Tag Archives: Jesus

Exodus 7: He Has Named Us So

I don’t know if I’ve told y’all this before but just case I haven’t, I love the book of Exodus. Love. It. Today, it blew my mind yet again.

Pharaoh will not listen to you, but I will put My hand into Egypt and bring the military divisions of My people the Israelites out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment. (Exodus 7:4 CSB)

Do you see it? I didn’t either at first. But now I can’t not see it. So weird how God does that. I looked at a different translation just to make sure I was seeing it right.

Pharaoh will not listen to you. Then I will lay My hand on Egypt and bring my armies, My people the sons of Isra’el, out of the land of Egypt with great acts of judgment. (CJB – Complete Jewish Bible)

The people of Israel had been captive in Egypt for over 400 years. They were oppressed, harassed, and enslaved. In fact, when God called Moses over to the burning bush in chapter 3, He told him that He had seen the misery of His people, and heard their cries.

They were slaves crying out in their misery, but they were already an army because God named them so.

I dare say, friend, that the view from heaven is so very different than here below.

I am a woman fighting battles with my flesh every day, feeling like I’m crawling my way through sanctification mud but I am already seated with Him in heavenly places because He has named me so.

And if all of this is true of the Israelites then and of you and me now, then what is true of His Church?

“You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 2:5)

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. ” (1 Peter 2:9)

We have leaders falling off pedestals like someone knocked down a domino somewhere and we’re brawling on social media like scrappy boys in a school yard and we are holy and we are royalty because God has named us so.

(As a matter of fact I am aware of my run-on sentence issue. Sometimes my words can’t stop for punctuation.)

Paul tells us that God chose him to be an apostle before he was even born and then he went on to become a pharisee who persecuted the Church. But one day God knocked him down and made him an apostle to build that same Church… because God had named him so.

Oh man I hope this encourages you like it does me. I also hope it convicts you like it convicts me. My earthly view is my reality far too often, but if I’m singing open the eyes of my heart Lord then I should believe I’ll see things differently, right? If He opens the eyes of my heart then I’ll see what He sees and I’ll see what He’s named that I haven’t been able to see through my veil of flesh.

And if I see what He sees because He has named it so, I will believe for beautiful things for the Church and for you and for me. I’ll hold back judgment and offer grace instead because I see what we are from His throne and He offers us all grace in our becoming.

We are His Beloved. He has named us so.

The Narrowing

It was subtle, so I didn’t notice it at first. And then one day I looked around and realized that most of the things I wanted when I was much younger, I no longer want. But it goes deeper than that.

I was having breakfast with a friend recently and she asked me what I’m looking for in community. I told her that I had come to a place of wanting to be around people who just want to talk about Jesus, that not much else interests me, and I wasn’t sure why. She nodded in understanding and dubbed it “a narrowing” and that term just felt so perfect. A narrowing.

When I was in my young decades – 20’s, 30’s and 40’s, the space of my life was filled with oh so many things. Family and work. Fears and pain and wants and dreams, and a past I was trying to outrun. At the far end of my 20’s, Jesus moved into that tattered, crowded space, and I had no idea of the narrowing that had begun and now, three and half decades later, I see it, and it is a joy to behold.

My narrowing is still in motion, and it’s painful at times, but man do I find it to be beautiful. I wish for a narrowing for us all. Instead of the wideness of everything this life has to offer, I want us to find life in the narrow space of the one thing, and to feel utterly satisfied in that space.

“One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek Him in His temple.” Psalm 27:4

It is the space of His presence, where the need for company narrows to just the One, and the desire to be with Him eclipses every other desire.

Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” He said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow Me.” Mark 10:21

It is the culling of our idols. Letting go of the one thing most of us lack—the giving of it all, especially that which is most dear. The ability to lay down what we have held so close. Everything that gives us our sense of security, or allows us to feel in control. What provides our comfort and gives us value. It is a painfully necessary narrowing, this one.

“The Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has made the right choice, and it will not be taken away from her.” Luke 10:41-42

When the many things get crowded out by the one thing. In this narrow space, we find the value of being, over doing and we finally understand that doing must flow from being, or it will wear us out.

 He answered, “Whether or not he’s a sinner, I don’t know. One thing I do know: I was blind, and now I can see!” John 9:25

My thirst to know the ins and the outs and the greek and the hebrew and the what the when and the where has been narrowed to one thing. I was blind and now I see and I want to know the God who did that. This has been the continual, sweetest, narrowing for me – the pursuit of the heart of my Father, who pursued my heart first.

