Author: Christine Wyrtzen

Beyond What Is Earthbound

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“You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?”  Psalm 56:8
Comfort. It’s an embrace when I’m crying. A listening ear when I need to process. A soothing, gentle ballad when my anxious heart needs a non-verbal touch.  All of these offers something extraordinary, but each one is earthbound. They are tangible, yes, but limited.  I need something intangible and limitless.
El Roi is intangible. I am spirit, and I must relate to Him in spirit. This takes more effort and more discipline. It’s easier to replace Him with temporary substitutes.  The problem is ~ they only satisfy for a brief period before I need more. Friends return to their lives. Hugs last only seconds instead of hours.  Teacups eventually empty. Blankets don’t have arms. And, songs end as the noise of life returns.
The world right now is a brutal place to live. Comfort is sometimes challenging to find.  There is only One who can put iron in someone’s spirit.  Jesus knew our problem of reaching out for care and compassion but coming up empty. That’s why He said, “I’m sending you a Comforter.” The Holy Spirit of El Roi brings what earthbound things can not.  He sees us and offers to be a permanent Companion.  He, alone, is able to write hopeful words across the landscape of my desolation.
 

The Humblest Suffering Servant

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Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD does not count against him. Psalm 32:1

The children of Israel knew well that God judges sin.  They experienced it firsthand. For them to believe that God would send a Messiah for reasons other than judgment was a stretch.  Never could they have imagined that Jesus would come, not to condemn but to extend mercy. 

Why, at the announcement of salvation, might I prefer condemnation?  I contend that self-hatred is addictive.  I’d rather despise myself than let God love me.  I can be like those who sinned against God in the wilderness and then refused to look at the serpent on the pole to be saved.  They nursed their grudges against His holiness and preferred to self-destruct. 

I’ve gone so far as to admit my guilt, confess it, but then wallow around in it, insisting that I don’t deserve to be forgiven.  Self-condemnation feels justified and quite comfortable the longer I wear it.  I throw myself a long pity party and shun the Forgiver. I feel quite powerful as I exert my freedom to say ‘no.’ Satan celebrates when this kind of twisted pleasure keeps God’s creation from salvation.  

Jesus did not come into the world to judge it as proven by sacrifice.  He affirmed that sin must be judged and paid for, but then paid for it Himself.  Oh, to have paid such a price only to see people reject the gift of this expensive pardon.  Jesus is the humblest suffering Servant of all.  

Does my own self-inflicted guilt keep me from receiving Your forgiveness?  Break my chains.  Amen

God’s Throne and The One Who Wanted It

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They remembered that God was their Rock, that God Most High was their Redeemer.  Psalm 78:35

One day, when Earth was still a barren planet, a sinister plot was being carried out in heaven.  Satan, one of the three archangels who enjoyed top level authority at God’s right hand, decided that he was entitled to more.  He set out to promote himself.   I will climb to heaven and place my throne above the highest stars. I will sit there with the gods far away in the north. I will be above the clouds, just like [El Elyon] God most high. Isaiah 14:13-14   With this twisted ambition, his gifts were corrupted. 

We must make a distinction between wanting to be like God and wanting to dethrone ‘God most high’ from His place of authority. This was the subject of John Milton’s famous confrontation in Paradise Lost.  It was clear that Satan’s ambition was to overthrow God, not emulate His holiness.

The price for setting oneself equal to ~ or greater than ~ El Elyon is a steep one. It was catastrophic for Satan, who lost his position in heaven, was judged, and then permanently expelled.  His ultimate end will be in hell, the place God created for him and all of the angels who defected with him.  

This kind of pride and entitlement are still rampant.  Satan, the god of this world, is driven to replicate his evil traits.  His children (Jesus called them children of the devil) refuse to bow down.  They are puffed up and exalt themselves as rulers over their own sphere of influence.  When those around them pray to thank God for divine provision, they are quick to say that they’ve made their own way.  Anything they enjoy is the product of hard work and ingenuity.  Know anyone like that?  

God is patient, giving such sinful men time to repent but grace has a time limit.  One day, they will face Jesus and will bow down.  It’s a certainty.  For every person who didn’t do it willingly on earth, their end will be a tragic one.

After this sobering review of Satan’s history, I lift both hands towards heaven, align myself yet again with El Elyon. I lay down pride and ask for the grace to be humble.  I forsake entitlement in favor of trust and gratitude.  I want to be like God most high, following Paul’s encouragement from Ephesians 5:1 Therefore, be imitators of God, as beloved children. 

