Have you ever considered that maybe God sings with us when we worship Him?
After you read this, I'd like you to find some of your favorite worship music and imagine that Jesus is singing it to you rather than you singing it to Jesus. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but when we sing about how much we love our Heavenly Father or how faithful and sure our salvation is, we should take a moment every so often to remember that the truth of the Gospel teaches us that Jesus feels the exact same way towards us. Just as we long to someday be with Him, He longs to present His bride in the Throne Room of Heaven.
I'll start with a simple example. Matthew West's song More has always been me and Jesus's love song; it is probably the only song I never sing along to as a rule. I just sit and listen while Jesus sings it to me. I love you more than the sun and the stars that I taught how to shine. You are mine, and you shine for me too. I love you.
Just a heads up, this does not usually work with old hymns. They are very foundational and heaven-focused, which is healthy and necessary in worship, but they don't usually work for this practice. However, I have recently grown incredibly fond of Blessed Assurance, and every now and then, I imagine Jesus singing it instead of me. Go with me on this. Blessed Assurance, You are mine. You are my story, you are my song. And for just a moment, this song is a two way conversation. Jesus is my story; to tell my story is to tell of Him (Thanks Big Daddy Weave for that great quote). But you are also His story and His song; when He retells the story of history to the angels, it's a story about you. And I think we forget that sometimes. To accept the gift of salvation from Jesus is a one-time decision, but the reality of the depth of love in the Gospel is something we need to remind ourselves is real every single day.
Here's a little deeper example. A recent favorite of mine is You Will Never Run Away by Rend Collective. The chorus goes: You will never run away, you're forever mine. You will never run away, you're by my side. You will never run away, you'll forever shine. You will never run away you're by my side. I think on our hardest days, Jesus sings this to us. He knows the strength of our faith better than we do and He's cheering and fighting for us when we question where we stand. One of my favorite Bethel Music song's declares Jesus we love you, Oh how we love you. You are the one our hearts adore. Whenever I sing this song, it's really weird, but my focus literally goes back and forth; I sing a chorus, then Jesus sings a chorus, repeat. When was the last time you had that kind of a conversation with the God of the Universe.
So give it a try. It might feel strange to imagine Jesus worshiping you, but in a kind of weird way, He does. Worship is an act of love. When we worship God, we are lifting Him to a high place in our hearts reserved only for Him. And believe it or not, Jesus has a high place in His heart for you too and He will always, always love you more than you love Him. And while we really shouldn't let it go to our heads that we are worshiped, what I want this exercise to teach us is to never forget that we are loved by Jesus in a way that surpasses everything we could imagine.
Friday, 23 October 2015
Sunday, 18 October 2015
I Fasted for Three Days and Nothing Happened.
I know this is supposed to be a blog about Eating, but permit me to dedicate just this one post to NOT Eating. Immediately after teaching His disciples the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6, Jesus spends 2 verses stressing forgiveness and then the first 'next topic' words out of His mouth are "Whenever you fast". Note that He does not say if, but when. It's like every other Christian discipline; it doesn't always, but it can cause movement in the heavenlies and should be a practice that saved believers (at least) think about (at least) occasionally.
After extended seasons of attendance at Zootown Church in Missoula and Antioch Community Church in Waco, I've come to expect a lot from fasting. I've seen my food-free peers experience supernatural healing, prophetic declaration, the works. I myself had a truly profound experience during a fast I did about a year ago. After several fasts in several different environments and seasons of my life, I expect Spiritual Awakening when I fast. So...
From sunrise on October 14th to sunset on October 16th, I did not eat any solid food.
I drank water, milk and juice.
I read the same passage every morning when I woke up and every evening before I went to sleep. (For the record, it was Psalm 119:33-40)
I attended daily prayer meetings at my church and I only listened to worship music.
And nothing circumstantially changed in my life.
I woke up on Saturday morning in the same apartment with the same job, still hungry, still a graduate student and still unsure of how I was going to wrap up the next chapter of my thesis. There were no fireworks, no prophetic dreams, no writing in the sky and no dry fleeces in my shower. I had no visions of a museum career in Virginia, no name of my future spouse underlined in my Bible and no burning desire to be any nicer to the annoying undergrads that blared loud music last night. In fact, I'm pretty sure every emotion I felt those three days, every word I prayed and every faint whisper I may have heard from God (or imagined) were all familiar, repeated things I'd heard and felt before. Leftovers.