Sometimes I still strain to make space for other things, only to find that those things do nothing to satisfy the true longing in my soul. So I pray for the narrowing to continue in me. And I pray it for you.

May you find that God has been narrowing your life in all the best, even painful, but beautiful ways.

Exodus 2: Destiny

Vs. 2: “The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months.”

I recently heard a Jewish Rabbi teach on this verse. In the Hebrew language, the word “fine” (in the ESV, other versions may use a different word) is Tov, which means good. But it has such a deeper meaning than simply “good”. It’s a word that means something is directly related to the will of God.

In a time when Pharoah was set on exterminating the male Hebrew babies, Moses’ mother looked at her newborn son and knew that he was born as a result of God’s will. This boy who should have been killed as soon as he was born, was not only kept alive, but raised in the house of Pharoah himself! And this same boy would one day be the man God would use to destroy Pharaoh and his army, and deliver an entire nation of people from captivity.

We next see Moses as a grown man, and his destiny comes into view:

When the Egyptian was beating the Hebrew – Moses stepped in.

When two Hebrews were going at it with each other – Moses stepped in.

When the shepherds were harassing the daughters of Midian – Moses stepped in.

Moses was made for rescue. God’s use of Moses to deliver his people, which we will be reading about soon, was not a random choice. He was formed in his mother’s womb to be a rescuer.

God is intentional in the way He forms us, and the purpose He puts in us.

Ephesians 2:10 – “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Moses’ mother, Jochabed, knew that his birth was God’s will. And Hebrews 11 tells us that it was by the faith of his parents that Moses was hidden from Pharaoh, and that they were not afraid of the Egyptian king’s command.

So here’s what I want to ponder today –  do we see the importance of destiny, and how the enemy will attempt to thwart it? This is why we must be people who will stand in the gap for the destinies of the next generation. Our children, their children, those in our churches who are stepping in to take the baton from our generation… they have destinies on them that the enemy wants to kill. I believe Moses’ mother saw it, and followed the leading of the Spirit of God in hiding him, and then in putting him into a basket in the river. She allowed him to be rescued by the very people who wanted him dead, because she trusted the will of God. This was her intercession for the destiny of her son, and it provokes me.

What will be my intercession for the destiny of the next generation?

But Some Doubted

Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had directed them. When they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some doubted. Jesus came near and said to them, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations…

Matthew 28:16-19

Judas was gone, so they were down to eleven. Eleven would eventually become twelve when they add Matthias. All but one of these twelve men would be martyred for their faith. Only John would survive, but would be exiled to Patmos, an island inhabited by criminals and political prisoners.

But as they stood here on this mountain, looking at the man they watched die and be buried in a tomb, some of them waivered. Some of them were uncertain as to what they were seeing. Some of them wondered if it could really be true. Some doubted. And yet, Jesus commissioned them all to go and make disciples.

At some point, their doubts became faith. How can we know this? Because people don’t risk, and ultimately give, their lives for something they doubt ever took place. I mean, I wouldn’t, would you? Would you go into a place that kills Christians and share the gospel, which includes the resurrection, if you doubted it happened?

Here’s my point with all of this –the doubters weren’t disqualified.

We all doubt, at some point. We may not doubt the resurrection, but maybe we doubt when we’re told that someone was completely healed of an incurable disease. Or when someone gives a testimony of seeing a deformity become undeformed in front of them. And don’t we often waiver between doubt and belief when we hear the stories that come out of places like Mozambique of dead bodies being raised to life? We want to believe it’s true, but doubt shows up anyway.

Some of us doubt things a little closer to home. Maybe we think our church is too dead to revive. Our bank account is too low to pay our bills. Our health is too far gone to be healed. Maybe our loved one has wandered too far to be brought back or we’re too broken to be of any use to the Kingdom of God. See what I mean? We are some who doubt.

He knows our doubts just as surely as He knew the “some” of His own disciples who doubted. But like them, He commissions us anyway. Calls us to go, to make disciples, to lay down our lives. He still fills us with His Spirit and His gifts and puts us into His body in whatever way He sees fit. Our doubts do not deter Him from calling us to keep following and keep going.

If Jesus doesn’t disqualify us because of our bouts with doubt, then who are we to disqualify ourselves?

Some doubted. Some still doubt. It’s ok. Let’s tell one another, pray for one another, and then go make disciples anyway.

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.

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.