Can you handle this?

Yesterday evening I began to feel sick (head draining, sinus pressure, almost fever but not quite). I fought through it at work today and am still fighting it. By the end of the day, I had more to do than I could handle or finish by my 4:30 "end time." It all would probably have taken me 2 extra hours. My body felt like it couldn't take any more and was demanding that I shut down and sleep. It was already after 4:00, but more items for the day were still coming at me, and I hit a wall. I came to the end of myself. It's not a far way to go to get there (believe me!). While crying in the restroom, the only private place for me at work, God cared for me. He told me that yes I cannot handle this, but He can. He told me what to do, very clearly. Almost all at once He gave me my game-plan: reply to Steve's email and ask if he can call about the payroll issue instead of you; ask Angela to help you with the Children's Ministry rosters and Bookstore inventory for Sunday; look up the new bank's hours online to see if they have Saturday hours so you're not pressed for time (which they probably do - trust Me). All this was so clear, and clearly from my Father because my own mind could not process even just one single thought clearly at this point. And he said more. He said - I am the One who cares for you. I use others to help you, but it is I Myself who cares and provides. Now go walk in what I have made clear. And He was faithful. He could not have been otherwise. Others helped me when I asked, and I left work only one hour late instead of two.

This is a snapshot of one day, and it mirrors my life. What God has made clear to me recently is what He makes clear in His Word. He is reminding me that:

1. You need more time with me and in my Word each day. Do not starve yourself, but come eat and drink of Me. (Rom. 15:4; Jer. 15:16; Psalm 42:1-2)
2. You need others. They are the means by which I desire to work in you. (Heb. 10:23-25)
3. Yes, you may feel that you are spread too thin and do not have enough time to do these things, but I am calling you to them. And if I tell you something, you can trust it will work out for your best.

God is teaching me that He is enough. He is more than enough. He looks after me, and He is all that I need. He is the beginning and the end. He uses others, but He is enough. Walk in what He has made clear; you can trust Him. He will be faithful. How do we know? Because He has been faithful. He has been faithful at the cross and He will be faithful to bring me to the end. God is good, and He loves me.

This is what He is teaching me, and this is what I will be learning my whole life long.

I life up my eyes to the hills.

From where does my help come?

My help comes from the LORD,

who made heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot be moved;

he who keeps you will not slumber.

Behold, he who keeps Israel

will neither slumber nor sleep.

The LORD is your keeper;

the LORD is your shade on your right hand.

The sun shall not strike you by day,

nor the moon by night.

The LORD will keep you from all evil;

he will keep your life.

The LORD will keep

your going out and your coming in

from this time forth and forevermore.

Psalm 121

photo: Thanksgiving 2007; Lititz, PA (Adele Wegert)

No Wasted Suffering

A friend sent this to me yesterday and my pastor posted this on our church blog today.  It keeps popping up, and it is encouraging to read.  So, I recommend reading Stephen Altrogge's post: No Wasted Suffering.

Do you notice how James tells us to count it joy when we encounter trials of various kinds? Not just big, “I’ll probably give a testimony about this someday” kind of trials. All trials. Even the little, annoying things, that don’t seem exactly like trials but still tempt us to grumble and complain. Yeah, count those as joy too.

Feasting or Starving?

For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. - Romans 15:4

I need endurance, encouragement, and hope. I need God's Word. Do I starve myself, living on granola bar-like doses of God's Word each day? I need to feast on the Scriptures daily.

Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O LORD, God of hosts. - Jeremiah 15:16

As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. - Psalm 42:1-2

photo: Leipzig, Germany 2007

Uncertainty in Speech

I saw this tonight on an older blog post by Rebekah.

I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions. I'm just like inviting you to join me on the bandwagon of my own uncertainty. What has happened to our conviction? Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?

I think this is a good observation of my generation in particular (myself included). We live in a culture of relativism, and the limbs of relativism are not strong enough to be walked upon with conviction.
If you truly believe in the gospel, I think you will have enough conviction to speak about it with certainty...even if you, like, cannot always find the totally right words, you know? Not budging on the fact that we are sinners who deserve the wrath of God and are heading to hell apart from Christ's sacrifice - the only true way to a right relationship with God and eternal life with Him in heaven - may turn people away because of how "intolerant" we are. But in a world of uncertainty, God will draw people to Himself through our witness of a certain hope in the gospel. There are so many things that I do not know or understand, but God has granted me the gift of salvation. And by His grace, He will make everything else clear in relation to the gospel.

In the shadow of the cross

Let everything fall into place again

Jesus Christ my sacrifice

How I need to find Your grace again

Jesus Christ my perfect priest

How You understand my weaknesses

Thank You for Your gift to me

Through Your sufferings I now possess this peace

And nothing I can do could add to all You've done

So let my soul be satisfied

As I receive Your favor I will overcome

So in my life by glorified.

