Sharing the Struggle

The Lord will meet us where we are, then bring us to where He wants us to be. 

When you read through the psalms, you cannot help but understand that whether you see David as faithful or flawed, he was utterly transparent. David hid nothing from God, and by writing down his innermost thoughts, struggles, and questions as psalms, he gave all of humanity an inside look at “becoming.”

Seeing other people’s struggles throughout the biblical account has often ministered to me much more than seeing their victories. Indeed, seeing the victories gives me great encouragement and much hope, but it’s seeing the struggles that truly ministers to me, because it’s the struggles to which I can truly relate. I need to know that Jesus wept, that Thomas doubted, that Peter stumbled, and that David hurt. It is in those places of struggle that humanity can deeply relate, so it is there— in the vulnerability and intimacy of human struggle— that Christ meets us and draws us upward into a new experience of victory. 

God made sure David’s psalms would be a part of the Bible, because we need to see this inner battle. We need to see and identify with the struggle. Those struggling out on the battlefield, need to hear from others out on the battlefield. “Like” only understands “like,” and we mustn’t get frustrated when we try to share our certain experiences with others who cannot yet understand them or relate to them. David’s life ministers to me because I can relate to him— and because seeing his struggles meets me where I am, rather than where others may want me to be. 

O Lord, teach us to be gracious and patient with those who are “becoming.” Thank You for meeting us where we are, and taking our hand to lead us into the glorious victory of where You want us to be. 

(1 John 3:2,3) Beloved, we are now children of God, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when Christ appears, we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as Christ is pure.

(Phil 3:13,14) Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

(1 Pet 4:13) But rejoice that you share in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed at the revelation of His glory.

(Rom 8:17) And if we are children, then we are heirs: heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ--if indeed we suffer with Him, so that we may also be glorified with Him.

(Phil 3:10,11) I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to Him in His death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

(2 Cor 3:18) But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

The Caterpillar Sings

There are moments of beauty 

But they are fleeting 

And they just leave me hungry for more

I feel like I’m dying

I wonder, “Does a caterpillar hurt inside its chrysalis? Does it hurt to become a butterfly?” 

Yes, it hurts

I wonder, “Does the caterpillar fear inside its chrysalis? Does it fear becoming something else entirely different and unknown to what it was before?”

Yes, it fears

I wonder, “Does the caterpillar dread inside its chrysalis? Does it dread the jeers of those who will tell it, ‘You are supposed to be a caterpillar, not a butterfly’ “

Those who will say, “The chrysalis is your home, not the wind”

Yes, it dreads

Yet I wonder, “Does the caterpillar praise inside its chrysalis? Does it rejoice that it is fearfully and wonderfully made?”

Made to ride the wind and drink from beauty

Not made to stay in the hurt, dread, and fear of darkness 

Yes, it praises

But the wind does not come before the darkness

And beauty can only be comprehended 

By comparison to that which is not

So I wonder, “Does the caterpillar sing inside its chrysalis? Does it have a butterfly song?”

Does it sing, “The sun must set and the dark night come, before we rise on the wings of the dawn!”

Yes, the caterpillar sings

(Ps 139:7-10) Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? If I go up to the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in the depths, You are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle by the farthest sea, even there Your hand will guide me; Your right hand will hold me fast.

(Acts 14:21,22) They preached the gospel to that city and made many disciples. Then they returned to Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples and encouraging them to continue in the faith. “We must endure many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,” they said.

(Ps 84:2-4) My soul longs, even faints, for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she places her young near Your altars, O LORD of Hosts, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in your house; they are ever praising you.

Distracted In A Ditch

“A centipede was happy till

One day, a toad in fun

Said, “Pray, which leg goes after which?”

Which strained his mind to such a pitch

He lay distracted in a ditch

Considering how to run”

This was a poem from my devotional for today. Before I opened my devotional, I tried to pray but couldn’t. The words just wouldn’t flow. Frustrated, I asked the Spirit to pray instead. I asked the Lord to give me the right words so I could pray the right prayers, because I didn’t know how. I wanted to get everything right. I wanted to say all the right things, in all the right ways, at the right time. Then I opened my devotional, and here lay a poem about overthinking. 

