Are you the worst party crasher?

Today was one of those days where I got a good hard painful look at how much ego plays into my sense of well being. In the midst of so much to be thankful for, I find that I am much too quick to ask myself if I am a good daughter, a good wife, a good mother, a good daughter-in-law. If the answer is no, then there follows so much pain, so much hurt, so much sense of loss. Those questions sound innocent enough, but really there is so much beneath those self-reflective tendencies that really are all about ego. Can I feel good about myself today because I have been good?

The hardest thing to come back to over and over is to let myself discover the truth again that Christ has died that I don't have to try to be what I cannot be in this body on this earth--perfect. He is the perfect one. He came to live perfectly for me so that I can find satisfaction in Him. But why then is it so painful to face that I am not always or most of the time able to be good in the roles in my life? Why does that hurt so much? I guess because the hardest person to disappoint is myself. I want so much to find what it is for Christ to live in me. But I want so much to avoid the fact that for Him to live I must die. No shortcuts. No pleasant painless route to that life in Christ. Only death.

I hope today for those of you who had a painful reminder like I did that the person who usually crashes the party of my expectations is myself, remember today that there is one who was willing to crash into the messy business of living as a human being to save us. One who was willing to be housed in a barn with hay and leave the perfection of heaven that I we might have hope of a restored relationship with a perfect God. A God who is willing to take on imperfection and clothe Himself with humility that I might be clothed with righteousness. He is today and forever God with Us. Oh Come Let Us Adore Him, Christ the Lord!

Delivered Through the Fire, not from It

A View from the Inside of Suffering

I was sitting in church yesterday listening to an excellent sermon on John 6 about Jesus feeding the multitude and my mind wandered back to the topic of suffering. I got to thinking about the reality of suffering and the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in Daniel chapter three.

When these three were asked to bow before the King's Image and they refused, there very posh life in the palace was abruptly over. The king had made it clear that anyone who refused to bow and pay homage to his image would be thrown into the fiery furnace. And these three give an amazingly faith-filled reply, "O Nebuchadnezar, we do not need to give you an answer concerning this matter. If it be so, our God, whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will deliver us out of your hand O King. But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up." The king then proceeds to do just as he has promised and throws them into the furnace. It seems clear from all outside observation that these men have chosen death. That there is no escape for them. In fact, the officers who were told to take the men to the furnace were killed carrying them up there. Their statement of faith had made the king so angry that he had ordered the fire be made seven times hotter than before. And so they are thrown in as the king looks on, watching to see their certain doom. But a strange thing happens. As he observes this happening, not only do the men not burn up in the fire, but they appear to be loosed of their bonds and walking around. Then he sees an even stranger view: there is a fourth man walking in the fire with them. When he confirms with his officials that they only threw three men in the fire with them he is baffled. It seems that this fourth man even appears to look like the son of the gods. When they take these men out of the fire, not only are they not harmed, their clothes don't even smell of smoke. They actually come out alive, and not only alive but unharmed.

For most of us, when we see someone suffering whether it be from cancer, from the loss of a loved one or from a broken relationship, to the outsider it can seem like nothing but an impossible and devastating situation. All we can see is the immediacy of the danger, the threat to their lives, their happiness and their plans. Its interesting though, I have had the honor of watching a few people go through huge trials and they seem to be unsinged by their fiery trial. It baffled me until I experienced this myself.

Two years ago, the day after Hurricane Ike hit Houston, Mike and I had come to Dallas to escape the aftermath of the hurricane, and I began having a miscarriage. Not sure at first that it was really going to result in the loss of our pregnancy, a very gracious doctor, aware of our situation, fit us in and did a sonogram to check the pregnancy. I remember the doctor after a longer than usual search said, "I'm sorry, I can't find any evidence of a pregnancy" and left the room to give us some time alone. Mike and I were of course flooded with overwhelming sadness and a profound sense of loss. But something very strange happened in that moment as well. A presence entered that room the minute the doctor spoke. It was the presence of the Holy Spirit. I had at once the most overwhelming sense of love and peace and I felt keenly that we were not alone in that room. The Lord was with us. Right in the midst of that horrible loss, I had one of the most amazing experiences of the love of God I have ever known. How that moment in my life could be one of the most clear expressions of God's love is not really something I can explain even today, but it is. And this is what I know, just like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego my fire did not destroy me. I was in it. It was real, it was happening, but my Lord was in it with me, and that made all the difference.