And somehow, the God of the Universe knew that leftovers were EXACTLY what I needed.
I recently finished Beth Moore's 10-week study on the Book of Esther and Beth points out several times that the name of God does not appear anywhere in Esther's 10 chapters. In this way, Esther is the book of the Bible that shows us what God looks like when we cannot see Him. After the king's best man Haman sets a calendar date to destroy, kill and annihilate all the Jews in Persia, a secretly Jewish scribe named Mordecai fasts, puts on ashes and mourns at King Xerxes' gate, crying out to Yahweh to save his people. At the end of his fasting, the Jews are still not saved, but Mordecai is still certain that 'relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place' (4:14). For three days this week, I thought about Mordecai a lot. And this morning, I was still missing a lot of the answers I wanted when I started fasting, but I have to admit, after three days of hearing nothing but familiar words of the hope and faithfulness of my Savior, I was pretty sure that He had all my questions handled.
I believe that the will of God is something we Earthlings often experience in retrospect, but rarely as foresight. As Soren Kierkegaard gloomily points out in Fear and Trembling, "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." We see in Scripture that the moments God revealed His will before it happened were rare and even among those few, most of them were pretty fuzzy on the details. What was absolutely NOT fuzzy was the faith of those He revealed His will to. A lot of them ended up in the Hall of Faith in Hebrews 11, but none of them got there because mountains moved and walls came tumbling down every time they decided to skip a meal. They got there because after pouring their hearts out, fasting and mourning, the silence that followed didn't slow them down.
So, if anybody out there is considering fasting, I pray that you can be content with whatever revelation God gives you or chooses to keep secret. If He told us everything we wanted to know, we wouldn't need Him, so even when we fast, He sticks to telling us what we need to know. And sometimes, all we really need to know is, Dear Heart, did you know that I love you?
After extended seasons of attendance at Zootown Church in Missoula and Antioch Community Church in Waco, I've come to expect a lot from fasting. I've seen my food-free peers experience supernatural healing, prophetic declaration, the works. I myself had a truly profound experience during a fast I did about a year ago. After several fasts in several different environments and seasons of my life, I expect Spiritual Awakening when I fast. So...
From sunrise on October 14th to sunset on October 16th, I did not eat any solid food.
I drank water, milk and juice.
I read the same passage every morning when I woke up and every evening before I went to sleep. (For the record, it was Psalm 119:33-40)
I attended daily prayer meetings at my church and I only listened to worship music.
And nothing circumstantially changed in my life.
I woke up on Saturday morning in the same apartment with the same job, still hungry, still a graduate student and still unsure of how I was going to wrap up the next chapter of my thesis. There were no fireworks, no prophetic dreams, no writing in the sky and no dry fleeces in my shower. I had no visions of a museum career in Virginia, no name of my future spouse underlined in my Bible and no burning desire to be any nicer to the annoying undergrads that blared loud music last night. In fact, I'm pretty sure every emotion I felt those three days, every word I prayed and every faint whisper I may have heard from God (or imagined) were all familiar, repeated things I'd heard and felt before. Leftovers.
And somehow, the God of the Universe knew that leftovers were EXACTLY what I needed.
I recently finished Beth Moore's 10-week study on the Book of Esther and Beth points out several times that the name of God does not appear anywhere in Esther's 10 chapters. In this way, Esther is the book of the Bible that shows us what God looks like when we cannot see Him. After the king's best man Haman sets a calendar date to destroy, kill and annihilate all the Jews in Persia, a secretly Jewish scribe named Mordecai fasts, puts on ashes and mourns at King Xerxes' gate, crying out to Yahweh to save his people. At the end of his fasting, the Jews are still not saved, but Mordecai is still certain that 'relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place' (4:14). For three days this week, I thought about Mordecai a lot. And this morning, I was still missing a lot of the answers I wanted when I started fasting, but I have to admit, after three days of hearing nothing but familiar words of the hope and faithfulness of my Savior, I was pretty sure that He had all my questions handled.