Sometimes the Lord has to remind me to just “be” in Him. Sometimes the greatest stretches of my faith are moments when I have to trust that my steps are truly ordered by the Lord, even when my mind is muddled and my feet are fumbling. Oswald Chambers said, “The ministry of Christ is characterized by an abiding glory of which the servant is totally unaware,” and this has always been a great comfort to me on days when I feel oblivious. I pray it will be a great comfort to you, too. 

O Lord, may we truly abide in You by faith. May we trust that our days and moments belong wholly to You, and that our call is not to over-consider each moment, but to allow each moment to dwell within You. 

(Ex 34:29) And when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was unaware that his face had become radiant from speaking with the LORD.

(Eph 2:10) For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

(Ps 37:23,24) The steps of a man are established by the LORD, And He delights in his way. Though he falls, he will not be overwhelmed, for the LORD is holding his hand.

Conquering The “Ites”

God will not take it away, you must conquer it. 

Last week, I confessed some things to a trusted brother in Christ. Difficult things. Deep things. The kind of things that only God can reach, because they’ve been a part of you for so long. When I confessed to my brother in Christ, I told him that I just wanted God to take it away. And this brother said exactly what I needed to hear, the exact moment I needed to hear it:  “God will not take it away, because He wants you to conquer it.” 

When God brought the Israelites into the Promised Land, He didn’t “take away” the Canaanites, Hittites, Jebusites, and all the other “ites.” He told Israel that He would be with them as they conquered them. God had already delivered the Israelites from bondage to Egypt and carried them to the land they were promised, but it was up to them to take possession of it. They had to keep moving forward and keep pushing on, until the whole land was conquered. It was an outer, physical example of an inner, spiritual reality. 

God didn’t take away the “giants of the land” for the Israelites, and He’s not gonna take them away for us either. He’s going to teach us how to live in faith and conquer, rather than live in fear and cower. Maybe someone needs to hear that today. Maybe someone needs to know that you can love Jesus with all your heart and cling to Him for all you’re worth, and still have things within you that He needs to overcome. And beloved, He surely will. 

O Lord, help us to conquer every Canaanite, Jebusite, Hittite, and every other “ite” within us. O Lord, lead us into battle against the giants of the land, for we shall surely overcome them. 

(Num 13:25-30) When they returned from spying out the land, at the end of forty days… they told [Moses]: “We went to the land where you sent us. It truly flows with milk and honey… But the people who dwell there are powerful.. the Hittites, Jebusites, and .. Canaanites..” Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “We should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we will certainly overcome it.”

(Rev 2:7,11,17; 3:5,12,21) To the one who overcomes, I will grant the right to eat from the tree of life in the Paradise of God.. The one who overcomes will not be harmed by the second death.. To the one who overcomes, I will give the hidden manna.. also a new name.. he who overcomes will be dressed in white. And I.. will confess his name before My Father and His angels.. The one who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of My God.. To the one who overcomes, I will grant the right to sit with Me on My throne, just as I overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.

(Rom 8:37-39) No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Held By Nails

 

We got our 15 year-old a chicken coop for her birthday. 

I don’t know many 15 year-olds who would be ecstatic about getting a chicken coop for their birthday, but a brand-new-chicken-coop-of-her-very-own is definitely on my daughter’s list of “best birthday gifts ever.” That afternoon, as we put it together piece-by-piece, I kept thinking about the church. 

Before we started to assemble it, my husband and I spent two days just making the foundation.   Most people wouldn’t spend that much time on a foundation. Most people would want to start building right away. But no matter how solid and well-designed a building is, it’s useless if it’s not built on some type of foundation to give it stability. Then, once we began to assemble it, we had to be very careful to follow the directions step-by-step. If we tried to hurry by skipping steps, then none of the other parts would have fit together correctly.

Each part had a specific purpose. There were big parts and little parts. Parts that braced, and parts that shielded. Parts that covered, and parts that held together. Parts you could see through, and parts that you couldn’t. Parts that looked the same, and parts that didn’t. Parts that were easily breakable, and parts that weren’t. But one of the things that stuck out to me the most, was that no matter what size the part was or what it looked like, they were all held together by the nails.

