Sunday Songs – Stronger

Devotional Thoughts, God's Love 0

I know, I haven’t been posting on Sonderjourneys much lately at all. Today, I’m participating in Mother Reader‘s 48-Hour Book Challenge. How does that relate to this blog post? Well, reading and blogging is allowed to contribute to your time. Now, since most of my daily Quiet Times consist of reading various books, I have no problem counting that in my time.

But I also usually write in my journal about what I’m learning, talking to God.

So I’m going to cheat just a tiny bit and blog about what I’m learning. The appropriate place is this Sonderjourneys blog.

And I’d been meaning to start a series on songs that have blessed me. I’m going to call it Sunday Songs because I love alliteration (gosh, could you tell?) and I’d like to be reminded about this weekly. However, I will feel free to post in this series on other days of the week, and I think the heading will tip people off that these are Christian songs.

Yes, I listen to Christian radio. Yes, I listen to Christian music on CDs. To me, there’s no better way to affirm what I know in my mind and start on the journey of knowing it in my heart.

That’s why I chose “Stronger,” sung by Mandisa. I’ve loved this song for awhile. It makes me want to dance. And it’s so true — but the message is so easy to forget.

Yesterday, this song played on WGTS 91.9 when I was driving to work. And it was a timely reminder. I’m currently on the 23rd day of what was diagnosed as a vestibular migraine. But is it really a vestibular migraine? Everything fits — except the 23 days part. And the last time I had such a long headache, it didn’t stop until I went to the hospital with a stroke.

So, yes, I’m keeping my eyes wide open for any stroke symptoms (and I definitely know what those are) and I’m communicating with neurologists. But in the meantime, it’s easy to get discouraged. That’s where this song comes in.

I do believe that the pain won’t last forever. I do believe that this experience, like so many others, will definitely make me stronger. And especially, I believe that God is right there, that even if it’s hard to see Him, I know that he still cares.

And that is worth dancing and singing about.

Prayer and Healing, Faith and Fear

Devotional Thoughts, Sunday's Sermon 0

I last posted on Sonderjourneys in December, and since then it’s become pretty clear that I’m having more mini-strokes, something that the Coumadin was supposed to prevent. Unfortunately, it’s not terribly clear to the doctors what to try next. I’m currently being referred to a specialist, who will spend next week reviewing my case to decide whether or not to see me. Meanwhile, I’ve had a headache for the last 14 days. It may be a tension headache, since heat and relaxing do help, but it’s not going away. What if it’s a sign that something’s wrong inside? And it started right after a very short dizzy spell that may have been a mini-stroke.

I’ve been having my Quiet Times the last couple weeks in Luke 8, where Jesus does four different miracles. On top of that, the sermon topic of the last two weeks at church was prayer. Last week, my Home Group all prayed over me. Also, after church the prayer team prayed for me, and then the pastor and the elders prayed over me.

So I’m thinking about prayer and healing, about faith and fear. I thought I’d try articulating some of these thoughts.

First, Jesus deals with each person very differently. Calming the storm was very different from driving demons out of the possessed man which was very different from healing the woman who’d been bleeding for 12 years, which was very different from raising Jairus’ daughter from the dead, which was very different from healing Bartimaeus. (The first four are from Luke 8. The other is from this morning’s sermon, in Mark 10.) It’s not like there’s a certain formula if you wanted Jesus to heal you. He approached everybody differently.

Second, in Luke 8, it was all Jesus’ fault! Whose idea was it to sail across the lake right when a squall was about to come up? Jesus! And if he hadn’t gone across the lake right then (apparently just to meet the demon-possessed man and return), then Jairus could have gotten to him before his daughter died, and it could have been just a simple, straightforward healing. Jairus didn’t come running to have his daughter raised from the dead. He was hoping for a healing. He comes to Jesus urgently, and you know he must have been anxiously waiting for Jesus to come back across the lake. And then, while he’s on the way, Jesus stops and talks to some woman who touched the edge of his cloak! Doesn’t Jesus realize how urgent this is?

Third, these were truly bad situations. The Bible admits that the disciples in the boat “were in great danger.” These fishermen told Jesus, “Master! Master! We’re going to drown!” As for Jairus, he was told “Your daughter is dead. Don’t bother the teacher any more.” Yes, I think he had good reason to give up.

But the thing that most struck me was this: Jesus said different things to the different groups of people. To the disciples, Jesus said, “Where is your faith?” In Matthew, it says his words were, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” But look at what Jesus said to Jairus! After he was told that his daughter was dead and he might as well give up, Jesus said to Jairus, “Don’t be afraid; just believe and she will be healed.”

