Tag Archives: Jesus

a deep drink from the humility well and keeping the realms straight

poor“The Spirit of the Lord God is on Me, because the Lord has anointed Me to bring good news to the poor.” – Luke 4:18 / Isaiah 61:1

Yesterday, I spent a good part of my day drinking deep. Sitting right here, in my favorite spot, listening to worship music and reading scripture. I happened on Isaiah 61 and I heard Him whisper something. It was faint, but I heard it.

The Gospel is only good news to the poor.

And just like that, He cracked open my heart and I saw how deprived of poverty it had become, how much self-sufficiency was being masked by spiritual maturity. I saw and I wept.

Because spiritual poverty is what makes the good news good. 

Twenty-seven years have passed since Jesus found me (I did not find Him. He was never lost.) and here is the truth that I am prone to forgetting…I am still as poor today as I was that first day.

Because twenty-seven years later, I still can’t do one thing to be right with God on my own. I still can’t earn His grace, or cover my own sin. I have not arrived. My hands are still empty. I am impoverished to the core of me. I can’t even obey Him without Him. I just start thinking I can. And when self-sufficiency rises up under the mask of maturity, bad things happen.

accusationMy finger starts to point at other people. People who are poor like me, but for some reason, they should know better. A harshness slips in and quietly asks compassion to leave. Grace becomes a given to me, but not from me. Rules become far more important than people, love is something that must be earned, and God is pleased with me but not with you.

When I forget that I am poor, it breathes life into the Pharisee in me.

And then God invited me to drink humility in deep. To drink in good news that is still good.

To consider my own poverty again. To find grace amazing still. To remember that I am a saint, chosen, sanctified by God, redeemed by Christ, part of the family of God, gifted by the Holy Spirit, befriended by Jesus and loved by the Father, and that I am poor. I have no righteousness of my own. I have nothing in me with which to earn eternity.

Before the spirits of darkness, I have authority. I am to give no ground, make no compromise, wielding the sword of the Spirit without mercy. Before the enemy of my soul, I must remember who I am because of Christ.

But not so before men. In earthly realms I am to be clothed in humility, full of compassion, honoring others above myself, turning my cheek, loving those who would do me harm. Before men, I must remember who I would be without Christ. I must remember that I am poor.

realms

Beloved, do not confuse the realms you walk in.

always

1 corinth 13 7

Always. Big word.

Love always protects. It doesn’t have bad days that make the hearts of those around us fair game to our anger, self-pity or our need to be first.

Love always trusts. When everything shakes. When everything hurts. When nothing and no one can be trusted. Love trusts the goodness and the sovereignty of God. Always.

Love always hopes. It doesn’t wring its’ hands in anxiety, it waits with expectation that God will be good no matter how hopeless things look.

Love always perseveres. It doesn’t walk away when things get hard. It keeps on keeping on because it knows it will be worth every struggle, every tear, every bit of dying to self it had to do.

Love never fails. It doesn’t fall away, back off or back down. Love holds its’ position at all times. Love never fails to be love.

But here it is. We will not know this kind of love as long as we are the center of our lives. While it’s about us, we will not experience an always kind of love. We will have to fight and scratch and beg to get something that doesn’t even come close. And we will settle for close enough. We will settle for love that protects on good days, trusts until it feels insecure, hopes until things look hopeless and will not stick around for the hard parts. Love that fails to always be love.

We will not only settle for receiving that kind of love, but giving that kind of love.

If we want to know this always love that changes everything, changes us, changes the atmosphere, changes lives…Jesus must come first. Our lives will have to be about Him always. After the worship service and sermon are long over. When no one else is watching. When we feel like everything is under our control, going well, coming together. When we are criticized. When the money runs out. In sickness and in health.

Jesus can’t just be our everything when our everything else is going wrong.

When what we do, speak, live, is for Jesus, we will know His always love and it will overflow from us into a world that has settled for so much less. They may never know the dying we had to do to always love them. They won’t know how hard we had to wrestle our flesh to the ground while asking God to make us like Him. That’s ok. They’ll know what God wants them to know.

