Tag Archives: truth

declarations

Hard week. A member of our lifegroup lost her 23-year-old son on Saturday. We are all a bit in shock, I think, but at the same time, our church community has gathered like an army around this family. It’s a beautiful picture to watch. If you think about it, lift up the Thomas family in prayer. They are living every parents’ worst fear.

At lifegroup last night I felt led to have us do some declaring. So after worship, we got down to it. With 3 pages of declarations in hand, we went around the table taking turns reading them. It got a little loud at times, lemme tell ya. These women de.clared some things! Vehemently. Passionately. Beautifully.

It left us wanting more.

I don’t know the mechanics of it. Can’t answer why. But I do know this – there is power in the room when truth is being declared. There is a fierce kind of faith that rises up when the scriptures are spoken over those in the room. When we declare the truth over ourselves and over our lives, lies begin to break.

{Because a lie from the enemy cannot withstand the sword of the Spirit.}

We will have ‘declaration nights’ more often. And hopefully, that will turn into declaration mornings for us individually. And declaration days. Until declaring truth is how we live life.

those six days

voidBefore there was anything there He was, hovering over the darkness. Breathing holy breath while all that was not, waited to become. Waited for His command.

With His words the brush of a skilled artist He began to create. Light rushed in at the sound of His voice. Then the waters obeyed and with a surge they parted and the sky was born. He gathered them and named them seas and land came forth as it was told. With every word of His mouth that which was not came to be. And it brought Him pleasure.

He chose light to separate the darkness and scattered the skies with the stars He had named. Having touched the hand of God they still burn bright in the darkness.

And then the creatures came to be blessed by their Creator and life was in motion and He was pleased. Pleased, but not satisfied.

God bent low and in His hands took dust from the ground and formed a man in His own image. And lower still, He came face to face with the man and breathed him to life. And from the man He took a bone and made the rest of His image and now, He could rest. He had made a place for His image bearers to dwell and care for all that He had created. He would walk with them and they would know Him. He would love them and care for them and be their God.

I am endlessly fascinated by the story of creation. The power of the voice of God to call forth that which does not exist. The pleasure He took in creating. The intimacy with which He made those who bear His image. His very breath bringing man to life.

The power of the One who makes something from nothing.

passion-1But you see, He separated the darkness but He did not extinguish it. Not yet. So the liar crept out of that deepness with a lie on his lips and death and despair came with him.

Because the lie has power too.

 

So I think of those six days on my days when the lie has found my heart and doubt settles like ancient dust across my soul. On my nothing days when the lie is on repeat.

“You are nothing of value. You have a nothing life. Nothing you do matters. Nothing will ever change. Nothing will make this go away. There is nothing you can do about it.”

Those six days are more than a story, more than a topic for debate, more than just the beginning. They are the sword that has far greater power than the lie that pierces my faith. They speak truth to the nothing lies.

God made everything from nothing.

And that ancient dust finds no place to settle on the soul that chooses truth. It makes no difference what kind of nothing I’m facing. My God will make something of it. Something good. Something that pleases Him. And I remember that He took a woman who had nothing to offer Him and He gave her everything in exchange for her nothing. And it brought Him pleasure.

Those six days matter to me.

 

believing for wonderful

Different. Wrong. Abnormal. Words that describe how I have felt most of my life.

aloneThe struggle to feel right, or normal. Always, every day, in every circumstance, I felt different, somehow wrong inside. I never fit in anywhere. I didn’t belong. I was just small when someone did things to me they should not have done and told me not to tell and something inside of me shifted sideways and I never again felt what most people want to feel. Normal, right, okay…whatever words you want to use, I never felt any of them. I still don’t, but most people wouldn’t know it. It’s like walking around with a low-grade fever all the time. You’re the only one who knows there’s something wrong.

I never understood it, never knew what it was, I just knew it was there. It was how I lived my life. And it wore me out. But God knew and God cared so He reached out and touched something and it all came rushing out like dirty water. It came rushing out and when it did He named it shame and I knew, just knew, He was right.