What was the difference between the disciples and Jairus? Jesus didn’t scold Jairus for being afraid, even though he did tell him he didn’t need to be. But the disciples knew Jesus. They should have known that God wouldn’t let them drown. They should have known better.

So that brings me to this morning’s sermon. John Maulella said, “When my awareness of my need meets my understanding of the character of Jesus, that’s faith.”

Where am I in my spiritual walk? I’m very sure that God loves me. I’ve seen him work in my life and bring great good to me out of truly terrible things that happened. So even if God allows something terrible to happen to me, I do believe that God will bring good out of it. I’ve come far enough with Jesus that if I doubt, He’ll have good reason to ask me “Why are you so afraid?”

Now, mind you, that’s easier said than done. One verse that helped is in Psalms: “Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings.” Singing songs can help remind me that I believe I am in God’s hands.

And I don’t know what His plan is with this illness. It would be nice to just be healed. It would also be nice to have the doctors figure out what’s going on and help make me better. In the meantime, I get practice in trust.

Also this morning, I listened to a recording of a podcast a friend gave me of John Eldredge speaking about suffering. He reminded us that in the Bible suffering is not something to be surprised about. Even Paul, God’s point person in reaching the world with the Gospel, suffered terribly.

So how does all this fit together? I’m not sure. But I do want to have the kind of faith that helps me not be afraid. Because I do believe that God is good. And I’ve seen him bring great good out of terrible things. What is He going to do out of this?

An Opportunity To See What God Will Do

Contentment, Devotional Thoughts, Guidance, Joy, Sunday's Sermon 1

Today’s sermon resonated with me on several levels.  Our pastor spoke about giving and generosity and money — a very timely topic, since I expect to lose my job in a few months and don’t know what I will do.  I also have filed for divorce and don’t know how the settlement will turn out.  So lots of reasons to worry about money, right?

Pastor Ed spoke from I Timothy 6:6-19 to point out two big lies we believe about money, that hinder our generosity.

Lie #1: We think our provision depends on what we do.

If we depend on ourselves, we’re proud.  Even when we worry because we think we haven’t done enough, we’re showing pride, thinking it’s all up to us.

We shouldn’t be like antique collectors, but like a well-appointed distribution center, accepting gifts from God and passing them on to others.

Lie #2:  We believe that we would be happier if we had more resources.

We put our hope in wealth.  We think we aren’t doing so, but our actions say otherwise.  And that’s foolishness.  Wealth is so uncertain.

Here he talked about putting our hope in our own plans.  He talked about how God gave our church a wonderful piece of property, and we planned to pay for a building by selling two outparcels.  But then the real estate market tanked.  However much we were disappointed is however much we were putting our hope in our plans and not in God.  And then we forget to thank Him for His abundant provision — the gift of the land in the first place.

God’s will often is dynamic.  He often doesn’t show us the whole picture right at the start.  We need to walk with Him step by step.

That part of the message resonated beautifully with what God’s been telling me about my divorce.  As I said in my last post, I felt it was time to file for divorce.  But I still worried if I was lacking in faith, not trusting God enough.  Didn’t God tell me, and confirm and reconfirm, that He was making my husband a leader and a witness, and one day our marriage would be restored?  I prayed about it.  I thought this was the right step, but how could filing for divorce be following God’s leading?  Was I just lacking in faith?

Then one day, when I was reading in Hebrews 11, a phrase jumped out at me from the part talking about Abraham sacrificing Isaac.  He did that even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.”

If Abraham had been thinking like me, he could have said, “I’m really sure that God told me I’m going to have many descendants through Isaac, so I must be hearing Him wrong about this sacrificing Isaac.  How could that work?”

Hebrews 11 says that Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead.  Abraham had to give up his own plan about how it should happen.

As Pastor Ed emphasized today, my hope should be in God, not in my own plan.  Surely God can resurrect my marriage, but if so it will be through His power, not because of any plans of mine, or any stubborn holding onto my marriage even though my husband has left.

As for my job search, all the rest of the sermon related to that.  I did not get the Assistant Branch Manager position I had applied for at my last posting.  I now have four applications out there for four very different positions.  I don’t know what my chances are for any of those positions.

But as I think about the future, I will not be afraid.  My last three jobs have been complete gifts from God.  (No, pretty much every job I’ve ever had has been that.)  It’s not like God’s going to abandon me now.

