Daughters of promise

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 2:20

Every family has its cast of characters. Mine was no exception. My parents were both quiet, but my extended family carried a very different energy. Even as a child, I could sense what mattered most to many of them. They wanted to be admired. They had to know more than anyone else in the room, to be right, to have the last word. They loved being clever, entertaining, unforgettable. They took pride in owning the nicest car, the most manicured yard, and they were quick to measure those who did not meet their standards. It did not escape me, even then, that their homes sat high in the hollows, looking down on the valley below. It felt like a parable.

As a quiet child, I watched carefully and made an inward vow. I will never be like that. But pride is subtle. It can dress itself in silence just as easily as in showmanship. So I began shaping myself in opposition to what I saw. I withheld my opinions, even when I knew the answer. I squirmed in the spotlight, not wanting to resemble those who seemed so hungry for it. I avoided arguments, not always because I was humble, but because I wanted no part in competing. I spent much of my childhood observing, evaluating, and quietly determining to be different. Yet for all my restraint, I was still revolving around myself. I was still carefully constructing a self-image.

It would take many years for Jesus to begin to free me from it. I did not need to become like the relatives I feared, nor did I need to define myself by resisting them. Both postures kept me preoccupied with myself. Jesus was inviting me into death and resurrection, the kind that frees a person from both self-display and self-protection. I began, slowly, to understand what it means to be crucified with Christ.  Not erased but possessed by the Spirit.

Jesus did not come to be admired in the way the world understands it. He did not need to dominate a room, prove His brilliance, or shame others with His wisdom. He came to call sinners home, to forgive the repentant, and to pour Himself out without vanity. He was strong without self-promotion and full of authority without the slightest trace of ego.

That is the life I want. Not loud, and not merely quiet. Not showy and not self-consciously restrained. Just free. Free enough to forget myself because I am captivated.  His beauty quiets any need to perform, compare, defend, or withdraw. Love has turned my face in a better direction. 

Jesus, how I long for your divine nature to shine through me like light through a window. Consume what is false, weak, and self-made. Amen

“Look, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” In response, Abraham prophesied, “My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together”. Genesis 22:7-8

I’ve waited so very long for God to answer some prayers. So have you. We wait, sometimes for years, sometimes for generations, and the waiting tests us till it hurts. We grow tired. We question His attention. We wonder if His love has thinned in the silence of perceived inactivity.

From Abraham’s question on Mt. Moriah to the hour the true Lamb was offered, centuries passed. Heaven seemed to take its time. So today, I don’t believe we should travel first to the stable. Let’s go to the hill where the Lamb was crucified.

The long ache of Scripture was finally answered ~ not with a cradle, but with a cross. Good Friday gave its terrible, beautiful reply. to the question, “Where is the lamb?” There He was. He was not wrapped in swaddling cloths, but was stripped and wounded. He was not cradled in His mother’s arms, but lifted up on rough wood.

Abraham waited for Him. Israel longed for Him. And every restless, guilty, tormented heart has been starving for Him too. Sin has hollowed us out, leaving us shallow in our souls, We are ashamed, agitated, and unable to quiet the incessant self-condemnation. I faced an onslaught only yesterday. And most every culture across the world has conceived some ritual to try to rid themselves of their guilt in order to please the gods. We ache to be guiltless.

Good Friday was where bitterness and beauty met. The darkest hour became the holy ground. The cross stood in the shadow of every promise God ever made, and there, in blood and grief, the promise was kept. Forgiveness of sin. Peace with God.

Let the blood of My Lamb speak more loudly than my guilt, my waiting, and my fear. Amen

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! He is the one I was talking about.  John 1:29-30

In many ways, the whole Old Testament leans forward, asking one question, “Where is the Lamb?” At the birth of Israel, God told His people to take the blood of a lamb and place it on the doorposts of their homes. He was teaching His people that rescue would come through a substitute. On Mount Moriah, the question rose again from the lips of Isaac. “Where is the lamb?” Abraham answered with trembling faith, “God Himself will provide the lamb.”

For centuries after that, lambs kept dying. The blood kept flowing. Families brought lambs. Priests offered lambs. Worshipers returned again and again because no animal sacrifice could remove sin. So when John saw Jesus approaching and announced, “Behold, the Lamb of God,” this was an earth-shaking declaration. God had reached down and provided His own Lamb.

What a moment! The long ache of Scripture, the shadow cast through Torah, the cry from Moriah, the blood on the doorposts, all of it suddenly gathered itself into one Person walking over the hill toward them. In Jesus, the whole sacrificial system reached its fulfillment. The story the prophets had carried, the story the rabbis had taught, the story Israel had rehearsed for generations, came near enough to touch. No wonder John was breathless.

