Wait.
In the past 5 weeks, I’ve begun to learn – to really grasp down deep – one of the most challenging and necessary lessons of my 25-year life.
I’m learning in earnest how to wait for God.
I’ve often heard that phrase (or its variant “wait on God”) sprinkled through Christian conversation and slipped into devotional books… I’ve even tossed it around myself more than a few times.
But this “waiting” is no longer merely an idea to me; in the past month it has smacked me square in the face.
When I say “waiting for God,” I mean that each morning I rise to a day of quietness, of not knowing things I would very much prefer to know, of having to open my empty hands again and again and trust that this temporary blindness to my future is just precisely what I need. When I say “waiting,” I don’t mean the waiting of a child who counts the days until his birthday finally comes, or a fiance waiting for the wedding day to arrive at last… Those sorts of waiting have a definite and clearly outlined end standing ready at the conclusion of the waiting, giving buoyancy to the patience. No, I mean the sort of waiting that is clueless to outcomes, the sort of waiting that has had to release the right to know or plan or predict, the sort of waiting that has cried out in need and urgency, “God, I will have whatever You give me… whatever You give me. And I will wait, without knowing for what I wait… except that I wait for You.”
Things hurt. Things happen that we wish achingly we could undo. Things get confusing. Things sometimes grow in our lives into convolutions and masses that are too knotted for us to untangle, no matter how earnestly we want to fix them or sort them out.
And just when we yearn for something from the Lord that is concrete and definite, something to help us unravel what we can’t unravel alone, He instead says to us, “Wait for Me.” … or, “Be still and know that I am God.”
“Just wait? That’s it?” we think to ourselves (at least I’ve thought that throughout this past month), “I want an answer… some solid direction!”
But that tender, sturdy voice holds fast: “Wait for Me.”
And then begins a slow trickle, a tender stream of promises telling us of the hope that grows up out of the fertile soil of quietness and trust, of the steadiness of character that is crafted only in the furnace of discipline, of the maturity that makes its home in the heart that has learned to surrender everything, even the right to plan and know.
And if we can quiet our protests and our tantrums and our surges of impatience – if we can lift our eyes to the horizon rather than fixing them on our shuffling feet – we will discover that the one thing for which we’ve so long been searching – Joy in its most real and true sense – is hidden in the most surprising of places. It is not found in the unveiling of a great “solution,” nor in the “fixing” of our problems, nor in the great revelation of what is next for us, nor in the fruition of all our ambitions. No, the Joy – the unimaginable best that we can long for as humans – is found in letting go, in surrender: a thorough and ruthless surrender before God that leaves no surviving pride or self-importance. There is nothing sweeter in this life than lifting open and empty hands to God, having offered to Him all our ambitions, triumphs, defeats, dreams, passions, timetables, agendas, plans, sins, and desires. The whole lot.
Such a surrender brings Joy because of this fact: when we empty ourselves of the clamor and clutter of our thousand other ambitions, aims, achings, plans, and gods (little ‘g’), we are ready to be filled up with One Magnificent thing: God Himself.
He “draws near” to the humble indeed.
And when we let go of our right to know things now, when we set our hearts to wait for Him – regardless of the specifics we do or don’t have – we have found one of the most marvelous secrets of our existence: “Those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary.” (Is. 40:31)
There is a mystifying, spirit-empowering, and heaven-breathed power unleashed upon those who “wait for the Lord.”
And with each new day of quiet and uncertainty that I face, I become more convinced – as I cling to the promises of God and wait for Him – that the waiting carries such power because He reveals Himself so intimately and tenderly to those who wait. Never have I savored the kindnesses of God, the person of Jesus, as much as I do in seasons of uncertainty and the eerie quiet of slumbering plans.
In the waiting, in the surrender of knowing what is next, comes a strengthening within me to believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that He is who He says He is… And He is for me not against me.
I won’t pretend to have mastered this lesson of waiting for God. FAR from it! Likewise, I am not suggesting that the circumstances of the past month for me are worse than most others face, not at all (my challenges and uncertainties are of my own doing)… Instead, I say honestly: I have a thousand miles yet to go on this journey of learning to wait on God. But the important thing is that I’m learning at all.
That is my encouragement, to myself and to those like me: whether the thing we face is small or medium or large in its severity of confusion and difficulty, let’s learn the lesson of waiting on God, let’s learn surrender. Let’s ask for hearts willing to release all our own agendas, repent deeply of our sins, and open up empty hands to receive from God whatever He might give.
Because, friends, I guarantee you that what He gives us to replace what we’ve surrendered will be ten thousand times better, if we can only wait for it, for Him…
Our surrender might be painful, but it need never be despairing… For – in the economy of God- we always surrender meager rubbish to receive a most valuable and excellent treasure, exceeding all of our imaginings.
We might not know the specifics, but we know Him, and He is Good – so good that the simplest raw understanding of that goodness would be as a hurricane to us. He is loving – so loving that even a small glimpse into the reality of that love would plaster us to the ground with awe.
So we can rightly tell our hearts:
“I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; yes, wait for the Lord.” (Psalm 27:13)
There is no room for despair in this waiting – no room to stare at our shuffling feet and moan about our slow progress or convoluted path – because the goodness of the Living God thunders at the horizon before us, if we will only lift our eyes to see it: a landscape of hope kissing the chin of a sky thick with the tenderest mercies of Heaven.
“Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; yes, wait for the Lord.”
England, wildness, and Him.
Each morning I zip myself out of my caterpillar tent, set my flip flops down in wet grass, and look up at a pale blue sky hidden almost entirely by towers of clouds – gray and white. It’s muddy. It’s wet. It’s lush.
It’s England.
And I am really and truly here.
At nine years old, I remember standing – hands clenched with anticipation at my sides – staring up at the jet planes that traced their lines across the sky over my little yard in Tacoma, Washington.
I ached for adventure – wild and big and risky and important.
Sixteen years later I’m camping in England – with visits to Greece, Germany, China, Taiwan, India, and The Maldives under my belt – and I am still longing for the very same thing.
I still ache.
More than ever, in fact.
But the object of my yearning has clarified. I could set foot on the Southernmost tip of Africa, the highest peak of the Himalayas, or the remotest ice-cliff of the North Pole… but the spark that ignites me to blaze — to really be and feel ALIVE in the wildest and truest way — isn’t found in the traveling or the accomplishing or the achieving or the doing.
My one wild and remarkable adventure is Him.
It’s the daily discovery of the unrelenting, magnificently tender love of Jesus Christ.
The Man.
The One.
He is real-er than real.
And I can feel His intimate tug at my heart — in the deepest and most secret parts — wooing me into the singular Adventure wild and spectacular enough to satisfy me.
It’s a love story.
It’s an epic.
It’s a grand and remarkable fairy tale.
It’s everything but a tragedy.
Whether I’m standing under an English sky, a Hawaiian palm tree, or an Indian city-scape, His love really is my most thrilling adventure.
The Grand Optimist.
God is the first Optimist.
God is the most radical Optimist.