I’m bolstered up by two Truths Pastor Ed pointed out from the Timothy passage.

Truth #1:  Our provision comes from God, and that’s where we should place our hope.

Truth #2:  God richly provides for our enjoyment.

Don’t get so caught up in my own plans that I forget to enjoy and thank Him for the many gifts He’s already given!

And that kind of attitude enables me to be generous with what God has provided.  God asks us to be generous, because that’s who we truly are, that’s how we will live “the life that is truly life.”

So, it was a beautifully encouraging morning.  Instead of seeing my probable job loss as a tough trial I’m going through, the sermon reminded me to see it as a wonderful opportunity to see how God is going to provide.

Shining Like Stars

Devotional Thoughts, Guidance, Joy, Sunday's Sermon 7

God did a beautiful thing for me today.

I was feeling down, shaken at the core of my being, who I am.  Let’s just say that some hurtful words in a letter, coming from someone I love, essentially accused me of being a bad mother and a bad person.  No matter how much my mind knows that’s not true, my heart was wounded, and I needed reassurance.  I was also tempted to answer the letter, but knew I probably shouldn’t.  Still, I asked God about it…

Anyway, Saturday night I was choosing clothes to wear to church.  I wanted to wear something pretty — I feel like God’s telling me He’s giving me beauty for ashes, and the truth is that He’s making me more beautiful during this trial, and I wanted to wear something to symbolize that.

My eye fell on a v-neck t-shirt with little stars embroidered across it, and I thought of the verse in Philippians 2, “… you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life…”  I thought I’d wear that shirt as a symbol of shining like a star through God’s light.  To go with the symbolism, I chose underwear with stars all over them, too!  🙂

As I put the clothes aside, I thought how neat it would be if God had that verse come up in the sermon in the morning.  I prayed and asked for it.  I knew that would be symbol from God that He is indeed making me shine like a star in the universe, by His grace. 

I had trouble getting to sleep that night, so I thought about the phrase, “you shine like stars in the universe…”

Well, the verse did not come up in the sermon.  It was a good sermon, about living your Christianity in your job.  I got to thinking, well, it was a silly little whim.  God certainly didn’t have to do that.  What are the chances that that particular verse would come up anyway?

Then they did the closing song:

We are the peple of God
The sons and daughters of love
Forgiven, restored and redeemed
Living our lives to the praise of our King
We are the ones who will shine
His light in the darkness of night
The hopeless, the broken, the poor
They will be hopeless and broken no more

You are the light
The light of the world
And we shine You, Lord
You are the light
The light of the world
And we shine You, Lord

Okay, that specific verse wasn’t there.  But I was getting the idea…

Then came the third verse:

We shine like stars in the universe
Proclaiming the hope of our God
And to the sons and daughters in all the earth
We shine You, Lord

Now there was no doubt — “shine like stars in the universe” is exactly quoting the verse.  By this time, my eyes were streaming with tears!

By doing that little thing for me, I felt that God was telling me He loves me.  He cares about the little things of my life.  He cares about my emotional pain.  And He is indeed making me shine like a star.

Wow!

Then came the punchline.  When I got home, I looked up the verse.  I had forgotten how the sentence begins, in the previous verse, Philippians 2:14 —

Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life. . .

I had asked God if I should defend myself and answer the letter that hurt me?  Well, in His loving and wonderful way (with His sense of humor), He gently led me to the answer:  “Do everything without. . . arguing”!  And, in fact, my answer is my life, in which God is making me shine like a star.

Praise Him.

Here’s a link to a site that plays the song:  http://www.imeem.com/mattxiong/music/FB9viSRq/steve-fee-you-are-the-light/

Rain and Lessons in Contentment

Books, Contentment, Devotional Thoughts, Joy 8

I fully believe that Joy is a choice.  I am currently reading several books that tell me it is not my circumstances that determine my happiness, but the story I tell myself about those circumstances.  I have heard sermons about contentment.  I have lectured at length to my children that complaining will only make them unhappy.  I believe this.

In the last couple days, I got a delightful three-part reminder.

It began on Wednesday morning.  I was doing a quick run to the grocery store.  We had expected an ice storm, but instead we got nasty, cold, heavy, near-freezing rain.

I do not like rain in the winter.  I tend to think how much I would prefer snow.  Rain in winter is almost as cold as snow, but not as pretty, and not as fun.  It soaks into your clothes much more quickly, and doesn’t brighten a dark day like snow does.