O brothers and sisters, let us not focus on our different looks and functions, but let us focus on the nails of our Lord that connect us and hold us together. 

(Acts 2:23,24) He was delivered up by God’s set plan and foreknowledge, and you, by the hands of the lawless, put Him to death by nailing Him to the cross. But God raised Him from the dead, freeing Him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on Him.

(Col 1:17,18) He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church; He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything He might have the supremacy.

(Rom 12:4,5) Just as each of us has one body with many members, and not all members have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

(1 Cor 12:17,18) If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact, God has arranged the members of the body, every one of them, according to His design.

(Eph 4:15,16) Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Christ Himself, who is the head. From Him the whole body, fitted and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love through the work of each individual part.

The Glory Of Dirt-Working

I planted a pumpkin patch for no particular reason. 

I have an area near my garden that I can’t till because it’s the overflow from our water lines that come out from the house, so I just poked some pumpkin seeds into the ground over there to see if they would grow. 

As I poked seeds into the ground that afternoon, I thought about the spiritual implications of what I was doing. I was sowing seed, but it was in shallow, unworked soil. The seeds might sprout and grow for a little while, but once they reach more than a couple inches in depth, their growth will be stunted once they hit the layer of clay underneath. 

The truth is, I want a fruitful garden in unworked dirt, but that’s an unrealistic expectation. I’ve experienced this same unrealistic expectation in the church. I’ve noticed that everyone seems to want fruit, but no one seems to want to work the soil. There’s no shortage of people willing to plant seeds and harvest fruit. Even watering gives some immediate gratification, because you can see the water being absorbed by the thirsty ground. But there’s no glory in dirt working. There’s no immediate, measurable results when you’re on your knees getting your hands dirty.

Come to think of it, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that working dirt and praying look an awful lot alike. 

(Matt 13:3-6) And He told them many things in parables, saying, “A farmer went out to sow his seed… Some fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.”

(James 4:2,3) …You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask. And when you do ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives…

(2 Cor 10:3,4) For though we live in the flesh, we do not wage war according to the flesh. The weapons of our warfare are not the weapons of the world. Instead, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.

Resurrecting The Rotten

The other day, I made a post about praying over some duck and turkey eggs I was incubating. 

I prayed that the ducks would not die in their shell because they didn’t have the strength to make it out. I prayed that my turkey eggs were by some miracle fertile, despite the fact that the females who laid them continually avoided the male who could make them fertile. When I prayed those prayers, the Spirit shared with me that there was a spiritual lesson to be learned here. 

Muscovy duck eggs are notoriously difficult to incubate, for various reasons I won’t get into, except to say that 100% hatch rates are typically not very common— I’ve certainly never had one. But every single duck egg hatched that was in those incubators I prayed over the other day. Which is remarkable. But what’s really remarkable, is that one of those eggs was rotten when I candled it, and as I was about to throw it away, my husband said to leave it in the incubator just in case. I argued with him, and showed him the blood and rot that was inside. I shook the egg and showed him there was no responsive movement. But I listened to him and did what he said. 

The lesson the Lord shared with me, was that at its beginning, that egg was fertilized and healthy and full of life. But something happened at some point in its development that began to rob it of life. Death began to take over and rot what was inside. But then someone prayed. And prayer brought the life of Christ into the situation— the very life that has defeated death. And even though that egg was rotten, the life of Christ resurrected the initial fertilization and brought that egg to its intended fullness. 

Every duck egg hatched, but none of the turkey eggs hatched because none of them were fertile. The lesson here, was that none of those turkey eggs ever developed because they never entered the presence of the one who could fertilize them. So, no amount of me praying was ever going to restore life to something that never had life in it in the first place. Contact with the only One Who has life must be made for any life to begin. But just one, heartfelt prayer will restore life, even to a rotten egg. 

Oh, and one more thing….guess how many ducks hatched? Twelve…

(John 1:3,4) Through Him all things were made, and without Him nothing was made that has been made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

(John 11:25-27) Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me will live, even though he dies, and whoever lives by believing in Me will never die. Do you believe this?” “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”

(2 Tim 1:10,11) And now He has revealed this grace through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has abolished death and illuminated the way to life and immortality through the gospel, to which I was appointed a herald, and an apostle, and a teacher.