God is so good. He meets me where I am and he’s my safe place to pour out my heart when I’m feeling rejected. I know this sounds silly, but sometimes I wake up and feel like all my friends don’t like me anymore. By the end of the day I have myself convinced that I am friendless and un-likeable and rejection lurks.
I run to God, and I pour out my heart to him and tell him my fears and within his refuge he reminds me of myself. He reminds me that I am a child of God, that I’m redeemed, and that I’m secure in Him.
He reminds me that in him I am loved. He reminds me that my thoughts need to be brought captive and by thinking that all my friends hate me because of some imaginary thing I did is pretty inward focused. He gently redirects my heart to what is true: I have friends. They like me. I like them. I’m going to disappoint them. They will disappoint me. But that’s what forgiveness is for. I can forgive myself when I fail my personal friendship standards. And I can ask forgiveness when I fail theirs. God also reminds me that my battles with insecurity don’t make me weak, they make me strong because I run to him for strength and help.
Do you ever feel like your heart is about to vomit all over the place? That there’s so much inside and some of it’s great, but some of it’s really ugly and like mold it spreads and takes over the good stuff?
There’s some word vomiting happening around us. Too often someone speaks before they think and in the process spews dissension and hate all over the place. Too often we hid behind screens and keyboards failing to consider the consequences of our words. Social media is not our personal journal. Not everything we feel or every opinion we have needs to be aired in public.
Yet, we need a place for these ugly feelings and thoughts to go. Some of us have trusted friends that we can share the “uglies” and they will point us to Christ and his word for direction. Sometimes, though, we choose someone else to spew our uglies at and it becomes even messier than before because we’ve created a super-cell super-destructive storm of emotions.
Somewhere along the way we’ve lost the relatability of God. In the midst of our awareness of his awesomeness and majesty, we forget that he is also supremely interested in us. In all of us–the good stuff and the bad.
“Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us.” Psalm 62:8
Our trust in God is related to how open open our hearts are to him. I don’t think God wants our sanitized hearts. Our sanitized hearts look a lot like the produce drawers in my fridge: clean on one side and nasty on the other.
In our world divisiveness rages. People hate on one another, turn their backs on their fellow man, use words to kill and destroy, declare tolerance in the name of hate. Our hearts fill with rage or disgust and so we speak. And sometimes in the speaking, we wound.
We wound because we haven’t taken the pain in our hearts to God and let him sanitize our pain so our words become life-giving instead of life-taking.
At times, our hearts have a difficult time separating righteous anger from regular anger, gossip from a prayer request, or conditional love from unconditional love. We need God to sift through the feelings and purify the things that don’t please him so that our hearts honor him with everything we say and do.
Pouring out our hearts to God can become the single most important thing we can do in our personal walk with him. He is the first to receive our confusion, our frustration, our questions, fears and anger. Only then, once our hearts are empty can he fill us up.
He fills us up with his peace, wisdom, guidance, joy and love. He becomes our refuge–where we’re kept safe and held close to his heart–so that we can know his heart. And when our hearts are filled with his heart, we can share words that give life and pour love onto the weary hearts around us.
Run to him first with all your care and concerns. Find solace in his word. Find power in the Holy Spirit. Live in his wisdom not your own and remember that your poured out empty heart has room for him to fill you.
I seem to forget the things I need to remember. It’s like I put them in a “safe” place in my mind, only I lose them, forgetting where I put them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve turned my house upside down looking for something I put in a “safe” place. So I’m a stacker instead of a filer and I have numerous junk drawers in the house that hold innumerable items of importance, like padlocks, pliers, and papers. If I see it, I remember, and I can find it when I need it.
God tells us to remember him and so we need to keep his promises and abilities close to our hearts and in our minds. We need to think on him and remember:
He holds the stars and calls them each by name.
He knows the number of hairs on my head, including the ones I daily lose.
His thoughts towards us are innumerable and good.
Why, then, do we doubt his goodness towards us? Why do we wonder where he is when he is silent?
Today, can you take courage? Can you take hold and hold onto your hope?
God is in the waiting. He is never failing. His love is unending and everlasting.
If you hold onto your hope, your triumph will unfold. Take courage. Stay steadfast. He’s there, in the waiting. He will turn your darkness to light because he is light.
