In the chaos

I just came back from a week and a half of vacation. I spent the first week with my family up in Maine and the last few days, I got to be with one of my oldest and closest friends in Boston. Time away allows God to refocus my mind. To take the truths that I have been learning from Him and solidify them in my mind. He also shows me the beauty and security of our relationship. In my normal life (which is pretty abnormal), I sometimes take for granted His presence. We have developed a rhythm together. We spend long mornings together and He is faithful to teach me.

In new environments however, I wonder, how will He show Himself?  Will I have the time necessary to be with Him? To sit with Him? This vacation, I had plenty of time in the mornings to engage with Him and it was wonderful. But it wasn’t always quiet. My whole immediate family of 11 people was staying in the same house together. So there was constantly movement and laughter and conversations. I have two nephews that are 7 and 4 and in the early mornings they are active. I was definitely free to spend time with the Lord but it was never still and I was never alone. Anyone reading this who has children will certainly scoff at the idea of a quiet morning.

And that’s been one of the questions I've had in this process of slowing down in my life. I know that God has given me this time to be with Him and to learn from Him. But I also long for movement. I do wonder what my relationship will be like with Him when I don’t have the same environment. Without uninterrupted hours in the morning, will I still encounter the same relationship and the same God that I see now? It has also been my heart to share this journey with others. I want my friends and family to experience the same depth of God’s presence and His goodness. But is it feasible to think that someone working 60-70 hours a week with 2 kids could have the time or space to be quiet before God?  

What I experienced in the chaos, loudness, and chatter of my family together was that God was still present. He was unhindered by noise and was still speaking. As my nephews ran back and forth between rooms, my parents stopped me to ask questions about the day, and my brothers and sisters descended down the stairs to get breakfast, God still wanted to meet with me there. In the midst of a busy household, He was still speaking and still able to get through to me-someone who loves silence and serenity.

The below song has been my prayer throughout my time of waiting. The words have echoed so much of what I’ve experienced and long to experience. I am restored in the secret, quiet, stillness of God’s presence. And when God calls me to move in my life, I won’t delay. But the second verse took on new meaning as I watched the activity around me this vacation. It says, “In the chaos. In confusion, I know you’re sovereign still.” I’ve always envisioned this chaos and confusion happening in moments of tragedy and uncertainty in life. But sometimes, normal life is filled with chaos.  Sometimes, our family is buzzing around, our work is hectic and that’s normal life. God calls to us in the stillness and in the chaos of our lives and He speaks for us to hear Him. I long for ears to hear both in the quiet and in the cacophony of life. And I pray the same for you today.  

He has everything

Most mornings, I wake up to the very loud and disturbing noise of my alarm clock on my cell phone.  I wish I was one of those people that had an internal alarm clock-who woke up feeling refreshed and alive every day. But most days, I need the clock.  I need my cell phone to do the work I wish it didn't do.  

Recently, I've gotten in the habit of turning off my alarm and immediately checking my phone for email messages, Facebook posts, and Instagram photos.  I know in my head that not much could have had happened in the 6-8 hours I had been asleep but occasionally something important is revealed. This routine became the first thing I did in the morning. The very first way I engaged with my day was to look at my phone. And it is death. Most of the emails that I receive during the night are junk-from some company telling me about their daily deals, trying to sell me something, or get me to look at their brand.  Most posts from facebook are from the wee small hours of the night and will be available for perusal later in my day. 

This week, I have been in a fog. And one morning, I prayed for God to focus my mind and to remove the veil I felt so vividly. And He told me to put away my phone. "It has nothing and I have everything," I heard Him whisper to me. He is so right (per usual). My phone which I view as so harmless is eating up my first thoughts of the day. Thoughts that I wanted to direct to God. Or more accurately, thoughts that I wanted God to direct for me.  My phone was full of nothingness.  Full of empty thoughts. Full of ways for me to escape. Full of posts and emails that could definitely wait until later in the day. And although I didn't understand, my phone was filling up my mind with worries and concerns from the world. While I desperately want to be Kingdom focused, my phone in those early morning times was such a distraction. So here is my small offering. I have put my phone away for the first of the day. I wait on the Lord in the earliest part of my day. I seek Him first and leave the phone for later. And I trust Him to fill up my thoughts for the day. He has everything and that is what I want.

