Tag Archives: Faith

The Servants Knew and So Did I

The man in charge tasted the water; it had now turned into wine! He did not know where it had come from, but the servants who had drawn the water knew. 

John 2:9

The words are in here. Waiting for me to set them free in the form of coherent sentences. The words, though, are swirling around like dust in a shaft of light, mixed with the emotions of what I see in this story. And not just this one, but every where in the gospels that I look at Him. *Sigh.* I’ll do my best to herd the words into a story of sorts.

This man, the one in charge at the wedding, he thought he was just tasting good wine provided by the bridegroom. (yeah…I caught that. Did you? Jesus. Our bridegroom. New wine.) Anyway.

The servants knew all about that wine that used to be water. They had seen it, participated in it. These were the hired help. Waiters. Seen, but perhaps unnoticed by the people eating and drinking and being merry. But they saw what Jesus did and I wonder what they thought of it all. Did they want to just fall down at His feet and never get back up?

I remember when it happened to me. My daughter was a teenager. That sweet girl is now, well, edging close to 40, but let’s not get sidetracked. Back then she was young and she was running wild from her pain with people that were not good for her. That sounds kind of generic, so let me see if I can put it another way. Her friend group was not just not good for her, they were actively bad for her, destructive in so many ways. As her mother, I was wringing my little hands half to death with worry and prayers that felt like they were hitting my ceiling and bouncing off the walls. And then Jesus told me how to fill the waters jars, so to speak. But instead of water jars, I would be filling bowls.

When he took the scroll, the four living beings and the twenty-four elders fell down in front of the Lamb. Each one held a harp and gold bowls filled with pieces of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people…

Revelation 5:8

“Ask Me to remove them from her life.” (this generated not a small discussion on – a. is that legal, you know, spiritually speaking, and b. what exactly did He mean by “remove”. We worked it out.)

So right there, in that two story house, I began to fill the bowls. And two weeks later the first friend left her life. And then another, and another, until they were all gone for various reasons. But here’s the thing. My daughter didn’t know, and those friends didn’t know that there was glory all over this thing. But I knew. In that house, where I often felt like the servant that wasn’t seen, I knew where the wine had come from, and it put me at His feet never wanting to get up. As one by one He removed the danger from my daughter’s life, I knew I was seeing glory. I knew He was there and it undid me in ways I can’t describe. He knows and I know that I will never be able to thank Him enough. We both know the glory He has spilled into my life and the lives of my family and how it has all become a fire in my bones that I pray will never burn out.

Words and thoughts like dust particles, but I want to capture them for you. To say to you that there is glory all around you. Bowls being filled as you pray for something that seems too big to be answered. Ordinary water being turned into not just something better, but into the best thing. Glory that may go unnoticed by others, but you will know, because you have done what He asked of you, so you’re in on it. You’re a witness to the miracles of what He’s done, and what He’s doing. You are filling bowls with what looks like unglorious water, but oh, just wait. He will bring forth wine. The very best wine. And you will know.

Let it be a fire in your bones. Let it bring you to His feet and may you never want to get back up.

I Am Not The Anointed One

He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Christ.”

John 1:20

John the Baptist had been sent by God to be a witness, to testify of the Light, to carry a message of repentance and baptism, and to call people to turn back to God and to prepare the way for His Messiah.

But John had no Savior complex. He knew who he was, and who he was not. He was not the Christ, (anointed one).

And I thought of the people that have come in and out of my life over the years. The ones I thought I could change. Fix. Be the solution they needed. These people have included my husband, my kids, family members, friends. All the people. I wore their problems and their hurts like they were my own and in the end, they were still broken and I was exhausted.

Through a long process I am learning to do things differently. To untangle myself from things that are not mine to hold or carry. To have compassion without needing to have the answers. I still don’t do it well, which may be why God needed to give me the words I need to speak to my own soul.

I am not the anointed one. I am not the Savior.

We are His witnesses, and we carry the message of salvation through the gospel, but we are not the Christ.