And His optimism composes our reality.
Optimism is “the belief that good ultimately predominates over evil in the world… and/or the belief that goodness pervades reality.” … Goodness with a capital G, which also begins the word Gospel, which is the most explosively concentrated dose of optimism our sphere of sod and ocean has ever (or will ever) see.
This revelation of God’s unbridled optimism has taken up all the space in my mind lately. It has spread itself out like warm sunshine over all my icy little fears or lingering insecurities.
HE IS SUCH A HAPPY GOD.
Is He Holy? Yes. Is He flawlessly Righteous? Absolutely. Is He Omnipotent? Certainly.
But, friends, He is Happy too… He is Happy as happy should be… not frivolous or cheap happiness. Not happiness that lingers for a moment then steals away into shadows of the mundane.
No, He is Happy (capital H) with a Happiness that digs itself down deep in our spirits and tells us that GLORY is what we were made to bask in, unbridled and free. His Happiness explodes across the horizon of our futures like a hurricane of Goodness that cannot, and will not ever, abate. His Happiness whispers into our quiet moments all the sweetness of His Presence and His yearning to be close.
He is deeply, passionately, incomprehensibly happy because He knows just how Goodit’s going to get…
… and how good it actually is for us right now.
What do I mean by that? I mean that God sees you as you actually are in this moment, and if you know Jesus, then your actual self is wholly victorious, spotless, un-condemnable, and filled to the full with the love and very Person of Christ. You aren’t your failures. You aren’t your weaknesses. You aren’t your worst mistakes or your mediocre moments. You aren’t even your finest feats (because even those aren’t ever quite enough). No, God has put to death the old, “never-good-enough” you and has raised up a new you whose DNA is the very DNA of Jesus Christ, strand for strand.
Death no longer has teeth in its bite. Sin’s leash has been severed. You stand justified and entirely clean before the Father, given full access to His favor (it’s your’s in FULL!), His riches in glory, and His most intimate Presence.
Sounds lavishly good, doesn’t it?
Optimism… and Reality.
When it comes to God, the Grand Optimist, the two are one.
Glory.
I come alive when I’m connected to Reality, to the gravity of what really matters — when I’m caught up in the Glory for which my spirit and flesh were formed. And I love that God has tucked so much of His glory into the nooks and crannies of this planet. Some days I need to stop, exhale, and open my eyes to reality as it is. His reality. The reality.
Life in Christ is worth mulling over… it’s worth gazing at long and hard; it’s worth thrilling over; it’s worth our obsession and delight and grit and passion.
So for today, this is enough — indeed, this is everything… “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” Colossians 1:15-20
What a magnificent, tender, explosive, and singularly extraordinary thing that is.
Take a moment or two today and allow the wonder to overtake you. Our reality in Christ — with Christ — is mind-blowing.
Tell me the truth.
“You will know the Truth and the Truth will make you free.” – John 8:31-33
“Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” – John 14:5-7
I’ve been experiencing two of the most radically transformative months of my life. I’ve journaled over 60 single-spaced pages (in my signature itty-bitty handwriting) recently, and I’ve been attempting to figure out how to compress so many layers of revelation and liberty into a concise blog.
I haven’t yet figured out how.
So here’s the not-so-concise verson:
Much of the past 4 years of my life I’ve spent in a cyclical effort to “get myself free” from the residual un-health, disorder, failures, standards and expectations of the previous 9 years. Those 9 years from 12 to 21 were my years of buying wholesale into the slavery of an eating disorder and rigid perfectionism. That’s a well-established (and published) part of my history.
But the nearly four years that followed my “bottoming-out” experience and my time in treatment (I consider 2008 to be the major turning point), have largely felt jumbled, confusing, and — like I said — cyclical. I went through cycle after cycle of trying to “really feel free.” That usually meant finding some new deliverance ministry, prayer time, schedule, habit, friendship, etc, and attempting to get it to be my ultimate bridge to really feeling liberated from all of my “issues.” Inevitably, these avenues always failed (or I failed in my attempts at them), and I was left disappointed and thoroughly convinced that underneath it all, I’d simply never be completely free from my deep internal struggles — that every avenue would fail me, and I’d always be enslaved in some measure to weird eating habits (remnant of my eating disorder days), shame, guilt, self-contempt, powerlessness, and insecurity.
God still loves me, I’d think to myself. But I’m just a messed up sinner, whom He calls His own anyway.
There were good days, weeks, and sometimes months in that span, to be sure. But rather than contentment/peace/joy being my “base-line,” they were (to my mind) the aberrations that upsetted the “usual course” of my life — that usual course being sub-standard living, failure, disappointment, and unworthiness.
If you can’t tell already: this is a serious identity issue. And I had some major set-in-stone beliefs about who I was (a failure and disappointment), and what made me who I was (my failures and mistakes).
And as I scavenged for answers to my internal chaos, I slowly began to understand something:
No 12-step program, treatment facility, world-class counselor, self-help book, Holy Spirit ministry, hard-core accountability, or great amount of determination can set a person free.
That’s a bold statement, I know. But trust me, I’ve tried them all. Nothing removed my self-hatred. Nothing touched the layers of shame and insecurity that shrouded my heart and mind.
So I’ll say it again: No 12-step program, treatment facility, world-class counselor, self-help book, Holy Spirit ministry, hard-core accountability, or great amount of determination can set a person free.
Now you might beg to differ with me and say, “But Emily, I know the success rates of Alcoholics Anonymous… They can take the worst alcoholic and keep him sober and abstinent for the rest of his life.” Or, “I know a girl who had an eating disorder, and who recovered fully after undergoing treatment and staying with her team of psychiatrists and counselors.”
Aha. I think we are speaking of two separate things. An abstinent and recovered alcoholic does not, by any means, equal a free man. I attended dozens of twelve-step meetings (not just for alcoholics), and spoke with numerous individuals who’ve lived “abstinent” from their particular addiction for years. And sadly, I must say that very few of these individuals are free. Likewise, I myself entered a treatment facility for an eating disorder, and have watched as various women move on from their eating disorder behaviors, but live with un-liberated hearts.
Freedom is not the cessation of destructive or addictive behaviors. Freedom is not success and productivity. Freedom isn’t even effectively serving others who struggle with what was once your struggle.
No. When I say “free” I mean free. I mean a heart that has been liberated from the burden of any and all failures: past, present and future. I mean a spirit that knows deeply and passionately that nothing can ever again defeat or condemn it. I mean a soul entirely liberated from the chains of insecurity, fear, and self-hatred — loosed forever from the cords of worthlessness and loneliness. I mean a man or woman who can stand in confidence and say, “I know who I am: I am loved, absolutely spotless, whole, and a victorious saint in every single area of my life. And my performance can never change that. No failure can make it untrue. No mistake can lessen its reality. No shortcoming can diminish its impact.” I mean an individual who is not just abstinent from behaviors, but rather a person who — in every recess and hidden corner of their heart, mind and spirit — is dead forever to sin.
You might say, “Fine, Em. You just described Jesus.”
