Category Archives: Blog

i’m begging us to stop it

Beloved, can we stop aligning ourselves with something just because it sounds good? Because when we post these self-empowering statements for all the world to read, here is what we are really saying…

People are the basis of my worth, my peace, my joy, my self-respect. People will determine how I see myself and how I feel about myself, and people have the power to determine my inner-world.

Their brokenness threatens my wholeness.

What tickles the ears of the world should sound so foreign to ours. People using people for their own self-worth should not be a concept that resonates with us.

We are the sons and daughters of God. Not one ounce of our worth depends on the thoughts or opinions of fallen human beings. Jesus, not mortals, is our peace, our joy, our reason for living, and there should be nothing so strong as to move us from that position.

We are ambassadors of Christ, His representatives on the earth. We are the people commissioned to love others with the love of Christ. His is not a love that is dependent on reciprocation. It does not demand to be noticed, to be treated fairly, to be respected or to be made to feel valuable. Just as Jesus was complete in His Father and needed no man to confirm His identity, so it is with us.

We are complete in Jesus, and we need no earthly form of confirmation of our value.

So when we begin to question our worth, think less of ourselves, lose our peace, lose our joy and resort to self-empowerment clichés to pump our self-esteem back up, the issue is not the people who surround us.

It’s the unbelief within us.

There is great need out there. People all around us need to feel valued, to believe they have worth. People need peace, and Lord knows real joy is in short supply.

But we are not the answer to their need, we are the ones who know the answer. Jesus. Always, Jesus.

But if we don’t know, believe, live like He is our answer, they aren’t going to buy it when we tell them He is their answer.

So I’m begging us to stop posting platitude memes that have no biblical foundation of truth in them. Stop blaming people for our self-esteem issues. Stop demanding people make us feel what God has already told us we are. Let’s stop loving God but believing people. Let’s love God and believe God so that we can truly love people in a way that leads them to God, not to us.

Say it with me now…

I am a child of God. Completely known and completely loved. I am of great worth to my Father, and could do nothing to cause Him to love me less, or to love me more. I am a foreigner on this earth, a citizen of heaven on a pilgrimage home. I am not a victim, I am more than a conqueror through Jesus. I have overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of my testimony. My destiny has been established by God. The peace of Christ is mine, the joy of the Lord is mine, and my feet are planted on a rock, not shifting sand. I am the Beloved of God, His church, His Bride, the one He died to save.

I do not, nor will I ever, need fallen human beings to prop up my self-esteem.

Jesus is enough for me.

#bedifferent  #betheChurch

what are your lies?

snakeThe woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit from the trees in the garden. But about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, ‘You must not eat it or touch it, or you will die.’” 
“No! You will not die,” the serpent said to the woman.  “In fact, God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  Then the woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; 

How many times had she looked at that tree? Walked past it? She was well aware of the presence of that tree in her garden home. What was it about this day?

A lie was spoken and a lie was believed and then the woman saw. 

 Things look different through the lens of a lie.

If you believe that gratifying your lust is natural, and doesn’t hurt anyone, then pornography will look harmless.

If you believe that the life of the unborn is expendable and of less value than your own life, then abortion will look like a right.

If you believe that your happiness is what matters most, then being faithful in your marriage will look optional.

If you believe that certain people are superior to others, or that a victim mentality is yours by right, then racism will look justified.

The enemy knows one thing very well.

The best way to make something deadly look good, is to lie about it.

We all have lies that have been whispered in our ear. Lies about God, about other people, and about ourselves.

But the power is not in the lie that we hear, it is in the lie we believe.

If Eve had heard the lie but chose to trust God’s word over satan’s, things would have been much different.

We have the same choice.

So now I’m asking God to show me my lies, because, you know. The lies sound true and the tree still looks good, know what I mean?

I have to be willing to ask:

What have I believed about God, about others, and about myself that cannot be supported by His Word?

And then I have to choose truth, no matter how hard it is. No matter what it costs me. No matter how wrong it will make me look. No matter how much humble pie I have to eat. No matter how much it will force me to forgive someone, including myself. No matter how much I will have to repent. No matter how addicted I am to self-loathing. No matter how right my victim attitude feels. No matter what I will have to let go, stop doing, stop thinking, stop saying. No. matter. what.

I must choose truth if I am going to choose life.

this is how He captured my heart

matt-9It amazes me that I can read passages that I’ve read many times before, and still see something new. This chapter is full of familiar stories of healing and confrontation, but in the midst of all that He is saying and doing, I find the heart and character of Jesus.