I have to remind myself of that when I am tempted to look at the suffering of others in my life. From an outside perspective, there is no upside, no silver lining, just grief and sadness and weight. But when the Lord is in it with you, on the inside of the furnace-- it all looks and feels radically different. That's the thing with suffering, the equation changes when He shows up--every time. Interestingly, the one thing that did burn in the furnace for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego was the ropes that had bound them. That's usually what does get consumed in the fire of our circumstances, and ultimately the fire of God's love...What has bound us. As the writer of Hebrews says, (quoting the Message translation) "Do you see what we've got? An unshakable kingdom! And do you see how thankful we must be? Not only thankful, but brimming with worship, deeply reverent before God. For God is not an indifferent bystander. He's actively cleaning house, torching all that needs to burn, and he won't quit until it's all cleansed. God Himself is Fire!"

That same passage reads in the NIV, "the words 'once more' indicate the removing of what can be shaken--that is the created things--so that what cannot be shaken may remain." This is really what happens in suffering, when we are thrown into the furnace. All that seemed to be so real, so important, and so pressing burns up in the fire of trial, and one thing is clear: He is with us--Emmanuel: God with us. Can we, with these three men of faith, say that our God is able to save us and He will deliver us? It may not be the way we wanted, it may not be delivered from, but delivered through the fire; but He will deliver us.

Contentment: What's on your plate?

I find myself reflecting quite a bit about my single days in my walk with the Lord. I remember one particular day having a powerful lesson with the Lord. I was working at a private Christian school at the time and liked to go outside during my lunch period and enjoy some sunshine on my break. This particular day I was feeling very sorry for myself, bemoaning my singleness and in the spirit of authentic prayer told the Lord, "I am single, and starving here. You know I'm struggling to be content in my singleness and you won't provide me the meal of marriage." The Lord answered me as He frequently does with a picture and a word.

At once in my mind there was an image of a plate with a hot meal on it. And with the picture the Lord spoke this to my heart: "Child, everyday I give you exactly what you need for life and godliness. I prepare a table before you everyday. But some days you refuse to eat. You have decided that you get to pick the meal, and if you can't have what you want, you won't eat. That is why you starve." It was a humbling moment for me for sure. I felt somewhat like Job must have when the Lord answered him; there was some real food for thought, and I needed to shut my mouth and chew on it. And I find that lesson has stuck with me. Everyday the Lord in His infinite wisdom has gives me what He knows I need for today. Each and every day He brings to me His new mercies which are new every morning. The question is: Do I come to the well and drink? Do I eat the bread of life? I can receive His gifts to me for that day, even if they look to me to be burdens or broccoli. Or do I stubbornly decide that if certain things aren't on my plate I'm not being fed? It is my constant prayer that I respond to His daily manna with a hungry heart, knowing that He knows what I need so much better than I do. For God's invitation to His people is one of open abundant provision:

Isaiah 55 says, "Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; And you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in abundance. Incline your ear and come to Me. Listen, that you may live."

