Tag: faith

From his abundance we have all received one gracious blessing after another. John 1:16. NLT

When something valuable is scarce, people hurry to claim it. Shelves empty. Waiting lists grow. We know what it’s like to get the last available seat on an airplane, or the last available appointment on a doctor’s schedule, or the last portion of our favorite meal on the restaurant menu. We know that supply will not always meet demand. What is precious is often limited. Money runs out. Strength has its limits. Even the most generous friend eventually grows tired even though their love might not fail.

Oh, but not Jesus. From His abundance, we receive grace upon grace. It is not grace measured by scarcity. It is not grace rationed by accountants in heaven. It is not grace given with a warning that I am asking too much. I can pray for whatever I need today and return tomorrow with twice as much, and I have not diminished heaven’s resources. I have also not taken from another person in need.

Jesus is not a reservoir that can be depleted. He is Living Water. The flowing stream does not thin. It is not choked out by drought. Abundance flows from Him because abundance is not merely what He has. It is who He is.

So, the tragedy is not that His grace is unavailable. The tragedy is that it is offered but hearts aren’t open to receive. Sometimes it’s because of unbelief. Sometimes it’s rebellion and pride. But sometimes it is a wounded child of God standing behind the door, convinced she is too needy and too unworthy to receive what Christ is aching and eager to give her.
Oh, what needless sorrow when we thirst beside the River of Life.

Jesus, You are not offended by my need. You are drawn to it. Help me see my emptiness as opportunity. Amen

For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39

Ever wonder where you belong?

Even in the healthiest homes, children can grow up with a quiet ache of lostness. Later, they may have no memory of ever fully relaxing into a safe embrace, the kind that lets every muscle soften, every guard fall, every fear unclench. So they move into adulthood carrying a deep hunger for belonging.   But because they are driven by need, they stretch out their arms indiscriminately. Others own them and hurt them. 

And even in the best of churches, believers can feel lost. Dysfunctional congregational life sets them up to stay on the sidelines, wondering where they fit in. Community seems to belong to the naturally confident or the fortunate few already part of a circle. Others stand just outside, wondering if there is really a place for them at all.

Oh, there are no safe masters except Jesus. Our life with Him began when we believed and trusted Him with our souls. We stepped through the Door. But many of us entered and then stopped short. We were saved but still cautious. Still standing near the threshold. Afraid of intimacy. Afraid of surrender. Afraid that if we come too close, we may be hurt again. So we linger, stiff and guarded.

Steve Brown, of Key Life Ministries, said, “Many come to Jesus to get saved but don’t stay long enough to get loved.”

He can heal our timidity. We can rest. We can breathe. It’s imperative in the days we live because only those with a burning love for God can endure the intensity of living in an increasingly godless age. This was the hallmark of the early Christians who went to their death singing. They had been loved deeply enough that even martyrdom could not separate them from joy.

Like a baby in a mother’s arms, I live securely with You. Amen

Having said these things, He spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva.  Then He anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said, “Go wash in the pool of Siloam.”  John 9:6-7

Each of us needs supernatural healing from God, whether physical healing, emotional healing, or perhaps even spiritual healing from something related to spiritual abuse. When we hear that someone else received it, we’re eager to listen to their story.  We want to know how it happened and when it happened.  As they tell us about it, we wonder if something in their story holds the secret to our own breakthrough.

But there is no formula.  Jesus never offered any nor did He conform to them.  He varied His methods of healing.  Once, Jesus put spit on a man’s eyes.  Another time, he just touched them, and the man could see.  In John 9, he put mud on another man’s eyes and told him to go to the pool of Siloam, in the southeast corner of Jerusalem, to wash the mud off.  Why such a wide variety of methods? 

Here’s a thought.  If Jesus consistently sent blind men to the pool of Siloam to wash their eyes, every blind person would have attempted to travel to the ‘miracle pool.’  The grandeur of the tales about Siloam would have obscured the power of Jesus, and He would not share His glory with another.   The whole point of blind people receiving their sight was that they encountered Jesus Christ.

For any who is waiting on God, we know how tempted we are to work hard for our miracle.  We pray and read more, trying to uncover the secret of getting God to move on our behalf.  If such miracles depended on self-effort, we would all get our breakthrough sooner.  But on the other side of it, what would be our testimony?  “When I did this, the miracle happened.”  

