Not for my service. Not for my talents. Not for my looks.
For me. All of me. The good and the ugly.
I am chosen.
You are chosen.
Do you believe that? Or is it a truth for someone else, but you cannot fundamentally apply it to yourself?
This truth I have struggled to apply to my own life. The theme of ‘unchosen’ runs strong through my story. I was always the last kid chosen for playground games. Boyfriends came and went when they chose someone else. The All-State Choir Director chose me, but my own high school choir instructor did not.
I have been chosen by friends and unchosen by the same friends.
Unchosen.
Unchosen is woven into my identity. But God has set me free. He has hung a banner over my head that reads: ‘Chosen’ ‘Loved’ ‘Approved’ ‘Mine’.
It was a couple of decades before my heart’s door opened a crack for that truth to seep in. Just as dry, cracked ground becomes soft and moist with a gentle rain, the truth of being chosen began to seep into the cracks of my being and eventually the cracks filled and the ‘unchosen’ places of my heart became soft, fertile ground for the truth to grow.
The truth of being chosen.
Chosen.
Me.
You.
Zephaniah 3:17 tells me that my Lord will rejoice over me with gladness, He will quiet me with His Love and He will rejoice over me with singing. But this is not for me alone.
He sings over you. You are chosen as well. You are his delight. He will ever sing over you.
Can you hear it? Listen closely:
‘I choose you. My hand is on you, choosing you–guiding you. I have you close to my heart for you are my chosen, you are my delight. My song rises high in the air around you, for you are my chosen, my delight, and I will ever sing over you.’
This is the song I hear and I pray that you may open your heart wide to the truth of ‘Chosen’ and let the identity of ‘Unchosen’ be tossed aside for the lie it is.
I lift my face to His and see myself through His eyes….
I wander. I wander in out of thoughts and trails of thoughts and thoughts that lead me to quiet discomfort and exuberant exclamation. I wonder over the grace the Lord has poured out in my heart and I wander closer to it.
The closer I get to grace, the more I understand truth.
Colossians 1:6 tells me that ‘all over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all it’s truth.
Grace and truth are not incompatible, but are complements to one another.
As I am flooded with grace, He leads me in His paths of truth.
Sometimes it’s truth I don’t want to hear. Sometimes it’s a growing awareness that my tendency toward insecurity is not compatible with His truth. At times it’s my pride that does not fit onto His paths of truth. Being shown an area that I need surrender to God = painful.
It doesn’t feel like grace.
But isn’t that what grace does? Jesus’ gift of grace rescued me from sin and if I wasn’t made aware that I am sinful, would I have received grace? Would I have opened my arms wide to Him the way He opened his arms wide to me?
First I had to accept painful truth: I am no good on my own. I cannot earn my way into heaven. I cannot do enough good deeds to merit my acceptance and approval.
Only when I saw the truth about me could I accept the Truth about Him and receive Grace.
This is what I ponder as I wander and wonder over God’s amazing love toward me–poured out through Jesus– in grace and truth.
Grace and truth.
Beautiful together. Inseparable. If I accept grace, then I accept truth.
This is grace. My mind, which is wrapped around performance and what people think of me, finds the idea of receiving something that I don’t deserve profound. You mean I don’t have to do anything? I don’t have to measure up for a trial period before I get to keep it? You mean all the good things I have done, all the ‘points’ I received for being kind and sweet and patient don’t matter and the only one who is keeping track of ‘points’ is me? I can simply receive?
Think about it. Does that make you uncomfortable?
I have a friend who embodies generosity. Generosity with no strings attached, it simply flows from her heart and she pours that generosity out on me. I will think I don’t deserve it, but what a disservice I give to her and her generosity. If I attempt to justify her generosity to me, I am, in effect, minimizing her gift. Isn’t that what we do with God’s grace?
I minimize the gift of grace when I declare whether I can receive it or not. It is the giver who determines who receives the gift. Wouldn’t it be silly if I received an amazing Christmas gift and told the giver I couldn’t keep it? Would I even consider that? Yet, how often do I do that with the grace the Lord longs to pour out on me. Who am I to say to the Lord that he can’t give me his grace? Why would I ever consider that? Yet, that is exactly what I am saying when I strive for goodness in my own strength.
I am a midwestern girl and I grew up with the mindset that ‘if there’s a will, there’s a way’. This mindset, coupled with the Lord, has seen me through difficult and crushing situations, but when I try and do this life on my own, I quickly move from dependence to independence. I move from reliance on a God greater than I, to self-reliance. And the last I checked, I mess things up quite a bit.
It’s an interesting and mind-bedding concept. Acceptance of a gift I didn’t earn. Acceptance of a gift that I can in no way shape or form ever consider reciprocating. But that’s the thing. Reciprocating in God’s economy doesn’t mean giving back to him exactly what he gave to me. Reciprocating in God’s economy means surrender and living this life for Him.
And if I want to continue to welcome grace into my life, then I need to be ‘uncomfortable’ and freely receive the grace my Lord pours out in me.