And my own heart is compelled to run to Him all over again.

Some men brought to him a paralyzed man, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.”

His paralysis remained but his sins did not and Jesus called it a ‘take heart’ moment. And in those few moments between the spiritual healing and the physical healing, I wonder what the paralyzed man was thinking. Was he disappointed that Jesus gave him what he couldn’t see, leaving his physical need unmet? Did his heart do what mine does sometimes — put the spiritual healing in a pocket and hold out its hand for more of what it really wants?

And I wonder if, a few minutes later, he was blown away by the profound generosity of a Savior who gave him what he desperately needed and then lavished him with what he desperately wanted. Did it occur to him (or me) that the forgiveness of sins was what he needed the most and deserved the least? Me and that paralyzed man have this in common…

We should be blown away by the generosity of God.

 Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, ‘Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts?'”

Nothing is hidden. No thought. No action. No intent of my heart. But the lump in my throat is not because He knows. It’s there because He’s always known and it didn’t stop Him. He pursued me anyway. Chose me anyway. He is so very different from you and me. He has known all there is to know of me, and still He calls me beloved.

And this becomes the death knell to my shame:  I am fully known yet fully loved.

 “While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?'”

phariseesOf course they asked. They needed to make a point. Holy does not mingle with the unholy. Rules were breaking and they didn’t like it one bit. Most of us know at least one pharisee in our lives. Some of us have to look no further than a mirror.

But it is His answer that captivates me.

“I desire mercy”

For three months I didn’t know if there was cancer anywhere in my body other than my uterus. They saw something in my lung and then in my breast and the waiting about did me in. In that waiting, I found myself with one cry, and I raised it every day. “Lord have mercy.” Given the way I had treated and neglected my body, and my family history, I believed that the only way I was not going to have more cancer was through the mercy of God. 

Two days before Christmas mercy fell with the words “your PET scan is clean”.

The fact that Jesus eats with sinners means one thing to a pharisee and something else entirely to a sinner.

But His desire for mercy means everything to me.

girl-in-shockI love that He can move mountains, that His voice can shake the earth and that He can tell sickness and disease to get out and they have to obey. His power and authority leave me wide-eyed with wonder and awe.

But this…

He is profoundly generous, giving me what I desperately needed the most and deserved the least. And then He lavished me with what I desperately wanted. He fully knows me and my every thought. Every motive of my heart, every desire that is less than pure, every prideful, selfish piece of me. And He loves me still. And though judgment and punishment I have well earned, the desire of His heart is mercy. 

praise-you-god-i-give-it-all-to-youThis is how He captured my heart.

Matthew—We Can Stop Inviting Jesus

“‘Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.’ Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.'” 

“‘Lord,” another of His disciples said, “first let me go bury my father.” But Jesus told him, “Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” – Matthew 8:19-22

narrow

Jesus was clear that following Him would not be a journey of 5-star hotels, but a narrow gate to a narrow road and most of what we clutch in our hands and our hearts will not fit.

He was equally clear that there is an urgency in the Gospel and no other perceived obligation can come first. To the man’s request that Jesus wait until he tied up his loose ends, Jesus’ answer was no.

But what really caught my eye was the missing invitation.

Neither of the men invited Jesus to be their Lord and Savior. Instead, they each said they would be His follower.

And for some reason, that became meat on a bone for me. A bone that I need to pick with us, the ambassadors for Christ, the disciple-makers, the carriers of the Gospel. So many of us present people with the same message, in varying forms:

“Invite Jesus into your heart/life to be your Lord and Savior, and you will be saved.”

We need to stop presenting the Gospel as though it is our invitation to God.

“Therefore let all the house of Israel know with certainty that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah!” Acts 2:36

Our invitation does not make Him what God has already made Him.

I think the real reason that our invitation to Jesus has become a point of contention for me, is that it feels too much like we are standing on a level playing field with Jesus. Like we have the power over whether or not He is Lord.

“…so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow—of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth—and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Philippians 2:10-11)

It’s not that the Christians have a Lord, and everyone else doesn’t. Jesus is Lord of all. The question will never be, is He Lord and Savior?, but did we obey the Gospel and receive life? Faith is an act of obedience, not an invitation. (Romans 1:5, 16:26; Romans 10:15-17)

I know what you’re thinking. The invitation gives them a starting point, a way of expressing verbally what is happening in their heart. It’s semantics, really.

