*2013 Repost*
So I work at a frozen yogurt shop. You know what there’s a lot of in frozen yogurt shops? Frozen yogurt. You know what else? Small children with underdeveloped reasoning skills and parents who don’t seem to notice. So they stick their hands in yogurt and wipe it around various locations within the store. Especially the freaking glass door. Which means I spend a whole lot of freaking time spraying that freaking door with Windex. And I tend to get frustrated with it, since I can’t ever seem to tell which side the freaking stain is on whenever I’m wiping it down. I tend to think, “Oh, this stain’s not going anywhere. It must be on the other side of the glass. Oh well. I’ll do the other side later.” Then I do the other side later and the stain still isn’t gone. So then I give up and let it stay on the window, because I mean, it can always stay on the “other” side for all I care. If it’s not going anywhere, I’m in no hurry to investigate why it’s refusing to be clean. As long as I keep believing it’s not my fault, I have no problem leaving the door like a mess.
And I’m kinda realizing I do this with everything. The can opener’s broken? Well, guess these cans can stay closed today then. It’s not my fault. The light bulb’s broken in the home bathroom? Not my responsibility. Our dining room isn’t even visible under all these papers? Doesn’t mean I should do anything about it.
That girl over there doesn’t have anybody to talk to? How is that my problem? There’s a kid crying himself to sleep tonight because his daddy left today. What am I supposed to do? People are starving, people are being persecuted for their proclamations of faith, people are being judged by the church and starting to hate God, people are thinking about suicide, people are scared to go to school because they’re being bullied. But what am I supposed to do about it? I like to believe that these problems are on the other side of the glass. They’re something I can take care of another time, or perhaps leave for someone else to take care of. I try getting rid of the stains, I really do. I try to help people out, try to understand, try to direct them to Jesus. But as soon as I realize it’s not as easy as I thought it would be to eradicate, I give up. “Well, I tried,” I tell myself. And I leave it, my conscience eased knowing I at least showed some effort.
But if I don’t clean the glass, who will? If I leave it there, it may be erased from my mind, but never from reality. Maybe this is why God talks so much about perseverance. Maybe persevering isn’t just about accomplishing cool things in your life, or getting to the other side of a struggle you’re facing. Maybe it’s about persevering for the sake of the hungry kid and the broken widow. Because if you don’t, who will? Isn’t there some sort of responsibility we have that comes from the power we have in Christ?
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
God has His own Dreams
*2013 Repost*
So it’s funny that the Bible makes so many jokes in itself that you would only understand of you read it in context.
But it’s not just funny, and it’s not necessarily a joke, except it kinda is. It’s amusing until you’re like, “Oh hey, this is in the Bible for a reason and I really need to be paying attention to it.
Okay. Anyway.
Tower of Babel. Fun story, right? Everybody knows it but doesn’t really know why they know it. Like, it’s told a lot in children’s church because it’s interesting, but it really doesn’t seem to offer much as far as life application. Thousands of years ago, some people tried to build a tower to make themselves look cool, God’s like NOPE, all of a sudden everyone speaks a different language.
I mean, what do you even say to that in response? “Hey God, please convict my heart if I’m building any cities or anything with people who should probably speak a different language than me.”
So maybe I’ll understand it really deeply one day, and it’ll be the greatest revelation, but I’m currently finding the next chapter in comparison to this one to be the revelation.
In Genesis 11, the people say to each other, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves…”
God didn’t want it. But in the very next chapter, He makes it very clear what He did want.
The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing… (Genesis 12:1, 2 NIV)
Go. I will make you into a great nation. I will make your name great.
That’s a lot different from, “Come. Let’s build a city and make a name for ourselves.”
God wanted better things for Abram than the Tower of Babel guys wanted for themselves. They just wanted a city and for their name to be great. God wanted a whole nation for Abram, and a name made great by the Name above all names.
So yeah. Maybe your aspirations are really really swell. Maybe you know what you want and you think you know how to get it. But maybe, just maybe, God’s got something better. It’ll require obedience, and downright ridiculous faith, as was required from Abram, but whatever you find in the land that God will show you is well worth the risk you take by leaving, even if you can’t even see the next step ahead.
