenomenon that is intended for the benefit of whatever it touches; but the funny thing I’ve observed about the combination of growth and my human nature is that my human nature has a way of stifling growth, usually with the lie that I am just fine the way I am. I’ve had the opportunity to watch a lot of growth take place in nature, and I’ve always been amazed at how resilient God’s creation is; I’ve seen things grow and thrive shortly after appearing to be cold and dead. One frigid day in February about twelve years ago, one of our sheep had a lamb in the pasture, and the lamb was stiff by the time my dad found them and got them into the barn. My dad managed to warm and revive the lamb, then twenty-four hours later the lamb was running around like nothing had ever happened. I’m pretty sure that God intended for growth to work this way in me, but I am the one holding it back. He took my cold, dead heart and gave me a new one that is warm and bursting with life; so why am I so hesitant to follow Him and allow Him to care for me in the way only He knows best? Growth is a natural process, but my sin sick human nature is what gets in the way and prevents God from working.

If I want to live the abundant life God promises to His followers, I have to get past my insecurities and be secure in who He says I am as a new creation in Him, and I have to be willing to leave my comfort zone to follow Him; I have to trust that He knows what is best for me, and I have to act on that trust.

 

 

Continue reading “Liebster Award!!”

 

I don’t know about you, but I am finding it increasingly difficult to not be afraid at the direction our country – and the world at large – is headed in. Political structures have dissolved into disarray; the family unit designed by God has been pulled apart and left to die; and it is becoming harder to find the truth about anything.

But as easy as it is to respond in fear, that is not my only option; I have the ability to rise above fear and trust in almighty God. Fear is a sinful response, because 1), God tells us 365 times in His Word not to fear, and 2), because He gives us plenty of examples in His Word of His power, His sovereign control, and His perfect timing; then if that wasn’t enough, He showed us at Calvary how much He loves us.

 

One of my favorite places in the Bible describes the response of three men who gave an incredible answer when they were literally standing in front of the fire, and it’s a response I want to be able to imitate; Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego said, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to give you an answer concerning this matter. If it be so, our God who we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But even is He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image you have set up.” They had complete assurance of God’s ability to deliver them from their situation, but they also knew that God doesn’t always view deliverance the same way we tend to.

How can you and I have this same faith? By turning our eyes to our Creator and Savior. In time, we will be able to say with confidence that, although we don’t understand His plan, we trust that it is the best one. In the end, His Name will receive the glory, because His mighty work will be obvious when we completely surrender ourselves to Him and allow Him to work through us.

Here’s a question I wrestled with for a long time:

What does prayer accomplish?

If God already had an immovable plan for mankind before He created the earth, obviously nothing, including prayer, can change circumstance; so what does prayer accomplish? I’ve often heard people say, “Prayer changes things”, but what does it change?

Prayer may not change circumstance, but it changes us. Communicating with the King of kings opens our eyes to see His work, so what we refer to as ‘answered prayer’ isn’t God listening to our requests and deciding to fulfill them; it’s Him working like He always does and opening our eyes to see it. God didn’t give us the option of prayer so we can get the things we want; He tells us to pray so He can conform us to His image and work through us. God works with or without my prayers; they themselves don’t change a thing. What prayer changes is my heart, and that is what God is most concerned about.

Prayer wasn’t created for us to bring God our lists of complaints; it was created so we can have a source of communication with Him. The Bible is full of people going to God with their joys, their burdens, and their questions; if God wanted that recorded for us to read, what does that say about how important prayer is to Him?

Over the past fifty years, relationships have been stretched and pulled out of shape to the point where they no longer resemble what they once did, which begs the question; what is a relationship supposed to look like? In a previous post titled “When it hurts to love”, I talked about God’s blueprint for how we are supposed to love one another because of the way He loves us, but there is another ingredient that is often left out; time. In our culture where everything is constantly becoming quicker and easier to access, it is becoming harder and harder to find people willing to put forth the time and effort necessary for a good relationship.

God’s relationship with us was so important that He gave up His rights as God for a while to come heal us; think about that for a minute. This is the God who can do anything, and more. He spoke the world into existence; so why didn’t He just say a few words to bridge the gap between Him and us? He created every law of physics and nature; would it have been so hard to bend a few rules or create a few new ones to solve the problem? He gave up Heaven’s throne to show us how much He loves us, and to give us an example of how to love the people around us. Love isn’t a warm, fuzzy feeling; it’s a decision we make and a commitment we carry out.

Theodore Roosevelt said, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”. Similarly, people don’t care how much I love them until I show them, and that takes time; time with God learning how to love, and time with people putting that knowledge into practice.

One last sobering thought I’ve had running through my head lately; if somebody was to take a look at how much time and energy I give to my relationship with God, what would they see?

Yeah, I don’t really want to think about that.

Relationships take time and effort, and the amount of time and energy I am willing to invest in them says how important they are to me.

 

 

It rocks our world and makes us stop in our tracks.

It makes us question everything we took for granted.

It blinds us to anything else in this world.

It’s called uncertainty.

I recently heard uncertainty likened to a river we swim in, and I think the analogy fits quite well. The water is often too deep to stand in, so we can never get our footing. The times when the current is strongest are often the times we are most tired of fighting. There are obstacles we cannot see coming, so we end up battered and bruised. It’s hard, and it makes me want to quit when I don’t see an end in sight.

