I’m sharing a post that I wrote for The Family Roadmap on the power of words and the lingering effect they have on our lives. The following is an excerpt and you can read the rest at The Family Roadmap.
We can de-construct growth in someone’s heart with a careless word or misplaced assumption. The childhood sing-song of: ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me’ is a lie and a weak defense for those who have suffered at the hands of mis-used words.
Words carry weight which crushes, deflates, and prevents us from hearing the truth of God’s love. It is then that I know that God will need to replace the negative echoes with the positive reflections of his word and what he says about me. The trick? I have to be willing to listen. I have to be willing to lay aside my hurt and be open to Truth. Continue Reading……
Because he is the wonder-doing God, he can turn the desert into streams, barrenness into beauty, and he can make a way of hope through our pain.
We only need to be still.
Deserts make me nervous because I can feel so lost and lonely. I search this way and that way, running here and there, but never finding what I’m looking for. I grow weaker and desperate. Panic wells up in my heart. I fear death.
Do you remember when you were a kid and what you should do if you got lost?
Stay where you are.
Be still.
Let them find you.
And so it is with God. Sometimes he leads us into a desert and we wonder where he went, so we start searching for him and questioning his leading. But a desert place is a perfect place to be still.
Be still and know that he is God.
In the desert, our gimmicks and tricks for making sure all our plates stay spinning, don’t work. One by one they crumble to the ground. It’s in the desert place that we become aware of our need for God as each of our coping mechanisms dry up.
The desert place is a place to practice being still. I’ve found that in the desert place, I exert a lot more effort to do the things I normally do: prayer, church, volunteerism, parent, homeschool. Do I get frustrated when I’m in the desert? Absolutely!
But I’ve been to the desert enough times that I’m learning a new dependence on God and most importantly, how to still my soul.
When I still my soul, my eyes begin to see God working and moving. He draws me to himself when I let go of the distractions of life. He grows fruit in me. He makes my pain a door of hope.
“Therefore I am going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt. ‘In that day,’ declares the Lord, ‘you will call me, “my husband,” you will no longer call me, “my master.” Hosea 2:14-16
I have never regretted a desert experience. I’ve seen the phenomenon of how God turns my desert into an oasis and makes something so beautiful out of something so barren. The desert becomes a place of worship, a place to eagerly meet with God, and a place to be still and know him.
Be still and know that he is God today and follow him through the desert places. He will bring beauty to your barrenness.
With Christ’s death and resurrection the beginning has ended and the eternal journey begins.
It is finished! No more wondering if we’re enough, because we are.
No more questioning whether Christ really is who he says he is, because he is.
It’s the end of the beginning. The end of wandering, the end of separation from God and the try hard life.
Jesus is our beginning and end. The veil that separates us from God is torn and now his love is accessible through the One who was torn, beaten, mocked, and killed for us.
We all have the same beginning: darkness and bondage even when we think we’re free and in the light. But when self rules our hearts and our lives, we become enslaved to what self wants: what we see, feel, and experience.
Christ has come to set us free from the tyranny of self. Christ defeated death so that we may live a life holy and set apart for him. So, you see, Easter really is the end of the beginning.
We get to live the middle part now. It’s the part of life between our resurrection from spiritual death to life, and the day when we see Jesus face to face in eternity. How well will we live?
Will we falter and fail? Will we doubt and question?
Yes and yes. But we have a power available to us. A power that says that “greater is he in me than he that is in the world.” And this I know: it’s grace that enables me to live this life for Christ, through Christ, and in Christ.
It’s grace that transforms me. Grace enables me to give myself up for a living sacrifice. It’s grace that enables our lives to be set apart and holy. I crash and burn when I try and live for Christ through my strength and understanding. I know failure well.
But the beautiful thing we get to experience in our failures is redemption. It’s redemption that makes getting back up again possible. It’s the daily resurrection of my spiritual life when I make “self” the number one motivator in my heart.
I want to live this middle life well, but I know how life gets monotonous and we forget what we did this morning let along two days ago. And when life gets monotonous I forget to look around and see evidences of grace in my life.
Or life is one crisis after another and rather than holding onto the anchor of grace we flounder and hold onto ourselves and our limited understanding. Crisis’ can blind us to the redemptive work of Christ in our lives.