As I came out of the grocery store, the thought crossed my mind that it was a shame I had to make a grocery run today.  The thought lingered long enough for me to feel guilty about the negativity.  But I was justified!  After all, loading groceries into the car in the pouring, cold rain is not a fun thing to do.  Ask anyone!

No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than I looked up and saw a mother and son walking toward the store.  The mother had an umbrella, but the little boy, about three years old, wasn’t paying any attention to staying under it.  He was positively dancing with joy at being out in the rain.  His shiny yellow boots splashed the pavement with zest, and you could instantly see how excited he was about this wondrous chance to go shopping in the rain!

Kind of put things in perspective for me!

The next day, a new book by Mo Willems, Are You Ready to Play Outside? came to the library.

play_outside.jpg

Piggie is so excited about playing outside with Gerald!  They will run!  They will skip!  They will jump!  NOTHING will stop them!

Then it begins to rain.

It pours.  Piggie is NOT a happy pig.

Gerald, an elephant, first tries shielding Piggie with his ear, but it is still raining.  Piggie doesn’t see how anyone could possibly play outside with all this rain.

Then they see two worms come out, exuberantly happy, splishing and splashing in the rain.

They decide to try it.  They run!  They skip!  They jump! 

Piggie decides he loves rain!  He hopes it rains all day!

Then it stops. 

Piggie is not a happy pig.

Fortunately, Piggie has an elephant for a friend, who has a solution.

This book conveys its message far more effectively than any sermon, lecture, or nonfiction book.  Part of the effectiveness is Mo Willems’ brilliant illustrations.  With simple cartoon drawings he makes you feel his characters’ emotions.  I never imagined that worms could look so joyful!  Elephant and Piggie turning somersaults and kicking up their heels in the rain proclaim complete exuberance.  You don’t just read about Piggie’s frustration turned to joy.  You experience it!

Last night, I brought the book home and showed it to my son.  I told him about seeing the little boy in the rain.  Gerald and Piggie dancing in the rain reminded me very much of that little boy in his yellow boots.

I think of Are You Ready to Play Outside? as a metaphor for life itself.  After all, I reflected, at this time of my life, I am single, not by my own choice.  I can spend my time moping about how I wish it would stop “raining” or I can skip and jump and dance in the rain.

Isn’t it true that people like Piggie who are unhappy in the rain tend to be the exact same people who are unhappy when it stops?

Later, I was e-mailing friends about the Inaugural Parade, in which my husband will be marching.  Even though he left me and has told me he wants nothing to do with me, I find myself feeling proud and excited that he’s going to take part in this historic event.  Someone sent me a link to an inaugural website, and from there I went to an Air Force page and found a story about the Air Force Band.  Apparently, they are supplementing the main DC band with musicians from several field bands for one big 99-member band for the parade, which is why my husband and several other Air Force musicians I know all get to participate.

What I didn’t realize is that they are already in the DC area.  My son had mentioned that his Dad was going to be practicing 8 days for the parade, but I didn’t realize it had already begun.  In fact, according to the article, the whole group began practicing this past Wednesday — in the pouring, cold, nasty, near-freezing rain.

I would be ashamed to report that this simple fact gave me a certain satisfaction.  I would be ashamed to say that the very nasty, cold, and unpleasant aspects of that rain now filled me with a certain unreasonable delight.

So I will simply say this.  The next time I am caught in a cold and nasty downpour, I will reflect that it could be worse.  I could have to practice marching in it.

A New Day

Devotional Thoughts, Forgiveness, Joy 1

Well, today I had some things cast up to me.  Some things I have apologized for about a dozen times, with tears, but the person wronged has not been willing to forgive me, and indeed has cast the worst possible interpretation on the things I said.

But you know what?  God forgives me!  And I honestly can say that, though it hurts to have someone I love so angry with me, God is giving me forgiveness — and freedom — about it.

Then tonight, I was listening to The Best of Avalon, and their song, “A New Day,” so beautifully sums up how I feel.

Forgiveness feels GOOD — both receiving it from God for yourself and for others.

Here’s a link to “A New Day” with lyrics:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAKfTRlnA0I&feature=related

 

More Big Picture/Little Picture

Devotional Thoughts, Sunday's Sermon 2

Today’s sermon was titled “Keeping Perspective.”  It was about exactly what I’ve been thinking so much about lately:  The big picture and the little picture.

Of course it got me reflecting some more.  I think there will always be a tension between the big picture and the little picture.  We can believe that God is working, that God is surely working all things together for good.  But in the little picture, bad things do happen.  And they hurt.