Clinging to God: A Model in Prayer

Clinging to God: A Model of Prayer

For me, having an authentic prayer life has definitely been a journey. When I was single I was convinced that it was a God-honoring prayer to ask Him when every new guy came along, “Lord, is he the one?” Really convinced that knowing that answer would help me to conduct myself rightly, I persisted in this prayer until one weekend I was challenged by a very godly man at our church to rethink this. Sinclair Ferguson, a Scottish reformed minister, had been asked to speak at our single’s retreat and having sworn off single’s retreats in my 30’s for all the melodrama inherently imbedded in them, I decided to go one last time, just to hear him talk. He gave a talk at an outdoor amphitheater one afternoon I will never forget. He titled it, “Why doesn’t God give us the red phone?” He started his talk with this question and shared his own angst in the dating process when he met and began to date his wife. Doing what apparently most of us singles do, he had been asking the Lord to show him if she was the one prior to asking her out, when he was challenged by a godly man at his church if she was a woman of character and the right kind of woman to marry. When Sinclair said yes, the man responded that he should not hesitate then to ask her out. That God might not want him to have that answer that the beginning of the process. He said that gave him much material for thought and spurred a shift in his thinking in this matter of knowing God’s will. He went on to point out that perhaps our prayers that are so rabidly focused on the outcome of the events of our lives and whether or not something was God’s will was really not at all about seeking God’s will. That is was rather a means of risk management. That we sometimes ask God if a thing is His will because we want to know at the beginning if we will get hurt, if we need to be guarded in the process. But taking us to the Scriptures, he pointed out that God is actually much more concerned about this process of conforming us to the image of His Son; that He is committed to a process in our lives not just a specific path, course of action or outcome. The importance of being in this process is that by not knowing how God will provide in every instance and having to wait upon Him and see how He works things out is what builds our faith and our trust in Him. He pointed out that God in fact only calls us to be accountable for one day at a time. To seek Him and His will daily, with a surrendered heart to whatever the outcome might be. He challenged us to consider that perhaps rather than praying that we know if this person or that person is the one, we commit rather to praying that we are the right kind of spouse and that God works in us to be the partner He wants us to be for the person He brings to us. That we pray that we are committed to honoring God in the dating process and allowing Him to unfold His plan regarding this person as we walk with the Lord daily, rather than praying that we see the end from the beginning. That can just be our way of managing the risk of a situation. While it looks Godly on the surface, underneath it lurks a dark motive of suspicion and mistrust of God’s mercy in our lives.

That talk really had an impact on me and I decided from that day on not to pray anymore that I would know ahead of time in a flash of revelation who was the one for me. I began to pray instead that God would keep me open to who He would bring into my life, and keep me open to His will in the process of leading us together. I actually prayed that God would lead through the man’s assurance that I was the one. He was pleased to honor that prayer when I met and started dating my husband to be. It was actually a grueling process for me though, and revealed to me in the process that I really did want to maintain control of the situation.

As I have reflected on the nature of prayer as God intends it, I have decided that the reason Sinclair had really landed on the right idea about prayer was because it promoted a posture of clinging to God. In the past few years my eyes have been opened to this being not only a minor theme that runs through the Old and New Testament but also actually an underlying theme in what right relationship with God looks like. Consider the passage in Jeremiah 13:10-11 where God makes a strange request of Jeremiah and asks him to get a waistband and hide it under a rock for many days. When God tells Jeremiah to retrieve it awhile later, naturally having been exposed to the elements, it has been ruined. He tells Jeremiah in this story that the people of Israel have become worthless to Him because they refuse to cling to Him. “For as the waistband clings to the waist of a man, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah to cling to me, declares the Lord, that they might be for Me a people of renown, for praise and for glory; but they did not listen.”

Again in Deuteronomy 13:4 when the people are challenged to keeps the Lord’s commandments, along with that admonition is a call to cling to the Lord. It says, “You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him and cling to Him. When the people of Israel were being led by Joshua into the Promised Land God says to His people, “But you are to cling to the Lord your God as you have done to this day.”

The most godly king who ever ruled Judah is described this way in II Kings 18: 3-6. It says, “And he did right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father David had done…He trusted in the Lord the God of Israel: so that after him there was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor among those who were before him. For he clung to the Lord; he did not depart from following Him, but kept His commandments, which the Lord had commanded Moses.” And then it goes on to describe his response when the king of Assyria’s messenger went to Israel and told them not to let their naïve king Hezekiah mislead them. That they would be not delivered out of his hand by the living God. How did Hezekiah respond? Did he get into some theological banter with that evil king? He went into the temple, laid this letter of scorn before the altar of God and cried out to Him to deliver them. And boy did God answer. It was one of the few battles described in the Old Testament where God directly sends an angel of destruction to wipe out the enemies of God. His prayer life was a reflex of dependence, surrender and vulnerable expectation before God. His response to life’s trials was to run to His heavenly Father and cling to Him.