I believe that the will of God is something we Earthlings often experience in retrospect, but rarely as foresight. As Soren Kierkegaard gloomily points out in Fear and Trembling, "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." We see in Scripture that the moments God revealed His will before it happened were rare and even among those few, most of them were pretty fuzzy on the details. What was absolutely NOT fuzzy was the faith of those He revealed His will to. A lot of them ended up in the Hall of Faith in Hebrews 11, but none of them got there because mountains moved and walls came tumbling down every time they decided to skip a meal. They got there because after pouring their hearts out, fasting and mourning, the silence that followed didn't slow them down.
So, if anybody out there is considering fasting, I pray that you can be content with whatever revelation God gives you or chooses to keep secret. If He told us everything we wanted to know, we wouldn't need Him, so even when we fast, He sticks to telling us what we need to know. And sometimes, all we really need to know is, Dear Heart, did you know that I love you?
Tuesday, 13 October 2015
Silent Treatment.
Does anybody else write down their anger and never, ever let anybody read it?
Or maybe wear their heart on their sleeve, but only when they're in front of a mirror?
I want to suggest that social media is full of two kinds of people:
1) People who hurt and tell someone.
2) People who hurt and tell an empty room.
I think there's a lot more women in this second category than we think. And it's not healthy, ladies. The fear of being too much and too little at the same time comes out on Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook. We fear being too little in fashion and motherhood, so we post dorm decor, recipes or pictures of our children. We fear being too much emotionally, so we avoid anything that might suggest we are stressed to the point of tears. Which is ironic, because going to all the effort of making our own pumpkin spice latte cupcakes with creme cheese frosting and a cinnamon stick is what induces the stress we want to hide. Face it ladies; social media is your great-grandmother's last ditch effort to convince you not to air your dirty laundry in public, to put on some lipstick and fix your hair before your husband or (God forbid) your girlfriends get here for Bible study. Yeah, because those are definitely two relationships in which secrets are totally acceptable.
I cannot tell you how many screaming, angry, crying, just-want-to-rip-my-hair-out posts I've considered posting on my Facebook status these last three weeks, only to reword, rework and rewrite until I just get fed up and retract. I give in to the old granny behind my ear, still whispering about dirty laundry.
This needs to end. And it needs to end now.
Because I'm a time bomb waiting to go off.
But I don't know how to tell you that yet.
So the clock keeps counting down.
I really don't have an answer to the silent treatment.
I hope you weren't expecting one.
The only thing I can suggest is to keep going, somehow.
Eat. Pray. Plank.
Most importantly....PRAY.
Because even if you try to give God the silent treatment,
He hears it.
Psalm 18:6-7, 9-10, 16, 19
In my distress I called to the LORD;
I cried to my God for help.
From His temple He heard my voice;
my cry came before Him, into His ears.
The earth trembled and quaked, and the foundations of the mountains shook;
they trembled because He was angry.
He parted the heavens and came down;
dark clouds were under His feet.
He mounted the cherubim and flew;
He soared on the wings of the wind.
He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
He drew me out of deep waters.
He brought me out into a spacious place;
He rescued me because He delighted in me.
If that's not a knight in shining armor, I don't know what is...
Or maybe wear their heart on their sleeve, but only when they're in front of a mirror?
I want to suggest that social media is full of two kinds of people:
1) People who hurt and tell someone.
2) People who hurt and tell an empty room.
I think there's a lot more women in this second category than we think. And it's not healthy, ladies. The fear of being too much and too little at the same time comes out on Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook. We fear being too little in fashion and motherhood, so we post dorm decor, recipes or pictures of our children. We fear being too much emotionally, so we avoid anything that might suggest we are stressed to the point of tears. Which is ironic, because going to all the effort of making our own pumpkin spice latte cupcakes with creme cheese frosting and a cinnamon stick is what induces the stress we want to hide. Face it ladies; social media is your great-grandmother's last ditch effort to convince you not to air your dirty laundry in public, to put on some lipstick and fix your hair before your husband or (God forbid) your girlfriends get here for Bible study. Yeah, because those are definitely two relationships in which secrets are totally acceptable.
I cannot tell you how many screaming, angry, crying, just-want-to-rip-my-hair-out posts I've considered posting on my Facebook status these last three weeks, only to reword, rework and rewrite until I just get fed up and retract. I give in to the old granny behind my ear, still whispering about dirty laundry.
This needs to end. And it needs to end now.
Because I'm a time bomb waiting to go off.
But I don't know how to tell you that yet.
So the clock keeps counting down.