There is an always Love pursuing them, and they don’t have to settle for less.

 

let me tell you

 

I remember the loss of my honor. In a desperate attempt to capture love, I surrendered something I could never get back. It didn’t take long to figure out that love had nothing to do with it. But I was just a teen-aged girl who had never been told that true love waits. It doesn’t use empty words to cajole and convince. It doesn’t prey on insecurities. It doesn’t seek its’ own pleasure at your expense. It waits. It honors.

In the years that followed, I discovered love that became angry when mixed with alcohol, love that left bruises both inside and out. I found love that held a magnifying glass over my every flaw and failure.

No one told me that in all my searching for love, I had found all that it is not.

And now I know but maybe you don’t. Maybe you’re still out there turning over every rock looking for the thing that will fill the empty space. Let me be the one who tells you. You are not pursuing love.

Love is pursuing you.

 

Because Jesus is love and fills the empty space all up and doesn’t promise what He never intends to give and He will never take away your honor.

Love sacrificed Himself for you so let me be the one who tells you that you will never be the sacrifice for His own pleasure. 

No matter what you feel, or what they’ve told you, the Love that is pursuing you is not mad at you. You don’t have to look away and that  isn’t eggshells under your feet, it’s holy ground because He is near, not angry.

And I know that you know all your failing and all your sins and let me be the one who tells you — you don’t need to get better and get it right. You need Him. Because Love covers it all in His own blood and chooses not to remember what you can’t seem to forget. 

isaiah 43

So let me be the one who tells you. Your soul wants love because your soul wants Jesus. And when you stop chasing after what love is not, you will find the Love that is pursuing you.

He will not dishonor you

He is not self-seeking

He is not easily angered

He keeps no record of wrong

 

“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” Luke 19:10
“…I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore, I have continued to extend faithful love to you.” Jeremiah 31:3
“And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.” 1John 4:16

 

 

every cut is the deepest

1Corinthians 13:4

 

“to be patient in bearing the offenses and injuries of others; to be mild and slow in avenging; to be long-suffering, slow to anger, slow to punish.” (Strongs)

musical notesI wanna know what love is
I want you to show me*

Lyrics to a song from my younger years. Lyrics that describe my younger years and by younger I mean all my years.

And while I was searching in all the wrong places and all the wrong people, it was here all along. Ancient words that tell me that true love is not of this world. It is other than. More than. Better than.

“God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.” (1John 4:16)

I wish I had known. Maybe if I had known that God is the very thing I spent so much of my time and dignity trying to find, I wouldn’t have spent so much. If I had known, things would have been different.

But now I know and it is different. So very. But not enough. It is not enough, because I have been acting  like Jesus, or at least trying —

to be patient in bearing the offenses and injuries of others; to be mild and slow in avenging; to be long-suffering, slow to anger, slow to punish.

And acting like Jesus exhausts me because it’s me. Because my strength, patience, and kindness are all feeble and not enough to be what love is. Acting like Jesus requires a lot of me.

Being like Jesus requires heart surgery.

And you know, every cut is always the deepest. God makes no superficial cuts. Deep is what it takes to remove a heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh. Deep is where He finds the bitterness, not the bearing, of offenses and injuries, the desire to get even and the flashes of anger we think we’re hiding as we passively punish those around us with our silence or thinly veiled words. The word of God is sharp and when it cuts it exposes the truth. I am not love.

Love was wounded for my transgressions. Love made a way for me to draw near to God, not just to bask in His presence, but to be transformed in it.

“For those He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son…” Romans 8:29

My destiny was never to act like Jesus, but to be like Jesus.

Lord, Your cut is deep, but keep cutting. I will continue to act like Jesus, mostly. Because acting like Him is better than not acting like Him. But I will lay here, under Your word…

until what has performed for You has become conformed to You.