To which I’d readily reply, “No, I just described the life and the identity He has given you and me.” Which is in fact His very life.
This was my turning point. This was the startling and shocking revelation that exploded before my eyes. God revealed to me that what I described in the paragraph above is. my. present. life.
Notice that the following verses are past tense (in bold) for the believer:
“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life… knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.” – Romans 6:2-7
“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” – Galatians 2:20
“Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh…” – Romans 8:1-3
Through Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, I have been freed from sin. Entirely. Totally. Forever. Regardless of how I “feel” about it, this truth has become my fact, my reality, my entire and brand new identity. It’s not merely positive thinking, or the power of believing nice things. No. If I am Christ’s, this is fact for me, whether I feel free from sin, act free from sin, think free from sin, or not.
The reason I had been stuck in a cycle of effort and failure, performance and disappointment, self-hatred and despair for four years was because I was trying slavishly to do something Jesus Christ has already done for me and in me.
Talk about a futile effort!
I was trying to kill what was already dead. I was trying to bring to life what was already alive. I was trying to accomplish what the cross had already accomplished: putting to death my sinful self, and raising up a new me that is forever free from sin.
And this whole time that I was attempting to do what has already been done for me, I was fundamentally clinging to lies that stand in direct opposition to the reality of the cross: that my identity is “messy sinner,” that my struggles are insurmountable, that my failures mark me, that my ongoing sin habits condemn me as unclean.
Lies, all of them.
You might raise a concern at this point: “Emily, you said it doesn’t depend on my acting/feeling/performing, but if you’re telling me this is my present reality of freedom in Christ, then why don’t I feel free? Why don’t I act like a person who’s been free from sin?” You might quickly point out your ongoing struggle with certain sins — the unforgiveness and bitterness you hold onto with white knuckles, the sexual thoughts that prey on your mind, the money-spending problem you have, the porn you lust at occasionally, your quick temper, or the obsession with losing weight that sucks the life out of you. I can relate! I have sin issues of my own.
But those sin issues were nailed to the cross and put to death forever when Jesus died. And up from the grave, when He rose, came a new me that is completely unblemished by sin, and will remain so forever.
Friend, we’re not dealing with performance, feelings, or behavior. If you want to start the conversation at the level of behavior modificiation, I’d suggest a 12-step program, treatment facility, world-class counselor, self-help book, or hard-core accountability. I went through those cycles until I was desperate. Remember, those avenues will never set you free.
Rather, we are dealing with our deepest strongholds of identity, our beliefs about who we are and why we are who we are. Neil Anderson speaks the truth when he says: “It is not what we do that determines who we are; is is who we are and what we believe that determines what we do.”
We can modify, abstain from, and change our behaviors and performance until we’re exhausted, but it won’t loose our bonds of slavery. Only the Truth that pierces straight through to the heart of who we are can set us free.
We can manipulate and massage our emotions attempting to “feel” free for years on end, but it won’t do anything real or lasting. Only the Truth of who we are in Christ can liberate us from slavery to sin. Neil Anderson says: “If you only believe what you feel, you will never live a victorious life in Chist.”
Why is that? It’s because our emotions are not Truth. They are subject to every dip in our performance, to every lie that comes our way, to every mistake we make. Our emotions cannot be trusted to authoritatively tell us what is True.
But Jesus can be trusted to do that.
So here is the answer that I searched in all the wrong places to find, and that you just might be searching for too… Do you want to live a victorious Christian life? Then: BELIEVE THE TRUTH THAT IS ALREADY TRUE FOR YOU IN CHRIST.
I’m not trying to be simplistic or cliched. This really is earth-shattering. When I say “believe the Truth,” what that means for me is a thorough repentance and renouncing of the lies I had believed about who I am, who God is, and what will satisfy me. It means a thoughtful and complete repentence of searching for answers, freedom, and life anywhere outside of God. It means replacing those lies with the Truth of what Christ’s cross has irreversibly accomplished for me and in me (I am dead to sin and alive to God!)… and then walking forward in that Truth, refusing to believe that my performance makes it any more or less true. It means believing the Truth, rather than my feelings when my feelings disagree.
Nothing on earth can liberate you. No method. No place. No thing. No idea. No teaching. No program. No structure. No schedule. No person.
But, “If the Son makes you free, you are free indeed.” – John 8:36.
The question is, will you believe what He says of Himself and of you because of His cross. The believing must precede everything. The believing is the only thing that truly counts. The believing liberates our hearts. The believing unlocks the life of victory God has for us — because we are aligning ourselves with reality, with everything He has accomplished and will continue to accomplish for and in us.
Once more Neil Anderson says it so well:
“Many people fail in their Christian experience, so they begin to incorrectly reason: “What experience must I have for this to be true?” They will never get there! The only experience that has to happen for you to be dead to sin and alive to God happened over 2,000 years ago on the Cross! The only way we can enter into that experience today is by faith.”
Whether we feel it right now or not, if we are Christ’s, then we are free — dead to sin, alive to God, un-condemnable, un-accusable, un-defeatable, un-blemished, and eternally victorious through our Savior. Indeed, we have His very identity as our own!
Will we believe what the enemy, the world, our emotions, and our performance tell us (lies)? Or will we believe what our Savior tells us (Truth)?
In that question hangs our liberty.
Briefly-
This won’t be long, because it needn’t be… It’s just a simple and poignant thought:
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “We are always getting ready to live, but never really living.”
What is that choice, that habit, that new direction, that thing of which you (and I) keep saying “Someday, I’ll do that. Someday, I’ll make that choice. Someday, I’ll believe the truth… etc.”?
Hear this:
Do not think “tomorrow” or “later” or “another time.” Think now. Do it now; say it now; commit yourself now. What can be done someday you can do today.
And that is that.
Fairytale.
I was enjoying a late-afternoon walk several days ago, thinking about where I might be in five years, when an enormously encouraging revelation struck me (thank you Holy Spirit).
Here it is:
I too often live my moments and days with a muted, nagging feeling — buried in my subconscious — that I’m not living up to the potential of my life… that I’m a disappointment considering what I “could” be… that a rain cloud of sorts hangs over my future because I’ll never quite be free of the struggles that haunt me today.
Sound like pessimism?
Bingo.
It’s not raging despair or a sense of utter failure. No, it’s a more subtle, — more acceptable, it would seem — version of self-pessimism than full-blown self-loathing. It’s an internal dimness, a propensity to compare my present life with the shiny “ideal” of what I think I “should” be. I’m never quite there; I can never arrive at that ideal — the mirage “me” that lingers just out of my reach: thinner, faster, smarter, more creative, more successful, etc.
And all this comparing and falling short occurs on a deeper layer than my conscious mind. I’m so good at failing to reach my own exorbitant standards, and expecting to continue failing to reach them, that I don’t even have to think about it anymore: there’s an entire section of my subconscious mind devoted to carrying out that deflating process without prompt.
Translation: I’m really, really hard on myself… and I color my future gray every time I compare my present self to the twisted, glossy ideal “me” I think I ought to be.
