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Exchanges

Life in Christ is all about exchanges.

He exchanges our sin and failures for right standing with God.

He exchanges our focus on this fleshly life for a focus on what really matters, a Matthew 6:33 life, where we are seeking His Kingdom and His righteousness first, allowing the “other stuff” to be taken care of by the Father according to His perfect timing and love.

And He also exchanges our daily sadness, confusion, and weariness for Joy, Clarity, and Strength.

Let’s talk about that for a minute.

There is a time to grieve….a time to question, think, sit…and a time to rest, do nothing, let go.

These are necessities for growth, just like off days when you work out hard: You have to give muscles the chance to stretch back out after tightening, tearing. That’s how they grow.

But then your weakness is exchanged for strength.

Our training as believers, spiritually, is to keep going through pain, fires, trials, conflicts, disappointments, personal struggles, yet each time learning to come with them to Jesus and go through the process of an exchange!

We can experience trauma without becoming victims.

We can experience loss without becoming empty.

We can experience stress and pressure without becoming numb, hopeless, angry, and sick.

This is the power of Christ in us.

This is one of the benefits of seeking first His Kingdom, and living – in our hearts – already in His family, His Kingdom, not necessarily with our eyes on Heaven (like as in the “sweet by and by”) but on JESUS, the Author and Perfecter of our faith who endured the cross and sat down at the right hand of God the Father. He is reigning, He is loving, He is giving daily manna, for those in the Kingdom – even though our earthly lives are set in a disturbing, ever shaken, ever darkening place.

But this is the power of His exchange. This is where we have light in darkness. This is where we have peace in chaos.

We have to choose whether or not we will make the exchange.

Each day, I feel like Jesus says, “You can do this or You can let Me live and love through you. You can continue to just survive this job – relationship – time of healing – or You can fall into my arms and we will do this together. You can keep your eyes on the problem, or you can put your eyes on Me. I can be your obsession, your waking thought – My strength, My wisdom, My Word – or you will be obsessed with your own process and progress…It is your choice.”

Life is hard. Marriage is hard. Singleness is hard. Parenting is hard. Not parenting is hard. Work is hard. Not working is hard. Health is hard. Money is hard. People are hard. Not having people is hard!

But through Philippians 4:4-6 and Colossians 3:1-17 and James 1 and 2 Peter 1:3-11, actually the entirety of God’s Word, we see we have an opportunity for a continuous exchange of our thoughts for His, our perspectives for His, our goals for His, our wisdom for His…

And as He once gave His life for us, we give it back to Him.

Yes, we give up a lot in this exchange, relatively speaking…

But I can’t help but say, on the other side of the exchange that I made at one time and that I daily make, there is no true, real, abundant life without forsaking my life to hide myself in Him.

When I give Him my pain, yes, I may also be giving Him my freedom to do what I want with my life – but how was I planning to make it through life lugging that pain around anyway? How far was I going to get?

When I give Him my anger, yes, I may also be giving Him my money and what makes me feel safe and what I expected out of a relationship – but those three things were always an illusion and I’m better off without living my life trying to control them.

One of the methods of exchange – practically speaking – is worship and thanksgiving. When I give God my praise, in the midst of the battle, in the midst of the sorrows or questions, He goes and does something miraculous.

We can cast our cares, our sins, our failures, and everyone else’s, too, that are weighing heavy on our minds and hearts, clogging our avenue to peace and joy. We can lay them down…We can bless His Name…We can cling to His living Word…

We can come, and keep coming, for the joy of the Lord is our strength.

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#HowToBuild: The Living Word

“…We are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss…Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple?” 1 Corinthians 3:9-16

We are in the building process, every day, through the circumstances God allows into our lives, but also through the choices we make to add layer upon layer onto our faith!

One choice that we must make in order to build (and build upon) a firm foundation is to be daily and regularly in the Word of God.

Communication between us and God is set in motion when we are in His Word. There is always something new and always something more, if reading is accompanied by openness to the Holy Spirit. If we ask Him directly for His input, He will open new truth that speaks to the current status of our heart and life! I have that much confidence in the Holy Spirit/Word of God duo!!! If the Word feels dull, confusing, irrelevant, infuriating, boring, or even wrong, we can tell Him how we feel. The Word is alive, interactive, and meant to bring conversation with Him.