I rest and ponder work and giftings and motivation. Work is easy to figure out–it’s what I do. Giftings can be obvious–it’s where our passions lie. But motivation–that’s the tricky one. It’s so easy to think I have the right motivation, but then I look into my heart and see that people-pleasing monster gleefully laughing that he fooled me again. Ugh. I desire my motivation to be for Jesus’ glory and yet, there’s this thing inside me that really wants other people to be happy with my offerings, which ultimately is wanting glory for myself. Double ugh.
Mark 14:1-5 tells of a woman who poured the contents of her alabaster jar on Jesus’ feet and the guests treated her harshly for this decision.
Why? It was a gift, an offering poured out for Jesus. It was also hers to do as she pleased. Shouldn’t she have been admired by the guests? But no.
The guests treated her harshly. They thought she wasted her gift. They thought her gift would have been better served to have been sold for much money and the money given to the poor. They thought their idea of how to use her offering was better and would serve more people. Hence, having greater impact. The guests wanted her offering done in Jesus’ name. She wanted to give her gift for Jesus alone.
It is clear that every gift we bring, every offering we offer can have two motivations. Is it done in Jesus’ name or is it done for him? The guests wanted her gift to be sold and money given to the poor–an offering given in Jesus’ name. The woman wanted to pour out her offering solely for Jesus’ benefit. She gave her offering for him.
There is a subtle, yet distinct difference. Is what I do done in Jesus’ name or is it done for him to be used for him and by him how he sees fit. I need to bring my offerings to him, pour them out on him and for him and let him decide how they best serve his purposes. I need to relinquish control and simply offer.
The woman in our story brought her gift, broke it open and poured it out on Jesus. She was criticized. She was murmered about. But Jesus. Jesus rebuked her critics and declared her gift an anointing of him. For his burial.
The point is, we may think we know what our gifts will be best served by, but do we? Shouldn’t we simply offer our gifts up to Jesus for him to be used as he sees fit? Isn’t this just one other way we can welcome grace into our lives? Giving to him and letting go in the giving?
Each day I am challenged to give my time and moments for him to be used by him. If I want the people-pleasing monster within me to stay silent, then I must give my time, days, words, moments to Jesus for him to decide how they will best serve his purpose. He knows.
I grew up traveling back and forth between the plains of Montana and the woods of Washington and along the way I developed a love for wide open spaces where I could see the vastness of creation and have a visual of how majestic is my God.
I also love the woods and the trees and it was there that I learned how my God loves small, tiny details. That he finds and created beauty in the knotty pine of bark on a tree, the twirl of a leaf in the breeze, the hearts delicately dangling from the stem of a bleeding-heart plant. I grew up knowing both the bigness of God and also how he delights in tiny, seemingly insignificant things.
One morning in my quiet time, I imagined the Lord and I on a walk in the cool woods and we sat down together on a log and I breathed in the scent of Him and breathed out praise to Him. I imagined leaning against him simply enjoying his company and feeling the security of him enjoying me.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As we sat and soaked in the beauty around us, the Lord nudged me and said, “Look at that rock at your feet, let’s pick it up.’
‘Oh, no, let’s just look at it,’ I replied, ‘look at the beautiful designs on it, do you think it’s got some gypsum in it? I love how it sparkles in the morning light.’
‘Daughter, let us pick it up and look underneath.’
‘Oh, Lord, not that!’ I nervously exclaimed. ‘There are bugs and creepy crawly things under there and I just don’t like creepy crawly things. That’s their home, we had best not disturb them, plus, what if they get out and crawl all over this log we’re sitting on. That would really creep me out. I will feel itchy all day!’
‘Daughter, please pick it up. I want to show you something.’
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And he did.
He showed me that just as the Israelites would set up monuments to remember some event in their history so I too create monuments in my heart. Monuments of moments in my life. Amazing monuments such as my wedding day or the births of my children or the reconciliation with a parent. Great moments like having one more school year wrapped up. Or having an accelerated accomplishment kind of day.
But some monuments may not be amazing or great, and they seem rather insignificant. Just little stones along my path. Or maybe a hefty size rock. Remembrances of moments of pain and anger. Or bitterness and resentment and how God, in his glorious promise, turned it into something good and instead of being something I stumble over, they have become monuments of moments where I allowed the Lord to turn something ugly into something beautiful.
However, as with all hurts and pains and rejections that have touched the recesses of my soul, sometimes the Lord wants to turn that rock over and examine the underneath, and often, but not always, he finds a little piece of bitterness or unforgiveness that he wants to remove.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I sigh and look up into his lovely eyes and breathe, ‘Couldn’t we have left it alone?’
He turns those love-filled eyes on me and whispers, ‘I love you too much to allow what is unseemly to multiply. I want you to grow in the ways of my love and sometimes that involves letting me see what’s underneath the moments in your life.’
‘But, Lord, it hurts to do that. Couldn’t I just look from a distance, I don’t want to pick up the rock. It still hurts to remember’, I whimper.
‘Oh my sweet girl, that’s precisely why we need to check underneath the rock. The greater the level of your pain, the greater your risk for unforgiveness is.’
And the Lord, gently guided my hand to pick up the rock and as I turned it belly side up to him, he gently brushed the grubs and creepy crawly things away and held my chin in his hand and whispered, ‘Thank-you for trusting me to do what is for your best.’
He kissed me and I glowed as bright as the morning sun.
