grace

Feasting

/ shawnheather96 / Leave a comment

Jesus answered, “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes form the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4

As I do my devotions this morning, I am waiting on the coffee to brew and the smell makes me want bacon and eggs. I’m hungry! My stomach is growling, and I am looking forward to a hearty breakfast to start my day.

About six months ago I found myself making a deal with God that if he woke me up in the early morning without an alarm, I would get up and spend time with him. I hate alarms – they make me so grumpy, and I spend much of the night waking up and checking the clock, afraid that I am missing whatever I am supposed to be up for. I understand it’s a bit childish to make a deal with God, but I figured, I AM his child, so he would be ok with that.

And he has.

More often than not I find myself naturally waking up a couple hours earlier than most of my family and remembering, “the deal.” Sometimes I am a little grumpy about it still, doing it only out of obligation. But usually – more and more as I continue this pattern- I find myself waking up and anticipating this time with my Father before the day becomes busy and hurried. I pour my coffee, sit on my porch, and listen to the birds worshipping or the rain soothing, and I feast on the words of God.

Food has always been my addiction. Of course we all need food. But I have struggled over the years with the binging (and at times purging) of it to try to console, to celebrate, to mourn, to rejoice, to relieve burdens…you name it. Food was my go-to.

One day I realized, after pouring my heart out to God, that maybe I could use this impulse. God can redeem anything. As I find myself experiencing one of these impulses, I try to remind myself (and ask the Spirit to make me aware) that I might want to binge on the Word first. It satisfies me in a more complete and whole way than gorging on chocolate and eating a bag of chips. And because I believe God transforms our minds and hearts, occasionally I enjoy the chocolate after the feast of the Word. I think God likes desserts! 😉

Can I encourage you to figure out the rhythms that work for you to be filled with the life-giving word of our Father, who loves you and desires to make you healthy and whole? You won’t be sorry.

Posture of Gratefulness

/ shawnheather96 / Leave a comment

Recently as I have been praying for people, I have found myself in a posture of gratefulness. As I bring the tragedies and traumas before the throne, I ask God to let each person see at least a glimpse of the redemption and beauty that He sees at the end of it. You might say, “Yeah, that’s easy, Heather. It’s not your pain.” And there is truth to that, I understand. However, the understanding that this point in time, this moment of tragedy, is not the whole story comes from my own walking through the hard things.

And that’s really the truth of abiding in Jesus, right? There is no greater paradox than this life that we chose to live. One where the admission of depravity leads to sanctification; the surrender of self leads to the fullness of living in who you were really created to be; where death leads to eternal life. There is a fine line between grief and joy, between despair and hope. You really can’t have one without the other. How could I understand grace and mercy if I wasn’t first in a place where I was accused and condemned for my crimes?

It’s the biggest reason I am not afraid to call people to repentance – not because we are stuck in our sin and horrible people, but because I know when we repent we open the door to deeper relationships, to healing, and to peace as opposed to the destruction that comes from our refusal to do so. However, to repent means we have asked Him to truly reveal what is there; It means allowing him to put a new spirit within us and removing from us our hearts of stone. ( Ezekiel 36:26.)

Sometimes I hesitate when I pray. I see the broken darkness all around us, and I think “How long, Oh Lord?” But as I pour my heart out to him he gives the space for the grief, he allows for my words, and he weeps with me. At the same time, he is not a God who is closed into time – he goes ahead of us and prepares. He sees the way all of these things are being made holy.

Could I ever have true joy without the brokenness ? Could I really live in absolute peace without having battled anxiety? I would have known pockets of these things – a small taste of goodness, just a shadow of what could be. But like the woman who anointed the feet of Jesus because she truly understood the forgiveness she received, I realize that my own steadfastness, joy, and peace come not in spite of circumstances, but because of them. And so they become like a banquet rather than a small taste; like the whole picture rather than a tiny shadow. We settle for so much less than what He wants for us because we are so sure of our own needs.

God’s ways are not mine. He knows what it takes my stubborn heart to come to the point of willingly dying to self. As I seek him out and continually ask him to reveal my own heart and then make it like his, I can see his fingerprints all over my story. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

The Ram in the Thicket

/ shawnheather96 / Leave a comment

I admit, I have always hated the story of Abraham taking Isaac up the mountain.  I know that it’s always taught that Abraham believed God would provide, and we know the truth is that he did!  There was a ram in thicket.