Being in the Word of God is one of the main ways we can hear God’s voice, because His Word IS His voice! When we have begun to recognize His voice in Scripture, we begin to hear Him speak outside of it, too. A thought while we’re driving the car, an answer to a particular prayer or question. Reading His Word is one of the main ways we can learn to differentiate between which thoughts (and even words from others that are directed toward us) are from God and which need to be dismissed and forgotten. It gives us an innate discernment, what is called the “mind of Christ”, because our hearts are melding into His as we read more and more about what He loves and hates. It grows in us a change of opinion when our opinions were wrong. It grows in us a softness where there needs to be mercy and a fierce determination where there is meant to be justice. His Word is living and active. It goes in and it changes things. It is the nutrient our souls were meant to ingest daily! I can’t help but think of the yogurt with the “1 billion acidophilus cultures” in it. The package declares this incredibly wonderful but creepy message: Active bacteria, live cultures! Gee, thanks!! (But really…thanks!) That healthy bacteria that we’re ingesting, as weird as it sounds, is making our digestive system a much happier place. The good bacteria needs to be there to overpower and kill off the bad bacteria that would make us sick. Think of God’s Word, all of it, any of it, as a living and active ingredient that goes in where He knows it needs to go, to whatever parts of our heart need to be cleansed, overpowered with truth and goodness, and made healthy again. And just a side note, most of us don’t get these live cultures in the food we normally eat. Very few restaurants are handing out rejuvenating, life giving food; we have to go out of our way to find it and consume it…hint hint!

Love and respect for the Word of God grows the more we become acquainted with it. Psalm 119 is an intense chapter of appreciation and longing for Scripture. The wisdom and the joy of the writer! He had found something worth going on and on about…!

In different seasons of life, we have to get creative and make being in the Word happen. Here are some ideas and resources for that, just to name a few:

*Listen to podcasts, such as Passion City Church , Martha Kilpatrick , Bethel Church , and Beth Moore. Even if they are just playing in a sometimes-empty room, grab what you can as the Word of God streams through the air of your house!

*Watch preaching and teaching videos. Some of my favorites are: Anyone from International House of Prayer, Kansas City , especially Misty Edwards. We don’t have to agree with every point teachers make on videos we watch, but our hearts will feel if someone is just not lining up with God’s Word. Obviously, not everyone out there with videos online is preaching truth. The more we are in His Word for ourselves, the more we will be able to discern.

*Get involved in group or personal book studies, that dig into one particular topic or book of the Bible. Here’s a good resource: Women of Faith. I have personally always gotten a lot out of Beth Moore studies, but those were my pre-children season type of studies!  I highly recommend them though. I also read books and resources by Martha Kilpatrick regularly. You can find her info on the link above under podcasts.

*Read blogs! The transparency of blogs from people truly seeking God are invaluable! Here are some great ones I read: Ray Hollenbach and Ann Voskamp There are so many I could share, but those are the ones I usually click on when they go through my Twitter feed…

*Hide His Word in your heart. Memorize verses with your family. Write a verse a week on a poster and tape it to the wall next to the dinner table! I never realized the work, honestly, that the Word of God that I had memorized in the past was doing for me all these years. So many times that I had hope or bravery or the words to say, that was a direct result of hiding God’s Word in my heart throughout my life. Some of those verses were learned just so I could earn a piece of candy! Haha!

*Pray His Word…back to Him.

*Sing His Word…out loud!

*Just open it up and read. Daily, if we feel overwhelmed, we can read a Psalm and a chapter from a book of the New Testament for starters, and then see where He leads. There’s no right or wrong way to be in the Word. Sometimes God will keep me on one passage or sentence for weeks. We can’t be all about quantity with this. There are no stickers on any charts here!

I want to share this new song with you that I’ve been writing the past couple of weeks, “Your Voice”.  He is speaking…because He loves to. His Voice, His Word, these are some of the sweetest gifts He could have given us…and they are our’s in abundance.