Forgiving – think it through!

God always seems to use my breaks from school to teach me my hardest lessons. This time it was about forgiving even when I wasn’t wrong. Had God asked me to do this a year ago, I’d probably thought He had lost His mind or I was hearing ungodly things. It was so illogical to me and against everything I believed in. But when He asked a few days ago, I said okay. Though it still feels illogical, His way is always best and I’m just going to move forward because I trust Him. No argument there, but it took days for me to understand how to move forward. I tend to think that how I think is who I really am – that my thoughts are controlled by the condition of my heart and bubble up from it. Never did it occur to me that what I was feeling and what was bubbling up from inside, was actually a habit. Feelings shouldn’t control whether I forgive someone or not, I should control whether I forgive someone or not. Feelings come from my thoughts and I should control my thoughts. They should not control me. And thought patterns can be habits. It isn’t that my heart is rank with evil, it is that my thought patterns were developed from a time when my heart was ruled by evil and now God has now decided that it is time for me to change this habit. I’m not used to thinking that it is okay (or even safe) to let something go when I’m right (I don’t even like to do it when I’m wrong- HA) but I totally trust God and I plan to do my best to obey.

Commitment and Motivation – Avoiding Spiritual Valleys this New Year

So many of us start each New Year motivated to change. We make resolutions about diets, finances, and housework, but they seldom stick. We read books to try to increase our chances of success and then even more books to try to figure out what went wrong. And it often seems that things go wrong. The weight comes back, the house is a mess after our schedule gets blown, and it always rains on our best efforts with the budget. We were so motivated. So what did go wrong?

There is a difference between motivation and commitment. Motivation is defined as the general desire or willingness of someone to do something. Motivation can wax and wane depending on our circumstances. Commitment is different. It is defined as an agreement or pledge to do something. It means we do something no matter how motivated we are at any particular moment in time. Commitment is when it clicks that it isn’t about feelings, pain, or convenience, but that it is about our mind. It is all mental. Quitting begins in our mind. Commitment begins in our mind. Commitment denies the desires of self to maintain our pledge. Until we understand that, we are only motivated.

Our walk with God is a commitment. There are growing pains, times when things don’t make sense, when our spiritual gas tank is low, when we feel we are going more backwards than forwards – times when we know we are in the valley. But God is already committed to us. He won’t let go. We too, must commit to not letting go. We can’t be just motivated to follow God, we must be committed to following God.

Sifting my thoughts on tithing.

I think I’ve mentioned on my blog that God seems to be sifting everything I believe so that I have to understand why I believe what I believe. I thought He’d touched about everything – divorce, baptism, santification, etc – but yesterday He hit me with one I wasn’t expecting – tithing. For about 2 years now, we’ve given our 10% and never even thought twice about it. Until now. Not only are we kind of just scrapping by, there’s some frustration with how the church is spending that money (actually in this case – not spending it). It’s obviously a temptation – give less to the church; fix our money problems at the same time – but it is causing me to seek answers about tithing. Why do I believe what I believe? How do you ask someone to tithe 10% when they are struggling financially? How do you justify asking someone to give to the church when it causes them hardship but they don’t perceive the church as being in hardship? What do you tell someone that really disagrees with how the church is spending the money? Is 10% biblical – particularly in the New Testament? I don’t have answers yet.

Advent – The Messiah is Coming.

It’s funny how sometimes a single thought can change our entire perspective. It happened the other day after I read a single sentence. I was reading my morning devotional which was Psalm 111. It’s a nice psalm and easy to understand. Almost too easy so I figured I was probably missing some deeper meaning. I decided to read the footnotes in my study Bible. The sentence that began reshaping my world was this, “Wesley (John Wesley) understood baptism as the means by which Gentiles enter into the everlasting covenant that God established with Israel.” This really clicked for me. Baptism as a means of grace just flies over my head (my brain just doesn’t work that way) but this I could really understand. But the best part was yet to come.

My next devotional was on the death of Jesus and how that is the only way that we are accepted by God. Perfect obedience to earn a place is impossible.  I thought about my own failings at my daily attempts to be perfect. I thought about how much I had regretted getting baptized when I did because I didn’t really understand it, I did it for the wrong reasons, and worse yet, I had not lived a holy/perfect life thereafter. Suddenly, I had a whole new view of baptism and Jesus. I realized that by being baptized I was now a descendant of Abraham. The stories of the Israelites were my stories. And my failures to keep the covenant after I was baptized where just like their failures to keep God’s law after He called them to be His people. They found out it wasn’t possible to keep the law so they longed for the promised Messiah. And for the first time ever, I longed for the promised Messiah as well. Though I live on this side of His coming, it is neat to go into this Advent season with anticipation in my heart for my Deliverer and a better understanding of who I am as a member of the body of Christ.

How big are those giants really? Beware of doubt

One of my favorite passages in the Bible is in Numbers. Yes – you heard me correctly – it’s in the book of Numbers. In 13:25-33, we read the report of the spies sent to Canaan. They come back with a report about how it is flowing with milk and honey and even bring back some impressive fruit to prove it. Unfortunately, the people in the land look powerful. God’s promised them He’ll give them this land, but now that they see what is before them, doubt creeps in. The interesting thing to me is how their doubt escalates the size of the inhabitants of Canaan. In the beginning the spies report that the inhabitants are strong, as they continue talking, they describe the inhabitants as descendants of Anak. Anak was considered the father of giants. So the inhabitants have gone from strong men to giants. Caleb tries to stop them but as they talk they allow their fear to take over. They continue. Now, the inhabitants turn into Nephilim (even bigger and more powerful than the Anakites). And then suddenly, the land isn’t flowing with milk and honey – it is a land that devours and the spies feel they are so small that they are just mere insects.

