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He Loves Us.

Something I have noticed about myself is I have a hard time with natural ebb and flow — ups and downs — motivation coming and going. Maybe it’s the motivation to stay on some kind of healthy routine or maybe it is my Bible study or intercessory prayer time. Maybe it’s the balance I keep seeking between time alone, family time, and reaching out to others who may be lonely.

These inconsistencies, these ups and downs–

I feel them and see them, and I judge them. I see the waves as a personal character flaw.

I didn’t know that I did, but I do.

The important part is though, the ebbs and flows are really not the problem…

my shame or judgment of them is.

When we determine to believe God is a God of grace, when we ponder that Jesus is a friend to sinners, when we recognize He made us human and not divine – with limited bodies and genuine needs and that a lot of our rules are just that: “ours” – some of us think, “Thank You, thank You, thank You…” And relief and humility and praise erupt!

But some of us think, “Yeah, to a certain extent.” Yeah, to a certain extent He has grace in our weakness. Yeah, to a certain extent He isn’t utterly exhausted of us. Yeah, to a certain extent we are allowed to be imperfect…And the condemnation and self-judgment continues to eat us alive, because our theology is flat out wrong. We are thinking the wrong things about God.

We are more focused on ourselves than on who HE REALLY IS.

To the one rotting in prison, guilty as hell — to the one pulling herself up out of bed every morning to quote her mantra, have her coffee, and slay the day – we are all the same.

We are all trying to do this – be strong, do it right, be enough, don’t waste your one life, be valuable – on our own.

And we can’t.

And I’m so glad. What a shallow life I signed up for in the beginning, when earning and merit and grades was all I knew. Now I know how to accept that I didn’t hit the mark and I never will, and those who are forgiven much LOVE MUCH and therefore I love much every single day.

I was telling my daughter this morning, that as far as I know (I’m no scholar) that Christianity is the only religion where our personal merit has absolutely no part in the equation.

Our personal merit has no part in the equation.

This makes me a radical Jesus-lover, because it’s too good to be true YET IT IS TRUE.

And it’s true for you, too.

I don’t know what you know about the Bible. I don’t know what words or sentences in Scripture have made you question the whole Book. I don’t know how people have hurt or misused or misled you or your family. But I am here to tell you today that God’s love for you is a shout He wants you to hear above every other voice- every memory, every question, every fear, every doubt, every person, every reason you have to not come to Him.

May this seed be planted anew in our hearts today, because I don’t know about you, but I need to KNOW that He Loves Us, with no buts, no howevers. His love will cover and cleanse and help and heal, and the miracle won’t somehow magically change hands and become your responsibility at some point. No. His love will do it all. No matter how messy our lives get, He loves us. He loves us. He loves us.

Oh, how He loves us.

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What Are We Afraid Of

I don’t think it’s always necessary to get answers to have peace.

I’m not sure that an answer is even what our hearts are really craving.

It’s kind of like math.

Just being able to set up the problem correctly means you are 90% there. Just picking out the right formula to use–isn’t that more than half the battle? (And yes, using the word “battle” is totally appropriate when talking about math! Not an exaggeration at all! lol)

So, what are we afraid of?

We are afraid of problems, of bad news, of loved ones going through hard times. We are afraid of messing up or missing out; afraid of someone else messing up or making us miss out. There’s more. Lots more. But ultimately I think we are afraid of pain. Mental, emotional, physical, social…

But what if we were to see that pain isn’t really the most painful thing?

What if we were to see that fear is…

Now we have “set up” our problem correctly.

When pain comes, as believers, we can believe that we will have everything we need to make it through and even become more like Jesus through that trial. As children of God, we can know we will be comforted and held even when the unthinkable happens. We can find purpose, a stronger more fruitful faith, and even remember His promises about all things working out for good. We don’t want pain, and it may still feel unbearable at times, but we see when it happens that we have a refuge and strength we didn’t experience in the easier moments of life. There is grace for it, in good measure. Feeling any negative emotions feels awful, but God created us with the capacity to heal, to sit with sorrow and joy at the same time, and to live again.

Pain is a reality, in every life.

But fear is a different story.

Sometimes pain is a visitor that won’t go away; it just needs to sit with us sometimes, always longer than we would like. Acceptance and time help a lot.

But fear is the enemy and we don’t have to entertain him, not for one minute. Accepting fearful thoughts and beliefs for long periods of time will only build a life of unnecessary pseudo-pain.

What if the children of God were marked by viciously refusing to be worriers at all? Can you even imagine the difference in your life and others you know if we understood that the sin of letting fear and worry run amok in our brains is more of a problem in our lives than the actual real process of facing pain when it visits?

Do we know in Whom we have placed our trust or do we not?

I am so convicted and truly amazed at how setting up the problem more clearly is in itself an answer…

Saint Therese of Lisieux said this:

“I had to pass through many trials before reaching the haven of peace, before tasting the delicious fruits of perfect love and complete abandonment to God’s Will.”