When Nothing Feels Safe

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The wicked lie in wait to destroy me, but I consider all your testimonies.  Psalm 119:95

This world offers us no real stability. Sooner or later, everything we lean on begins to shift beneath our feet. If our security is in a job, we live with the quiet fear of losing it. If it’s in money, we feel the tremor of every wobble in the economy. If it’s in a person, uneasiness rises the moment their humanity shows through—selfishness, fragility, inconsistency. All of these crack the illusion of safety. And when wickedness enters the picture, our sense of well-being can feel threatened to its core.

A person who has “set their sights” on God’s child—especially when their heart is open to Satan’s influence—does not simply forget and move on. There is a dark, persistent mission at work. When the believer is blessed, they secretly long for calamity. When God’s servant stumbles or suffers, they feel a twisted satisfaction. They rejoice over the bad news of someone God loves.

One of the hardest parts of today’s scripture is this: David eventually called some of his former companions “enemies.” Elsewhere in the Psalms, he writes with raw honesty about betrayal from those he once trusted. That kind of wound cuts far deeper than the opposition of a stranger.

And the sobering reality is this: not all wickedness is far from the things of God. It can live under the same roof. It can sit in church pews. It can share our last name. The people closest to us can quietly “have it in” for us. We sense it—even if it never erupts into open hatred. We feel their discomfort with our good news, their private relief when we fail, their subtle delight in our humanness and weakness, and their envy of our gifts. It is the kind of hurt that is hard to forgive because it taunts us in the dark. The enemy loves to run those scenes on repeat in our minds.

Into all of this, God offers Himself as refuge. “Hide me,” becomes our prayer. We hide ourselves in the Word—ultimately, in the living Word, Jesus—and discover that His comfort is enough for every trembling moment.

He understands betrayal from the inside. He received the kiss of Judas and all that came with it. He felt the fickle devotion of the crowd—celebrated with palm branches one day, shouted down with “Crucify Him!” the next. When the ground beneath His feet shook, He slipped away to pray. He went “home” to His Father for stability, strength, and reassurance.

He has already walked the path we are on. And in His footsteps, we find our own way forward: not by denying the pain, not by pretending people cannot wound us, but by anchoring our hearts in the only One who will never change, never betray, never rejoice in our hurt.

When everything else shifts, He remains.

Every word I need, You are.  Amen

 

The Wind and the Ordinary

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He walks upon the wings of the wind; He makes the winds His messengers, flaming fire His ministers. Psalm 104:3-4

I’m an over-achiever. I like to work hard and feel that I accomplished something. I enjoy stretching myself to learn new things. While none of these are bad traits, in ministry they can be dangerous. I can begin to believe that my efforts are what yield success. I would do well to remember that humans only generate earthbound results. Only God gives rise to true spiritual outcomes.

Several years ago, I had a vivid dream.  I was mixing together three unlikely ingredients in a bowl to make something to eat.  Jesus was standing nearby so I asked Him about it. “What is this going to be, Lord?”  He answered, “It’s going to be manna for the people you’ll be feeding in my name.”  I was surprised because the ingredients were such that you’d never mix them together to create anything appetizing.  So I said, “But how will these three things produce something edible?  I don’t understand.”  He laughed and replied, “The secret is in the wind.”

With that I felt a gentle breeze enter the room.  It blew over the ingredients and stirred them up so that they rose into the air to form a swirl before settling back into the bowl.  The Spirit had touched the common ingredients and transformed them into something supernatural.

Wind has always been a sign of God’s presence.  Wind and breath are often synonymous in scripture.  Jesus breathed on His disciples and filled them with a power beyond themselves.  No longer limited but Spirit filled, the Gospel message would spill out of their mouths with power and passion. Continents would never be the same as these ordinary men were transfigured into agents of heaven. Without impressive credentials, people would say of them, “We can tell they have been with Jesus.” The spiritual wind accompanied them. It disturbed the deep. The vast emptiness of people’s souls was filled with the Bread of Life.

Come, Holy Spirit, to my ordinary world.  Amen

Faith Is a Filter

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Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act. Psalm 37:5

I delight in the heart of Scripture, and I delight in the hearts of people. My life has been one long, ongoing conversation—learning my own soul, learning God’s character, and paying close attention to how He has wired others. Tools like Myers–Briggs, DISC, and StrengthsFinder have simply given language to what I love most: helping people see how they’ve been uniquely crafted, so they can bring their whole selves honestly before God.