We cannot save anyone. We aren’t anyone’s greatest need. We cannot fix what is broken. But if we don’t remind ourselves of who we are, and who we are not, before you know it we are neck deep in someone else’s brokenness, trying with all our might to save them, change them, or convince them.

We can invest ourselves in the lives of others, but doing it without taking on the weight of their lives requires that we know the difference between bringing them to Jesus, and trying to be Jesus for them.

I am not alone. Many of us are fixers by nature. Helpers to the core, because helping someone else, having, or being the solution to their problem, meets some kind of need in us.

We can help, but we can’t be their hope. We can walk with them, but they cannot need us more than they need Jesus. We can speak truth, but we can’t obey it for them. For their sake and ours, we have to freely make our confession:

I am not the anointed one.

A Fascinated Heart

It was just a line in a prayer, but it has not let me be. Once I heard it, I knew it was the prayer that I had been unable to find the words to pray.

Lord, may our hearts be fascinated with You again.

Yes! Over and over again I have been saying yes and amen to that prayer. Because after much time trying to figure out what I have been missing, there it is. Fascination with Jesus.

I remember it, this fascination. Unable to get enough of Him. The complete wonder of who He is, and how He is. His heart. His ways. His overwhelming goodness. I couldn’t wait to get alone and pray. Waking up at 2 a.m. and spending an hour or more in prayer and worship, because when I was awake, I wanted to be with Him. Losing my breath everytime He answered my prayer, because it stunned me that He heard and He moved on my behalf.

My heart was head over heels fascinated with Jesus, and I didn’t care who knew it and I have been wanting that fascination back. He’s not done with me and I am most certainly not done with Him. I want Him to occupy my thoughts, to be the One my eyes continually search out. I want to stand back and watch Him at work and feel the smallness that comes from seeing His greatness. I want to look back and look around and look up and see Him in all the places I couldn’t see Him before, and let it flat out overwhelm my heart. I want to look at what He’s done that only He could have possibly done, and whisper “I see You, Lord, I see You.” And then I want to cry at what I’ve seen.

I want my heart and mind to be absolutely distracted by Jesus, and nothing else. Like the woman who broke the alabaster jar at His feet, undistracted by the stares and thoughts of those around her. Like John, who remained at the cross when all of his friends left. Like Mary, who sat at His feet, unmoved by the accusation of Martha.

It was a line in a prayer, spoken by a conference speaker who had no idea that God was about to use his prayer as oxygen on an ember. And isn’t it just like God to only need a few words to rekindle a heart? To make a woman in her 60’s fascinated with Him again? 

Yes, it is exactly like Him to do such a thing!

So here I am Jesus. Choosing You again and again. Longing for Your presence, staring in wonder at who You are, breathless again that You have answered a prayer that I didn’t know how to pray.

You can have all this world, just give me Jesus.

When It Was New

Those early days of walking with Jesus. Where have thirty-five years gone? Sometimes, it felt so hard to keep following, but that’s because trust was so hard for me then.

Following gets a whole lot easier when you trust the one you’re following.

He laid a track record for my untrusting heart so that I could find my way to His faithfulness. Comfort in the hard places, answers to prayers I said in desperation, little by little shifts of my heart toward Him. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to follow Him, or didn’t want to give Him my whole heart and my whole life – I just didn’t know how and I didn’t know what He would do with what I was giving.

Thirty-five years of learning to trust Him more than I trust anything else in this world. Discovering that He is more than I ever could have imagined He would be – more loving, more kind, more merciful, more trustworthy. Once I discovered the goodness of God, I mean really tasted it, it was game over for anything else that would fight for my affections.

God has no worthy opponent for my heart.

I remember the newness of discovering His voice. That God would speak and I could hear Him in my heart, well, that never gets old, I’ll tell ya that. Today, He is still speaking. Through His Word, but also through a still small voice in my heart, and often through pictures. From time to time, He has grown quiet, but never silent.

My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.