So… where’s the encouragement in this dismal revelation? Ah, I thought you might be wondering that. It enters here…
That “ideal me” is a lie.
It’s a clever, wicked ruse of the enemy to keep me permanently dissatisfied with who I am (always telling me who I ought to be instead, and how hopelessly far I am from becoming that version of me), to trap me in the muck of self-frustration and criticism, to make me inescapably self-centered, convincing me to live my life as if it’s a mild tragedy.
Now here’s the fantastic part: I don’t have to fall for it. The chains that bind me to that cycle of comparison and failure are made of air. They don’t exist. I’m no prisoner. I can stand up and walk out of the lie because the chains aren’t real, the prison doesn’t exist. There is no haunting, unattainable “ideal me.”
I am who I am, and — by the blood of Christ — I am the delight of heaven, the righteousness of God.
Now.
Here.
At this weight, with this level of talent, with these scars and wounds and flaws.
Why? Because I am who Christ is: He lives within me in all of His glory and fullness. “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” (Gal. 2:20)
With what shall I compare myself? What “ideal me” can possibly exist to condemn who I presently am? Nothing in heaven or on earth can measure up to the glorious stature of Jesus Christ, and He has called me His beloved, His chosen one, His delight. He has given me His very identity.
Really, really.
So the tragedy of living in a rut of comparison and failure can become something else entirely… It can become a fairytale.
I exhort you with the same words I speak to myself:
Are you Christ’s? Then do not live as though your life is a tragedy. Live a fairytale. Child of God, gloom and failure do not await you at your story’s end — happily ever after does. You cannot ultimately be a failure because He never fails. Live and risk like you know that is true.
2000… and twelve.
I so enjoyed composing my year-ending blog post (with images and brief words), that I’ve decided to use the same format to express my longings and prayers for the coming year.
These are not “New Year’s resolutions.”
They aren’t specific expectations of where, when, who, how, etc.
Rather, they are my desires for Christ’s work in me this coming year of 2012…
“Your hands made me and formed me; give me understanding to learn your commands. May those who fear you rejoice when they see me, for I have put my hope in your Word.” Ps. 119:73-74
“As the deer longs for streams of water, so my soul longs for you, my God.” Ps. 42:1
“You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” John 8:32
“For you will go out with joy And be led forth with peace; the mountains and the hills will break forth into shouts of joy before you, And all the trees of the field will clap their hands.” Isaiah 55:12
” I will run the path of Your commandments, for You will enlarge my heart.” Ps. 119:32
“Do not call to mind the former things, or ponder things of the past. Behold, I will do something new. Now it will spring forth; will you not be aware of it? I will even make a roadway in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.” Is. 43:18-19
“So let us know, let us press on to know the Lord. His going forth is as certain as the dawn; and He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth.” Hosea 6:3
And finally…. this:
Here’s to the year to come.
So it goes.
2011 ends this evening.
Rather than writing some lengthy memoir of the year that was, I’m attempting to capture my internal world these past 12 months in images and brief words. I’ve meticulously selected each of the following photos/words… they are placed along the timeline of my experience from January 2011 (I found myself in India) until the present – December 31, 2011 (Olympia, WA).
This is what the year held – what 2011 was for me…
JANUARY 1, 2011
JANUARY 14, 2011
FEBRUARY 12, 2011
FEBRUARY 26, 2011
MARCH 11, 2011
MARCH 21, 2011
APRIL 1, 2011
APRIL 20, 2011
MAY 12, 2011
MAY 22, 2011
MAY 30, 2011
JUNE 15, 2011
JULY 6, 2011
JULY 23, 2011
AUGUST 7, 2011
AUGUST 10, 2011
SEPTEMBER 20, 2011
OCTOBER 1, 2011
OCTOBER 10, 2011
NOVEMBER 1, 2011
NOVEMBER 10, 2011
NOVEMBER 19, 2011
DECEMBER 22, 2011
DECEMBER 31, 2011
… His pen is poised, the story continues. I don’t know the number of years I have left, but I want more of Him in each one of them, precious many or few that they may be.
Story-time.
I’ve just completed the Hunger Games trilogy.
Magnetic books, those three.
Each time I encounter a new and compelling work of fiction, I experience afresh the powerful gravitational attraction of a well-woven plot, nuanced characters, a couple hundred pages bound together…
… a story.
Stories are catalysts. Take, for example, young Harry and his Hogwarts, Aslan’s Narnia, Frodo and the fate of Middle Earth… or (even) Edward and Bella’s codependent love triangle (poor Jacob). These stories were born as written words — simple, black font on white pages. Yet I can’t help but gape at the tidal waves of influence, obsession, and creativity which they’ve each uniquely spawned: films, soundtracks, spin-offs, games, images, etc.
Let’s be honest: the Twilight series is not on the verge of winning the Nobel Prize for Literature – in fact it’s about as far away from the ‘verge’ as a vegan from bacon. Yet, while critics and literature purists might slander its syntax, more than 10 million Twilight series books are in print.
10 million.
My my my, that’s a lot of books.
Twilight. Harry Potter. Hunger Games. Each series has held captive the iphone generation, tethering it to the written word when Angry Birds, Xbox, blue ray, and Words with Friends are beckoning.
Yes, stories are still mighty.
However, as I finished off the final page of “Mockingjay” (the third installment of Hunger Games), I was left with a sense of dimming lights, of muted finales. The Hunger Games story, as much as the series engrossed me, couldn’t deliver something transcendent through its last pages. I’m trying to say that the story, although gripping, was – at its ending – so very temporal. It couldn’t climb outside of its own darkness, the darkness that (I’ll admit) initially hooked me into reading the books so voraciously.
I felt the same of Twilight. Of Harry Potter.
All three series catapult into the realm of enthrallment, vying for massive amounts of time and space in the voracious reader’s mind.
And yet…
The transcendence is missing – that thread which illuminates longings for something wider, deeper, for something beyond here, beyond this world.
Twilight, Hunger Games, and Harry Potter remain, in every way, within the walls of this world. Their stories can deliver no more than a passionate human romance, a tomorrow-world fraught with violence and desperate for heroes, and a young boy enveloped by his chosen-ness in the face of peril, his singular calling. Compelling? Yes. Worth reading? Indeed.
But so very confined – confined to the limits of the human imagination, a rich source to be sure, but dry dust compared to the whispers of Eternity.
Those whispers are heard in Tolkien’s Middle Earth… in Lewis’ Narnia. Tolkien scripted it best: a good story “does not deny the existence of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance. It denies universal final defeat…giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy; Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.” I read his books, and I feel the tug – indelible, fierce, and silent – towards that which lies beyond these walls, beyond my eyes, my ears, my fingertips… my mind.
More.
Eternity.
The waking reality, the golden horizon, the shore beyond the sea.
Him.
HE writes the mightiest stories. His caress transforms the forgotten into the thunderous delight of heaven – a leper, an adulteress, an illiterate fisherman… a Man on a cross.