 

*Foreigner – I Want to Know What Love Is. For all those my age, good luck getting it out of your head today. And you’re welcome.

our crowd

“When He saw the crowds, He felt compassion for them, because they were weary and worn out, like sheep without a shepherd.  Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is abundant, but the workers are few.  Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.” Matthew 9:36-38

refugeesI thought about the refugees this morning when I read this passage. Our crowd. Many of us see one thing while Jesus sees another. The crowd is a crisis, a reason to fear, something to debate from a safe distance.

Weary, worn out, wandering people move the heart of Jesus. He is not afraid they will move in and take over. He’s not closing His borders to keep out the bad apples in disguise.

He sees a harvest of Gospel-ready people and feels compassion toward them. And far from telling His followers to “Be careful. Consider the implications. Keep yourselves and your land safe. Don’t get too close.”, He tells them to pray for people who will go to the harvest.

We know what it looks like. We know the risk. We know what could happen. But we are His people. His Church. We can trust that He sees what we can’t see. We can’t all go, but we can all pray for God to provide workers for this harvest. We can open our wallets and give the funds required to send them. We can stop choosing fear and start looking at how Jesus is responding to worn and weary people who have no shepherd.

And then do that.

[P.S. – I know many people who are going to engage the refugees with compassion. If you want to know how you can give to help them get there, contact me.]

 

in search of a wilderness

“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.  The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”” (Matthew 4:1-3)

This taking to the wilderness fascinates me. Maybe because I feel like I’ve stumbled my way through the desert a time or two.

OR

Maybe I’m fascinated because I need a wilderness experience right about now. Maybe my faith feels dull like a butter knife and maybe I pretend there is no war and maybe this lethargy is making me sick. Maybe.

“Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”  And in that dry, lonely place, faith and temptation and hunger would collide and it had purpose and was on purpose and He was led there. He didn’t wonder why. He didn’t try to turn around and find His way back to comfort. He followed.

God, make me brave like that. Lead me to what I need and give me courage to follow.

” After fasting forty days and forty nights, He was hungry. The tempter came to him…”  The tempter came when the hunger came. But it wasn’t physical fullness that prepared Jesus for the face off, it was the spiritual fullness that came from forty days and forty nights of denying His flesh. 

And I know that I have been physically full and spiritually hungry for far too long.

 “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.  Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

The devil is many things, but dumb is not one of them. This was not an identity issue. He knew Jesus was the Son of God, and so did Jesus. He was tempting Him to fill His own need. To provide for His own hunger, without seeking His Father’s will first. Later, Jesus would tell His disciples “the Son can do nothing by Himself; He can do only what He sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” (John 5:19) So the way I see it, Satan is tempting Jesus to do it by Himself and for Himself. 

And so I say to myself:  This is not an identity issue. You know you are a child of God, and so does the devil. Stop going around in circles trying to prove that you know who you are. Stop ringing that bell, and wake up to the real issue. 

BECAUSE of your identity, the tempter is trying to get you to do it by yourself, and for yourself. 

To meet your own need. Fill your own hunger. To make your identity about you, instead of about the One who gave it to you.

Four verses from easily my favorite book in the Bible, and one of my favorite passages from that book. A passage I have read hundreds of times. Really. But today four verses have me undone. Today, four verses brought an answer to a problem that I’ve been ignoring.

I have been physically full and spiritually hungry, and, from a biblical standpoint, this is backwards. It has made me dull. Spiritually lazy. Selfish. (Oh. So very selfish.) I’ve just gotten self-consumed, and frankly, I’m a little sick of me.

Today, four verses confirmed my suspicions.

I need a wilderness.Autosave-File vom d-lab2/3 der AgfaPhoto GmbH

she was guilty

stone“Then the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery,making her stand in the center.  “Teacher,” they said to Him, “this woman was caught in the act of committing adultery.  In the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do You say?”  They asked this to trap Him, in order that they might have evidence to accuse Him.” John 8:3-6

Yesterday my team was discussing ways to get 6 women, living together in a recovery home, to be on each other’s side instead of backbiting, finger-pointing and tattle-telling on one another. This story came up. Getting them to see one another through the eyes of Jesus.Continue reading “she was guilty”