John 10:27

I remember the hunger of when it was new. The insatiable desire for more of Him. To just sit with His people in prayer and worship for hours sometimes. I only wanted to talk about Him, nothing else. Every other topic of conversation became frivolous. I had a death grip on the hem of His robe in those days, wanting to just attach myself to Him and never let go. Some people, mostly family, just didn’t get it and thought I was off the deep end, but you know what? God planted me in a church full of people who got it. People who were hungry with me, and when you have people around you who share your hunger for Jesus, man, nothing can touch that. But I have also experienced the opposite, and it’s heartbreaking. Being part of a community of people who are content to stay where they are, not really interested in knowing Him more, in changing, or in walking out what the scriptures describe as the life of a follower of Christ. They like the company of fellow Christians, but they aren’t hungry for anything more than what they have. That’s a hard place to be for anyone who hungers for God.

Find hungry people and be with them. There’s nothing else like it.

When it was new, I wept over His Word, wept in worship, wept in prayer. It wasn’t the whipping up of emotions, it was a born again spirit responding to a realm I had never experienced. People get so scared of being emotional in church, but when you come to the realization that God is near, that His Spirit is living on the inside of you, that Jesus is real and His love is real and His goodness is real… I mean, how can you have all of that swirling around you and remain stoic? Unmoved?

Thirty-five years have changed a lot of things about my life. But I think what prompted this post is realizing that today, I’m as hungry as I ever was. I still want to be with Him every minute of every day. I still long for hours of conversation about Him, and prayer with His people. I still long for Him to change me, teach me, and lead me into the things and places that I have yet to go. And I still weep over Him, and I never want that to stop. Walking with Jesus has never felt old. Not once.

There is no other love that is worthy of being our first love, and first love never grows old.

And I want that for you, whoever you are. I want you to be crazy about Jesus no matter how long you’ve walked with Him. He is so worthy of a hunger that won’t quit, a desire for His nearness, and emotions that run free in His presence.

I pray that for you, and for us all, walking with Jesus will always feel like when it was new.

Genesis 49—The Struggle

What struck me first in this chapter were the words in verse 2:

“Come together and listen, sons of Jacob; listen to your father Israel.”

He referred to himself with both names – the one he was born with, and the one God gave him.

The name Jacob means supplanter (one who purposely takes over, or takes the place of someone else). However, the literal translation of Jacob’s name at birth was “He grasped the heel”.

“After this, his brother came out grasping Esau’s heel with his hand. So he was named Jacob.”

In essence, Jacob did not let go of Esau until he had supplanted Esau’s position as first born, by gaining both Esau’s birthright, and his blessing.

The name Israel means he struggled with God. And it was after Jacob’s wrestling match with God (Genesis 32) that God changed his name from Jacob to Israel, saying “Your name will no longer be Jacob,” He said. “It will be Israel because you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed.” He prevailed in his struggle with God by refusing to let go until he had received the blessing he was after.

And so all of this is swirling in my mind and I begin to wonder…

I know who I was before I encountered Jesus, and I know who I am since. It’s been a lot of years in the learning, but I do know who and how God has called me to be. But I still struggle from time to time between who I was and who I am. I bet you have that struggle too.

This chapter in Genesis is about waaay more than that, but this is what caught my eye, and what I think God wanted to speak to me about on this particular day. A gentle reminder that who I was is not who I am. An invitation to see the difference, and marvel at the work of God in my life, and to be thankful, even in the struggle. But there is something else I’m seeing as well –

Jacob took his blessing from man, living up to the meaning of his name. But he received a new name because he held on in the struggle for his blessing from God.

Hold on. Don’t let go of God, no matter what. Don’t settle for the blessings of men. It’s worth the limp you may have by holding on for God’s blessing in your life. And one final thought-

What I can take in this life pales in light of what I can receive from God when I choose to not let go of Him.

Genesis 48—When the Prayer Changes

“Jacob said to Joseph, “God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me. He said to me, ‘I will make you fruitful and numerous; I will make many nations come from you, and I will give this land as a permanent possession to your future descendants.'” (Genesis 48:3)

This is so similar to what God said to Abraham, and then to Isaac.