What keeps us from operating in such vulnerable expectation with the Lord? Again reflecting back on my single years one of the other most impactful talks I heard was regarding this issue of prayer with our single women’s leader Kari Stainbeck. She was talking about this matter of prayer and said that the reason we don’t come before the Lord with our hearts wide open is because we are afraid to let our desires and fears be as big as they really are because we don’t really think God will come through for us. So we tell ourselves it’s really not that big of a deal. It really isn’t that desperately lonely to be single. I really don’t want kids that badly. We hide behind this very Christian-sounding rhetoric that says, “I’m really ok with this” because it’s the Lord’s will when in fact our hearts our breaking. But we can’t admit to ourselves let alone the Lord just how big or devastating this issue is to us because on some level we really believe He just might not come through. He might not answer me. His love might not be enough to cover and heal this. So we minimize our needs and desires when we pray because our God is frankly just too small.

Elizabeth Elliot describes a similar struggle in her prayer life shortly after the death of her second husband in her book A Path through Suffering. Having lost her first husband to a massacre by a tribe of Auca Indians, it was unimaginable to her that God would ever call her to suffer the death of her second husband to cancer. Finding herself a widow however for the second time, shortly after his death, she was sitting at her table trying to have time with the Lord but feeling entirely at a loss with what to bring to Him. She told him in a moment of complete honestly that she knew she needed to worship Him but the only thing she really had to bring before His throne was heartache, disappointment and despair. She recounts that the Spirit softly replied to her, “then child that is what you are to bring to me. For it is not that you bring your best, but that you bring what you have in your heart and offer it on the alter of surrender. For it is in laying it down before me, that it becomes a fragrant offering to me.” It was a totally liberating moment for her to recognize that we do not come before the Lord in prayer with the right attitude or the right heart, but in this model of clinging, rather we just run to Him. We see him as our refuge, our only hope and we run to him because as Peter says in John 6: 68, “Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” We do not come to Him because we can do it right or well or in a spiritual frame of mine. We come to Him because He is Abba---Daddy. We come to Him because we know that ultimately He is our only hope, our only rock and our only refuge. There is nowhere else to turn.

What better example is given to us of this kind of clinging in prayer that Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane? It is interesting because as many times as it mentions in the New Testament that Jesus went alone by himself to pray, this is our only intimate glimpse of what actually took place in His prayer life with the Father. And it isn’t what we would expect. For Jesus does not come with pious stoic words of lofty notions of suffering. He cries out to His Father in complete vulnerability that this cross is not one He wants to bear. That this cup of suffering is one He would rather not drink. He doesn’t minimize his fear or his emotions. He doesn’t hide from the Father his true human feelings about facing the cross. Instead He pours out his heart before the Father so fervently that He sweats blood. He held nothing back. He threw Himself with unguarded passion at His Father’s feet, and in doing so found that He received mercy in His time of need. As it tells us in Hebrews 5: 7 “ In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the one who was able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety. Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.”

Several things fascinate me about this passage. It says that Jesus appeal to His Father was emotional, heart-felt and completely honest. He did not try to dress up His feelings or diminish His very real fears about going to the cross. He did not hold back revealing His true desires and even making requests of the Father that if possible He would not have to go to the cross. What is interesting about the text though is that the Scriptures clearly tell us that He was heard because of His piety. His Father heard Him; and yet Jesus did end up going to the cross. The Father did not say yes to His Son in this, even His only Son. Do we trust the Father as Jesus did? Enough to come to Him as our only source of comfort and pour out our hearts? Willing to accept whatever the Father has for us in the process?

One of my favorite stories of prayer is about St. Augustine’s mother Monica. She was a godly woman of prayer who had prayed fervently for the conversion of her wayward son Augustine. When he announced to her that he planned to move to Rome, the capital of debauchery at that time, her heart was broken. She was convinced that if he moved to Rome he would never be converted to Christ. And so the night before his planned departure, she lay on the dock from which his ship was to embark and prayed fervently all night long that God would not let him get on that ship. And yet when morning came, he did get on that ship and leave for Rome. She was crushed. Had God not heard her prayer? Did He not have more of a heart for her son’s conversion than she did? And yet it was a few months later in Rome that Augustine met the Lord.