And what moves me most is this ~ the Lamb of God comes near enough that each of us can say, with awe, He came for me. He is not only Israel’s promised Lamb. He is my Yeshua.

You are the One my soul had been waiting for before I even knew Your name. Amen

God thunders wondrously with his voice; he does great things that we cannot comprehend.  Job 37:5

From early December through the middle of March, I walked through a bewildering ordeal with my hands. Several fingertips began turning white, then blue, and eventually broke open into painful ulcers. The pain of exposed nerves constantly begged relief. My days narrowed to pain management—making bandages, keeping my hands elevated, keeping my fingers warm, trying to protect what felt increasingly fragile. The simplest acts became impossible: having my hands in water, cooking, washing and drying my hair, typing, playing the piano, and even design work at my computer.  No doctor or specialist could explain what they were seeing.

In that forced stillness, I began asking God whether there was a spiritual parallel, something He was trying to tell me.  And in time, He did speak. Some of what He revealed has already found its way into earlier devotionals. I yielded my voice and my pen to new things He wanted to say through me. Once I did that, the scabs and ulcers peeled up, fell off, only to reveal new pink skin underneath.  I’m watching regeneration in real time.

Lately though, I’ve been speaking to God with a bruised honesty. “I thought I walked closely to you.  I thought I listened well to your voice.  I’m struggling with how long the season was with my fingers, the level of pain, the fear of amputation, and the extent of medical expenses incurred.  Why did you have to talk to me so harshly?”  Beneath the question a trembling effort to understand the severity of His dealings with me. After many days, He was merciful to answer.

“The severity in My speech, the length of time the testing lasted, and the level of pain that accompanied it reflect the weight of the message. I wanted you to know how strongly I feel about it, so you would know how much weight and attention to give it.”

His answer gave it context. It was neither random suffering nor divine carelessness. He was pressing something weighty into me. There are times when His whispers are enough, and there are times when He speaks with a firmer hand because what He is saying must not be lightly handled.

Something in me has been altered. My voice is clearer now. My pen is yielded. And my healing fingers seem to be preaching their own sermon.  When God wounds with purpose, He also restores with tenderness.

Lord, when Your voice carries weight, give me grace to endure and to yield quickly. Amen

By faith they crossed the Red Sea as though they were on dry land. When the Egyptians attempted to do this, they were drowned.  Hebrews 11:29

The children of Israel walked between walls of water and came safely to the other side. The Egyptians entered that same path, but for them the walls did not hold. The sea became a passage for one and a grave for the other. What made the difference?

Israel recognized Moses as God’s appointed deliverer. They followed his God beneath the shelter of the cloud and stepped into the divided sea, trusting the path opened by the breath of Yahweh. What looked like certain death became a corridor of mercy because they believed the One who made a way where there was none. Moses, of course, was only a shadow cast forward by Christ. His lifted staff points me to the greater Deliverer and to what is required of me if I am to leave my own Egypt behind. I do not walk out of slavery by grit or self-reinvention. I come by faith to Christ’s finished atonement and step into the impossible opening His cross has made.

And what of the enemies that pursue me? Like Pharaoh’s army, they come with noise and force, bearing down as though they will surely overtake me. I may hear the rumble of chariot wheels behind me. I may feel the cold spray of fear on my face. Old accusations, old bondages, old griefs can rush at me like a flood, certain they still own me. But if I am hidden in Christ, what threatens me will not finally possess me. My Deliverer will bring me through.

That is the mystery of redemption: the very waters that swallow His enemies become the road beneath the feet of His redeemed. What looks like chaos becomes a threshold. What seems ready to undo me becomes, in His hands, the place where He proves that He alone is Savior. The sea does not decide my future. The One who parts it does.

Oh Lord, the traumatic memories of slavery in Egypt no longer line my face. Thank you.  Amen

“For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground.”  Isaiah 44:3

Holy Spirit, be poured out upon those who do not know You and upon those who have no desire for You yet. Chase down the dead in sin and raise them to living faith. Draw near to the brokenhearted, and come tenderly to those who have grown disillusioned, offended, or weary in soul.

Be poured out upon the dry bones within us, the hidden places where death still clings and old sorrow has not yet lifted. Be poured out upon the Word we have heard, studied, and prayed, and yet have somehow kept at a distance from our deepest places. Lay Your hand upon our barren fields where nothing seems able to grow. We are the dry earth, and You are the river. Amen.

I am like the mighty cypress; from Me comes your fruit. Hosea 14:8 

God is aware of the language barrier that exists between the spiritual realm and the physical. Because we are earth-bound and our ability to comprehend His greatness and glory is compromised by our mortality, He is willing to tell us what He is like in terms we can understand. He is quick, throughout Scripture, to say….“I am like a _____________.” He employs the use of illustrations and metaphors that are common to our everyday life. 