Here’s the downside to knowing and understanding people. Not only do you discover their strengths, but you also come to know the depth of their weaknesses. When challenges come their way, you see 10x more pitfalls than most people because you know how they process life. The better you know them, the more you are tempted to worry.

This is my summer to more deeply address my lifelong battle with worrying, fretting, fussing, and anguishing. Though I teach Prayer Mapping and the language of faith, it continues to be my greatest struggle. Perhaps that’s why I’m so passionate to teach it. People who take the course can assume I’ve conquered it and have become some kind of expert. No, I’m living the challenge. Martin Luther said, “We teach best what we have had to learn most.”

I heard a bible teacher once say, “Faith is a filter.” That caught my attention because faith is the opposite response to anxiety. Faith reminds me that God is ruling when it appears mayhem prevails, God is watching when I fear He’s lost interest, God is active when I see no evidence of it, God is omniscient and I am not, God is sovereign over all surprises, God is redemptive when life seems full of wasted pain, God is fiercely protective when His children are vulnerable, God is just when evil temporarily prospers, God is a faith-giver when I’m running on empty, and God is a Father who is never fatigued, distracted, nor disinterested. “Let faith arise.”

Birth faith in new places. Deep places. Amen

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Nana’s Blue Bowl

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My heart stands in awe of Your words. I rejoice at Your Word as one who finds a great treasure. Psalm 119:161-162

Twenty years ago, I dropped by Pier One on the day of their best clearance sale. I was going to shop for a very large salad bowl so I went straight to the dinnerware section. In front of me was a beautiful blue and white bowl. It was 75% off and a real steal. I was thrilled and made my purchase. This many years later, I still love it. Ron reminded me the other night that the bowl has quite a history and that got me thinking.

I’ve used it to serve a main dish kind of salad when I’ve fed a lot of people at our table. A salad for ten people is no problem.   The rest of the time, the bowl has graced the middle of our kitchen table, or has sat on the counter, or has been placed in the middle of our stove with lights overhead shining down on it. It’s always the focal point. What’s in it? Bananas, raisins, good chocolate, nuts, licorice, trail mix, apples and pears. It’s usually stocked fairly well and the contents are constantly switched up. Now, here’s the fun part. Our whole family heads straight for the bowl whenever they walk in the house. Adult or child, it’s calling their name. There’s a quick, ‘hello’, and then someone makes a beeline for the bowl.

When our grandsons were smaller, they would run to the counter and hold out their arms to us to be lifted up. They’d paw through the bowl to find what they wanted. Just say the words ‘blue bowl’ in our house and everyone feels happy.

While this feeds the flesh and pleases the senses, it is not unlike what happens to my spiritual senses when I approach the scriptures on a good day. When my spiritual hunger is engaged and my need is on my sleeve, I can’t wait to mine for gold. I never know what I’m going to find either. I have to keep digging until I’m given just the right ‘word’ for the day. God keeps His word stocked – full of surprises – and loves it when I love it.

I know it’s just a foretaste of the ‘pleasures forevermore’ that will be waiting for me when I step foot into my eternal home. Exhaling earth’s air and inhaling celestial air marks the moment when my appetite is completely satiated.

Feed me. Satisfy my cravings. Delight me. In You are pleasures forevermore. Amen

Lifesaving Wounds

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See now that I, I am He, and there is no god besides Me; It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal, And there is no one who can deliver from My hand.  Deuteronomy 32:39

What exactly is a life-saving wound? 

It is a wound that comes wrapped in a loving purpose. A wound allowed by a Friend, not an enemy. A wounding that, when redeemed, will one day yield a joy so deep it dwarfs the agony that once felt unbearable.

The tragedy is that so many children of God never see their past this way. They name their wounds only as tragedies. “Victim” hardens into a permanent label. Deprivation carves out a defeated mindset. And the God who was—and is—sovereign over their story becomes, in their eyes, more adversary than Ally. They reason that only an enemy would inflict a wound.  But enemies mean to kill or maim.  God wounds to save and bless.  Never do I suffer anything that is not an installment to something glorious. 