Except it isn’t. I cannot find even a theological principle that implies our ability to extend an invitation to the Creator of heaven and earth, for anything. Even our opening the door that He is knocking on is not our invitation to Him, it is our yes to Him. He’s already at the door. No invitation needed. (Revelation 3:20)

Gospel means good news. The good part is not that we can invite Jesus in. It is that He can make us stop being dead.

 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world… But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love that He had for us, made us alive with the Messiah even though we were dead in trespasses.

For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift. (Ephesians 2:1,4, 8 – emphasis mine)

Lazarus comes to mind as a physical picture of a spiritual event. He was very dead. Jesus neither gave an invitation nor waited for one. He gave a command — “Lazarus, come forth”. Disobedience would have kept him in the grave. Obedience brought him out.

Invitations are nice, polite. Unintrusive. Friendly. I think maybe that’s what we want the Gospel to be.

But it isn’t. The keys to death and hell were not politely handed over, they were taken with earth-shaking force. There was nothing friendly about the atonement for our sin.

The Gospel is bloody and real and hell shattering and it is not about making bad people good, or hurt people better, but about making dead people live.

passionofchristqi4

This was not to make us better but to put an end to our death. 

It leaves me a little wrecked with wonder as I look back through this lens and see what really happened in April of 1989 when I thought I was inviting Jesus to come into my life to be my Lord and Savior.

In reality, He stood at my tomb and commanded me to come forth. And in His love, goodness, and mercy, He took my invitation as obedience and removed my grave clothes.

Oh. How I love Him.

faithful, loving, co-laboring in 2017

Dear friend, you are showing faithfulness by whatever you do for the brothers, especially when they are strangers. They have testified to your love in front of the church. You will do well to send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God, since they set out for the sake of the Name, accepting nothing from pagans. Therefore, we ought to support such men so that we can be co-workers with the truth. – 3 John 5-8

Just a few observations from this passage:

When we give our financial support to those who are “setting out for the sake of the Name” (or those doing ministry/missionary work, as we would call it), God’s Word calls that faithfulness.

So when I hoard my money and let others do all the giving, refusing to support those I don’t know…am I being unfaithful?

Gaius’ faithfulness in supporting fellow Christians resulted in a testimony of love before the church.

When I do give, am I giving from a place of love, or a place of grudging obligation? Even if others’ were to testify to it as love, would I know that my giving was prompted by love? Would God?

My giving to the work of ministry makes me a co-worker of those who are laboring with the truth.

Do I want to co-labor with others who are doing the work of God? Or do I prefer to show up on Sunday and no more? Am I content giving only my weekly participation during the church service, spending the rest of my time and money on myself/my family?

I think that’s really what it comes down to, don’t you? At what level do we want to live Christianity? Unfortunately, for many, it really does funnel down to the money factor.

At the same time, I think all of us want to be considered faithful. And I really do think we want to be loving. But we must be willing to look at why we are not. What hinders our giving? Fear? Greed? Jealousy? Pride? Whatever it is, it will not go away until we bring it to God and deal with it.

May this year find you and me to be faithful, loving, co-laborers in the truth, having allowed God to confront the things that have kept us from it, and give us a new perspective on our money, time, and motives.

what has to happen for His word to be true

typing-on-keyboardAll the writer people are doing it, and something in me that wants to be counted among the writer people set out to do it too. Put fingers to keys and let flow something profound about the birth of Jesus. So I flipped over to Luke chapter 2 and got ready. But I never got past the first seven verses.

Because I saw this —

“So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David.” (Luke 2:4)

And then I remembered this prophecy — 

“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for Me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” (Micah 5:2)

And then I went back to verse one and my mind blew up just a little.

“In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.”

In that year, that month, Caesar Augustus had to call for a census.

But before that a man named Joseph had to love a girl named Mary and ask for her hand in marriage (or offer her dad six goats and a really nice rug).

And Joseph had to come from the line of David so that he would have to travel to his hometown of Bethlehem, the city of David, to register for the census.

But before that, Mary had to become with child by the Holy Spirit at just the right time so that she was almost due to give birth when the census was ordered, so that once in Bethlehem, our Savior was born.

And all I can think is nothing is random.

There is order and strategy and purpose in everything God does to bring about His word.

And then my mind does a mad dash.

And we all, who with unveiled faces reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory… (2 Corinthians 3:18)

What has to happen for this to be true?

Every mountaintop and every valley.

refiners-fire3Every crucible, deep water and wilderness wandering.

Every moment spent at His feet and every single one spent with my face to the hard ground of Gethsemane whispering “not my will but Yours be done”.

Every green pasture and still waters and invitation to the table with Him. Every stumble and every victory dance.