So it’s funny that the Bible makes so many jokes in itself that you would only understand of you read it in context.
But it’s not just funny, and it’s not necessarily a joke, except it kinda is. It’s amusing until you’re like, “Oh hey, this is in the Bible for a reason and I really need to be paying attention to it.
Okay. Anyway.
Tower of Babel. Fun story, right? Everybody knows it but doesn’t really know why they know it. Like, it’s told a lot in children’s church because it’s interesting, but it really doesn’t seem to offer much as far as life application. Thousands of years ago, some people tried to build a tower to make themselves look cool, God’s like NOPE, all of a sudden everyone speaks a different language.
I mean, what do you even say to that in response? “Hey God, please convict my heart if I’m building any cities or anything with people who should probably speak a different language than me.”
So maybe I’ll understand it really deeply one day, and it’ll be the greatest revelation, but I’m currently finding the next chapter in comparison to this one to be the revelation.
In Genesis 11, the people say to each other, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves…”
God didn’t want it. But in the very next chapter, He makes it very clear what He did want.
The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing… (Genesis 12:1, 2 NIV)
Go. I will make you into a great nation. I will make your name great.
That’s a lot different from, “Come. Let’s build a city and make a name for ourselves.”
God wanted better things for Abram than the Tower of Babel guys wanted for themselves. They just wanted a city and for their name to be great. God wanted a whole nation for Abram, and a name made great by the Name above all names.
So yeah. Maybe your aspirations are really really swell. Maybe you know what you want and you think you know how to get it. But maybe, just maybe, God’s got something better. It’ll require obedience, and downright ridiculous faith, as was required from Abram, but whatever you find in the land that God will show you is well worth the risk you take by leaving, even if you can’t even see the next step ahead.
"Spreading out away from bad memories..."
*2013 Repost*
People hurt you. If nobody ever hurt you, trust wouldn’t mean anything. It means that much more when you’re able to trust someone in spite of what’s happened when you’ve let your guard down in the past. Because in the light of the past, you understand the risk you’re taking when you let people in. So when you finally do trust again, you have to consciously believe that this person is worth the risk. And I think being able to look at someone and tell them they’re worth trusting, even though you don’t trust people anymore, makes all the pain from the past worth it.
People hurt you. If nobody ever hurt you, trust wouldn’t mean anything. It means that much more when you’re able to trust someone in spite of what’s happened when you’ve let your guard down in the past. Because in the light of the past, you understand the risk you’re taking when you let people in. So when you finally do trust again, you have to consciously believe that this person is worth the risk. And I think being able to look at someone and tell them they’re worth trusting, even though you don’t trust people anymore, makes all the pain from the past worth it.
The Light Meets the Dark
*2013 Repost*
So in the Bible it talks about how all things come to light eventually. And that’s what I’m always scared of. I always wonder the means by which my deepest mistakes will be revealed. But when the light meets the dark, that’s when redemption is made possible. If you never come to terms with your reality, you’ll never be able to sort it out. You have to surrender it, and in doing so, you must tell the truth about it. And things do come out. I don’t know, maybe one day you’ll be standing center stage in front of your church during worship, doing your thing, and then Pastor will randomly say to the congregation something like, “Jesus thinks you’re worth it, even with your eating disorder.” And you’ll freeze and all of a sudden have no where to hide anymore. Because God called you out. Because the light invited itself in when your defenses were down. But in that moment, you have the choice to pretend you have yourself together, or you can let the light in. You can do something about it. You’ve already prayed, which is always the first step, but now you can work through it, because you no longer are occupied by trying to defend your secrets. You can find the cause of your problems and pull them by the roots. And this is the freedom we have in Christ, to say that we are no longer held by anything but the love of God.
So in the Bible it talks about how all things come to light eventually. And that’s what I’m always scared of. I always wonder the means by which my deepest mistakes will be revealed. But when the light meets the dark, that’s when redemption is made possible. If you never come to terms with your reality, you’ll never be able to sort it out. You have to surrender it, and in doing so, you must tell the truth about it. And things do come out. I don’t know, maybe one day you’ll be standing center stage in front of your church during worship, doing your thing, and then Pastor will randomly say to the congregation something like, “Jesus thinks you’re worth it, even with your eating disorder.” And you’ll freeze and all of a sudden have no where to hide anymore. Because God called you out. Because the light invited itself in when your defenses were down. But in that moment, you have the choice to pretend you have yourself together, or you can let the light in. You can do something about it. You’ve already prayed, which is always the first step, but now you can work through it, because you no longer are occupied by trying to defend your secrets. You can find the cause of your problems and pull them by the roots. And this is the freedom we have in Christ, to say that we are no longer held by anything but the love of God.