“And to you [Abraham] and your future offspring I will give the land where you are residing—all the land of Canaan—as a permanent possession, and I will be their God.” (Genesis 17:8)

“For I will give all these lands to you [Isaac] and your offspring, and I will confirm the oath that I swore to your father Abraham.” (Genesis 26:3)

It was right here, in the book of Genesis, that I learned that God is generational. That in the same way He has been faithful to me, He will be faithful to my children and to their children. I understood, on a much deeper level, that those coming after me could know God, know His goodness and His mercy and His love, just as I had come to know them.

“I will be with you, just as I was with Moses. I will not leave you or abandon you.” (Joshua 1:5)

The revelation of this part of God’s character changed how I prayed for my family. There is a boldness, borne out of confidence in the truth of His Word, that begins to rest on your prayer life when you know that He desires for your children and their children the same thing He desired to do in you.

I believe that if you stopped random people on the street and asked them what they wanted most for their children, the majority of them would say “I want them to be happy.” We all want good things for our children – happiness, good health, good education, financial security, good job, good friends – all the things that will benefit and help them in life.

But most of the things we want for them will not follow them into eternity.

The greatest desire that I have for my children and their children is that they would know God the way I have known Him, and even more. That they would know His faithfulness to them, His goodness toward them, His mercy, grace, love, and the incredible peace that comes from trusting in Him above any other, including themselves. That desire becomes my prayer life for them, because of the revelation that it is the same desire that dwells in His heart.

But, as we pray, we also must obey…

“Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children’s children—” (Dueteronomy 4:9)

We cannot just let our Sundays at church, our kindness to others, or our prayers over our food be the extent of our children’s vision of God. Those are things they see us do, but unless we tell them, they will not know the things God has done. We must testify to our children so that they can know that He is faithful, even before they have seen it in their own lives.

Tell them that His covenant with you is also for them.

It Was A Good, Hard, Free Lunch Today

Texas Roadhouse was offering a free lunch for veterans today, so I took them up on it, since they hold the number one spot on my “places I like to eat” list. I knew I could anticipate a delicous meal, college football games on every screen, and country music. In the words of some Christmas song, these are a few of my favorite things.

What I did not anticipate was the emotions that would come up and spill out during this lunch. As my husband and I sat outside on a bench, waiting for them to text me that it was our turn to be seated, I watched the veterans coming up to the little table the restaurant had set up, to get their free lunch voucher. It was a steady stream of old men, not so old men, and women. Some of the oldest of them were wearing their “Vietnam Vet” ball cap. Some wore “Desert Storm” hats. One man wore a jacket that had all of his medals pinned on it. It was a sight to see.

As I looked at all these men and women converging on the restaurant, my heart just swelled. I come from a military family, and served in the Army in the early 80’s, so it’s in my blood, as they say. But today, it wasn’t just the nostalgia of being in the midst of a very large group of soldiers again, although that alone felt wonderful. I can’t speak for what the military looks like today, but when I grew up, and then served in it, it was a world unto itself. A community. A family. It is one of the things I miss about being around it. As I sat in a restaurant that was literally filled with vets, I felt the bond of comraderie with people I had never met.

But, what literally brought me to tears was the knowledge that many, if not most, of these men and women served because they believed their country is worth the sacrifice, and they, like me, are wondering what, pardon my french, the hell happened to that country.

For the love of this nation, many of them went to war. But even those, like myself, who didn’t serve in wartime, carry within us a deep love, and sense of pride and protection for our country. As I fought back tears, I wondered how many of them grieve, like I do, over the tearing down of so much of what we love, and what so many gave their lives to protect.

Thankfully, my grief is tempered by hope, because I know the sovereignty, power, and greatness of God over all of His creation. I know that He can, and that He will bring an end to evil, and until then, we raise our shield of faith, and we war in prayer for the nations of the earth.

And in the natural, we shake our heads over what we see around us, and take a free lunch when it’s offered.

Today was good, but today was hard. To all of those who have served, thank you. And to all who currently serve, thank you. You are necessary, you are appreciated, and you are prayed for.

P.S. – BIG shoutout to Texas Roadhouse for supporting veterans, and for the kindness and respect they showed today.