But how many giants in our faith had certainty in front of then when they went out to follow God? We aren’t alone in our battle, and we aren’t the first people to fight uncertainty. Hebrews 11 has a list of people whose great accomplishment in life – according to Scripture – was their faith that made them follow God when uncertainty pressed them on every side. From a human perspective, none of these people had a sure thing in front of them; faith isn’t logical. It doesn’t make any sense to the person looking in from the outside, and it often doesn’t make sense to the person living it. So why? Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” We accept His promises because there is the certainty in the fact that He is the God of all authority, knowledge, power and love.

There are so many times in life I say to God, “You want me to do WHAT?” He purposefully gives me more than I can handle, to show me that He can handle it – this blog is an example, and so are a few relationships that I have. One thing I’ve learned is the greater the uncertainty, the more room there is for Him to show up. He wants me to surrender my life to Him so He can do something awesome with it.

 

If I were to rewrite the dictionary, I would eliminate the word ‘growth’ and substitute it with ‘pain’.

Just sayin’.

God never promised an easy life; on the contrary, He tells us in His Word, “In this world, you will have trouble…”. But the next part of this verse gives me all I need to keep going: it says, “…but take heart, because I have overcome the world.” Those weeks and months when I plead with God to stop what He’s doing because I don’t think I can take any more pressure have a purpose; to make me like Him. In fact, He shows us through His creation how beautiful things come out of intense pressure and heat: diamonds are formed over long periods of time with intense pressure; pearls are formed by an irritating piece of sand lodged in a mollusk’s shell; metals only have the highest quality after being heated to a high temperature and having their impurities skimmed off the surface; and the list goes on. The highest quality things only come with at least one of these ingredients: heat, pressure, and time. Will I let the pressure crack me, or will I let Him make me stronger and more refined through it? It all depends on my source of strength during that time. God knows exactly how much of those three ingredients I need, and He won’t give me more or less.

Since this post is about growth, I couldn’t resist adding something about gardening. I have been ‘in charge’ of my family’s vegetable garden for several years now, and one thing I have observed is how the first crops to ripen are usually the first to wither away in the summer heat, while the vegetables I have to wait longer for are the ones that last longer. For example, lettuce is one of the first crops to mature, but is also the first thing to die off; but vegetables such as carrots onions and carrots are the last things I harvest, and I can store them for months in the proper conditions so they won’t spoil. God wants to do work in me that will have a long term effect, but I’m going to have to be patient and wait on Him for it. He doesn’t always work in a way that makes me happy, but that is not His goal; He works to conform he to His image.

What about a middle eastern man who lived two thousand years ago is so incredible that His life and teaching are still studied, debated, and by some, followed?

Everything.

Every single one of His teachings are so countercultural because none of them line up with human nature. But perhaps the most incredible thing about the way He lived – and the way His followers are called to live – is summed up in the following verses:

“Have this attitude in yourselves that was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking on the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Philippians 2:5-8 (NASB)

Human nature demands that we make a name for ourselves by declaring to the world who we are and what we can do, but that’s not what Jesus did, and that’s not how He calls us to live. Jesus is God, but He let His status go (without actually letting go of being God) and came down to our terminally sin-sick world and gave us life. He put aside His splendor and stepped into the story He was writing, but there wasn’t a moment when He wasn’t in control. The really awesome thing is how He used His power as God; He didn’t use it for His benefit, He used it to give us eternal life. When it looked like He had lost and death had won, Jesus stepped out of the shadows of the grave into the sunshine and showed the world that He was the Son of God.

To sum all this up in a few words and pass on the challenge I received: Jesus died for me so I can live for Him.

This is just an observation I’ve made, please tell me if I’m wrong: in every one of us, there is an innate urge to fight to be the best we can be, to climb up the ladder out of the shadows and bask in the sunshine so we have a tan to display as a badge of honor when we are knocked off the top rung and fall back down to planet earth. But when I step back and look at all this, it makes me think of a bunch of kids in the candy store fighting for the last piece of chocolate; then I wonder, isn’t there something higher to fight for, something that would make a difference in eternity?

When I fight for myself and my rights, I am being shortsighted and selfish; but when I fight under God’s banner and His fame and renown are my focus, I am fighting for something of eternal value. When I fly my own colors, I am consumed by achieving my comfort and my status, and my idea of what is best for myself and the people I love is skewed; but when I fight in God’s army, the things I do will have eternal value as I become more concerned with God’s name getting glory it deserves, and I will want God’s best for myself and the people I love. What makes all the difference is who I am serving; myself, or the God Who loved me enough to give up everything to offer me eternal life with Him in Heaven.

When I was growing up, one thing I remember my Dad saying a lot was, “If you are looking out for yourself, that’s the only person looking out for you; but if you are looking out for other people, you have that many people looking out for you.” The principle he was trying to drill into our selfish little heads applies in the Spiritual realm as well: when I am fighting for my agenda to be accomplished, I am the only one fighting for it; but when I am fighting for God’s agenda to be accomplished, I have God and His army behind me.

Whose banner flies above my head as I march into battle, mine or God’s?