Contemplating Life

  Have you ever gone through something that has made you feel a lot ‘older’? I don’t mean older in a decrepit way – more of a “you’ve been on a fast track of maturity that has changed you to the point where there is no going back now” way. That is how the past 6-7 months have been for me. I feel a lot older (and bless my husband for saying that in the midst of getting older, my peace and joy in God have grown. It is true, and I am thankful. But you can’t go through a war like I’ve been in without relinquishing yourself to your Commander – and my Commander is utterly faithful and good.) I have been walking through a unique experience in which #1 I have never committed so fully to honoring my God in the midst of it; and #2 I have had scriptures that I thought I understood, come to life in very encompassing ways. First and foremost, I never truly understood before that our battle really isn’t against flesh and blood (Ephesians 6:12). We tend to fight each other, but the real enemy inhab

  Do you ever get hit by this overwhelming desire to get up before dawn and go outside and dance under the stars? I have this desire that is growing….so one morning soon my pajama-clad figure will be out in the driveway in the dark, dancing under the canopy of God’s creation. (That’s the nice thing about living semi-isolated in the country – I wander outside a lot in my pajamas and I never worry about my neighbors. The raccoons simply don’t care.) I love being outside under the stars before the sun has even begun its appearance. I’m not good at dancing. I’m not good at singing. But somehow I think God will take pleasure in me anyway, because He'll know why I am there. Psalm 19:1 “The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display His craftsmanship.” I think this proclamation of God’s glory is never more true than the moments before and after the dawn, and I want to join in the proclamation . The beauty of the canopy that we exist under can be breath-taking in those moments

  In my last blog I talked about the concept of Jesus-with-the-skin-on. At the foundaton of this concept is the fact that we ALL have broken areas, we are ALL wounded, we ALL have dysfunction that we need Jesus to reach into and work with and heal. No matter how closely you walk with Christ, if you have breath you still have broken spots. If you were to tell me that this isn’t true for you – that you have arrived- I wouldn’t call you a liar, but I wouldn’t believe you either. Sin (whether our own or another’s) ruins us all – it just does – and it keeps damaging us on a daily basis. Without a doubt, we all need a Savior to deliver us from this ruination. Sometimes our pain, our woundedness, is so great that it is hard to face. Jesus-with-the-skin-on is my terminology for a believer operating in the Spirit who is willing to be a focal point for you to latch on to as you face the darkness or pain inside yourself. Jesus isn’t here in bodily form to hold onto you as the pain erupts, but He

  I have finally finished the book of Ezekiel and today I get to read Daniel. This foray into the prophets has been heart-stopping and eye-opening and has come with a definite conviction that I/we need to stop putting God in a box. Somehow, we get into this pattern of thinking that God can only act a certain way, but the prophets dispel this notion. God is NOT predictable; He is not confined to acting in ways that WE find acceptable; God is God, He has a plan, and He WILL work out that plan according to HIS design. In C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia , Aslan the lion (who is the representation of Jesus) is described as “He’s wild you know, not like a tame lion”. Lewis did a good job with Alsan as he depicted our Lord – wild, unpredictable, but good. I am looking forward to Daniel, especially the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. I LOVE the picture of Jesus literally walking in the fire with the three men. They didn’t have to trust and believe in God’s Presence – He  actually

  I mentioned in yesterday’s blog that I am on an adventure to really understand and embrace God’s creation of the Body of Christ. Last night was another of my almost sleepless nights as I pondered and prayed, trying to understand God’s leading. Whereas “I” thought understanding of the Body would begin by coming into a real knowledge of the various parts and their giftings and how they fit together, I feel I am actually being started at the opposite end of the story. I have this gut feeling that it is imperative that I understand the meaning of the Whole before I view the parts. When you think about a human physical body, it is mind-boggling how wonderfully complex it is. I remember taking a physiology class that made me think over and over “How can anyone NOT believe there is a Creator God – this couldn’t have just happened?” The body is so complex and yet so finely tuned to function amazingly as each part does its part. Every part needs to be connected in a certain way and EVERY par

  When being challenged by a religious leader, Jesus once said that the two greatest commandments were to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” I have been pondering both of these a lot . When it comes to loving God, the word “ALL” keeps jumping out at me. ALL of my heart, ALL of my soul. ALL of my mind pretty much sums up ALL of me, which means I need to love God with everything I am. But contrary to popular belief, love is not an emotion – love is a choice of action (check out 1 Corinthians 13 for some dos and don'ts).  Jesus said, “ If you love Me, obey My commandments.” ( John 14:15 )   This is a very clear if/then statement. IF we love God, then we WILL OBEY Him, and obedience is a choice of action that often defies our emotion s or desire. We are loving God

I have been told repeatedly that I have a gifting with words. I was once even called a “wordsmith”. I have been told that I am an excellent communicator. I think maybe these things are true because God made them true within me, but today…..today was one of those days when I felt like I completely failed with my words. I was trying so hard to communicate something, and I just couldn’t find the way. I was trying to explain to a friend what it means to “see yourself through God’s eyes and not through the eyes of self or of others”. It’s something I’ve been experiencing for only a short time, but it is something that has been phenomenally life changing . And I want everyone I know to experience it if they haven’t. I have lived so much of my life geared in a mindset of self-loathing. I have always been quick to pick up the negative narrations from others about who I am, and I allowed those narrations to own me. I have loathed myself so much that there were moments when I would literally