Scripted in the tender strokes of His own blood, His words – carved in a deep, piercing red – fall to the page more real, more transcendent, more final, and more alive than any other story my eyes might find.
Hunger Games.
Twilight.
Harry Potter.
All just wisps of fog, thinning and fading as the swift sunrise rides across the sky – sure, strong, and so very far beyond the walls of this world.
Something greater.
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” -Ecclesiastes 3:11
For three nights, I’ve laid my head on my pillow consumed with a poignant longing, an unsatisfied twinge of nostalgia for memories I’ve never experienced, an unsettled desire which I’ve no idea how to fulfill.
It winds its way around my heart in those undisturbed post-11pm moments, when I’m alone — when I’ve finished the homework, the laundry, the workout, and the social networking for the day. I sit on the edge of my bed, and it washes over me, the desire I can feel in the back of my throat and in the tremble of my hands.
Sometimes I try to scoot it away by thinking. I’ll lie down and think about being pursued, about marriage and adoptions, globe-trotting ministries and running the Boston marathon… about writing screenplays and traveling for months. But my lavish fantasies are a teaspoon to the canyon of that longing.
It’s always bigger.
Bigger than my daily experiences
Bigger than my daydreams.
Bigger than my most magnificently soaring moments.
The desire is loud, storming into my thoughts and ruining my intent to focus on other things. Yet, it’s also maddeningly soft and still, like a great, gaping whisper.
My head touches the pillow and it grips me, quiet and loud and bigger than everything else — that raging desire, silently screaming that there is something greater, and I’ve blood and skin and bones so that I can be part of it.
Life for now, however, is trips to Target, errands at Chase Bank, runs around Capitol Lake, emails to friends, nannying on Tuesdays, and laundry upstairs. It’s Cliff bars in the morning and chicken and rice at night.
Simple. Usual.
They’re only the cover of the book — these 24 years and however many I have left to my name. There will come a day, an hour, when the first page is turned and the story of stories begins — the real adventure. The curtain will fall on this grey reality and the sun will rise — warm and bright and soul-satisfying — over the landscape of eternity. Then I will taste the fullness of what is now only a drop, only a “fleeting glimpse of Joy; Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.” (J.R.R. Tolkien).
That’s it. That’s the day for which I long. Nothing here is good enough, true enough, bold and glorious enough to fill that desire. All I have are shadows and sketches.
But, as Sam the faithful Hobbit spoke to Frodo during the darkest night of their wearisome journey, “Above all shadows rides the sun.”
Dawn is coming.
Something greater has yet to unfold.
“End? No, it doesn’t end here. Death is just another path, one which we must all take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all changes to silver glass… And then you see it… White shores, and beyond, a far green country, under a swift sunrise.” -Gandalf from “Lord of the Rings”
Come home.
A brief addition to my most recent post (“Yes, again”).
If you feel disconnected, withdrawn, rebellious, or far-removed from the presence of Christ, then these silent moments (see previous post) — these opportunities to experience the tenderness and healing of His presence — might seem like an impossibility, or perhaps they might even seem less than desirable.
For those of you who sense what feels like a chasm between your heart and the intimacy of Christ’s presence, I have an exhortation:
Grace never runs out — you are never too far gone, never a lost cause. Are you breathing? It is because His breath is in you. You are known. You are desired. All of heaven testifies that You are His beloved. Child of God, it is never too late to come home.
It is worth it.
He is waiting. As long as you have breath in your lungs, He will wait for you.
Come home.
Joy awaits you.
Yes, again.
Quotes again?
Yes, indeed.
The following excerpts from my friend, Corin, are exquisite. He wrote them as part of an update while in Budapest, Hungary, for several months:
“As I sat on the tram going around Gellert Hill (Budapest), I wondered at the deep silence that each person carries in their hearts, the silence that we are often so afraid of, the silence that is loneliness to most people, solitude to some, fellowship with God to others — the closest we come to eternity. We use our minds to cover this silence, but at moments even our minds fail us and we are abandoned to the fearful enchantment of the passing moment. I realized that the tired old tram carried a treasure worth far more to God than all the kingdoms of the world; it was a vessel carrying God’s creations, the evocations of His glory and the objects of His passion. It was for these weary and dusty tourists and teenagers that Jesus shed His blood; they were objects of His romantic exchange of blood for life, so deeply romantic that human romance is only a flimsy shadow of this mighty flame, these flames of fire, the love that cannot be quenched, the love as strong as death, the unrelenting pursuit of the everlasting God.”
“This is the Jesus I have just begun to know on this mission experience, to see the world in the light of fire and blood. It has transformed the way I see humanity, the world around me, myself, the passing moments, music and silence. These are intimate changes within the heart that only God can make — the changes that have taken place in my own inner quiet, the quiet I have often run from because of loneliness, because I was afraid of letting Him pour Himself into my moments, making them beautiful with the delicate echoes of eternity.”
Corin writes about silences, moments of quiet. I’ve found that I think about those silences a great deal, I feel the slow grip of them often, and I find myself attempting to fill them as quickly as possible, with noise, with relationships, with achievements, with entertainment, and with my own circular patterns of noisy thought and imagination.
Emily, “Be still and Know that I am God.” He’s saying that to me. To you.
If we can make the choice not to fill them or run from them, the silent spaces in our lives becomes a poignant opportunity to taste the tender goodness of Christ, to feel the embrace that a busy life drowns, to feel our loneliness melt under the warm light of His gracious attention.
Be still. Let the silence — which at first feels much like loneliness — become a source of fellowship sweeter than human touch, conversation, or distraction.
Quiet your heart. He will speak, and you will know the intimately freeing power of His voice.
Further quotations.
I am a quote-fiend. Obviously.
I’ve included some of my fondest quotes in this post … Quite a lot to chew on, certainly, but well worth the time to absorb:
“No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we get home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels are put out, and the clean clothes are in the airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us: it is the very sign of His presence.”
(C.S. Lewis)
“For it is necessary for us to fall, and it is necessary for us to see the fall. If we did not fall, we would not know how feeble we are of ourselves, nor should we know the love of our Maker… And by the test of this failure, we shall have a noble and marvelous experience of love without end in God, for that love is hardy and wonderful. It cannot and will not be broken on account of trespass.”
(Dame Julian)
“I am not without scars, but I am softer, gentler, slower to judge, more spontaneous, more resourceful, more willing to see the story behind the behavior, more open to receive help from others, and more zealous to see how God really wants to use my adversity to make me of maximum service to him.”
(Laaser)
“The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God’s eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity and held safe in an everlasting embrace… We must dare to opt consciously for our chosenness and not allow our emotions, feelings, or passions to seduce us into self-rejection.
”
(Nouwen)
“The Bible’s purpose is not so much to show you how to live a good life. The Bible’s purpose is to show you how God’s grace breaks into your life… and saves you from the sin and brokenness otherwise you would never be able to overcome… religion is ‘if you obey, then you will be accepted’. But the Gospel is, ‘if you are absolutely accepted, and sure you’re accepted, only then will you ever begin to obey’. Those are two utterly different things. Every page of the Bible shows the difference.”