The Psalms are full of wrestling with this tension.  Here’s a common pattern to so many psalms:

Help, Lord!

Things are awful!

Answer me quickly!

I remember that You came through for me before.

Surely You will come through for me again!

God rocks!

I’m going to conquer!

Isn’t God AWESOME?!?

Sometimes the way we get through our pain in the little picture is to cry out to God.  After we express our pain, we can remind ourselves that we KNOW God is going to come through for us.

Pastor Ed mentioned that the best way to keep perspective is not positive thinking, but faith.  Hebrews 11 has so many models of faith.  Even though “they did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance.”

Maybe that’s the challenge:  Seeing what God is doing, and welcoming it, even from a distance.  Believing that God is Real, and that it is Worth It to follow Him, however foolish it may look in the short term  (Hebrews 11:6).

Imagine that you’ve bought your child something they’ve been longing for.  It’s wrapped up and hidden away for his birthday, or maybe sitting under the Christmas tree.  Then you go to a store together and see one, and he dissolves into tears because you won’t buy it.  You would be sad with your son because of his pain, but you would know he’ll get a lot more joy if he waits for Christmas.

Last year, God gave me some verses in Jeremiah 31, beginning with: 

“Restrain your voice from weeping

and your eyes from tears,

for your work will be rewarded,”

declares the Lord.

“They will return from the land of the enemy.

So there is hope for your future,”

declares the Lord.

“Your children will return to their own land.”

Now here God is telling us to stop crying, but I know from other passages that He does have compassion for our pain!  So he’s not the Mean Dad snapping, “Stop crying!” but the one saying, “There, there!  Don’t worry, Honey, I have this problem totally under control.  Everything’s going to be Okay.  Better, everything’s going to be Beautiful.”

If we can truly believe the big picture, even our emotions can start to reflect that.  Mind you, getting them there may take a wrestling process such as in the Psalms.  But that Big Picture thinking can help us refrain from crying as we come more fully to believe that, truly, God “exists, and He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.”  It is worth it to follow God.

I’ve also been thinking lately that I can use my love for fairy tales to reinforce my big picture thinking.  Today Pastor Ed said that as Christians, “We believe in Happy Endings.”  How true.  If we follow God, we can be certain that, whatever happens, the ending will be, “And they lived happily ever after.”

Isn’t God AWESOME?!?

“Answer Me Quickly!”

Devotional Thoughts 1

Today’s verse from the Psalms was Psalm 143:7 —

Answer me quickly, O Lord;

my spirit fails.

Do not hide your face from me

or I will be like those who go down to the pit.

At first, I was a little taken aback.  Do we dare pray to God, “Answer me quickly”?  What about all I said in the “Long-Term Visions” posting?  What about all those verses about waiting on the Lord?

But look at the reason the Psalmist asks this — “My spirit fails.”  We humans do have trouble with long-term visions, and long-term trials.  Our spirits grow faint.

What comforted me about this is that God knows that we grow weary.  He lets us ask him to hurry up.  He knows that we are human.  He knows that long-term difficulties are hard on us.

And the verse says nothing about how God will answer.  In my own life, there have been several times when God answered my desperate cry quickly — not with a resolution of the problem, but still with an answer.  Notably, when I asked him to please end this NOW, he began giving me verse after verse after verse that said, “Wait on the Lord.”

The psalmist also says, “Do not hide your face from me or I will be like those who go down to the pit.”  This says to me, when my spirit is failing, that’s when I’m utterly desperate for God.  If I still have Him, I can make it through.

And He will not hide His face when I am desperate for him.

In many ways, this Psalm tells the story of my marriage falling apart:

Verse 1– I asked God to please come to my relief.  I was in trouble and desperately needed help.

Verse 2 — I felt horribly guilty for my part in hurting my marriage.  But took such comfort that God does not remember our sins forever, that God forgives a repentant heart.

Verses 3 and 4 — I felt horribly depressed and crushed.  Things got worse.  I felt like I might as well be dead.

Verse 5 — I remembered all God had done for me in the past.  I knew I could trust Him now.

Verse 6 — I spread out my hands to Him for help.  My prayer times took on a whole new desperation.

The Psalm goes on, with the verse I began with.  This trial is getting old — please help quickly, Lord!  My spirit is failing.

Verse 8 is a wonderful answer:

Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love,

for I have put my hope in you.

Show me the way I should go,

for to you I lift up my soul.

Notice it’s not necessarily a solution to all his problems — the Psalmist is just asking for “word of your unfailing love,” a reminder that God’s love never, ever fails.  Just something to lift that failing spirit.