And every single trial.

Nothing is random and nothing is wasted. Everything is leading from glory to glory.

We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God: those who are called according to His purpose. (Romans 8:28)

What comes to me comes for me. Because God keeps His word. Always.

The Savior was born in Bethlehem, and I will be transformed into His image.

Chloe

Dear Chloe,

Someday, you will read about these events, but can I just give you my account of what took place? You will read about it in far more historical detail, I’m sure, but these are my observations, for the record.

So it came to pass that it was time for a new president. To be honest, it felt like our nation was coming apart at the seams. Depending on which side you took, we were either spiraling into the depths of complete moral decay, or we were on the brink of change that would make us better than ever. But there is no denying that we were not a united nation, by any stretch of the imagination. And since this is my accounting, I will just say that it felt like we were a country on the verge of imploding, and I knew better than to hope that a new president would change that regardless of who they were or what party they represented.  Chloe, never put your hope in a president, a political party, or any other world system. Your hope will only be unshakable when it rests firmly on God, who is never, ever shaken.

campaign-2016Anyway, it was time for a changing of the guard, and the race was on. First, who would run? The blue party held no surprise, nor was it even a contest. But the red party, oh my. Out of the pack of twelve shiny choices, emerged the “least likely to ever be nominated for President”. And that’s when everything started shaking, Chloe. That’s when this race for the White House went from an event in history to a historical event.

Democrats were horrified then humored, confident that this thing was now in the bag. Republicans seemed to be somewhat dumbfounded in a ‘what just happened?‘ kind of way, but finally said ‘we meant to do that‘ to the watching world, and the dogfight race was on.

Oh, Chloe, this was a grievous, vicious time, the likes of which I personally had not witnessed in my lifetime. From both sides, the character assassinations were in big, bold headlining script, while digging-at-nightthe issues were sent to the small print area. And the country took their cues and jumped in, holding their own excavations, and the deeper they dug, the more sins they found. But that isn’t the saddest part. The world’s actions are not what grieved me so deeply.

It’s the Church, Chloe. It’s how we responded that broke my heart. It’s the picture of the people of God giving way to headlines, to all of the ‘what if’s’. Giving way to fear. Frantically turning to human reasoning, to our own wisdom. It’s the sound of brothers and sisters name calling and belittling one another. Pointing fingers. Using words like “what kind of Christian…” which is a polite way of calling into question someone’s sincere faith in Jesus. Judgment and anger and fear were all over the face of the Bride, Chloe, and that frightened me far more than either candidate did.

And I just kept thinking, what if this election isn’t really about either of the candidates? What if God is doing something that seems inconceivable to us? What if God has not entrusted the nations to humanity, but has retained His sovereignty, His right to outvote us? What if we, His Church, asked Him who to vote for, and then simply obeyed, regardless of what we thought about His choice?

What if His ways really are higher than ours? What if His thoughts aren’t our thoughts at all?

And this…both sobering and comforting…what if God isn’t using these times and these events to change a nation, but to change the Church so that the nation can change? What if we are what this election is all about?

What if judgment really does start in the house of God?

Here’s what I want to leave you with, Chloe. Hope. Hope and even joy. Because we are the Church. His chosen vessel to light up the world. His beloved to whom He is forever committed. His faithfulness is for us. We are His people and we have been lavished with His love and His grace, set apart for Him, to be holy and blameless in His sight. We are cared for, provided for and fought for by our mighty God and loving Father. We are His hands and feet, His ambassadors to a dying world. We know Him and are known by Him. We are the joy set before Him as He gave His life on the cross. We are His body, and we have been given everything we need for life and godliness (regardless of who is president). We have every reason to hope, to rejoice, to trust, because we belong to and serve the Creator and Ruler of every nation, including this one. We, you, have nothing to fear.

Chloe, you will live with the future fallout of this election, no matter which way it goes. But know this, God never let go. He never turned away and left us to our own devices, our own ability to choose a leader. He is far too faithful for that. The person who became the 45th president was by God’s choosing. If I don’t believe that, then I cannot believe that He is, as He claims, the sovereign ruler of the nations. But the most important lesson I hope you take from this time in history is this…

The throne of God is in Heaven, not the White House. And He will never give it up. 

…and he said, “O LORD, the God of our fathers, are You not God in the heavens? And are You not ruler over all the kingdoms of the nations? Power and might are in Your hand so that no one can stand against You.

~ 2Chronicles 20:6

*Chloe is my imaginary friend from the future. It happens.