It’s the end of the beginning! Your beginning steps are over and done and now it’s time to run. Run the race God has for you with your eyes fixed on the prize–eternity with the Father of Light. Let him shine that light into all the recesses of your life and keep on running.
You’ll make it. How do I know?
Because God is your strength. He is your love. He is your light. And he will finish it.
“A soul cannot seek close fellowship with God, or attain the abiding consciousness of waiting on him all the day without a very honest and entire surrender to all his will.”
It’s the “very honest” that grips me. It’s one thing to be honest, but very honest? It requires me to examine dark corners that I would rather leave hidden. If I’m very honest then I would have to admit that I don’t surrender well. And I want to surrender well. So I hide from the truth that surrender doesn’t work without honesty.
Surrender without an honest examination of our hearts leaves us deceived into thinking we’ve surrendered, and the deception leads to frustration because we don’t experience freedom.
This waiting on God brings me to deep waters and the discovery that I need God much more than I ever realized. It’s in the waiting that I discover layers of my heart that haven’t been relinquished to him. I realize that I’ve given him a pseudo-surrender, but failed to give him my honest heart.
My honest heart defaults to insecurity and comparison: two enemies that vie for the death of my soul and the defeat of God working and moving in me. So today I’m going to tell you a secret.
The secret to an honest surrender lies in building an altar based on the character of God. His character is only good. It is faithfulness, it is strength, and it is our everything.
If I know that he is faithful, then I can trust that he won’t run when I am at my ugliest. If I know he is truth then I can relinquish the lies I believe. When I realize that his love is never-ending and nothing can separate us, I’m willing to be honest with my fears.
It’s knowing his character that allows me to surrender all.
And it’s surrender that transforms me. Without surrender I cannot be a living sacrifice or experience his transformative work in my heart. My Christianity turns into a list of tasks to accomplish rather than a relationship to develop.
When we fail to get to know God we rob ourselves of the light he can bring to our darkness. Do you have pockets of your heart that are deep? Do you have secrets that you fear bringing to the light?
He knows the deep, he knows the secrets, and he’s waiting for you to invite him into those raw places. He’s waiting for you to acknowledge his faithfulness and love towards you. Will you take steps today to build an altar based, not on your fears of what might happen, but on who God is? Will you open your Bible and let his words soothe your soul?
But running clothes are cute. So then, maybe, I should run. Just so I can look cute.
Nah.
But I do run towards Christ because I’m on a pilgrimage.
It’s a journey we walk, run and battle our way through. We set our hearts. We fix our eyes. And we move our feet.
“I will run in the way of your commandments for you set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32
I don’t know about you, but this whole life thing can trip me up, trap me fast, and triple my heartache. My heart sometimes doesn’t feel free.
It gets caught up in performance or perfection. My heart trades worldly wisdom for godly wisdom. It mistakes man’s words for God’s word. Lies snare. Idols form. And soon I’ve traded the glory of God for a false light. Then I no longer run, but stub my toe on a rock, trip over a boulder, and tumble down the cliff.
I sit stunned and wonder how I got here. You too? Do you feel like you stumble more than you run? Do you want to know how to run? I do, too.
Reveal Your Heart
Ask God to show you your heart. It’s okay if you cringe, I know I do. But this is the deal. We can forget, for a while, the contents of our hearts and fool ourselves into thinking that nasty little section that gossips or harbors bitterness isn’t really there, but God sees all. Only instead of following our example by condemning us, he lovingly convicts. Because how can we run free if our hearts are bound to sin?
How can we run free when we are bound to performance or perfection? How can we be free if we are more worried about what other’s think of us instead of doing what’s right in God’s eyes? When fear rules our lives, we cannot be free.
So. Freedom to run. Not away, but towards God. It comes when our hearts are set free of any sin that stops forward momentum. Freedom comes when we know who we are in Christ and when we surrender all to him.
I know that my ability to run lies in how open I make my heart to God. Will I let him have unfettered access? Will I risk trusting him with the most intimate details of my life?
Take the Risk
It’s risky. This journey we’re on. But one unequivocally worth it. So, how do we run? We fix our eyes on Jesus. We give the Holy Spirit full access to our heart. And we trust God for strength and endurance.
We can do it. I know it looks hard, but running well is a benefit of freedom. Step into the freedom and run. He has set your heart free.