I'm still your child.
*2013 Repost*
It’s easy to get really hopelessly discouraged when reading 1 John 3. I mean, a lot of the chapter is along the lines of, “This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.” (1 John 3:10 NIV) or, “No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God.” (1 John 3:9 NIV)
And when you read that, if you’re anything like me, you try to really quickly come up with a replacement for a certain number of four letter words, because you realize that you’re screwed. You just messed up again last night. You knew what you were doing was wrong, and you did it anyway. Again. After you told God you didn’t ever want it to separate you from Him again. Does this make me a Satan child? Because that’s freaking terrifying.
And I wish I had some amazingly well-written Theological explanation using about five books of the New and Old Testament as reference to bring peace to this matter, but I don’t have all the answers. All I know is this: In Psalm 51:17 it says that a broken and contrite heart, God will not despise. Which means that every time you come to repentance (again) and you truly mean it, it would be against God’s character to scorn your request for forgiveness. In fact, in James 1, it says that God “gives without reproach”, which means He gives gifts, such as forgiveness, without reminding us of how terrible we’ve been in the past. When he gives us forgiveness without reproach, he forgets the past. He doesn’t hold forgiveness over our heads and make us jump for it, taunting us by saying, “Well, if you really want it. I mean, we both know you’re gonna screw it up again, but if you reaaaally want it…” False. He died because He wanted to give it to you!
And his mercies are new everyday, as it says in Lamentations 3. Everyday is a new day. Which means you may have screwed up the day before and the day before and the day before with the same sin, but God still sees each day as a new opportunity for you to fight. He sees it as another chance for you to run to Him instead of your sin. And God would have never told us His mercies were new everyday if He didn’t know we were going to keep struggling. He knows we fail so easily. He knows we’re gonna mess up again. That’s why He’s always there, ready to take us back.
So as for 1 John 3, the whole child of Satan thing- if you keep sinning, without repentance, without caring, without second thought, knowing you’re being disobedient to the King of Kings and enjoying the pain you inflict upon Him, loving your desires too much to even consider letting God change you, over and over and over again, then yeah, you might just be a little Satan. But there’s a difference between that and continually bringing your sin to the cross. Because the thing is, your sin is a matter of your heart. It’s a much deeper issue than what it seems. And your heart can only be changed by the Holy Spirit, who, going back to 1 John 3, is the manifestation of God remaining in us as we remain in Him. And like it says in Romans 8, if we have the Spirit, we are indeed His child. That being said, we are His child if we have accepted Christ as our savior and have made Him our Lord. Period. And the Holy Spirit, who we receive as God’s children, is the one in us who changes our hearts. And as long as we’re sensitive to lay ourselves down everyday, and run straight to Him when we do mess up, because He knows we will, He’ll always be there with open arms to welcome His child. And eventually, you’ll see His love and grace are enough for you, and eventually, you won’t want that sin anymore, and eventually, it won’t be anything. And that’s what we have to put our hope in- the fact that we are still His child, and because of that, we are empowered by His Spirit to leave our sin behind and live the life Jesus died to give us.
Abba
*2013 Repost*
To those of you who haven’t experienced the whole absent father thing, let me take a second to explain its effects. I work with inner city 4-12 year olds everyday, and countless times, I’ve watched a kid act out, start fighting, start hitting, start yelling, and then I’ve watched them immediately reduce to tears and fall on the ground. And when I ask what’s wrong, they give an answer like, “I miss my dad! He’s dead.” Or, “I want my daddy! He’s in the streets somewhere.” Or, “Has my dad asked about me?”
It’s real. This is yet another reason why this generation needs our Heavenly Father.