What is the significance of God saying that He is like the cypress tree? He is telling me something about His strength and permanence. The cypress tree is renowned for its durability. The doors of St. Peter’s in Rome are made of cypress and even after 1200 years, they show no decay. The cypress groves of Lebanon are well known and referred to in the book of Ecclesiastes as ‘trees which grow up to the clouds.’ 

And then He says something even more intimate: “from Me comes your fruit.”

Whatever fruit in me is alive with beauty and built to last does not rise from striving, but from His life flowing through mine. It comes from Him. What He builds in me will carry His nature. What He reveals will not decay with the passing of years. What He births in my surrendered life carries the scent of eternity on it.

I know what it is to lose sight of that. There have been seasons when my confidence in the eternal was shaken. Loss was stitched into my story, and at times I limped through my faith more than I walked in it. But God has been teaching me to lift my eyes again, to stop grieving as though decay gets the final word. He is inviting me not merely to survive, but to live with young-hearted confidence—to believe that what comes from Him in me is not doomed to wither, and that the deepest things He has spoken over my life are still alive.

Lord, You are everlasting—unchanged by time, untouched by decay. Let my life be rooted so deeply in You that whatever grows from me bears the mark of Your strength and the beauty of what endures. Amen

“For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God?  If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.”  Galatians 1:10

Encounters with God change a person permanently. We can not come near Him, hear His voice, and remain as we were. His words do not skim the surface; they pass through us and find the deepest place to land. And as holy and beautiful as that is, it is also costly. Because once God has touched me there, I cannot so easily return to my old ways of relating, hiding, and surviving.

Sanctification is, in many ways, God speaking directly to what is broken. In His presence, my beliefs and perceptions are rearranged. What once felt necessary begins to feel false. If I learned to survive by blending in, by becoming agreeable, by shrinking the truest parts of myself to remain likable, then healing will require more than comfort. It will require surrender. God may ask me to lay down the very strategies that once protected me. And often, the places that were ridiculed, silenced, or misunderstood become the very places where His voice now longs to speak with power.

That is what makes His work so unsettling and so freeing. He calls me out to be the person He created, before I adapted to fit in. And living authentically is not self-expression for its own sake. It is obedience to the person God says I am.

This is where the cost becomes deeply personal, especially with those who have known me for years. Will I let their memory of me become my identity? Or will I be obedient to the fresh call of God on my life? There comes a point when I must decide that fear no longer gets to edit me. I must let the Spirit of God fan into flame what fear taught me to mute.

Lord, give me the courage to be who You created. Not a lesser version.  Whatever you made, You call ‘good’.   Amen

I have recurring dreams that take me back to school, and often, something is wrong. I’ve forgotten an assignment. Forgotten the combination to my locker. Forgotten to study for a test. The dream always carries the same emotional weight. I am unprepared.

At times, that same theme followed me into ministry. One dream in particular has stayed with me.

In it, I woke up one morning relieved to have an open day ahead. But then I glanced at the calendar on my desk and felt my stomach drop. I was scheduled to speak that afternoon at a church several hours from home. I had completely forgotten. There was no time to prepare. I threw on clothes, grabbed one of the Bibles from my desk, and hurried out the door. As I drove, I remembered the topic I had been assigned. I was to describe the Word of God using three words that began with the letter P.

I arrived just in time. I had fifteen minutes before the program would begin. I slipped into a side room, hoping to gather myself, pray, and sketch out a bare-bones outline. But when I reached into my bag for my Bible, I realized that I had grabbed a Bible with the tiniest print. Even with glasses, it would be difficult to read, but then I realized I had forgotten my glasses, too. Everything in me said, Oh no, this is a disaster.

The chairman of the event came toward me, smiling warmly, and said how much she was looking forward to hearing what I would share. I smiled back, but inwardly I thought, Me too.

There was nothing left to do but surrender. I walked to the front, sat down, and felt something unexpected settle over me. Peace. I realized that I was being driven back to the one place I most love to live ~ where I listen for the Spirit. What had been laid up quietly over the years would rise like water from a deep spring.

And it did. The first word came without effort.

The Word of God is priceless.

Then the second word came.

The Word of God is precise.

Then the third word surfaced.

The Word of God is personal.

When I woke up, I realized that some of the best sermons are not the overmanaged ones, polished to perfection and controlled from beginning to end. They are the ones delivered in complete dependence on the Spirit. Rivers of Living Water rise from the deep and saturate the parched landscapes of desperate hearts.

Holy Spirit, it’s not about my emptiness, but Your fullness. Not about my panic, but Your river. Amen