What is interesting about this story is that God was working out Monica’s prayer. It did not look like it. How could she have known that in order for God to say yes to the heart of her prayer—her son’s conversion---He would say no to the particular of her prayer—that he not go to Rome. Such is the wisdom of God in our lives. And so the challenge for us is to entrust our lives into the hand of our faithful creator and practice a life of clinging abandon with Him. If this was not what He intended why would He say in John 15:5 “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from me you can do nothing.” The image He gives us for relationship with Him is that of total dependence, total surrender, a clinging to our Vine. Are you willing to enter into this kind of prayer relationship with your Father? Ready to lay before Him all that you have, and wish for, and have not, that you might discover the riches of His grace? Cling to Him and see if He is not worthy of all your trust.

The Lesson of Leah

Genesis 29 The Lesson Of Leah

It is interesting to note that the Scripture says that God saw that Leah was unloved and compensated her grief with the joy of giving her children. He didn’t force Jacob to love her. He didn’t give him love for her. But He saw her grief and He answered that grief. He showed her that as her ultimate husband, He would care for her in ways her earthly husband would not.

It is also interesting to watch her journey with the Lord as well. At first she has made her life about a quest. What she couldn’t have. What she doesn’t have: her husband’s love. She sees her children at first as merely a means to win her husband’s love. She is still hoping that one thing will make another happen, but it doesn’t. However, you see a progression in her walk, her faith with her declaration when Simeon is born. She is beginning to realize on some level that ultimately her life is about her and the Lord. And that the Lord sees her grief, and He cares. But she lapses back into her old mentality when Levi is born. Her last ditch effort is like all of ours; maybe this will work. Maybe this one last thing if I accomplish it will give me what I want.

Then finally there is a shift when Judah is born. She has finally reached a place of surrender. She says when he is born, “This time I will praise the Lord.” She has finally let go of seeing what the Lord brings to her as a way to manipulate, to control. She instead embraces this gift, this precious child as God’s provision, and God’s good gift to her. That is all.

But that isn’t all really. Isn’t it interesting that through this child, the child of abandoned dreams and surrendered hope that He brings the Messiah. It is not through Rachel—Jacob’s chosen but through his rejected wife Leah that God fulfills His promise of Messiah.

And yet we find ourselves naturally feeling sorry for Leah. That she has to endure being an unloved wife. But it is her suffering, her awareness of her pain and willingness to surrender her desires to God, that He uses to fulfill much larger hopes: the hope of Messiah; the hope of Israel for a Savior.

What is it that we find ourselves scheming for? Hoping for? Manipulating our world to get? Perhaps when we as Leah can get to the place where we are willing to just praise the Lord. To see all the events and relationships in our lives as having ultimately to do with the One relationship which supercedes all others. Perhaps out of our dying dreams the Lord will breathe His life, His plan, His hope which will be far greater than we could have imagined.

And what of Rachel? For all that she got, what was her legacy? Is she part of the Messianic lineage? She received her reward in full. Jesus said it best when He says in the beatitudes, “Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.”

Marriage Sermon

Today is a day of rejoicing. It is a day of reflecting. It is a day of remembering. Remembering that marriage would not be possible if it were not rooting in eternity. In the pattern of God’s love for His people. Usually when we hear about marriage wedding ceremonies it is limited to a discussion of the nature of love as described in 1 Cor. 13. God’s definition of love. And this is true. But let’s go a bit further. Let’s look at God’s definition of what marriage is really meant to do. Not just how we are meant to behave towards one another but why we are to behave and why there are defined roles within marriage. Roles within marriage are rooted in the Godhead itself. Look with me at Ephesians 5: 25-33. When Paul gives instructions to a man and his wife regarding how they are to relate to one another, he immediately directs us to the example given to us by Christ. As Paul is describing how the husband is to lead his wife in a self-sacrificing way and how the woman is to reflect the church’s submission to Christ, he says in vs. 32 that he is speaking of a mystery. And this mystery is the marriage of Christ His bride the church. How can two entities, completely different from one another, completely separate in substance and form become one flesh. It is more than a physical reference. It is a spiritual work done by God Himself.

