1 Kings 19:11-12 Then He said, “Go out, and stand on the mountain before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12 and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.
John 7:4 For no one does anything in secret while he himself seeks to be known openly. If You do these things, show Yourself to the world.
What a great verse. So incredibly appropriate for me today. Somehow, I mixed up my daily readings and did today’s devotional yesterday. So, I’m doing what should have been yesterday’s today. But God knew I needed this exact verse this morning. It’s always amazing to me when I see so clearly that the Lord is showing me something. When He meets me right where I’m at and opens His word to me.
This premise is pretty basic. If you are willing to be openly known, you won’t be doing things secretly. Another translation talks about being a public figure and having secrets. You only need to look at Tiger Woods to know how that turns out. Continue reading
John 11:5-6 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when He heard that he was sick, He stayed two more days in the place where He was.
What an odd way to show love. Isaiah 55:8-9 says that God’s ways are not like ours. These two little verses in John certainly demonstrate that. It’s pretty clear here that although Jesus loved this family, He knew the end from the beginning and needed to wait it out those forty-eight hours. He delayed. Stayed put. Let things take their course. During those two days, His friend died. Lazarus’s sisters mourned, felt pain and loss. Probably wondered why the Lord didn’t respond to their message. Questioned if Jesus really cared for them as they previously thought. I know I would. Jesus didn’t show up in their town until His friend had been dead 4 days. That’s a long time. Continue reading
1 Peter 5:6-7 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
One of my favorite songs as a child was the “Cares Chorus”. The theme for the song is taken from this verse in 1 Peter. I needed to be reminded that God cares for me today. When I’m feeling particularly vulnerable, I sing this song and it helps me put things back in perspective. It doesn’t matter what others think. It doesn’t matter if I don’t feel I’m getting the recognition I “deserve” or at least what I want. Scripture is quite clear. Humble yourself. Literally, place yourself lower than another. Mentally I need to get to a place where I stop comparing myself – better or worse – to other people, and instead compare myself to the only One who matters. Christ. And by that measure, none of us are anywhere close to worthy. By His standard, we all fail miserably every single day. So what right do I have to puff up my chest and proclaim how awesome I am? None. Zero. Zilch.
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1 Samuel 15:22 But Samuel replied: “Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
We view obedience as such a nasty word. We require it of children, so once we reach adulthood we feel vindicated in stomping our foot and saying “Nobody is going to tell me what to do anymore!”. Sometimes we disobey God with the best of intentions. We think we are pleasing Him with our efforts. That thru service to Him, sacrifice in our lives and giving to others we’ll be bringing pleasure to the Lord. Other times it’s more blatant – like the king of Israel in chapter 15 of Samuel. He knew what God had commanded him to do, but in his own pride, thought he knew better. The spoils of war were not the offering God asked for, but Saul thought they would be a good enough replacement for the obedience he would not give to the Lord. Many times I bring my own version of “the fat of rams” to God as an example of how much I love Him – when all He’s asked of me is to hear His voice and obey it. God doesn’t ask for showy gifts or lives lived in utter sacrifice and deprivation. All He wants is for us to be His kids. To know Him and follow His guidance in our lives. Continue reading
Hebrews 4:13 Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
I read once that integrity is doing the right thing – even when nobody is watching. The fact is, it’s really difficult for our private thoughts and actions to mirror those up for public consumption. Even harder for me than achieving personal integrity is the unrest I feel when in my relationships with others, things don’t add up. There’s a disquieting of my mind as I try to think thru conversations and understand the motivation of others. There are things in my life I don’t want to talk about with others. Areas I’m ashamed of. While I can be honest with myself about where my personal convictions stand, I will never know the whole picture behind someone else’s actions. I cannot possibly hope to understand what drives others responses in life. The full truth of where they are. But God does. Continue reading
1 Corinthians 5:11 But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.
So, I understand the couple of verses before this – where Paul is basically saying that non-Christians are going to behave as such. And that those of us living a life following after Christ should not expect anything more. That to remove yourself from the company of such people is not right. That it basically defeats the entire purpose of reaching the unsaved in the world. Ok. Got it.
Verse eleven has me totally confused however. After reading this passage, I’ve decided that it is at least partly to blame for some treatment I’ve received from Christian “brothers and sisters”. As much as I don’t believe I’m any of these things, certain people think I belong amongst this list. So, what am I supposed to do? Huh? How am I to respond when I’m treated like there is justification for dissociations just like this verse describes? “Don’t associate with these people. Don’t even eat with them.” Continue reading
Mark 6:8-9 These were his instructions: “Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. 9Wear sandals but not an extra tunic.