And because He is good He had begun preparing me before any of this surfaced. He laid my eyes on Psalm 139:14 and something in me caught its breath as He asked me “when did it stop being true?”. I was still turning it over and over in my hands and in my head days later when the rushing like dirty water came up and out.

“I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” 

…and I knew the words I had laid my eyes on were a sword I was going to have to pick up. Because it cuts through shame and it severs the lie right out of any heart that is willing to believe with a let-go-and-fall-back kind of trust. Because it never stopped being true, not for a moment. Not before, and not after the thing that broke something inside of me. Nothing I did and nothing that was done to me turned Psalm 139:14 into a lie. Nothing.

fearfully. yare’. ‘in a wonderful manner’, or ‘wonderfully’…

wonderfully made. palah. ‘to be distinct, be separated, be distinguished, to be set apart. To be wonderful’.

(And I laugh as I see ‘wonderfully made to be wonderful’, and then I try not to cry as I hear Him whisper…)

“Beloved, you have wonderful all over you.”

(And you should laugh and then try not to cry because He’s talking about you and not just me.)

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

I am a work of God and therefore I am wonderful, and I will say it and say it until it rings true in my heart. Because wielding the sword is not done well unless it is done often. Over and over, until the lie is dead and truth lives in its place.

I will praise Him for what He has made.

I don’t know what you are dealing with or what broke something inside of you. I don’t know if you carry shame or if it is something else that makes you feel somehow wrong inside. I don’t know what lies you are believing. 

   Not good enough      Not pretty enough      Not smart enough  
  Unlovable     It’s all your fault      Not normal    
Unacceptable      Failure    Tainted   Used      Wrong
Bad      Stupid      Broken     Too much      Too little
 
 And it all goes down easy. We take it in and live our lives by it and never break a sweat.  A lie is spoken and it sounds just right to us so we take it and claim it and we let it call the shots.

But the truth is turned over in our hands, peered at from every angle, almost with suspicion.  And when finally we choose to believe that truth, it’s hard and we weep because we want so badly to believe it and it’s probably true for others but not for me, but we must choose. We must, no matter how hard, no matter how suspicious it seems, we must choose to let go and fall back into ‘fearfully and wonderfully‘ made. Because we want to be free.

Our hearts can easily memorize a lie but must work hard to remember truth and this is life in a fallen world.

It takes great effort to live by the truth.

wonderfullymade

Over and over…until you know this full well…

You are a wonderful work of God.

breaking_chains.208145743_std“For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be.” 

Psalm 139:13-16

truth revealed

I was all set to talk about rest for the weary in Matthew 11:28-30 because it’s one of my favorite passages. But I can’t, because I’m stuck on the scriptures before that, when Jesus thanked His Father for hiding and revealing truth. (v.25-26) His prayer comes directly after His pronouncement of “woe” upon those cities who saw His miracles, yet would not repent.

“At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.  Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.”

I keep staring at these verses, trying to discover what I’m supposed to learn from them. Perhaps it’s that somewhere along the way, I grew from a child to an adult.  I gathered enough information to make me “wise”, and stopped watching Jesus with wide eyed wonder and trust.  Have I settled for studying His Word so that I can learn all about Him, rather than running after Him because I thirst to know Him? It begs the question, “what has been hidden from me because I thought I already knew it?”

Maybe the lesson is that the miracles that Jesus did were not to teach His followers how to heal or cast out demons, but they were God saying, “This is My Son. My Messiah. You should turn around and follow Him.” Perhaps I’m supposed to learn that when I see Jesus, He isn’t looking at me with disappointment because I’m not doing this “christian” thing right. He’s looking at His Father, wanting my gaze to follow His.

I’m still not satisfied that I’ve learned what I’m supposed to know.  Something is missing. So I read the verses again. I am aware that there is something of God’s heart here, and I want it. And then the little child’s heart in me skips a beat as I hear God speak.

“Truth is not learned. It is revealed.”

My Father is truth. He doesn’t want me to learn Him. He wants to reveal Himself to me. It brings Him pleasure. It’s as simple as that.