God can have the victory before, during, and after pain.

Be not afraid.

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What the Spirit Desires: A Cure for Worry?

All semester I have longed to truly trust God and see the effect of that trust in my feelings. I wanted His peace that everything was going to be okay, but constantly the concerns of my life were on my mind like if I forgot them, He would, too.

Then several weeks ago, this happened. I had no intention of blogging about this, but I kept feeling like I should share. In a nutshell, the Lord said to me:

“Lyndsay, thank you for going to the nations, learning languages, loving and serving your family, and being so concerned about obeying Me with your life. But dear one, I have this one thing against you and you desperately need to hear it. You do not trust Me. You don’t relax under my care and power as a child of Mine would. While you’re physically obeying, you’re worrying. You’re wondering if what “you’re” doing will be enough and if you yourself will be enough for all the problems surrounding you. It’s a shame. I have peace and life for you if you’ll just allow Me to accomplish in your life all I said I would in My way and in My time. You do not need to be or do anything except trust and abide in Me.”

I had to just think on that for awhile and then repent, all the while knowing I could not fix myself. That’s the awesome thing about repentance. It’s not saying, “I agree with You, Lord, I am wrong, and I will do better.” Nope. It’s “I agree with You, Lord, I am wrong, and I am completely bankrupt in every. single. area. of. my. being.” And HE promises to take that heart and make it clean; He also promises to bring solutions by the power of His Spirit once we realize our inability to live His way.

He wants me to live at peace and enjoy life as I follow Him. But how, if this (sadly) doesn’t come as easily as it should?

 

Romans 8:5-17 has our answer. Reading the whole text would be great, but the gist is that our minds can either be controlled by the Spirit or by our natural, sinful nature. 

The things I usually am all in a tizzy about, needing desperately for them to work out soon, are not bad things. They are actually all things that I believe by His Word to be His will. So that led me to skim over this part of Romans 8, because I never realized that my sinful nature can take over even in the midst of daily obedience and doing things HE has led me to do.

My mind constantly on these things working out in my way and my time, adding a smidge of “I better get this right or it’ll all fall apart” made my so-called obedience a big fat adventure in missing the point. Repentance truly was the step to take, not a self help book on worry, and the next step after that was to let God show me how to have a mind ordered by His Spirit.

We can choose at any time to set our minds on what the Spirit desires instead. Let’s get specific if we’re going to do it, right? What does the Spirit desire? Here’s just a short list…

*That we would know the character qualities of God and trust His heart

*That we would know the Word of God as a comfort and a sword

*That we would know and claim personally the specific promises of God for each individual trial we face

*Full surrender in prayer, acknowledging we don’t even know what to ask, and rely on His intercession (Rom. 8:27)

*That we would know how to praise and worship God, being lifted above this realm for healing, relief, and transformation

 

And lastly, back to Romans 8, the Holy Spirit who is such a good friend and wants so much for us in the Lord, He longs for us to know that we did not receive a spirit that makes us a slave again to fear, but we received a spirit of sonship. “And by Him, we cry ‘Abba Father’. The Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs–heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings in order that we also may share in His glory.” (verses 15-17)

What are we supposed to set our minds on? What the Spirit desires.

What does the Spirit desire? That we would receive our spirit of sonship!

 

Three out of four of my children were once orphans.

That’s not an easy title to break free from, even after the adoption papers are signed. I can love them, show them my intentions, and care for their needs all day long, and they blossom, and I begin to think Ah, they are beginning to see themselves as daughters! But the moment I say “no”, or even “not now”, I see it in their eyes. They’re orphans again. The trust isn’t there yet. It’s all sight; no faith. It’s every man for himself; this supposed caretaker, this supposed parent, is not what I hoped for because they will not bow down to me and bend at my command!

When we are disappointed with God’s decisions in our lives or when we don’t see His power working quickly enough, we can easily take on a spirit of an orphan–bitter, untrusting, fearful, self-protective, focused on losses, controlling, angry!

No matter what I do for my girls, I cannot make them receive their new status as daughter…but it is still their’s, like a gift all wrapped up, waiting to be opened and enjoyed.

The same is true for us.

It’ll take time for my daughters to trust me enough to relax and go with the flow. It may take years, but I know the first step would be for them to really know me and their dad, and what we’re all about, to be immersed in our heart for them.

For us as believers to truly be just that–believers–we are going to have to know God, get past the little verses taken out of context and truly eat His Word, and get in step with the beat of His heart. We’re going to have to immerse ourselves in His heart for us, which is revealed through His Word, prayer, worship, and community. There’s a “new normal” the Spirit longs for us to embrace!

Right now for me, to abide means (a) to live in a place of knowing my bankruptcy, my inability to be who God is calling me to be and (b) to constantly be filling my eyes, ears, mind, and heart with what the Spirit desires.

I’m the type that needs to know what my job is.

This—abiding—this is my job. And the more I do it, the easier it is to see how very, very well He is doing His.