Daughters of promise

I proclaim your saving acts in the great assembly; I do not seal my lips, Lord, as you know. I do not hide your righteousness in my heart; I speak of your faithfulness and your saving help. I do not conceal your love and your faithfulness from the great assembly.  Psalm 40:9-10

What do you do when the person you’re counting on the most repeatedly lets you down?  You cry out in protest.  “Where were you?  I thought you loved me?”  But when these words do not move them to draw close, to apologize, you might stop talking altogether and turn the other way.

Such can be the case when I’ve perceived that God is failing me.  I’ve prayed for things I believed I needed immediately.  I believed that anyone who loved me wouldn’t withhold them.  When answers were delayed, I prayed harder. Now, when I spoke with friends, I made excuses for God, but the first signs of disillusionment had already been manifested in the core of my soul.  My inner testimony sounded hollow.  Armed with the lies of the devil, I stopped talking to God. 

Did you see today’s scripture?  David is speaking in glowing terms about God’s faithfulness.  If I had to guess, I’d say that God just came through for him in some huge way.  David is having a mountaintop experience.  But David is, in fact, in a place ofturmoil and is waiting on God.  His soul is ragged and desperate.  Although his eyes have not yet seen the saving help he needs from God, he is still talking to Him, still praying.  

This is the essence of faith.  In my disappointment, in my wilderness, I can still brag to others about God’s love and faithfulness.  I can encourage them to put their lives in His hands too.  All because the foundation of my life rests on the pillars of God’s promises!  God has not abandoned nor forgotten me. Even while I pour out my complaint in prayer,I speak of His glory in the sanctuary. 

My praise is not conditional, Lord. Amen

And by him we cry, “ Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.  Romans 8:15

Over the many years I’ve been in ministry, people have shared their adoption stories with me.  Some were glorious, and others were not.  If there were biological children in the home, there was often discrimination against the ones who were adopted.  Biological children felt they were the ‘real’ offspring, meant to enjoy greater rights and privileges.  In matters of family inheritance, the distorted values really manifested. 

Jesus, our brother, made a way for us to be adopted into His Father’s family.  Through Him, we cry out, “Abba, Father.”  Think of it.  We call His Father the same intimate and endearing name that He used while on earth. 

Not only that, but God expresses to us the same kind of love and favor that He expressed toward Jesus.  We receive the same grace, the same tenderness, the same access in prayer, and we enjoy the same level of intimacy.  To further astound us, Jesus then shares His inheritance with us.  No discrimination.  

On this day, we are invited to express our gratitude.  I’ve never had an earthly brother, but I always wondered what it would be like to have one.  Ah, but then Jesus stepped in.  He gave His life to share His Father with me (and everything else in the kingdom.)  I was undeserving, even an enemy, and yet He paid the expensive ransom for my adoption.  

God is good.  The Son is good.  The Spirit given to us is good.  And through the blood of our brother Jesus, we are justified and declared ‘good’.  Let’s celebrate!

Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.  Matthew 10:29

Sacrifices are made every day for the sake of the people we love.  For the sake of a mother, we give up our schedule for a year to care for her after heart surgery.  For the sake of our children, we go back to work to put them in private schools.  For the sake of our husband’s happiness, we move to another state.  Love constrains us to lay down what we treasure.  Now, if we were asked by someone we didn’t know to clear our calendar, go back to work, or move out of state, we would shrug off the outrageous request. The relationship is missing.

I just thought of something, and it’s bizarre.  We invoke the name of Pete in a stray conversation. “For Pete’s sake, why did you do that?”   Whatever the person did or didn’t do, Pete wasn’t even considered.  Cliches are interesting. 

When Jesus calls us to uncompromising discipleship, He makes it clear that sacrifices will have to be made ‘for His sake.’  For what other reason would we be willing to lose our life?  Only for Jesus.  

It causes me to look at my obedience today.  What am I doing out of moral habit?  What am I doing out of peer pressure?  What am I doing out of sheer grit because ‘scripture commands it.’  All of these reasons are hollow.  If the sacrifice is large enough, I will get angry.  If it isn’t love that constrains me, I will become an embittered older woman.  

For each difficult act of obedience, I sense the question.  “For my sake, Christine, will you do it?” Everything gets simple after that.   

Drudgery dissipates.  Resentment melts.  Joyful willingness wells up in my heart.  Yes, Jesus. Yes!  Amen

Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.  Genesis 2:7  ESV

God breathes and life is birthed.  Adam was made from the dust of the earth and while he had physical qualities, he was not a spiritual being until he came to life through a God-breath.  God breathes, even today, and we may not be aware of it.  Oh, but sometimes we are.