Marriage itself is an act, a covenant which is meant to drive us to God. To point to His pursuing relationship that He has established with his people to manifest His tremendous love towards us. When we attempt this endeavor called marriage it will at some point lead us to a crisis. A crisis of emotion, of will and of desire. Because within all of us are wandering hungry hearts. Hearts that are on a constant journey of fulfillment and wholeness. And somewhere along the line we find someone who promises to help us achieve this. However, in the process we find that they are also on this journey of self-fulfillment, and wholeness. And many times our journeys collide in painful and harmful ways in our marriage. Simply for one reason. We cannot sustain our own marriages any more than we can sustain our relationship with our creator God. He must do a work. And He designs and orchestrates circumstances and states in our lives such as marriage to drive us to this crisis of realization. 

This awareness that we are fundamentally inadequate. That we cannot live the way we want to and we cannot behave in loving ways on our own. Because we find ourselves driven by our own needs. And those needs are infinitely cavernous. They are voids which finite things, even marital love cannot fill. This crisis is meant to bring us to a point of brokenness. A place of humility. A place of realization that we have been designed, we not simply a mass of randomly ordered chemicals. We are not simply creatures of the here and now. Because there is an ache in us that points to something beyond all that we can see and all that we know in our physical bodies. There is a part of us that is rooted in eternity. And the remedy for this ache is itself eternal. For this remedy is the eternal love of God. We can strive our entire lives to fill this void and we will find but one truth, that it always outchases our efforts. It always outruns our pursuit of its fullness. Because it takes an infinite source to fill it. And that source is the person of Jesus Christ. He is the hope that is offered to the world. Listen to what Isaiah the prophet said, “Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress…the people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned…For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:1ff). How blessed we are to celebrate our marriage around the season which celebrates God’s gift of love to mankind. His Son Jesus. And it is by relationship with Jesus that we can have fulfillment that our hearts so long for.

Listen to what He says in Isaiah 55 “Come all you who are thirsty come to the waters; and you who have no money come buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good and your soul will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; hear me that your soul may live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you…Seek the Lord while He may be found; call on Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts… Let him turn to the Lord and He will have mercy, and to our God for He will freely pardon….

When we grown tired of seeking our own fulfillment we find that He is there. And He as the author and sustainer of love can give us what our hearts so desperately crave. A relationship that is not based on our ability our perfection or our past actions. It is based on His nature, His character and His love. And this is offered to us as a gift. A free gift to us, even though it cost Jesus His life. There is nothing we must do to receive it other than to accept that we cannot earn it; we must simply accept His gift of salvation, the expression of His love in Jesus Christ. And when we do something happens. We have a source outside of ourselves. And eternal unchanging, unalterable love… And this love frees us to love each other. It is from our relationship with God that we can love each other. That we have anything to offer our mates.

It says in I John 4: 7-18, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed His love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. 

This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love each other God lives in us and His love is made complete in us. We know that we live in him and He in us, because He has given us His Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. Love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in the world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The man who fears is not perfected in love. We love because He first loved us.” The apostle Peter says it this way, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these He has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption of the world caused by evil desires.” I Peter 1: 4.

The stability of marriage, the act of marriage is meant to drive us again and again to the fact that our lives, our love our ability to serve comes from God. We cannot give that which we have not first received.

My friends want you to know that: it is the deep longing of our hearts and the constant prayer to God on your behalf that you, our friends and family experience this love relationship with God that He we have been blessed to experience. And it is from this primary relationship with Jesus that we offer ourselves to each other today knowing that only by reliance upon God’s great mercy and His sustaining love that we can enter into our covenant of marriage today. May our lives and our love for each other be a picture of the love God has for us.

Genesis 32: Alone with God

Genesis 32: Alone with God

Genesis 32: 24 Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.