(Timothy Keller)
“We do not have to make ourselves suffer in order to merit forgiveness. We simply receive the forgiveness earned by Christ. 1 John 1:9 says that God forgives us because He is ‘just.’ That is a remarkable statement. It would be unjust of God to ever deny us forgiveness, because Jesus earned our acceptance! In religion we earn our forgiveness with our repentance, but in the gospel we just receive it.”
(Tim Keller)
“Our hope is in Christ’s righteousness, not our own—so it is not traumatic to admit our weakness and lapses. In religion we repent less and less often. But the more accepted and loved in the gospel we feel the more and more often we will be repenting. And though of course there is always some bitterness in any repentance, in the gospel there is ultimately a sweetness. This creates a radical new dynamic for personal growth. The more you see your own flaws and sins, the more precious, electrifying, and amazing God’s grace appears to you.”
(Tim Keller)
“So when you are sinned against or when the fallen world breaks your door down, don’t lash out or run away. Stand in your weakness and confusion and say, “I am not alone. God is with me, and he is faithful, powerful, and willing.” You can be realistic and hopeful at the very same time….Realism is found at the intersection of unabashed honesty and uncompromising hope. God’s word and God’s grace make that possible.”
(Paul Tripp)
“To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, not knowing what tomorrow may bring. This is generally expressed with a sigh of sadness, but it should be an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God. As soon as we abandon ourselves to God and do the task He has placed closest to us, He begins to fill our lives with surprises. Leave everything to Him and it will be gloriously and graciously uncertain how He will come in – but you can be certain that He will come.”
(Oswald Chambers)
“God gives us the vision, then He takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of the vision, and it is in the valley that so many of us faint and give way. Every vision will be made real if we will have patience. Think of the enormous leisure of God! He is never in a hurry. We are always in such a frantic hurry… Ever since we had the vision God has been at work, getting us into the shape of the ideal, and over and over again we escape from His hand and try to batter ourselves into our own shape. The vision is not a castle in the air, but a vision of what God wants you to be. Let Him put you on His wheel and whirl you as He likes, and as sure as God is God and you are you, you will turn out exactly in accordance with the vision. Don’t lose heart in the process.”
(Oswald Chambers)
My friend.
I have a good friend — one whom I’ve known more than a dozen years — whose words are undiluted encouragement for me. Today is just the sort of day to share his thoughts.
I’m thankful, a thousand times over, for these excerpts from his world:
“I feel like I’ve only just now begun to understand the depth and passion of God’s love. Yesterday it flew through my life like a storm, breaking down the compartments of my heart and releasing both joy and grief. One of my teachers once said that, though we see through a glass darkly in this world, the truest perspective on it is God’s light shining through the prism of the Holy Spirit. It opens up the heart at its deepest points: literally, Jesus sets the captives in us free, the buried sorrow and the captive tenderness, the latent compassion and hidden joy.”
“One of the songs that has given me greatest comfort is “You are Faithful” sung by Kim Walker: when the song rises to its climax, she sings, “Your spirit inside me holds me close; in your wonderful presence I let go.” That’s when I think of the Holy Spirit blowing through a room of worshipers; this kind of worship feels like the eye of the storm, the quiet place at the center of the storm of God’s glory. One of the Psalms speaks of God arriving with dark clouds under his feet and lightning and hail and wind… but then Elijah hears God’s quiet voice only after all the flames and dust storms have passed… a tension between the immense passion of God’s love and the tender intimacy at its center.”
Such truth.
He’s the ocean.
I have an Australian pen-pal. Dani is my age, she’s insightful, and she knows how to write words that matter.
Her latest email contained a paragraph I had to re-read three times out of my sheer delight in it. Her words flawlessly articulated my sentiments. It’s so good, and so how my brain works, that I had to share it:
“I am learning that when He is silent, He is listening and not abandoning; and that His timing is actually perfect; and that I am very, very, very, very impatient and demanding. He is like the ocean to me, I am a little bit afraid of it, couldnt live without it, love to be near it or just hear it or smell it, but I cannot even try to control the tides or the waves. Each morning it looks different, but it is still the same. It never changes, it never goes away, but it looks different in different places and times and lights of day or night. It will completely consume you if you desire, or you can just stay on the beach and admire its beauty. I have always loved the ocean but the older I grew, and realized the dangers of it, it made me scared a bit more. But being away from it makes me claustrophobic and makes me feel like something is missing. I can breath and my shoulders relax after a hard day when I wander there and sit. All problems seem smaller when I’m at the sea. And thats how Christ feels to me.”
Extraordinarily well said, Dani.
Words.
A friend encouraged me to copy into a journal the “quotes” which I’ve lately been writing and sharing via Facebook. So I’ve decided to do so in an e-journal — this blog to be precise.
Here they are… the snippets that I’ve written as a way to express what the Holy Spirit is teaching me:
Allow Him to love you. Let down your defenses, and the love of Christ will be for you the sweetest and deepest fulfillment for which your heart has ached. He will not give up on you.
He loves His children. You are His child. Never doubt your acceptance, your belonging.
Will you look down, brooding over your weaknesses and faults? Will you look back at your past, strewn with failures? Or will you look up at the Living Christ? Every promise of God is answered for us in Christ with a thundering, “Yes!” In Him, our hope has no limits.
Do you believe what He says of you? He has forgiven you. Completely. No spot remains. Live as though you believe it. Live as one held in the embrace of Christ’s love.
He delights in you. His delight is like nothing you’ve ever known. It is the explosive joy that created the universe. And this He feels towards you. Do not turn away from Him, ashamed or resistant, because He will never stop pursuing you with this relentless delight.
Allow Him to teach you to laugh again, but allow Him also to use your tears in ways you could never have dreamed. No season ofsorrow or pain is ever wasted. If you find yourself weeping, take heart. Christ transforms tears into the deepest, surest joys. Dawn is coming for you.
The matter is settled. Will you go on living each day as if there is no Christ… no power, no grace, no redemption for you? Will you take up your faults and failures over and over again as if He does not exist? Or will you let the matter be settled for good: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”
Because of Jesus, everything sad will one day come untrue. Every tear will be wiped away, every scar smoothed, every ache eased. The great shadow of pain, disappointment, imperfection, and sorrow that is now unshakable, will then depart for good, forever. Beloved of Christ, do not grow weary: He is coming for you.
This hard place in which you find yourself is not pointless; it is not a detour or a waste. Are you weary? Are you discouraged? Are you disappointed? Child of God, even if you cannot feel it in this moment, believe Him: you are His beloved, His favored one. He will move heaven and earth to respond to your cry. Choose today to define yourself by His love rather than your circumstances.
Who possesses your heart? You can be sure that it belongs to someone or something. Is it owned by another? You will be sorely disappointed. Is it owned by success? Failure will crush you. Is it owned by things? You will never have enough. Do you possess your own heart? You are a slave, chained to your pride. But is it Christ’s? Here alone is life. Never will your heart be more free, more full, than when it is entirely submitted to its true Beloved.