Paul Oakley

He cares

God is my Father, and He cares. All the time, He cares for me. When others do not, He does. When I do not deserve it, which is all of the time, He cares. He shows this to me, not when I am licking my wounds of self-pity or bitterness, but when I am undone by my sinfulness before a Holy God. When I rightly see God as God and myself as the chief of sinners, He reminds me that He is my loving Father. He cares. Why would He care? "Why should I gain from His reward? I cannot give an answer. But this I know with all my heart, His wounds have paid my ransom." Jesus really is the lover of my soul, and I really do have the only true God as my Father. My Father cares.

How deep the Father's love for us

How vast beyond all measure

That He should give His only Son

To make a wretch His treasure

How great the pain of searing loss

The Father turns His face away

As wounds which mar the chosen One

Bring many sons to glory

Behold the Man upon a cross

My sin upon His shoulders

Ashamed I hear my mocking voice

Call out among the scoffers

It was my sin that held Him there

Until it was accomplished

His dying breath has brought me life

I know that it is finished

I will not boast in anything

No gifts, no power, no wisdom

But I will boast in Jesus Christ

His death and resurrection

Why should I gain from His reward?

I cannot give an answer

But this I know with all my heart

His wounds have paid my ransom

How Deep the Father's Love for Us; words and music by Stuart Townsend

copyright 1995 Thankyou Music (PRS)

photo: the Alps in Bolzano, Italy 2007

Grace is Greater

Last Friday night I went to the first part of Paul Tripp's seminar at Covenant Fellowship Church called Your Walk with God is a Community Project. He exhorted us to dive into intentionally intrusive, Christ-centered, grace driven relationships. These relationships are the God ordained means for us to keep our identity in Christ in focus (Hebrews 10:19-31). These points also stood out to me:

There is a significant difference between being amazed at something and putting your faith in something. It's not enough to be amazed by the gospel; you must live the gospel through faith.

Second Peter 1:3 should astound you and draw remarkable faith in you. "His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence." (emphasis added)

And on Monday I listened to the sermon preached at King of Grace Church when some of my family was there on an E-team July 11th.

Are you more aware of God and his goodness than your challenges, or are you more aware of your challenges than God, who is bigger than any challenge you may face? - Paul Buckley

Am I more aware of my sin than the grace of God? Do I underestimate his Spirit's power to work in me to conform me into the likeness of the Son? Then let me gaze at the Cross, where my sin indeed is real and ugly and miserable, but where my sin was taken from me and placed on the shoulders of Christ. My identity is no longer in my sin. My identity is found in Christ and His glory. Because I am in Christ, God is my Father. And in His goodness, my Father sent me His Spirit. My ugly deplorable sin still is actively working in me, each day battling for my desires. But I am no longer a slave to sin - the Holy Spirit is at work in me. God has granted me all things that pertain to life and godliness. Seeing my sin should not lead me to despair or hopelessness, but to amazement of the glorious finished work of the gospel and faith for seeing the glorious gospel continuing to work in me each moment of the day.
Though I may see the pervasiveness of my sin in even the minute details of my heart, God's grace penetrates deeper still.

photo: Charlotte, NC 2009

I Love the Cross

In My Heart

In my heart there is a treason

One that poisons all my love

Take my heart and consecrate it

Wash it in Your cleansing blood

Tie me to the Rock unchanging

Tie me to His wondrous Cross

I'll fix my eyes upon the Savior

All other things I count as loss

Tie me to the Rock unchanging

And His great redeeming love

King of Grace; copyright 2000 Sovereign Grace Worship (ASCAP)

Alas, and Did My Savior Bleed

Alas and did my Savior bleed - And did my Sovereign die - Would He devote that sacred head - For such a worm as I - Was it for sins that I had done - He groaned upon the tree - Amazing pity, grace unknown - And love beyond degree

My God why would

You shed Your blood

So pure and undefiled

To make a sinful one like me

Your chosen precious child

Well might the sun in darkness hide - And shut His glories in - When Christ the mighty Maker died - For man the creature's sin - Thus might I hide my blushing face - While His dear Cross appears - Dissolve my heart in thankfulness - And melt my eyes to tears

Love Beyond Degree; copyright 1997 Sovereign Grace Praise (BMI)

I Love the Cross

All my sins forgiven

Far removed as east from west

Cast into the depths of the ocean

Of grace and redeeming love

I love the place where my Savior died - I love the place where I was justified - I love the place - Where Your blood flowed down - To give me life - I love the Cross...The Cross of Christ

All my guilt atoned for

Every debt is paid in full

Though my sins were scarlet

Now I'm clean as a fresh fallen snow

Everlasting; copyright 1999 Sovereign Grace Praise (BMI)

photo: Agape farm, Mt. Union, PA 2009

Fight for Joy

John Piper in When I Don't Desire God (page 44):

The essence of the Christian life is learning to fight for joy in a way that does not replace grace. We must be able to say at the end of our lives, "I have fought the good fight." But we must also say, "It was not I, but the grace of God that is with me." I have pursued Christ as my joy with all my might. But it was a might that he mightily imparted. We must fight for joy in such a way that we prove Jesus true when he said, "My yoke is easy, and my burden is light" (Matt. 11:30). We will succeed in this battle when we can say with Paul in Colossians 1:29 that we are "struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me." We struggle to bear the burden and carry the yoke. But he gives the power. All burdens are light to him. All yokes are easy to him. This too is something glorious to see in him. This too makes us glad in him. Trust him for this. Our joy in him will be the greater because we see him as the one who gives both the joy and the strength to fight for it. (emphasis added)

Death brings Life

I did a rare thing this evening. I finished two books: Discovering the Soul of Service and Mere Christianity. I am not going to quote the first one, but I am going to quote the last sentences of the second.

Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

Death brings life. This is the paradoxical life that God calls us to. It is so very hard, but God's grace is stronger.

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6).

photo: New Attitude 2008 in Louisville, KY

good people or bad people?

At our church picnic yesterday afternoon, I was talking with a couple friends about how we interact with people who profess to be Christians but do not live in step with the gospel. What could be worse than being lost but thinking you are safe?

Tonight, I read the following in Mere Christianity:

But we must not suppose that even if we succeeded in making everyone nice we should have saved their souls. A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world - and might even be more difficult to save.

For mere improvement is not redemption, though redemption always improves people even here and now and will, in the end, improve them to a degree we cannot yet imagine. God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man.

You must have the bad news before the good; you will not want a Savior if you do not see what you need to be saved from - the wrath of God against sinners. Saved from What? by R.C. Sproul is a book that also addresses this.

photo: Cinque Terre, Italy 2007

Sleep Sound In Jesus

My parents played this cassette for us when we were little kids to help us sleep, and it came to my mind tonight.

Sleep sound in Jesus sweet heart of my heart,

The dark of the night will not keep us apart;

When I lay you down in your bed for the night,

He holds you gently till morning is light...

so sleep sound in Jesus, I'll turn off the light.

Sleep Sound In Jesus; Michael Card 1993

I will not leave you or forsake you. (Joshua 1:5).

Tired - that describes my week - physical, mental, and spiritual tiredness. Do you ever feel tired like a child? A tiredness that comes after a day of tears and laughter. A tiredness that knows your Daddy will take care of everything while you sleep, and that nothing that seems big to you is bigger than Him.

photo: Badlands National Park, 2005

two notes on two options

C.S. Lewis helpfully diserns the vanity of making certain distinctions between two options (in two different cases): what could have been versus what is and one evil versus a "lesser" evil.

Have the words, 'Could have been' any sense at all when applied to God? You can say that one particular finite thing 'could have been' different from what it is, because it would have been different if something else had been different, and the something else would have been different if some third thing had been different, and so on. (The letters on this page would have been red if the printer had used red ink, and he would have used red ink if he had been instructed to, and so on.) But when you are talking about God - i.e. about the rock bottom, irreducible Fact on which all other facts depend - it is nonsensical to ask if it could have been otherwise. It is what it is, and there is an end of the matter (pg. 183-184).

And [the devil] always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors (pg. 186).

gain the world and lose your soul

The Creation Festival, east or west, is a very unique experience. I've been going since I was a 4-month old baby, and each year is different, yet similar.
Vinson and I went yesterday evening and came home with Joy early this afternoon. We watched TobyMac's performance Friday night and went on stage for the candle lighting. As we were driving to Creation, we were talking about TobyMac. His music is not the kind I listen to often, but he is an artist that I really respect. He also is a great live entertainer (I love that I got to grow up following DC Talk and Newsboys through Creation). Vinson commented that Toby is a normal Christian, somebody that you might have in your church, but he stands out as being such a strong Christian because that type of faith is sadly not the norm for the "Christian" music industry. One thing I respect about Toby is how he seems to fight to hold the gospel in his own life and speaks the truth of the gospel at least briefly in his shows between songs - making references to how we have received what we do not deserve, like he did last night. And in the few short interactions or observations I've had with him at Creations over the years, he seems to carry himself humbly and genuinely before others. It is such a strong temptation for those in the music and entertainment industry to become man and self-centered rather than God centered. Self-promotion is a poison that can stealthily and subtly consume you from multiple angles. I feel and see that pull each time I am at a Creation festival, and it can be intense.
I am thankful that God can and does use Creation to proclaim his gospel, even if there are ample opportunities for it to also feed the flesh and water down the gospel. The good news that Christ died for our sins and took the wrath of God that was justly ours so that we can live at peace with God and know him as our Father, that is an unstoppable gospel.

Toby performed "Lose My Soul" last night. Use google to find the rest of the lyrics if you like. I couldn't find a good link for you. but here is his music video for it.

Father God, I am clay in your hands,

Help me to stay that way through all life's demands,

'Cause they chip and they nag and they pull at me,

And every little thing I make up my mind to be,

Like I'm gonna be a daddy whose in the mix,

And I'm gonna be a husband who stays legit,

And I pray that I'm an artist who rises above,

The road that is wide and filled with self love,

Everything that I see draws me,

Though it's only in You that I can truly see that its a feast for the eyes - a low blow to purpose.

And I'm a little kid at a three-ring circus.

I don't want to gain the whole world, and lose my soul,

(Don't wanna walk away, let me hear the people say.)

I don't want to gain the whole world, and lose my soul,

(Don't wanna walk away, let me hear the people say.)...

Mark 8:34-38:

And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. (Jim Elliot)

photo: Creation West, 2007