I really don't have an answer to the silent treatment.
I hope you weren't expecting one.
The only thing I can suggest is to keep going, somehow.
Eat. Pray. Plank.
Most importantly....PRAY.
Because even if you try to give God the silent treatment,
He hears it.
Psalm 18:6-7, 9-10, 16, 19
In my distress I called to the LORD;
I cried to my God for help.
From His temple He heard my voice;
my cry came before Him, into His ears.
The earth trembled and quaked, and the foundations of the mountains shook;
they trembled because He was angry.
He parted the heavens and came down;
dark clouds were under His feet.
He mounted the cherubim and flew;
He soared on the wings of the wind.
He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
He drew me out of deep waters.
He brought me out into a spacious place;
He rescued me because He delighted in me.
If that's not a knight in shining armor, I don't know what is...
Sunday, 11 October 2015
A Single Tear In The Storm
When I started a blog primarily directed towards single Christian women, I expected backlash. That's the thing about taking up a cause for your faith - it's like placing a target on your back and saying "Ok Satan, come get me!" And what do you know, after the first few posts, some things I'd successfully forgotten came to light again. After some serious conversations with people who read this blog, guilt started pounding me like a freight train. I've said before that Satan knows your weaknesses girlfriend and he will use them against you.
For the last couple of weeks, his weapons have been working.
For the last couple of weeks, I haven't felt qualified to post anything.
For the last couple of weeks, Satan's had me convinced
I have nothing to say
I have no authority
I have no room to talk about these things.
I want to write about faith,
He tells me that mine is weak, unstable and conditional.
I want to write about purity and forgiveness,
He tells me that my past makes me unqualified.
I want to write about self-confidence and identity,
He tells me that my value lies in others' opinions.
In the great words of my beautiful mama: WHY AM I SURPRISED BY THIS?!?!!
My purpose in sharing this is not to generate pity, but to issue a warning. If you're going to take a leap of faith, be prepared to encounter flying debris. What I'd like to do now is encourage everyone else in this position.
When the devil throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this: "I admit that I deserve death and hell, what of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is there I shall be also! I didn't say it, Martin Luther did. And he said it really well, I think.
Acknowledging deep-rooted sin is new territory for me; I've been a bit of a coward for a few months now. But at some point last week, I recalled that I had a saving faith long before this problem started. I also realized that the God of the Universe knew it would be a problem long before I had a saving faith, and He still gave that faith to me anyway.
Romans 1:24 says God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts...
Hear me. If you have even an ounce of faith left in the midst of your addiction to sin, it is because God gave it to you. He was planning to give it to you even before you got your first high. He has not, will not, and has never ever planned to give you over to this thing.
Later in Romans, Paul says that If you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of Sonship. And by him we cry 'Abba, Father'. The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.
Hear me once more. If you have even an ounce of faith left in the midst of this, it is because God gave you Sonship even before you got your first high. And Sonship doesn't go away, friends. It's a guarantee. He WILL see you through this. You might be pretty battered on the other side, but you will be His and He is very good at putting back together broken pieces.
Let me wrap this up with a quick story. This morning in church, we were singing about our longing for Jesus, our need for Him and our desire to see His face and my attention was drawn to an older Hispanic man sitting alone in front of me. He was very inconspicuous in his jeans and dirty t-shirt but he stood out in a roomful of pastey white college kids. Just looking at him, yup the back of his head, tears filled my eyes instantly. I've only been slammed by the freight train of compassion once before, but it hurt a lot more this time. My chest was tight, I couldn't even hear the words being sung and every fiber in my body told me I had to talk to him.
God, what do I say? It was like the words were written across the inside of my eyes, they were so clear. Tell him I LOVE HIM. Tell him I long for him, I need him, and my strongest desire is to see his heart. This song isn't about your love for me, it's about My love for HIM. He is my first love.
So....I did. Somewhere between the offering and the start of the sermon, I leaned forward and whispered in this old man's ear, "Sir, this has never happened to me before and I don't know you. But God wants you to know that this song isn't about Him, it's about you." He didn't turn around, didn't tell me his name, he just nodded, faced forward and listened. After sharing the message God had put on my heart, I awkwardly leaned back in my seat.
Only then did the man turn around.
Only then did I see a single tear tattoo under his right eye*.
"Pray for me." he said, then began to cry and turned away.