Also direction.  Encourage me, and show me what step I should take today.

The last verses of the Psalm ask for deliverance (for I hide myself in You) and guidance and ultimate victory.

From several different sources and in several different ways, people have been mentioning to me lately that these long-term trials are all about the big picture.  Ultimately, what is God doing here?  I can be sure that this story will ultimately be about His amazing and unfailing love.

Long-term Visions

Devotional Thoughts, Guidance, Sunday's Sermon 2

Pastor Ed preached yesterday about the state of our church.  Some obstacles and discouragements are coming up, but he also talked about why he still believes God is and will be doing a mighty work at Gateway.

One thing he came back to is that many years ago, God gave him a vision about this church, a vision about lives changed through God’s power.  He acknowledged that for some time now, our circumstances aren’t seeming to fit with that vision.

That got me thinking about long-term vision.  I, too, feel that God has spoken to me about something in the future.  I believe God has told me He is making my husband “a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander of the peoples.”  I believe that God has told me that our marriage will be healed and restored.

But for now, circumstances don’t match.  It looks like a divorce will happen soon.

I thought about long-term visions in the Bible.  We talk about the verse Psalm 119:105 — “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”  Invariably, commentary on that verse mentions that walking by lantern light does not give you the long view, just the next step.

And in the Bible, we humans don’t do too well with long-term visions.

Look at the Israelites heading for the Promised Land.  When the spies looked at the land, they looked at the circumstances — giants who were way too tough for them.  Only Joshua and Caleb remembered God’s promise and God’s vision.

Look at Abraham.  God told him that he would make his descendants like the stars of the sky.  Then nothing happened for years and years.  Abraham thought he’d better help God out with Hagar.

Then there’s Joseph.  God gave him a vision of his brothers bowing down to him.  Joseph didn’t give up on the vision that we know about.  But who knows what he went through waiting for it to happen while he was in prison?

In my marriage crisis, the first crystal-clear word I got from God was “Wait on the Lord.”  I had been praying earnestly and asked God, “Father, can’t you please end this NOW?”  For the next few weeks, every time I picked up a Bible or other Christian book, the words in the passage included “wait on the Lord.”  Our Sunday School lesson a few days later was where Jesus taught his disciples that they should “always pray and not give up.”

I recently heard a testimony about a restored marriage from a woman with my same name and her husband.  They were divorced for ten years before the husband came back to God and came back to his wife.  That’s a long, long time.  Along the way, God continued to speak to her and tell her not to give up, even when her husband married someone else.

Long-term vision is hard for us humans.  Sometimes God gives us the big picture.  Then the challenge is trusting that God can bring it about even when the little picture, from our perspective, doesn’t look like it can possibly fit into that big picture.

I liked what Pastor Ed said about the at least two and a half years we will have to wait before we can get into a new church building.  He said: This is our opportunity to be ready.

By the same token, however long I have to wait for the restoration of my marriage, this is my opportunity:  My opportunity to get rid of resentment, to practice forgiveness, to work on my own relationship with God, and even to work on personal pursuits like my writing.

Part of the challenge of a long-term vision is asking yourself:  What does God want me to do today to get ready for that vision to happen?  Sometimes, like with Abraham, it’s simply to wait.  Sometimes, as with Joshua and Caleb, it’s to go in and take the land.

But where God has provided the long-term vision, surely He will also provide a light for our feet, if we ask.  But be careful about looking at circumstances, like giants in the land or a barren womb, to conclude that God never really meant what He said in the original vision.  Sometimes the hardest thing to do is simply to wait.

Not Even Fun

Devotional Thoughts 2

I’m reading a book called The Bait of Satan, by John Bevere.  The bait of the title refers to the trap of taking offense.

I got to thinking that when we think of lures from Satan, we usually think of fun things — lust, food, alcohol, some form of pleasure.  We think of Satan as trying to get us to overindulge.

Taking offense with someone is an even more pervasive trap — and it isn’t even fun!  This trap ensnares us, and we don’t even get some pleasure out of it. 

Like all Satan’s traps, this bait is disguised.  It feels right; it feels just.  After all, that person we are offended at did something wrong.  We don’t realize that Satan’s trap is all wrapped up with our own pride.

And who suffers because we take offense?  We suffer ourselves.  Perhaps that’s why what feels like pursuing justice doesn’t end up being the best way to get justice at all.  “It is mine to avenge, I will repay,” says the Lord.