My Philippians 3:4-14

I could have great confidence in myself if I wanted to. I grew up in a missionary family. My parents (two of the smartest people I know) left everything to train local leaders in foreign countries. I accepted Christ at the age of 4. I performed great at church. I was the apple of my Dad's eye. I earned straight-As in school and teachers loved me. I always obeyed the rules (or skirted around them enough to be considered good). I led Bible studies in high school and in college. I was a leader among my peers and I was going places. After college, the corporate world challenged my faith and I sinned with the best of them. I abandoned the teaching of my youth for the taste of being a success. I excelled in my job, getting raise after raise. I had money, friends, position, and everyone liked me.

I once thought all these things were so important. My Christian activities and my secular ambition. But now...now, I consider them all worthless because of what Christ has done for me. Seriously, everything is worthless when compared with the actual truth of Christianity. We get to know Christ, our Lord, our God, our Savior. So, I have trashed everything else. I look at all of my striving and wandering as garbage. I must do this so that I can have Christ and be one with Him. My own goodness, my own "holiness," my own church-going, people-helping ways are not what will save me. I trust (and want to trust more) Christ to save me. For God has a truer way of making us His children and it doesn't depend on us at all.  It depends only on faith. All the time I was growing up, striving to be good, deep down God had placed on my heart a desire to know Him.  The ironic reality is that Christ is known not through my striving but through faith. And as crazy as it sounds there is the real opportunity for us to experience God's power (which is not at all like human power that we all hunger for).  God's strength raises people from the dead.  If I can experience that (and I believe that I have!), somehow that means that the dead things inside of me can be raised up to life. I can have life that is true and eternal. And the ugliness inside of me, that includes self-righteousness, arrogance, and selfishness can finally die. And my truest self (who God wants me to be) can be resurrected and used for His glory. 

I don't mean to say that I've arrived or that I've already achieved any of this to perfection (or anywhere near it). But, this is my aim. I will keep working until the day I die not on becoming a better, more moral person but on becoming the woman Christ Jesus wants me to be. For this is the reason he saved me at four years old. Not so that I could boast in my own righteousness but so that I can boast in Him. 

Family, I am definitely not all that I should be (and if you know me at all, you know this), but I seek to put all my energy into this one thing: Forget the past. Forget the striving, the school achievements, the self-importance. Forget the sin, the wandering, the laziness. And forget trying to go places where I will be considered important. And seek Christ only. Go nowhere He isn't. Seek out places where I'll be humbled. Find Him in serving others. I'm 100% focused on reaching the end of my life and not just dying but living. I want to live life the way Christ wants me to live. And one day to get my prize - to see God face to face and to live in His presence for all time.

Prayer of Obscurity

Below is a prayer I rediscovered today.  One that impacted me last summer and continues to find me.  

"Today I still long so much for honour. I am so pleased with myself, so rooted in my nature. I am pleased when others often ask for my opinion, when I am made to feel I am needed, when people know that I am clever, talented, and popular. I am glad when I am friends with everyone, when I can share with others what is in my heart, when I can shine.

But Lord Jesus, you were a servant of all.  Today I surrender all desire to be great, I renounce all pleasure I take in being important. Help me never to take pleasure in the things that do not please you."

A prayer of Basilea Schlink

May this prayer find all of us in the obscurity of our faith and lives. May it remind us that life is only found in Christ. 

We need more friends

I've never seen myself as the main character of my own story. When I daydream about my life I often find myself as the supporting character to a friend who I'm rooting for, encouraging and driving her to the airport just in time to catch the love of her life before he leaves for Africa. I always manage to turn out ok in my stories (matched with the funny yet lower key friend, giving advice when needed, and providing comic relief). I certainly don't lack in selfishness but I've always been more comfortable in a supporting role when it comes to my friendships.

Reading Ruth 1:16-22, I find myself doing the same thing. Today, when I read Naomi's words of her tragedy, I didn't see myself as Naomi but rather I found myself as her friend.  Filled with compassion as I listened to her tale of affliction. Close to her sadness and experiencing anger at her side.  I grieved that her husband and sons' deaths were not the way it's supposed to be. And it caused me to wonder - Were there friends that came alongside Naomi when she returned to Bethlehem? She had a wonderful advocate, redeemer, and daughter in Ruth, but I wonder if she had a peer? Someone to help her grieve, to remind her of God's faithfulness, and to just sit silently with her. 