Wake up. Stand up. Lift your head. Today is full of hope and promise because Christ is in you. Whom shall you fear? The world cannot understand your identity: you are Christ’s. Dare to live that way.
Nouwen.
This bit from Henri Nouwen struck me:
I vividly remember how I had, at one time, become totally dependent on the affection and friendship of one person. This dependency threw me into a pit of great anguish and brought me to the verge of a very self-destructive depression. But from the moment I was helped to experience my interpersonal addiction as an expression of a need for total surrender to a living God who would fulfill the deepest desires of my heart, I started to live my dependency in a radically new way. Instead of living it in shame and embarrassment, I was able to live it as an urgent invitation to claim God’s unconditional love for myself, a love I can depend on without any fear.
Insightful. Powerful.
Everything sad comes untrue.
The following excerpt is taken from Lord of the Rings, Return of the King.
(Sam — a hobbit — previously watched Gandalf fall an enormously catastrophic distance while battling an evil creature. Sam believes Gandalf is dead. But in the end of the story, with Sam having been asleep for a long while and then beginning to regain consciousness, Gandalf stands before Sam, robed in white, his face glistening in the sunlight, and says…)
_______________
“Well, Master Samwise, how do you feel?”
But Sam lay back, and stared with open mouth, and for a moment, between bewilderment and great joy, he could not answer. At last he gasped: “Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?”
“A great shadow has departed,” said Gandalf, and then he laughed, and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days without count. It fell upon his ears like the echo of all the joys he had ever known. But he himself burst into tears. Then as a sweet rain will pass down a wind of spring and the sun will shine out the clearer, his tears ceased, and his laughter welled up, and laughing he sprang from bed… “How do I feel?” he cried.” Well, I don’t know how to say it. I feel, I feel” –he waved his arms in the air– “I feel like spring after winter, and sun on the leaves; and like trumpets and harps and all the songs I have ever heard!”
_______________
This excerpt is everything true and real for which I’m waiting… Because of Jesus, the answer to Sam’s question (in bold) is yes. Because of Jesus, everything sad will one day come untrue. Every tear will be wiped away, every scar smoothed, every ache eased. The great shadow of pain, disappointment, imperfection, and sorrow that is now unshakable, will then depart for good, forever. Beloved of Christ, do not grow weary: He is coming for you.
He is happy.
This quote is a gem of encouragement. I stumbled upon it in a quote search:
From Hanging In There by John Dickson:
“Whenever I doubted something about God, I felt guilty and wondered whether I was really a Christian or not. This only led me to try harder at being a “super Christian.” Finally I was worn out, fed up, and didn’t know what to do. If this is depressing you, stay tuned because it was at this point that I learned the most important lesson of my Christian life. It has taken me about two hours to think how to summarise this lesson into one sentence, but here it is:
God is happy with his children.
I know this sounds simple but the implications of it are huge. I discovered from the Bible that I could not become a better or more stable Christian, by my own effort. God is pleased with me because Christ took all my guilt on himself. It has nothing to do with how much I pray, or how often I tell others about Jesus. Even when I disobey him, God does not think to himself, “You bad Christian. How dare you disobey me?” As it says in Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
Frangipane.
I’m greatly enjoying the words of Francis Frangipane currently:
“Just because the current giant you are facing looks like one you defeated in the past, don’t buy the lie that you never really won the first battle! By the strength of God’s grace, you trusted the Almighty and conquered your Goliath. The first giant is dead. Satan is masquerading as your former enemy so he can slip past your faith and regain entrance into your life. Resist him.”
“The conflict will always be beyond your strength. The enemy always pushes us beyond our personal, inbred, preset limits concerning how far we will go for God. The test kills the limits of our humanity, until we are like Christ in everything. We are left with a choice: Become Christlike or gradually shrivel into superficial hypocrites: angry people who have stopped walking with God, who blame others for our bitterness.”
“Any time we open ourselves up to fear, we fall prey to the enemy’s deceptions and intimidations. Yet, if we submit our hearts to God and stand in faith, we can resist those first fearful thoughts. As we yield to God we can master our reactions to fear and the enemy will soon flee.”
“To win the war against fear, we must know the true God as He is revealed in the Bible. He works to give us lasting peace. He receives joy, not from condemning us but in rescuing us from the devil. Yes, the Lord will bring conviction to our hearts concerning sin, but it is so He can deliver us from sin’s power and consequences. In its place, the Lord works to establish healing, forgiveness and peace.”
“There will be no “knights in shining armor” in God’s kingdom; our armor will have many dings and dents. No, no perfect Hollywood heroes will ride to save the day; just wearied saints to look to God and, in weakness, find Christ’s strength. This, indeed, is the essence of God’s kingdom: divine greatness manifest in common people.”
“God has not given us a spirit of fear,” (2 Tim. 1:7 NKJV). Tormenting, debilitating fears are not from the Lord. Paul continues by saying that the nature of the Holy Spirit abiding in us produces a spirit “of power and of love and of a sound mind.” This means that our feelings of helplessness are not from God. We can be assured that, whenever our minds become darkened through self-condemnation, fear or tormenting guilt, we are living outside the realm of God’s love, for God’s perfect love “casts out fear” (1 John 4:18).”
“We must make the choice to rejoice. Too many of us are cynics. Cynicism, contrary to popular opinion, is not a gift of the Holy Spirit. A cynic is a habitual doubter. He is nearly always negative, expecting the worst, and probing for the worst when there is nothing negative is visible on the surface. Ultimately, a cynic will always discover something that confirms their expectations. I am saying that God is good, and even when things are not good, He works them for our good. If you believe this is true, your faith in God will relieve you from a host of dark and dangerous attitudes. God is Who He says He is. Even if we don’t know all the details along the way, we trust that He is good.”
“Dear friends, let us shake off the intoxication of compromise. Too many of us are entertained by things we should weep over. God destroyed the world during Noah’s day because of violence, yet we sit before televisions and in theaters amused by violence. The Lord ultimately destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because of their twisted morality, yet we do nothing to protest similar perversity entering our lands.”
“Why is the Lord so attracted to the lowly? He knows the weaker His servant, the more genuinely he will give glory to God. So the Lord kept Moses weak, and maintained his weakness throughout the wilderness. Forget Hollywood’s version of Moses, God never healed the stammer… Who would not be tempted to plead: Hurry Lord – heal his stutter! Yet, the Red Sea parted. God was never troubled by His servant’s flawed oratory skills. This is the glory of the cross: self is crucified by it so that Christ may be revealed in power.”
“Rest precedes rule. Peace precedes power. Do not seek to rule over the devil until you are submitting to God’s rule over you. The focal point of all victory comes from seeking God until you find Him, and having found Him, allowing His Presence to fill your spirit with His peace. From full assurance at His right hand, as we rest in His victory, let us rule in the midst of our enemies.”