I don’t know if you can relate to Jacob as a schemer, but I can. And when you are someone who is capable of getting him/herself into our out of almost any situation, it is pretty scary to consider the moment that we are really truly alone with God. I think it’s a moment most of us try to avoid at all costs. Especially when we’ve got a beef with Him or a grudge to nurse.

Its interesting to note that this night of physical wrestling that Jacob had with God wasn’t something that Jacob initiated with God. God found him. God picked the fight-or so the text seems to indicate. Why did God do that? Why did He strive with Jacob literally and physically that night? I think its because Jacob was one of those people who found his place in the world by testing the limits. It was sort of his personality. He fooled a lot of people in his day and pulled a lot of stunts. And so for him, for his chastening—God accepts the challenge that Jacob had issued to the world—even in the womb.

And Jacob apparently had a lot to bring to the fight, because he would not let go of the Angel of the Lord until he blessed him. In fact God had to touch Jacob’s hip to prevail. He had to cripple him to finally get him to give in. But Jacob didn’t really know who it was he was dealing with until it was all over. Until he was marked by God in a way that he would never forget; not just in his hip, but in his identity. It was his night of wrestling with God that gave him a new identity as Israel.

I can’t tell you how many times in my life I have found myself wrestling and I had no idea until it was all over that the real person I was struggling with was God. We don’t usually see that until its played out and we can see that it usually is God we find ourselves taking issue with when he take life by the horns. It usually boils down to the fact that things haven’t played out the way we thought they should. And we feel like we had a better script if everyone else would just take their proper roles. But they don’t. And finally when the light begins to dawn on our wrestling, we see that its ultimately the Lord with whom we strive.

But the hope of this story for me at least is that Jacob isn’t cursed for striving. He is allowed to wear himself out. And so are we. God understands why we strive. The amazing thing about our Lord is that He condescends to engage us. He does. I am so thankful that the times I have shaken my fist at heaven—He has always accepted my challenge and prevailed. He has ultimately and finally showed Himself to me as the real one I challenge when I strive for control.

It is not an insecure thing to know that He wins. It is an amazing comfort. Because unlike us, when God prevails, He blesses those who strive with Him. I’m glad to know my Lord’s will is greater than my own. That his purpose can overcome mine. That I can surrender ultimately to His touch, for even if it marks me with pain, it transforms me.

Stealing our Father's Idols

Stealing our Father’s Idols: Genesis 31

If most of us were honest we would admit that we think the whole story of Rachel stealing Laban’s idols is absurd. We find her childish in her petty theft and brazen in her bold-faced, nervy lie of saying that she was on her period and couldn’t get up to hide them from her father. She really did marry a man of equal caliber because they were both given to much deceit. But in point of fact we are not that different from Rachel. We fall into the same kind of sin. Jesus tells us that because man and woman were made to be one flesh—for this reason and man will leave his father and mother and the two shall become one flesh. 

Its because of God’s plan we are to leave our family of origin. But how many of us want to take some souvenirs of habit, of perspective, of attitudes or behaviors with us. We are just plain comfortable with the way our family did it. It’s scary to set out into unfamiliar territory with the man at our side who hasn’t quite made his way in the world. After all, Rachel had watched her dad’s success for years. And his idolatry had poisoned her as well. She really felt that those silly idols were a comfort of home that she just couldn’t leave behind.

What are the small little idols you have packed in your bag from home? The things you are unwilling to leave behind from your father’s household? We tend to think of idolatry as a thing of the past, something that the early primitive believers used to struggle with. But there are things we will lie and/or manipulate to protect and cover up, just to know that we have maintained a little bit of control. But what do these things get for us?

Ironically the idols we pack with us in our emotional bag when we leave home are many times sins of the father. Man-made attitudes of dealing with conflict, hurt, fear or pain, and we won’t let them go because they are the only way we have known of dealing.

Ask the Father today to reveal the idols you pack in your bag. What are you defending from His gaze? Give them back to your heavenly Father, for you will find His rest far greater when you know that you hold back nothing from Him. He is indeed a merciful Father who longs to have compassion on you. Give Him your idols. 

II Chronicles 16: For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.