  I was lying in the dark this morning when I felt like I had another one of those “gentle teachings of the Spirit". I had been awake for a few hours (I am starting to feel the physical fatigue of just not resting enough), but this morning I wasn’t wrestling with God, I was just drifting in thought. I began to think about forgiveness, and in the course of my thoughts something that has been a kernel of thought for a while took full bloom. I hope I can explain it at least somewhat well. Scripture tells us that we are to forgive one another. Forgiveness isn’t a suggestion – it is a must. Ephesians 4:32 – ‘forgive as Christ forgave you’. Colossians 3:13 – the same – ‘as you have been forgiven’. I could list a myriad of scriptures on the ‘must’ of forgiving. I know from experience that when we forgive it graces us with a freedom from the bondage of sin. I have, with God’s help, forgiven some egregious offenses against me, and I have experienced what happens within me when I forgive

  Happy Saturday! Today I want to throw something out here that has been driving me crazy (and yes, I hear some of you like RJ saying “and we all know that’s a short drive”, so thanks.) But seriously, I am really struggling right now with the myriad of assumptions that people are always making about one another. “Assuming” almost seems like an epidemic, not only in the world, but also in the church. There is this terrible practice of thinking that you know what someone else is thinking, meaning, or intending WITHOUT EVER ACTUALLY HAVING AN IN-DEPTH  CONVERSATION WITH THAT PERSON TO FIND OUT. It is absolutely frustrating how much misinformation is out there because one person ( let's  call him Joe) decides that a word or a facial expression or even a silence from another guy (we’ll call him Bob) meant XYZ, so Joe takes offense. Joe now has a chip on his shoulder, (and sadly, gossiping and backbiting also seem to be rampant) so Joe tells Mark, Ignasius, and Sam, who tell their wiv

  Have you ever had someone tell you that the reason they won’t go to church is because in their experience “most Christians are hypocrites”? They go on to say that they get sick of listening to the preaching by people who don’t even do what they say? I have to admit that sometimes I see their point. And before you go all “but we are all just sinners who are saved by grace”, I would like to say…..”Then act like what you’ve been given!” Seriously, we love to talk about how great our God is and that He is in the business of “redeeming the broken” and “transforming hearts and lives”. We will invite in strangers to “share their testimony”, and we will clap heartily over the fact that this person was at point A but God brought him to point B. However, we then turn around and in the same breath we absolutely refuse to see the wonderful work that God is doing in the person sitting right next to us . In my experience (and that’s a lot of experience), the two places that hold you to your past

  Sin. That lovely word that the world denies and even Christians really don’t like to talk about. But it’s there and it’s real and it trips us up at every step. In the book of Jeremiah we read “ The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?” Our spirit can be redeemed by the blood of Christ and born again into a living hope, our minds can be renewed continuously by the Word of God so that we can walk in renewed clarity, but still we remain a battlefield within because of the wickedness that remains in our heart. This is why when someone (lets call him Bob) is acting in ways contrary to scripture and Joel defends him with the words “I know this might not be right but I know Bob has a good heart”, I’m like “REALLY!??” Scripture is clear – none of us has a good heart. Our hearts are deceitful, and our tongues often prove it because Jesus told us that “out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks”. [Matthew 12:34] We

  The nice thing about house cleaning (yes, there is something positive about it) is that it gives my brain free license to run its rabbit trails. This morning I have been pondering “conflict among Christians” as I clean. (You’ve probably figured out by now that I seldom ponder easy things. ;) ). Conflict arises among Christians far more that it should, and I think it is because we have a tendency to allow our emotions to take over without effectively communicating first. We feel slighted by someone’s words and/or actions and, without giving that person an opportunity to clarify or even apologize, we run ahead with our emotions. A mole hill soon becomes a mountain, and sometimes, sadly, that mountain is a gossip mountain. Some people really are mean. There are bullies and control freaks and abusers even within the church, and those problems need to be handled differently than what I am sharing here. What I am referring to is that sometimes I think a majority of issues that arise betw

  As I was lying in bed, unable to sleep, the word “repetition” began to play through my thinking this morning. A little back story here: In Ephesians 6:10-12 scripture tells us “A final word: Be strong in the Lord and in His mighty Power. Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil. For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.” Scripture is clear that our enemy is not each other, even when it feels like. We are in fact fighting against evil entities that are set on our destruction and the destruction of the Kingdom. H owever, I do acknowledge that deception allows these evil powers to sometimes use people in their evil activities. Satan has a whole lot of tools in his slimy arsenal that he uses to capture and deceive the minds of people, and this morning I was

  I am slowly reaching the end of my study of the gospel of Mark. What an absolutely beautiful journey. This week has been emotional reading, partly because I have been sick, but mostly because I have been pondering the details of the crucifixion of my Jesus. There was so much lying, bullying, and injustice involved – all the things I hate the most in this life- so my emotions have been all over the board. But then... everything stilled when I read what is, for me, one of the most beautiful verses in the Bible. Jesus has just died and the Word tells us “And the curtain in the sanctuary of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.”   The significance of this does not escape me. The curtain in the Temple was a long woven purple, scarlet, and blue tapestry that acted as a barrier separating the Holy of Holies from all else. The Holy of Holies is the place where the Presence of God resided and the Ark of the Covenant and the Mercy Seat existed. This is the place where the high prie