As I read her story once again, I was reminded that I want to be that friend to other people. I want to be that support to those as God leads them through the dark times of their life. And I'm always thankful for those very faithful men and women who come alongside me in my life. I pray for more and more friends like that to be raised up in our church - and I hope I can be counted among them. 

Naomi's honesty

“I went out full, and the Lord has brought me home again empty...” Ruth 1:21

Naomi’s arrival back to Bethlehem should have been a sweet homecoming for her. Old friends waited anxiously to greet her. And neighbors wanted to hear news of her family. As these old friends greeted her, Naomi abruptly stops them. “Do not call me Naomi (pleasant), call me Mara (bitter) for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and the Lord has brought me home again empty. Why do you call me Naomi, since the Lord has testified against me, and the Almighty has afflicted me?” (Ruth 1:20-21)

We often treat Naomi poorly as we retell her story to others. She has a bad reputation of being an angry and bitter woman. We wonder why she can’t be more like Ruth who trusts God in the midst of uncertainty and tragedy. But if we look closer at the story, we cannot help but feel Naomi’s pain. She has lost both her husband and her sons. And as a woman in the ancient world, she has no hope of providing for herself. She is empty. She is bitter. And she declares her feelings honestly before her old friends and before her God.

When our lives are filled with uncertainty, afflictions, and tragedy, we sometimes hide our true feelings from the world. Not wanting to let others into our personal pain and not wanting to betray our less-than-perfect feelings about God, we pretend that everything is fine. We sometimes pretend in front of God too. Praying prayers than are “righteous” but not true. Saying all the right words that don’t match our feelings of pain and affliction. Not wanting to ask God, “Why me?” The story of Ruth and Naomi is beautiful because it contains so much of the real, emotional pain we often feel but don’t always express. Naomi has real pain and heartache in her life. She feels afflicted by God but her feelings do not threaten God’s eternal love for her. God hears Naomi’s anger against Him and provides grace, healing, and redemption for her.

And Naomi is not alone in her pain. Scripture is full of people crying out to God. The psalms’ authors embrace feelings of God’s affliction and true depression (Psalm 66:11). Job cries out in confusion over the tragedy that has come upon him (Job 6:4; 16:12).  And God hears and knows our true and imperfect feelings as well.  

True freedom does not exist in a “perfect” world where we never feel grief, loss, or disappointment with God. True freedom exists in Christ. Where we’re known and loved despite our ability to always see and testify to God’s hand at work in our afflictions. God understands our feelings in our successes and our disappointments.  He comforts us when we hurt and He can handle our less than perfect feelings, even when they are directed at Him. There is freedom in living honestly before God because we see His hand of grace as He works to redeem our dark situations. And when we live honestly, others see His hand of redemption too. And together we can glorify God as He works out His plan of healing in our lives.

The Nearness of God

"Draw close to God, and God will draw close to you." James 4:8a

I read this verse in a little devotional this morning and had the thought that this should be my theme verse. You know, that verse that encapsulates everything you feel about God, that you continue coming back to to provide comfort and solace when times get hard. I went to James to read the context of the passage expecting to find more of the same - a passage on how intimacy with God provides comfort. Instead what I found was a more accurate picture of what I have been living this past year.  James 4 talks about the whole army of evil desires within us. It admonishes the reader to take stock of their own motives and allow God to root out the selfishness and pride in our hearts. 

As we draw near to God, our sinfulness is exposed. I wish it weren't true in my case but for the past months (and over the past years) as I've drawn closer and closer to God, I have seen more and more of my own selfishness, my own pride, and my own sin. It is ugly and the closer I draw to God, the uglier I see it in myself. And still the process is painful. Even though I want Christ to perform sin surgery and remove it all from my life, I'm surprised by how deeply the roots of sin are in my heart. So that when God does remove sin from my life, it hurts. 

So, Merry Christmas, right? A message of pain and sin removal for this happy day. Except that it is happy. Even though it is painful and even though it grieves me to see God removing things I didn't even know existed in my life, I am close to Him. I am by His side and that is where I want to be. So when, Christ drew near to all of us 2,000 years ago, He did it so that I could draw close to God - which turns out to be the deepest and purest longing of my heart. He came for me. And He came for you. Draw close to God and He will draw close to you. The process is not painless but the pain is worth it.