• Job recognized it.  He said, “The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.”  Job 33:4
• Ezekiel anticipated it. “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.”  Ezekiel 37:9  In a vision, barely revived corpses came to life, stood on their feet, and became a great army.
• The world at the end of the tribulation will know the power of God’s breath when the two witnesses, the prophets Satan kills, come back to life with a breath.  “But after three and a half days a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood up on their feet, and great fear fell on those who saw them.”  Revelation 11:11
• The disciples were surprised by it.  Jesus appeared to them after His resurrection, told them to be at peace, and then breathed on them.  “Receive the Holy Spirit.”  John 20:22   They left their places of hiding to burn brightly for the kingdom.
• And we experienced it at the time of salvation.  God breathed over us and our spiritual blindness was cured.  We looked up and saw a Savior; we looked inward and saw our sin.  “Unless one is born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”  John 3:5

Our spiritual fathers focused on the breath of God, too.  They made breathing prayer a way of life during times of meditation and prayer.  As they inhaled, they prayed ~ “O Lord Jesus,” and as they exhaled, “Have mercy on me.”  In 2008, I made this breathing prayer a part of my life and I was different.  It is still a part of my life.

I think of the phrase ‘the living dead.’  It refers to a person who is physically alive but soulfully dead.  That should never characterize any child of God.  The Spirit of God, the breath of God, is within each of us.  In Him, we are promised peace and the surpassing power of His greatness.  Many are waiting for heaven to experience abundant life but it’s a breath away.

 Have mercy and breathe over me, I pray.  Amen

If you had only paid attention to my commands, Your peace would have been like a river and your righteousness like the rollers of the sea.  Isaiah 48:18 

There are two kinds of peace; peace with God and peace in our hearts.  The tragedy is that we have the first and are meant to have the second as well.  Sometimes, God’s children have neither.

From God’s perspective, because Christ came and finished His mission, I am at peace with Him.  His wrath was spent on Jesus, not on me.  When He thinks of me, it is with deep affection.  All is well.  I am forgiven, loved and secure.  How sad is it when God thinks of me this way, but I live as though I’m not loved, forgiven, and secure?  My belief that all is well with God dangles like a thread. The liar suggests that I have failed God or God has failed me.  The Gospel satisfies both misgivings.

There is also circumstantial peace.  My peace with God may be intact but I still lack peace in my heart because of the times in which I’m living.  God spoke through Isaiah to reveal that there is a peace that flows like a river.  It emerges from my inner world as a rippling stream, coursing through the ever-changing scenes of life.  In a storm, the river is raging.  On a lazy summer day, it trickles and calms.  There may be green meadows at one bend, children playing at another, dangerous rapids around the next curve, but the river continues nonetheless.  Today, I may be thriving; tomorrow, in want.  Today I may feel healthy and strong; tomorrow, sick in bed and wracked with pain.  Today, I may be praised and encouraged by others; tomorrow, the target of ridicule.  Peace is not threatened by any of these changes.

My river of peace can be clogged and polluted by unbelief.  The Gospel is about believing God.  I believe him for my salvation, but I also believe, and then act on, every promise He has made to me.  The liar is a promise stealer.  As soon as I listen to his voice, the one that undermines God’s credibility, my river of peace dries up.  If I don’t feel peaceful today, what promises have I stopped believing?  What ones will I re-affirm and then walk them out to give evidence of my faith? God brings the sound of water to the deserts of desperate mankind.

I embrace your commandments all over again and walk in Your promises.  Amen

For now, we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.  1 Corinthians 13:12

It is instinctive to overcorrect. If I was raised in an overly strict home and was hurt by an iron hand, I will create a home with few boundaries. If I was raised in an atmosphere of permissiveness and saw the fallout of rebellion, I will parent with aheavy hand. Unprocessed pain causes me to swing the pendulum to the oppositeextreme. 

This same principle holds true if God was misrepresented to me in my formative years. If I was told that He was harsh, angry, and unreasonable, I will grow up to dismiss Him as Judge and Ruler, in favor of a God who is loving and accepting of all people and all behaviors. Overcompensating always gives me a vision of God that is skewed. As a child in His kingdom, I can’t afford even one distortion. 

Defining my past as God defines it is so important. Allowing Him to diagnose it drops a plumbline of truth into my perspective. I am the child of a God who is perfectly balanced. I don’t need to be skittish as He re-fathers me. I’ll experience Him as loving. Just. Disciplinary. Gentle. Fair. Safely intimate with Him,distortions in my own parenting style will come into view, and I will make corrections. 

An imperfect upbringing isn’t the only catalyst that weaves distortions. Satan devises schemes that build deception upon deception. If he can get me to believe a lie about God, he knows that trust will erode. I’ll accuse God of being too ‘one-way.’ This will wreak havoc on my parenting and in my relationship with my Heavenly Father. Every day, the Truth-teller wants to expose lies. Why? Lies hurt the children that He loves. And distortions that cause us to overcompensate in our parenting hurt the children that we love.  

Show me where I don’t yet know You. Amen