This is what doubt does to us. Once we let it in, it grows. What looks like a  tough situation, grows into an impossible situation. We start seeing giants where there are just ordinary difficulties. One of the dangers I get from this passage is how we let doubt in by how we talk. We hit a tough spot and we “share” it with our friends. Some of our friends are like Caleb, they try to help us see how God can overcome, but some of our friends aren’t really friends at all. They are glad to see giants with us and then for some reason, the more we talk with these friends, the worse the problem looks. I think we actually talk ourselves into seeing a bigger problem than really exists.

Ordinary or truly giant, God can handle all of the problems. We need to be very careful that we don’t give doubt room to grow and part of that is not talking ourselves into seeing what really isn’t there.

An exodus but are we leaving?

The exodus of the Israelites from Egypt reminds me so much of our own spiritual journeys. God has rescued us from the slavery of our sin but we’re still trying to hang on to our old ways. Just like the Irsaelites in Egypt, we groaned under our terrible master (sin) and we dreamed of nothing but freedom. However, when we are finally liberated we end up grumbling in the wilderness. There are changes that come with freedom and soon we forget how terrrible our lives of slavery were and so we try to go back. Change is hard and uncomfortable. It takes time to adapt to a new way of living and if we aren’t careful we begin to believe that what we were used to was better.  So a trip that should take 2 weeks ends up taking 40 years. Our new lives can start now. We can enter the promised land as soon as we leave our old master.

Blessings

I’m amazed how much God takes care of us even in the small details of life. I feel so blessed as I look at how God works all the little pieces together to make things happen. For example, I really struggle with exegesis (interpretation of Scripture). I read for the big picture (which I’m now finding out isn’t such a bad thing), but I don’t see sermons in most of my Bible reading. Last semester, I took a class on public speaking. I wasn’t supposed to take it and had originally been given credit for my previous college course but somehow I ended up back in it. Public speaking isn’t a problem for me but I learned something in the class that really really helped me and that was learning to outline. At the same time I was taking the class, I started working through a book on learning Greek. I happened to flip to the back of the book and found a chapter in it on learning to take a sentence or a paragraph and break it into phrases (similar to diagramming but for content not structure). I spent some time practicing this on different passages and though I wasn’t doing very well with the book’s method, I developed one of my own that is working for me. This semester I’m taking Biblical Interpretation and doing my first exegetical paper. I really don’t think I would be doing well in the class if it wasn’t for learning to outline and learning to phrase verses last semester. Now, I’m finding that exegesis is an acquired skill for me and I just simply didn’t have all the tools I needed. God is filling in gaps in my education that I can’t even anticipate! I feel so blessed and so not worthy.

Sin – Can you smell it?

When I was in high school, I spent a year in Germany as an exchange student. Upon my return, I flew into New York, never left the airport, and flew to Houston. When I stepped outside of the airport in Houston, I was overwhelmed by the smell of salt. The airport is about 40 miles from the bay and 60 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. It smelled like it was right on the beach. I’ve lived all my life within 60 miles of the Gulf and never noticed the smell, but after spending a year away, I immediately noticed it upon my return. I could hardly stand it.

Our tolerance for sin can by just like this. If we live to close to it, we don’t notice it. It doesn’t bother us, but the more time we spend away from it, the more sensitive we become to it. We can’t stand to be around it and want to distance ourselves from it. Let’s not live so close to sin that we can’t smell it any more.

A Spiritual Foundation

Through out the summer I could tell that this summer would probably go down in my books as the time that I experienced the most spiritual growth. God developed an incredible lesson plan for me that really helped me settle some issues and because of that, I’m not riding a roller coaster in my emotions so much any more. Little did I know that God was just building a foundation for spiritual growth. Hourly now, I’m shedding baggage. With each interaction I have with someone, God is changing my perspective. I started out the summer feeling very depressed about realizing I was such a terrible person. Now, I really know how terrible I am, but it no longer depresses me. I am confident that God will transform me into what He wants. I do have to be careful that I don’t decide what that looks like and then get disappointed when I don’t get there, but when I stayed focused on just being obedient day by day, it has been incredible to see what God is doing in my life literally hour by hour. Also, when I stay focused on God and His work in my life, I’m not quite so judgemental about others – I recognize the work it takes in my life to be obedient and I have a great deal of empathy for everyone.

How Deep the Father’s Love for us

I love the song, How Deep the Father’s Love for us. As I was listening to the words in one of the verses, it occurred to me how many of us want to deny that we would be one of the mockers.

Behold the Man upon a cross,
My sin upon His shoulders
Ashamed I hear my mocking voice,
Call out among the scoffers

I have no doubt I would have been among them. It does shame me. But here is the part that really tears at my heart, God knew. He knew I would be one of the mockers. He knew and He loved me anyway. I think we should still be ashamed but I also think we have to move past it. He knew and yet went to the cross so we must let go and accept the love and freedom He offers.