Take courage and let your soul stay steadfast. Your doubts will fade, your questions dissipate as you focus on the King of Kings. Fix your eyes on Jesus, the Hope of the world. Our miracles happen when our eyes are fixed on him, despite what we see, feel, or experience.
It’s in the steadfastness of our soul that we know the steadfastness of God’s heart. It’s in our faithfulness that we know God’s faithfulness. He is strong and mighty. He saves. He redeems. He triumphs.
When we’re at the end of ourselves, we see the power of God displayed in our lives. You see, God has promised that we will rise in His victory. Our triumph will unfold, but it won’t be because of us and our efforts. Our triumph will unfold because we’ve held onto hope when hope seems lost. We will experience victory when our hearts don’t waver in our belief in God’s mighty goodness and faithfulness.
We may not be able to see around the next bend, but God is there. He is with you in the thorny path and he is ahead of you around the curve that you cannot see. He is behind you protecting your back from the darts of the enemy of our souls. And he is beside you whispering direction and encouragement.
You will rise in victory. You will rise in His victory because he holds the stars and knows them by name and he will surely keep his promises of finishing the work he has begun in you. Take courage. Hold on. He is loving and good and steadfast. He is faithful. He is power. And as you hold onto your Hope, he holds onto you.
The best stories make you cry, laugh till you cry, scare you, anger you, and then make you glad again. These are the stories I return to over and over again. I crack the cover, knowing the ending, but wanting to savor the middle.
My life is a story. Your life is a story. I know how my story will end, but I don’t know the details of the middle. Your middle is a muddle too. Sometimes it’s hard and beautiful and ugly and impressive. Even the parts of life that make us sad and mad have a place in our life. If we want to live life well, we must learn to embrace the beautiful hard.
Sometimes I want to be the hero and sometimes I want to be rescued. Recently, however, I wasn’t the hero or the rescuer nor an observant bystander, but I had an opportunity to love the “least of these.” The “least of these” are those children whose parent’s are unable to care for their children and it’s the children whose hearts have known too much pain and known burdens they shouldn’t bear.
Last week, God intersected my heart with two other hearts. My heart shattered into pieces and in the shattering I saw grace in action. I saw the power of love. I saw the power of time. I saw that despite the pain in this world, God is still with us.
For five days, I poured life and love into the dry parched places of their hearts. Their eyes lost the wary look and gained laughter for a few days. We splashed in a lake, made tu-tu’s, played dress up and participated in a jungle safari including snakes, bearded dragons, and turtles. And yes, these snakes hugged necks and crawled up arms and elicited squeals and giggles.
My heart broke into a thousand pieces as I watched these two little girls laugh with abandon and then in the next instance pull the curtain down over their heart.
Trust: It doesn’t come easy once it’s been broken.
Hope: It flickers and sputters.
Joy: It’s foreign and fleeting.
But for one week out of the summer, these children–the ignored, the forgotten, the hurt– experience safe relationships with safe adults. For some of these, the memories made at camp will be their only good memories from their childhood. For one week, these children were told they were special and worthy of time and attention. This one week of love and laughter and carefree living changes lives for the better. It breaks cycles and starts new ones.
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. James 1:27
It’s far too easy to reduce religion to where we spend our Sundays and how we worship. It’s easy because running smack dab into the hard awakens us to pain. And we’re a society of pain-avoiders. But Jesus ran toward pain for you and me. He suffered so that we might know joy, and hope, and trust. If he can do this for us, how can we not do this for others?
Yes, I was uncomfortable. I was hot. And the lake was green and smelly. I wondered if I made a difference in these girls’ lives. I remembered things I’d rather forget. I grew reacquainted with tears. I felt inept, ineffective, and ingrown. But God called me to love. He called me to reach the children’s hearts and so I ran toward the suffering of the hurting and wrapped my arms and heart wide around them.
We can reach out to the kid next door whose mom is working three jobs to put food on the table or we can volunteer in children’s ministry in our local church. Often there are children who feel orphaned because of the lack of involvement of their parent’s in their lives and a kind word is like a cup of cold water to a dry heart.
God gives us opportunities to plant seeds of hope, love, and trust in children’s lives and then he takes the seeds we’ve planted and he waters them and makes them grow. I had to say goodbye to my campers and I don’t know their tomorrows, but I know who holds all of our tomorrows and he’s amazing at his job.