Encounters with Jesus are happening all over the world at this very moment. He’s speaking to someone sitting at an airport gate, and another will feel His presence in the kitchen packing their child’s lunch.  You may sense a holy encounter when you see handwritten notes in your mother’s bible.  The Lord still changes bitter waters to sweet springs of Living Water.  

How I love this Charles Spurgeon quote:  

Do not call yourself Mara but remember the new name the Lord named you. Don’t be so ready to affix to yourself names of sad memorials; your griefs have tainted your memory.  Do not aid them to sting you. Call the well by another name.  Remember Jehovah Rapha, the Lord that heals both you and the waters. Record His mercy rather than the sorrows and thank the Most High God.

Teach me to do Your will, for You are my God; Let Your good Spirit lead me on level ground.  Psalms 143:10

God fathers each of His children differently. His path for me is a solitary one, and it will never perfectly mirror the path He chose for my parents. If my parents were iconic in their faith, trying to “measure up” to their story can feel suffocating and impossible. I am not either of them, nor am I meant to be.

Scripture itself reflects this. Isaac was told by God not to go down to Egypt during the famine; Egypt was off limits to him. Yet Isaac’s son, Jacob, was led by God into Egypt in his famine and told to settle there. The very place that was forbidden to the father became the place of provision for the son. Obedience did not look identical from one generation to the next. I imagine Jacob’s confusion at first ~ doing something so different from what his father had been told must have felt risky, even disloyal. And yet it was the will of God for him.

God stretched me out of my own family’s mold in my mid-forties. Some of my views on peripheral biblical issues began to differ from those of my father and the legalistic church that shaped my early faith. The conversations were tense. His disapproval cast a shadow over our relationship for a time. But as the years passed, he saw that God’s hand was on my life, and I learned to speak of my convictions with more grace and less defensiveness. Before he died, the Lord brought us beautifully onto the same page through some “end-of-life” mercies. I treasure that.

Through all of this, God’s message has grown clearer.  I am His children first, and members of my earthly family second. Egypt may be off-limits to my father and yet, in another season, be precisely where He sends me. The point is not to replicate anyone else’s obedience, but to respond to the voice of my own Shepherd.

He is a kind Father who leads deliberately, giving His children the courage to step away from “the way our family has always done it” when He asks. The relational fallout can make us second-guess the path, but the same grace that calls us also sustains us. His voice is sometimes wild and wonderfully peculiar. His way is often solitary. But any price we pay is more than repaid in the joy of walking in step with Him, and one day, in hearing Him say, “Well done.”

I long to be shaped by You, Father, by Your Word, Your Spirit, and no one else.  Amen.

He leads me in paths of righteousness . . . Psalm 23:4a

I have often been at critical junctures, wanting to follow God’s paths but having no idea what they were. I was frustrated by the ambiguity. I knew God promised to lead me. He said we are sheep and cannot find our way without His guidance, but I wondered why He did not speak louder so His paths could be discerned.

God is all about growing me up into the stature and maturity of His Son.  If I don’t have to think for myself at all, isn’t this spiritual toddlerhood?  Infant faith does begin with baby steps, but mature faith requires that I engage my intellectual faculties to the glory of God.

“Those who are skittish when it comes to rigorous study, deep thinking, and theological precision have wanted us to believe that our problem is the mind, when in fact it’s the flesh.”  Sam Storms

I have such high respect for Sam Storms. He’s right. These are not the days for laziness. I must know how to build precept upon precept in the artful ways of wisdom.  Sound decisions are made by students of the Word who have set out to learn the mind of God through Scripture with humility and spiritual poverty.  And just as importantly, sound decisions are made by disciples who are like the Apostle John, who spent time with his head on Jesus’ chest, cultivating an intimate relationship. Learning to think ~ and learning to hear God’s still small voice ~ are equally important.

Knowledge tempts me to be proud, but it is not knowledge that is the enemy.  It is my pride.  Paths of righteousness are ever before me.  God makes them clear for every level of spiritual development.  Milk for the babes; meat for the mature.  And, in that light, I can know that God will grant me the humility to listen, the grace to obey, but He also encourages every intellectual pursuit to be harnessed to the truth of the Scriptures.

I can be lazy and want to be led like a baby.  Forgive me.  Amen

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