To those of you who haven’t experienced the whole absent father thing, let me take a second to explain its effects. I work with inner city 4-12 year olds everyday, and countless times, I’ve watched a kid act out, start fighting, start hitting, start yelling, and then I’ve watched them immediately reduce to tears and fall on the ground. And when I ask what’s wrong, they give an answer like, “I miss my dad! He’s dead.” Or, “I want my daddy! He’s in the streets somewhere.” Or, “Has my dad asked about me?”
It’s real. This is yet another reason why this generation needs our Heavenly Father.
Jesus can use random white girls.
*2013 Repost*
I finally found out what it means to love others like Jesus loves me.
For five weeks, I’ve been asking God to open up my eyes and show me how to love, and today, it finally clicked.
So there was something special about this week. I can’t quite name it. I think maybe it was just the fact that the team this week was insanely into loving these kids selflessly. Whatever it was, it was inspiring as crap. And today, as all the kids were pulling my hair and dog piling on my body and yelling, “CAN I GET ON YO NECK!?” and pulling me up, and pushing me down, and pulling me up, and pushing me down, something changed in me. I suddenly felt God impress on my heart that when Jesus was carrying His cross for me, He kept pushing, even when He was exhausted. Just because He loved me. Instead of letting exhaustion control my actions, the love of God overflowed. I felt myself become the hands and feet of Christ as I was strengthened by His love. And suddenly, I loved these kids a whole dang lot more than I thought I did, and I was all about wrestling them until I could no longer breathe. Even when it was time to corral the 13 kids on my mile long route for dismissal, as I was holding this kid, I felt love like I’ve never experienced before. The kid was heavy, but impressions of Jesus kept strengthening me to carry him further. Even when he started beating me in the head with a branch, I had grace to laugh and hug him tighter. Even this Spanish-only speaking kid was able to see the love of Christ through this random white girl.
And today, for the first time, I cried when I dropped the kids off. I didn’t want to wait the entire weekend to hold them and kiss their foreheads. Their smiles radiated like nothing I’d ever seen before. These kids, who when I first met them were clean of all childhood innocence and hardened to a point that scared me, were now hugging me incessantly and truly smiling the most genuine smiles I’ve ever seen. And that’s why I’m in inner city Memphis all summer. Just so I can see those smiles and know that the love of Christ and the truth of the Gospel is continually being put into their lives, offering them a hope they would never find in the streets. And that’s really all I could want.
The scary part is that I might just want to come back next year and do it all again.
I finally found out what it means to love others like Jesus loves me.
For five weeks, I’ve been asking God to open up my eyes and show me how to love, and today, it finally clicked.
So there was something special about this week. I can’t quite name it. I think maybe it was just the fact that the team this week was insanely into loving these kids selflessly. Whatever it was, it was inspiring as crap. And today, as all the kids were pulling my hair and dog piling on my body and yelling, “CAN I GET ON YO NECK!?” and pulling me up, and pushing me down, and pulling me up, and pushing me down, something changed in me. I suddenly felt God impress on my heart that when Jesus was carrying His cross for me, He kept pushing, even when He was exhausted. Just because He loved me. Instead of letting exhaustion control my actions, the love of God overflowed. I felt myself become the hands and feet of Christ as I was strengthened by His love. And suddenly, I loved these kids a whole dang lot more than I thought I did, and I was all about wrestling them until I could no longer breathe. Even when it was time to corral the 13 kids on my mile long route for dismissal, as I was holding this kid, I felt love like I’ve never experienced before. The kid was heavy, but impressions of Jesus kept strengthening me to carry him further. Even when he started beating me in the head with a branch, I had grace to laugh and hug him tighter. Even this Spanish-only speaking kid was able to see the love of Christ through this random white girl.
And today, for the first time, I cried when I dropped the kids off. I didn’t want to wait the entire weekend to hold them and kiss their foreheads. Their smiles radiated like nothing I’d ever seen before. These kids, who when I first met them were clean of all childhood innocence and hardened to a point that scared me, were now hugging me incessantly and truly smiling the most genuine smiles I’ve ever seen. And that’s why I’m in inner city Memphis all summer. Just so I can see those smiles and know that the love of Christ and the truth of the Gospel is continually being put into their lives, offering them a hope they would never find in the streets. And that’s really all I could want.
The scary part is that I might just want to come back next year and do it all again.
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