As much as I hate this sin in my life and hate myself for being consumed by it, I am beginning to consider this fight a blessing. I have a mission that I'm not afraid to fight for and there is literally nothing that can keep God from completing the good works He begins in the hearts of His children. So I'm going to keep writing, keep praying and keep returning to that place in the Throne Room where my face is on the ground. I'm going to cling to the truth that Peter knew very well: it is always better to be terrified, exhausted and drowning in the middle of the storm with Jesus than to be sitting comfortably in the boat without Him.
*For my friends unfamiliar with prison tattoos, this tattoo varies in meaning, but is most often associated with inmates who have committed murder.
For the last couple of weeks, his weapons have been working.
For the last couple of weeks, I haven't felt qualified to post anything.
For the last couple of weeks, Satan's had me convinced
I have nothing to say
I have no authority
I have no room to talk about these things.
I want to write about faith,
He tells me that mine is weak, unstable and conditional.
I want to write about purity and forgiveness,
He tells me that my past makes me unqualified.
I want to write about self-confidence and identity,
He tells me that my value lies in others' opinions.
In the great words of my beautiful mama: WHY AM I SURPRISED BY THIS?!?!!
My purpose in sharing this is not to generate pity, but to issue a warning. If you're going to take a leap of faith, be prepared to encounter flying debris. What I'd like to do now is encourage everyone else in this position.
When the devil throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this: "I admit that I deserve death and hell, what of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is there I shall be also! I didn't say it, Martin Luther did. And he said it really well, I think.
Acknowledging deep-rooted sin is new territory for me; I've been a bit of a coward for a few months now. But at some point last week, I recalled that I had a saving faith long before this problem started. I also realized that the God of the Universe knew it would be a problem long before I had a saving faith, and He still gave that faith to me anyway.
Romans 1:24 says God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts...
Hear me. If you have even an ounce of faith left in the midst of your addiction to sin, it is because God gave it to you. He was planning to give it to you even before you got your first high. He has not, will not, and has never ever planned to give you over to this thing.
Later in Romans, Paul says that If you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of Sonship. And by him we cry 'Abba, Father'. The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.
Hear me once more. If you have even an ounce of faith left in the midst of this, it is because God gave you Sonship even before you got your first high. And Sonship doesn't go away, friends. It's a guarantee. He WILL see you through this. You might be pretty battered on the other side, but you will be His and He is very good at putting back together broken pieces.
Let me wrap this up with a quick story. This morning in church, we were singing about our longing for Jesus, our need for Him and our desire to see His face and my attention was drawn to an older Hispanic man sitting alone in front of me. He was very inconspicuous in his jeans and dirty t-shirt but he stood out in a roomful of pastey white college kids. Just looking at him, yup the back of his head, tears filled my eyes instantly. I've only been slammed by the freight train of compassion once before, but it hurt a lot more this time. My chest was tight, I couldn't even hear the words being sung and every fiber in my body told me I had to talk to him.
God, what do I say? It was like the words were written across the inside of my eyes, they were so clear. Tell him I LOVE HIM. Tell him I long for him, I need him, and my strongest desire is to see his heart. This song isn't about your love for me, it's about My love for HIM. He is my first love.
So....I did. Somewhere between the offering and the start of the sermon, I leaned forward and whispered in this old man's ear, "Sir, this has never happened to me before and I don't know you. But God wants you to know that this song isn't about Him, it's about you." He didn't turn around, didn't tell me his name, he just nodded, faced forward and listened. After sharing the message God had put on my heart, I awkwardly leaned back in my seat.
Only then did the man turn around.
Only then did I see a single tear tattoo under his right eye*.
"Pray for me." he said, then began to cry and turned away.
As much as I hate this sin in my life and hate myself for being consumed by it, I am beginning to consider this fight a blessing. I have a mission that I'm not afraid to fight for and there is literally nothing that can keep God from completing the good works He begins in the hearts of His children. So I'm going to keep writing, keep praying and keep returning to that place in the Throne Room where my face is on the ground. I'm going to cling to the truth that Peter knew very well: it is always better to be terrified, exhausted and drowning in the middle of the storm with Jesus than to be sitting comfortably in the boat without Him.
*For my friends unfamiliar with prison tattoos, this tattoo varies in meaning, but is most often associated with inmates who have committed murder.
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