But let’s just be honest here.  I am a mom.  I have watched my kids go through some pretty hard things and wondered if I had scarred them for life.  My first thought every time I read about Isaac asking where the lamb was and Abraham saying,”The Lord will provide” is the therapy bill that would be in the future for that child!  Abraham actually binds Isaac up before God intervenes and stops him.  The whole story has always felt so manipulative to me, and most of the time I teach it or read it as fast as I can and move on so I din’t have to think about what I would call the “practical” implications of it.  Does Isaac fight back?  Is there ever a moment of doubt for Abraham?  What is the conversation like going back down the mountain?

I am doing the Ann Voskamp advent devotional “The Greatest Gift,” and when I opened for today this story was there.  My first instinct was to skip the Bible reading part – I know this story.  I don’t like it.  (And isn’t that how we are supposed to read the Bible – only the parts we like? *Note the sarcasm.)

So I started reading only the part that Ann wrote about the story.  And my heart just broke.  She writes, “It is a thing to call a place ‘The Lord Will Provide.’ It is a thing to name where you live as provision, to name the place you call home ‘The Lord Will Provide.'”

My heart.

This house, since the day we first saw it, has been God’s gift to me.  I don’t know if you ever heard my “wish list” when we were first talking about moving back to the States.  As we sat with the boys and talked about what we wanted in whatever our new home would be we made a list.  At first it was practical – enough bedrooms to host people, a dining room big enough for a table to seat many.  Then I felt the Spirit prompting us to name “extras.”  As a family we named things that we really wanted, even if they seemed silly and definitely weren’t necessities.  A front porch, a back yard, a gas stove, lots of windows, off street parking, bright colors, within walking distance of the church, an extra room where I could do art and create without having to always pick everything up midway.

This house checked every single box.  Every. Single. One.  In a place where we should never be able to have a house like this.

I almost cried when they showed it to us.  Everyone was nervous and reiterating that we could change the paint or do what we needed to make it our own home – but it felt like “me” the moment I walked in.  (I later met our landlord, a dear sister from the church, and instantly found a kindred spirit – just an extra blessing!)

I know this house is not ours – we are merely renting and using it while we can.  When the time comes that we need to move, God will provide the next right place for that time of life.  But in the moment, the now, this is HOME and I am so overwhelmed with thankfulness for it.

When I read those words that Ann wrote, I knew I had to go back and read the story of Abraham and Isaac again.  And my gratefulness started to deepen from the physical aspect of providing a home, which is temporary no matter how long we live here, to the spiritual aspect of knowing I have a home in my God, who’s name is Jehova Jireh.

The Lord Will Provide.

He is my provision.  In this advent season he is the hope, the peace. He gave himself as the ram in the thicket, and continues to be my provision as he gives me access to everything in the heavenly storehouses.  I am free because of him.  He gave this prisoner of anxiety and anger the gift of breaking those bonds and letting my heart know freedom and peace.

As I thought through these things and tears freely flowed, I was sitting and looking at my Christmas tree all lit up.  My eyes fell on the ornament with RJ’s name and the year he was born and my heart broke again for my baby.  Born with two holes in his heart, yet is strong and whole today.  I saw my “ugly Santa” ornament from Uganda and remembered the way God provided times of laughter and relief from the hardships of life in South Sudan with teammates that I loved completely.  The beautiful bulb of beads made in Bosnia that represented one of the many church families that have prayed us through the last 10 years of missions prep and work.  One after another I saw physical reminders of God’s provisions – and those were just some of the obvious ones!

This advent I encourage you to take time to notice.  Ann writes, “Worry is belief gone wrong because you don’t believe that God will get it right.  Peace is belief that exhales.  Because you believe that God’s provision is everywhere – like air.”  God always has a ram in the thicket, friends.

Now I’m off to paint a new sign for my home, as I have decided it needs to be announced that this place has a name – “The Lord Will Provide.”

Stepping out of Darkness

/ shawnheather96 / 2 Comments

I have been doing the bible study by Pricilla Shirer called The Armor of God, and I have to tell you – it is really convicting me!  This month we are reading through and studying the chapter on the Breastplate of Righteousness.  As I have asked the Spirit to convict and move in me while I read through things, I have been so surprised at some of the ugliness that has surfaced.  (When will I stop being surprised at how ugly my flesh is?)