Jesus was sending his disciples out to preach repentance. They were going to heal the sick and drive out demons, but they were not to take with them money, food or a change of clothes. Why?
It’s amazing how much I depend on God when I’ve reached the end of my rope. When I have nothing on the journey to sustain me, it’s much easier to turn to the Lord to fill my needs. Obviously I’m making some assumptions here, but if the disciples had been given several weeks of spending money for hotels, a carry-on of clean tunics and enough groceries to last their trip – do you think they would have been in a place of reliance on God? Continue reading
2 Corinthians 4:16-17 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
These verses today reinforced for me something I heard in my church service on Sunday. Here’s what I wrote in my notes: “When we take anger and turn it inward, it becomes depression. When we take anger and turn it outward, it becomes gossip. When we take anger and turn it downward (start listening to the lies of Satan), it becomes oppression. Only when we take our anger and turn it upward does it find the appropriate vent, and we are able to move on.” Sometimes, we have a right to be hurt. We have a valid reason to be angry. It’s what we do with those emotions that determine the lasting effect of them on our lives. Anger resolved improperly only becomes a bigger problem. We vent to other people and turn into gossips. We harbor resentment and it eats us alive. But the process of allowing anger to exist in a healthy way is hard – because it requires us to turn our emotions over to the Lord.
Also from Sunday’s message – Habakkuk 1:3 “Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds.” I’m not going to lie. It felt good to sit in a service and hear exactly what I’ve been asking God all week…and from the Bible no less. Why? Why is this unfairness allowed to continue? Suddenly I felt given permission to be really honest about my emotions of hurt, anger and sadness. But, here’s the key. I have to give those emotions over to God. He’s the only one who can fix things. It’s ok to tell Him I’m not happy about how things are – but then I need to allow Him to handle it. When I’m not sure what to do (and I’m still not), that’s when I need to do nothing at all. Wait. Stop. Listen. Ultimately I’m not telling God anything new when I complain to Him. I mean really, He already knows, right? And (here’s the awesome part to me) He already knows the resolution. A fix that is so perfect, I wouldn’t believe it even if He told me how it was all going to work out. And all the problems that seem so huge in my life right now, are really just momentary troubles in the grand scheme of things. Blips on the radar that are helping me to trust God more and more. Bringing me to a place where my first response isn’t to call my mom, talk to my husband or go for a run and sob the whole time – but a place where the first cry of my heart is to turn whatever it is over to the Lord. And watch Him work out the details.
Thank you Lord that even when I have no clue what to do, you have it figured out. Thank you that when I cannot even properly identify my emotions, I can still release them to you, knowing they are safe there. Help me to make you my first line of defense against the momentary troubles of my life. Trusting in your perfect plan for the details.
Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Last night I had a total flip out. Completely lost it. I felt like I was going to vomit I was so incredibly upset. I locked myself in the bathroom and sobbed for about 10 minutes. I cannot remember ever doing that before.
Here’s the story:
I’m working on a wedding slide show for my baby sister, who’s getting married in about a month. I went to retrieve some photos from my back-up hard drive, which I purchased specifically to hold the thousands upon thousands of pictures that were clogging up my C drive on my main computer. I’ve been systematically moving my photo files over to the back-up drive and then (after checking to verify they are in fact copied on the back-up), deleting the files off my main computer to free up space. I’m sure you can all guess what’s coming – when I went to pull up the “Windsor 2010″ file, which held about 700 photos from our recent all family vacation in Windsor, it wasn’t there. As in, not where I filed it. I didn’t panic until I’d done my customary search thinking I just mis-filed it or hadn’t actually transferred it to the back-up drive yet. But it wasn’t on my C drive either. Wasn’t on any drive I searched. Wasn’t anywhere.
I started to flip out thinking of how on earth I was going to tell my parents and siblings that all those hundreds of photos – including the “formal” family shots we’d taken hours to shoot were gone. Then I hit the wall…the thing that put me over the edge. I realized that somehow the back-up drive had auto refreshed…and had copied exactly what was now showing on my C drive. Which meant that it wasn’t just the Windsor file that was missing…all the photo files I’d deleted from there were now erased from my back-up. Files which included every picture I’d taken of my daughter since she was born 4 years ago. Every. Single. One. Gone. The moments after her birth, Christmases, birthdays, her first smile, first bath, first everything. All of them erased in some horrible factory setting auto-refresh. Continue reading
