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.
There is a song by Elevation Worship that repeats in my mind and meets me in the life-overwhelms and reminds me where my strength and hope is placed. One of my children had a dental procedure and the weight of the unknown overwhelmed her and I felt overwhelmed knowing how to help her. Have you been there? You’re overwhelmed by the weight of the unknown and you desperately cry out for help and your friend or husband or kids can’t help you. It’s the kind of overwhelming feeling that can only be carried by Jesus.
I couldn’t do anything for my daughter except hold her hand and comfort her the best I knew how and the best I know how is to point her to Jesus and remind her that he is calling her to himself. He calls us to come to the altar when we’re hurting. He calls us to come to him when we don’t know if we can handle one more second of the unknown. The fear weighs us down and we suffocate from it.
And so I remind you and me and anyone who wonders if they can take another step of this:
Jesus is calling. He calls you when you’re broken. He calls you when your sin threatens to overwhelm you, and he calls you to come drink from his well that never runs dry. He says to you, “Turn your back on your regrets and mistakes. Those are in the past and I have redeemed you, look to me—the starter and finisher of your faith. Don’t be afraid. Come to me. I have refreshment for you in the midst of your trials and pain.”
Ah friends, whatever you’re facing, there’s an altar waiting for you. An altar that points your eyes to Jesus. An altar where you can receive forgiveness. It’s an altar where you leave your mistakes and regrets as a testimony to God’s faithfulness because rather than your regrets pointing it’s accusing finger at you, you can use it as a reminder to yourself of God’s redeeming power in your life.
Sorrows and suffering. They go together like peanut butter and jelly—only they don’t taste as good–and I would never choose them. In fact, they sometimes leave a bitter taste, but when we recognize our feelings towards our sufferings, we have an opportunity to head straight to the altar and surrender our expectations to Jesus.
And then he does this amazing thing: he bears them for us while walking with us through them. But if we leave the altar, we stumble and fall because we begin relying on our own strength. We begin to rationalize away our feelings about our reality and once the rationalization happens we lose touch with the reality that God is with us in the midst of the unknown.
Jesus is calling us to come to the altar. He’s calling us to come when the weight of the world threatens to crush us. He’s calling us to come when our sin weighs on our hearts. Jesus is calling you to come to the altar. Run to him and find rest.
Rejection lurks and lingers, taunts, and threatens to show up where I least expect it. It’s a cocked and loaded weapon aimed directly at my heart and I walk through life with hands held up ready to surrender my identity, my purpose, and my relationships.
I’ve called myself names, I’ve believed I don’t have anything to offer, and then I’ve believed that my gifts and talents don’t have as much purpose as yours.
Rejection steals my identity in Christ because my security is in Him.
Rejection kills my purpose because of the impossible cycle of pleasing people.
Rejection destroys relationships because I view them through a fear-filled lens.
Do you live defensively expecting to be rejected? Do you approach relationships planning to be rejected? Do you self-condemn so rejection doesn’t surprise you?
I’ve self-condemned, self-sabotaged, and self-hated. Have you? But God wants us to be filled with him. He is our defender so we don’t need to live defensively. He is our greatest cheerleader so we don’t need to be afraid to step out onto the stage of life. He is our greatest champion so we don’t have to worry whether we win or lose because our hearts, our life, is safe in his plans. God becomes who we live to please—not ourselves and especially not what other’s want us to be.
We don’t have to enter every friendship with the expectation that it will end in rejection. We don’t have to hold ourselves back from relationships, isolating us further into self-condemnation.
You see, when we self-condemn, we partner with Satan’s three tools of destruction: to steal, kill, and destroy, but when we partner with God we are given freedom, joy, and life.
Our minds and hearts work together and we must realize that our self-condemnation is a default response to our fear of rejection. The way to be free is to have our mind renewed.
The most effective way I’ve found to renew my mind is through transformation and captivation.
Romans 12:1-2, “Therefore….present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not conform to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…”
2 Cor. 10:5, “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ.”
My thoughts transform as I submit my life to God’s holy and acceptable way of living. Living fear-filled is not holy and acceptable. We are called to faith-filled and courage-filled and trust-filled lives. God finishes what he starts and works everything out.
Self-condemnation is not a holy and acceptable way of thinking. And those thoughts—the ones that tell me I’m no good or not enough need to brought into captive obedience to Christ.
[bctt tweet=”Christ lives in us and when we diss ourselves, we reject Christ in us.” username=””]
Today, right now, offer your life as a living sacrifice.
The pain of rejection is worse than letting God touch those tender places in your heart. As you lay your fear down, step back, and turn your eyes on Jesus. Let his heart for you wash over you. And when you’re tempted to self-condemn, bring that thought captive and make it obey Christ. It looks a little like this: instead of saying, “I am a screw up,” Say, “I’ve messed up, but God loves me, messes and all, and I run to him instead of hiding in my shame.”
Those thoughts we have about ourselves? They’re going to come, but as we learn the process of captivity and obedience we will experience transformation and then become the fear-fighter we want to be.