Have you ever read a mystery and thought you had things figured out until you read the end of the story and discovered you were totally and completely wrong? I have. Which is why read the end of the story first, the suspense just about kills me! There are times when I shake my head and scratch my chin as I ponder the seeming mysteries in the Bible. I can see why it’s tempting to take a Gillette razor to certain verses or sections. The ones that have some of the greatest mystery are the verses that tell me to rejoice and to suffer.
I certainly don’t say, “Oh, rejoice!” when I splash boiling water all over myself. And I certainly don’t say, “Oh, Joy!” when I hear of a friend who’s suffering through a sickness or a death of a loved one. But I can’t deny the perplexing feeling I get when I read 1 Thessalonians 5:18, “Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you,” and James 1:2, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.”
Count it joy when I meet trials? Give thanks in all circumstances? Even the yucky ones? Even the ones that I wouldn’t wish on anybody? Surely, not the times when I screw up and cause my own bad circumstances? Surely, I don’t have to be thankful then, right?
“All” doesn’t mean sometimes, it pretty much means what it means: all. No exceptions. No excuses. No exemptions.
The mystery lies in somehow bridging our desire to give thanks with the ugly realness of our lives. Because sometimes it doesn’t feel as though my thanksgiving is real. Sometimes it feels like I’m lying because I’m saying thanks while my feelings are anything but thankful.
The answer to this mystery is found in Lament. Lament is the language of expressing anguish, confusion, disorientation, sorrow, grief, protest, and disappointment within the context of your faith in Christ. Lament bridges the gap between suffering and rejoicing always.
David is called a man after God’s own heart. David shared all of his heart with God. He shared his dismay, mental anguish, and fear uncensored before his faithful God. He knew the power of lament for bridging the distance between his sufferings and his praise.
A good book or story has five essential elements and without one of these elements, we have a flat story. A lament has five important parts: the cry, the confession of trust, the expression of our heart, the petition, and the praise. It’s the lament that gives the story of our lives color and spark. It allows us to ask the hard questions and becomes the place where we can scream our disappointment in how things are turning out.
In the lament, we are able to turn our sorrows into praise because we remember God’s character and his capabilities; we cry out to him because we know he’s our rock, refuge, and safe place. We declare our trust because we remember what he’s done for us in the past. Our pain and anguish get dumped at his feet because he’s the only one who can wade through the muck to reach our heart. We bring our petition for help and assistance because we know that the wind and waves listen to him. And lastly, we bring our praise. We praise him for what he’s done, what he’s doing, and what he’s about to do.
The lament is God’s gift to us so that we have a healthy way to communicate our doubts to him while ensuring our hearts stay close to him. Our lament is an act of faith, a proclamation of hope, and an act of love.
Run hard and fast to him with everything that is within you–the good, the bad, the sorrows, and the pain. It keeps our hearts soft before him and with a soft heart we can know God’s heart. Hide in the shadow of his wings and let your heart pour out your cry, your trust, your doubt, your petition, and your praise.
The Red Sea parted and the Israelites walked away from bondage to freedom on dry ground with walls of water towering above them. Their freedom had come in shifts. First the freedom from experiencing the plagues that attacked Egypt, then the freedom from their physical bondage when they walked away, and then miraculously as they crossed the sea on dry ground.
They were truly free! Egypt was destroyed, the army drowned, no one could enslave them again. The elation! The jubilee! Their eyes were eager as they set out. They watched in awe as the cloud covered them by day and the fire warmed them by night. “Let’s get to the mountain to worship God! Step lively! Don’t dawdle! We’re free!” The chorus of voices rang out.
The Privilege of Freedom
I’m free twice. I was born free in the land of the brave and then I was born free again when Jesus became my Lord and Savior. One was a right by birth and the other was a gift. With both comes responsibility to serve.
My freedom right means I have the beautiful privilege of serving my fellow man, woman, and child. It means I get to serve democracy and not my own interests. It means that I have a duty to the country of my birth–a duty to uphold the values that men, women, and children have given their lives for.
My freedom gift means I carry the weight of Jesus in my life and it means that my life is no longer my own to serve myself, but to serve him. This gift is an exchange for my life for the very presence of a holy, almighty God in my heart.
I wish I could say it were easy being free, but sometimes I look at the selfishness in my life and truly wonder if I understand freedom. I want to use freedom to do what I want to do. I want freedom so I can have a life of ease and comfort. I don’t really think of freedom and fear in the same sentence, but I’m beginning to.