“This is the only life you will have before you enter eternity. If you want to find joy, you must first find thankfulness. Indeed, the one who is thankful for even a little enjoys much. But the unappreciative soul is always miserable, always complaining. He lives outside the shelter of the Most High God.”
“The very quality of your life, whether you love it or hate it, is based upon how thankful you are toward God. It is one’s attitude that determines whether life unfolds into a place of blessedness or wretchedness. Indeed, looking at the same rose bush, some people complain that the roses have thorns while others rejoice that some thorns come with roses. It all depends on your perspective.”
Wash me clean.
Click & listen: Wash me clean. Then read as you listen:
She stepped outside, lifted her face, and smiled — mouth open, eyes closed. She’d never be back. Not here. Not ever.
The rain was more mist than rain, and the air teased her lungs with its tepid humidity. Heavy and still, everything felt heavy and still. But not heavy with her familiar pain. No, she had faced the pain at last, turned around and looked square at it. And what she saw wasn’t a victim or an enemy, a failure or an ego. She simply saw the cavernous hole that she’d never been able to stop up, to fill up, or to cover up. Then she’d seen clear through to something else entirely, something she couldn’t explain but wanted ravenously. The invitation fell into her open hands, and she said yes. And with her yes, the poignant hurt that had been sewn to her soul for all her years began to pull away at the seams. Night was retreating — in centimeters for now, but someday it would crawl back all those miles, and she’d really be free.
It took a moment, and it would take her lifetime. But the important thing was that it had begun.
So she stood in the still air, heavy with the juices of what she knew now to be hope, and whispered the only words that meant something — that meant everything — to her…
Wash me clean.
Wash me clean.
Wash me clean.
Over and over she said the words. And as she opened her eyes and drew her arms in around herself, she tasted the rain.
In these days, barren fields will sprout trees.
Fourteen steps and she was to her car. She didn’t turn around or glance back. She ducked in, turned the key, and licked her lips.
The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain.
Longfellow wrote those words, and yet, her whole life she’d tried to keep the clouds from releasing rain. She’d built a dam for her tears, and fed herself on the stale remedies of a rainless world. And she’d been dry because of it — awfully, unbearably dry.
She trembled a moment, then drove forward… into life, into hope, into the rain.
Quote depository.
A collection of choice quotes:
___________________________________________________
“We need God in ways we do not know. Don’t limit your experience of God to what you can think to ask. Ask for the unknown joy.” -John Piper
“We are women, and my plea is this- Let me be a woman, holy through and through, asking for nothing but what God wants to give me, receiving with both hands and with all my heart whatever that is.” – Elisabeth Elliot
”This is Jesus’ love – that He labors and suffers to enthrall us with what is infinitely and eternally satisfying. Himself.” -J. Piper
“God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.”
-Reinhold Niebuhr
“Faithfulness today is the best preparation for the demands of tomorrow.” -Elisabeth Elliot
“If I cannot hear ‘the sound of rain’ long before the rain falls, and then go out to some hilltop of the Spirit, as near to my God as I can and have faith to wait there with my face between my knees, though six times or sixty times I am told “There is nothing’, till at last there arises a little cloud out of the sea, then I know nothing of Calvary love. (Read 1 Kings 18:41-45)” -Amy Carmichael
“We say, then, to anyone who is under trial, give Him time to steep the soul in His eternal truth. Go into the open air, look up into the depths of the sky, or out upon the wideness of the sea, or on the strength of the hills that is His also; or, if bound in the body, go forth in the spirit; spirit is not bound. Give Him time and, as surely as dawn follows night, there will break upon the heart a sense of certainty that cannot be shaken.” -Amy Carmichael
“When ours are interrupted, His are not. His plans are proceeding exactly as scheduled, moving us always (including those minutes or hours or years which seem most useless or wasted or unendurable) toward the goal of true maturity (Rom 12:2 JBP).” -Elisabeth Elliot
“To wait open-handedly on God is an enormously radical attitude toward life. So is trusting that something will happen to us from Him that is far beyond our imaginings. So, too, is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life, trusting that He molds us according to His love and not according to our fears. Life with God is a life in which we wait, actively and fully present in the moment, trusting that new things will happen to us… new things that are far beyond our own imagination, fantasy, or prediction. We can live with fullness and joy in the present, secure and safe in the hope of the abundant goodness God has in store for us.” -Henri Nouwen
“I will charge my soul to believe and wait for Him, and will follow His providence, and not go before it, nor stay behind it.” -Samuel Rutherford
“Never think that God’s delays are God’s denials. Hold on; hold fast; hold out. Patience is genius.” -George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon
“God of our life, there are days when the burdens we carry chafe our shoulders and weigh us down; when the road seems dreary and endless, the skies grey and threatening; when our lives have no music in them, and our hearts are lonely, and our souls have lost their courage. Flood the path with light, run our eyes to where the skies are full of promise; tune our hearts to brave music; give us the sense of comradeship with heroes and saints of every age; and so quicken our spirits that we may be able to encourage the souls of all who journey with us on the road of life, to Your honour and glory.” -Augustine
“Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones. And when you have finished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.” -Victor Hugo
“Beloved, I say, let your fears go, lest they make you fainthearted. Stop inspiring fear in those around you and now take your stand in faith. God has been good and He will continue to manifest His goodness…….. Let us approach these days expecting to see the goodness of the Lord manifest. Let us be strong and of good courage, for the Lord will fight for us if we stand in faith.” -Francis Frangipane
“The true follower of Christ will not ask, “If I embrace this truth, what will it cost me?” Rather he will say, “This is truth. God help me to walk in it, let come what may!” -A. W. Tozer
“Nothing so hinders us in what we are doing as to be longing after something else; in so doing, we leave off tilling our own field, to drive the plough through our neighbour’s land, where we must not look to reap a harvest; and this is mere waste of time. If our thoughts and hopes are elsewhere, it is impossible for us to set our faces steadily towards the work required of us.” -Francis de Sales
“Emotional healing is almost always a process. It takes time. There is a very important reason for this. Our heavenly Father is not only wanting to free us from the pain of past wounds, he is also desirous of bringing us into maturity, both spiritually and emotionally. That takes time, because we need time to learn to make the right choices. He loves us enough to take the months and years necessary to not only heal our wounds, but also build our character. Without growth of character we will get wounded again.” -Floyd McClung
“The Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to do good. The Christian thinks any good he does come from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.” -C. S. Lewis
“Little things are indeed little, but to be faithful in little things is a great thing.” -Mother Teresa
‘The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God’s eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity and held safe in an everlasting embrace… We must dare to opt consciously for our chosenness and not allow our emotions, feelings, or passions to seduce us into self-rejection.” -Henri J. M. Nouwen
“Your true identity is as a child of God. This is the identity you have to accept. Once you have claimed it and settled in it, you can live in a world that gives you much joy as well as pain. You can receive the praise as well as the blame that comes to you as an opportunity for strengthening your basic identity, because the identity that makes you free is anchored beyond all human praise and blame. You belong to God, and it is as a child of God that you are sent into the world.” -Henri J. M. Nouwen
the unknown Joy 