I have been a Christian longer than not.  I am a pastor’s wife.  I have been a missionary.  I have been discipling and teaching for many years.  I also like to think that I understand a fair amount about spiritual warfare and what it means to step into freedom.  But in the middle of this lesson I have realized that there is something I have fallen into the habit of doing that is not only rebellious, but just plain dangerous.

I did not grow in up a legalistic household, but I have many friends who did.  As I watched them sort through some of those things, I saw many of them swing far in the opposite direction.  We all like to do that, right?  Even when I am talking to people who do not claim any religion I hear about how no one wants to repeat their parent’s mistakes when it comes to raising their own children. It takes having adult children of your own to make you realize that no matter how you raise your kids, they will need to process through and allow God to redeem the mistakes that their parents made and speak truth to the way they reacted to them.  We are broken people raising more broken people, after all.

In trying not to be legalistic, however, we sometimes forget that we can only stand before a holy and perfect God because of the work of Jesus.  Or, at the very least, we forget that the work of Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice.  Not just because of the physical pain and the suffering on the cross, but more so because of the fact that Jesus had his Father turn away from him.  We never have to experience the void that comes from the loss of the presence of God because of that.

However, if you are like me then you forget the seriousness of that.  We love the idea of grace and forgiveness, and we live in the knowledge that once we put our faith in him we are forgiven – the old is gone, the new is here.  While living in the knowledge of this can bring freedom, I sometimes abuse that freedom and do exactly as Paul says in Romans six.  “What then, shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?”  We know that the answer to that should be NO!  (“By no means!  We are those who have died to sin, how can we continue living in it?”)   However, somewhere along the way I stopped taking this to heart.  Sometimes I have done exactly that – kept on sinning.  I have literally heard the voice of the Spirit, looked him in the eye, and turned around so I could keep doing what I wanted – with the full knowledge that I could repent later.  

So ugly.

Even though by the time I got around to repenting I would feel terrible, confess, and would be very remorseful about my attitude and the purposeful rebellion that played out in my actions, I knew it would happen again.  And it did – it does.  Because somehow the act of using grace for my own selfishness and gratifying of my flesh still seemed less “sinful” (or at least less harmful) than having a bunch of rules that made me feel guilty and condemned.

It can be a vicious cycle.

I know that both legalism and license are extreme, and that neither of them show a true understanding of his great love for me and the true freedom that I can be living in as a new creation.

But what I did was not as simple as acting like a child who selfishly rebelled against her parent.  When I allow myself to live by rules and regulations that I know I cannot live up to (holiness, perfection!) and I redefine those to make something that is attainable in my own strength, OR when I just keep doing what I want in the moment because I know there is forgiveness ahead, either way I am inviting the enemy in.

I may not be intentionally saying, “Here I am.”  But when I allow darkness into my life, the one who loves the darkness is drawn to it.  Whether I am relying on my own actions or ignoring the fact the work that Jesus did for me was a true sacrifice, I am telling Satan, “this part can be yours.”   Pricilla writes, “I didn’t need to personally invite them into my house.  All I had to do was create an environment conducive for them.  The environment I created WAS the invitation.” (Page 70)

I don’t want that.  When Jesus did his work, he purchased ALL of me – my thoughts, my actions, my heart.  He deserves all of me, not just the parts that are easy to give.  I want to be a woman who puts on the full armor and is ready to go into battle with the knowledge and truth that every part of my being is new in him – nothing held back or remaining in the darkness.

I realized this week that I have not always taken this seriously.  In my attempt to remember that it is NOT about my effort, I have sometimes refused to take on the responsibility and discipline it takes to be a strong soldier.   When Proverbs says, “Guard your heart above all else, for it is the source of life” we can see how important it is to actively and intentionally live in a way that is pleasing to God to the very best of our ability.

So now I go into a new battle, a new part of surrender to him and allow him to make his truth  – that I am new, the old is dead, I am redeemed,  I am a masterpiece, I am a co-heir with Christ, but I was bought with a price become the truth that sinks deep into my soul and transforms from the inside out.  From that I will live my life in a way that is pleasing to him NOT because of rules  but because I am so, so thankful and secure in his love for me and I trust that what he has and says is right and good.  I will guard my heart with the truth of my righteousness being found only in his.