When We Reject Freedom
Our Israelite friends? The ones who experienced a miraculous freeing? They gave up a personal relationship with God because they didn’t understand what their freedom was really for. Their freedom was a vehicle for them to know the heart of God towards them and they rejected it for a man to be the mediator between them and God. (Exodus 20:18-21)
The weight of freedom is the fear of the Lord. It’s a healthy fear than enables us to not sin, which explains why the Israelites had a problem with sinning. I can see why they rejected God’s extension of a personal relationship with him. I mean, the mountain was shaking and smoking and it was thundering and lightening and somewhere, somehow there was the sound of trumpets. It was a cacophony of sound. Overwhelmed and as frightened as they’d been while slaves in Egypt, this had to have brought their fear to a whole new level.
We like to pigeon-hole people. Someone behaves a certain way and all of a sudden they’re the “organized” one or a “perfectionist” or a “cleany” or a “messy.” Humans love categories and classification. But God doesn’t fit into a category or classification. He is both kind and just. He is both gentle and destructive. And the God who they thought they knew as their freedom maker just became someone they were all together unsure of.
When Freedom Surprises Us
I know I’ve been surprised by God. I think I’ve got him all figured out and then out of the blue he pulls a fast one on me and before I know it I’m tossed on the waves of questioning and wondering who is this God I serve.
When this happens we don’t have to be like the Israelites and back away from him. We can be like Moses who drew nearer to the shaking, smoking, clanging, and lit up mountain. Do you know his character? Do you trust his heart for you? He is good. He is also just. He is light and life. He is breath. He is trustworthy. He knows best. He wants to make us into a beautiful reflection of him. And sometimes that involves stepping closer to a mountain that seems like it’s going to explode.
Imagine if it did. Imagine confetti exploding and covering us with all the goodness his heart has inside. Even if we feel our world is about to collapse, he is still good and he wants us to know him.
Don’t be like the Israelites and shirk away from your duty that being free in Christ brings to you. The duty to be enveloped in his presence and to know his very heart. It might seem frightening, but let him show you his heart and who he really is.
Your freedom gift is a privilege. Embrace it. Esteem it and never let it go.
This statement arrested and accused me. I do dream small. I dream small because I’m afraid of disappointment, danger and daring to fail.
But in the dreaming small I lose pieces of my heart until all that’s left is a shriveled core struggling for it’s next breath, and it’s next beat. I become the walking dead, curiously satisfied with mediocrity, apathetic towards the status quo. Every once in a while a what if, a why not, or a what could be stirs to life and my heart beats a little louder, a little faster until I have to listen. I have to pay attention to it.
The dream longs to be heard, to be brought back to life and to have a say.
“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.” Ephesians 3:19-20 NIV
Today, I will…
dream the dreams that frighten me.
dream the dreams that seem impossible.
And I will know that my dreams that seem so big are nothing compared to what God is capable of doing in my life. I will dream my frightening, out of this world kind of dream because God’s dreams are bigger than I can imagine. I will dream and then I will trust.
I will trust God to take my dreams that seem big to me, but are so small in his hands, and let him sift the ones that are for my glory and keep the ones that are for his.
What is my glory compared to my Father’s? What is my ability compared to his? I will let him have those dreams and discard those dreams that are all about me wrapped in the guise of all about him. I will let go of my legacy and embrace his. I will take hold of him and never let him go.
My heart takes courage and I dream big because I know I’m safe in my Father’s hands. I know that he is for me. I know that he means not to harm me. I believe that he is with me, guiding me, leading me, and shepherding me. And that includes those dreams I’m afraid to whisper in the dark.
Small dreams keep us tied to our own strength, our own glory. Dreaming small reduces our faith to something we can hold and understand whereas faith is mystery that we shouldn’t understand because if we really understood it, do we have any at all?
Your dreams. They’re gifts from a loving God. Your dreams aren’t meant to frighten you, freeze you, or fill you. Your dreams are meant to point you to God and his capabilities, and to open your heart to just how great his thoughts are towards you.
He thinks good things of you. He dreams big for you. He woos you to himself so that he might lift you up and hold you high and declare: “This is my girl and I’m proud of her. See what I do for her? I shower her with my goodness in the land of the living and I cherish her.”
Dream big. Dream of God. And let his light fill you and lift you as he does immeasurably more than you could ask for or imagine. He is good and he is for you.