  • A child who is never chosen, never the object of anyone’s affection, grows up carrying the heavy cloak of rejection. They move through the world assuming they are forgettable. But the wound can be lifesaving when he discovers that God is a pursuer. He tracks them through the years, draws them to the cross, adopts them into His family, and pours favor over their once-unwanted life.
  • A teenager who has been mocked and bullied because he is “different” grows into an adult unsure of his voice. He believes his distinctiveness is a defect. Yet that wound can be life-saving when he realizes that God set him apart on purpose. The very traits that made him a target are the markings of leadership.
  • A woman blindsided by divorce papers feels ripped in two. Betrayal echoes through her body. She is sure she will never again feel whole. But that wound can be life-saving when, driven to God, she finds Him not only as Father but as Bridegroom. Day after day He meets her in the quiet, loves her without flinching, whispers comfort, provides faithfully, and proves that she is not abandoned but cherished.

What is the nature of your unhealed wound?  And what is the need that rages as a result?  Are you willing to consider that the need you’ve just isolated is life-saving if it takes you into the arms of a God who does not trivialize what you suffered, but refuses to let it have the final word?  Look up. Believe. Live in the promises.

Revive my faith. Reinterpret my wounds.  Amen

What It Is To Pour Out

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Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us.  Psalm 62:8 

How many people do I really have with whom I can speak unfiltered—no careful spin, no guarding, no editing? With whom can I empty my heart and know that perfect wisdom is listening, sifting, and answering? If I’m honest, it’s a very short list. To speak that freely is a rare gift.       

The Hebrew phrase “pour out” is as vivid as it sounds: to empty, to spill, to let what is inside come out. I’m struck by how often Scripture uses it. Dependent prayer is described as “pouring out one’s soul.” God Himself “pours out his wrath” on hardened rebellion. And then there is this: “I will pour out on the house of David… a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn.” (Zechariah 12:10). Judgment poured out, mercy poured out, the Spirit poured out—Scripture is heavy with this language.

There are times I pour out my heart to a few trusted friends. But do I feel that free with God? Do I censor myself in prayer, weighing every word, trying to sound composed and mature? Do I sit on my anger, my disappointment, my confusion and call it “faith”? Or is prayer, for me, a place where I can truly tip my soul and let everything come—knowing my heart is landing in utterly safe hands? God invites that kind of honesty, and I am held in a Love that is not threatened by my mess.

Two images grip me.

First, I see myself lifting my heart to God, like a cup, and gently tipping it, letting the contents run out before Him.
Second, I see Him, in response, pouring out His own Spirit over me; washing, filling, softening what has grown hard.

Both are beautiful, but they are not equal. Pouring out my heart will bring some relief, yes. But the real transformation comes when He pours out His Spirit. When that happens, nothing in my inner world can stay quite the same.

So, with confidence and without restraint, I pour out my heart to You, Lord. And I ask—pour out Your Spirit upon me. Where I am fractured, make me whole; where I am numb, make me alive; where I am afraid, make me steadfast in You. Amen

Singing a Peculiar Song

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By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our lyres.  For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”  How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?    Psalm 137:1-3

Not all Psalms were written by David.  This one was written by a Jewish exile living in Babylon.  Having seen his homeland destroyed and then taken as a captive into the foreign culture of the Babylonian Empire, he struggled to get his spiritual bearings.  His new homeland was corrupt and excessive, and the people of God stuck out like sore thumbs. 

They were invited to sing their simple songs of faith to the taunts of the crowd, not unlike the Jews who were made to perform in the camps for Nazi soldiers.  Brilliant violinists, violists, cellists, and bass violin players formed string quartets to pacify the military tyrants who despised them. 

The song of the redeemed is being rendered just as peculiar against the backdrop of these unsettling days.  As we continue to witness rapid decline into the abyss of godlessness, we must not conform.  God’s grace will enable us to stand and to sing.  Our allegiance is to the kingdom of heaven and His culture of holiness.     

There is an ongoing emotional and spiritual adjustment for what we’re witnessing and what we know will come next.  In our grief, God invites us to sing the songs of the exiles. We are clearly outsiders and the brunt of society’s jokes, but our voices must not be silenced.  The noise of evil must not prevail over the praise of God’s people.  It’s not time to close the piano lid.  It’s not time to retire the pen of the poet.  It’s not time to put away the instruments.  Never has the music of faith been more important and never are the songs sweeter than when saints raise their joyful voices with tear stained faces. 

You are my joy.  Let my hope sing.  In Jesus’ name, Amen