spiritual stuff

Amy Beth, a young single lady fostering children, posted this excerpt that has stayed with me for days.  I do hope she doesn’t mind that I’m sharing.

“I went home that day aching with the reality of undeserved pain.  I used to think that suffering came to other people […] not to people who opened their hearts to the orphan.  The stories swirled in my mind of families who’d dared to love the least of these and had been worn down by the ceaseless, thankless reality of disability and brokenness.  It was tempting to be angry at the unfairness — and yet I’d learned through my own trials that there was another way to understand the suffering.

You see, each of us had wanted to live the gospel… and God had answered our prayers.

The gospel life is an invitation to come and die.  It is first of all a story of brokenness.  Before the beautiful redemption there is misunderstanding, rejection, loneliness, disappointment, frustration, and betrayal leading to a painful, bloody death.  There is sorrow, burial and mourning.  Yet somehow, though we prayed to be like Christ, we were surprised when the pain came to us.  We were surprised when the gospel story was repeated in our homes, in our hearts, in the children we thought to rescue.

[…]

What my friend needed to know is that her troubles are not the marks of failure, but of Christ-following.  Christ’s love leads us into places that no one else wants to go, where the stench and the mess and the heartache push out the well-dressed and the well-behaved.  She and her family have been invited into the mysterious blessing: to suffer the reality of sin just as Christ suffered.  […] It brings the foul-mouthed, rule-breaking, rage-riddled, impulse-driven, broken-hearted, least of these, right into our homes. This love works and tries and believes when everyone else has given up and slipped back into something more comfortable.  It aches and bleeds, it is misunderstood and rejected and lonely.

And if we will surrender to it, this love teaches us to sing and to rejoice as the blessed of God.” — A Song Almost Heard, Tonia Peckover (all emphases mine)

That coming to learn to die and live the gospel?  That is grace.  It is giving the undeserved gift.  Grace comes from the abundance of God’s gifts.  First and foremost it is the giving of the forgiveness that we do not deserve.  I get that grace.  But then I try to apply the giving of God’s grace and it feels pretty and simple; a sharing of  the abundance we received and we easily give to others.  Our finances.  Our love.  And grace can be that.  But many times grace is not pretty.   When someone hurts you and you must give that forgiveness you realize that grace is pain.  That although the other is the offender, the responsible one for the sin, you are the one not only offended but also the one that must be broken to forgive.  Grace is not an easy calling.  Grace is beautiful but it’s not pretty.

But it’s in the grace that we find life.  Just as in God’s grace of forgiveness we find eternal life, it is in the giving of grace now that we find life.  Today Ann Voskamp is sharing of her book (READ IT IF YOU HAVEN’T) and Shaun Groves’ new CD (GET IT).  All so timely for me this week.  I love this quote from her book

That fullness can grow foul. Grace is alive —  living waters. If I dam up the grace, hold the blessings tight, joy within dies … waters that have no life.

In God’s upside down economy it is only in the brokenness of ourselves that we find life.  It’s easy to give in the abundance of God’s blessings but it’s exquisitely hard to give in the face of pain from others’ sin.  This brokenness doesn’t seem to lead to joy but Christ’s brokenness is our example of the only way to joy.  If we hold forgiveness back, the grace, we lose our joy.   But when we let grace rain (or reign, as it were), we find joy and they find joy and then both together, we rejoice in God’s grace.

So as Ann concludes in her book and Shaun sings, All is grace.  He gives to us, we give to them, we are healed, they are healed, we give thanks back to Him.  A beautiful, painful, cyclical picture of grace. 

Please go watch the video on Ann’s post.  If you only knew what these two people have seen and experienced (and some of you do) and yet still offer God praise, it’s truly God’s grace at work.

I don’t have too much to say today except that I’m drowning in these lyrics today:

-How He loves, John Mark Mcmillan

I wrote this yesterday about the Osama news and debated not posting.  Well, actually, I chose not to post.  I don’t want to be preachy about how people should be thinking or put down someone if they don’t think the same way.  But in the end, it’s important that I write.  I wish I would have written down all my confusing thoughts on 9/11.  And if I’m having these thoughts, someone is likely to too and that connection is important.  We need to know we’re not alone.  So here you go, all my reactions and questions

About 10 last night I had taken a shower, fallen in bed ready to get some much-needed sleep and checked Twitter one last time.  I was intrigued when I saw Obama would be making a speech at 10:30.  I debated skipping it after reading some initial guesses on Twitter at the subject. I was honestly uninterested in what had happened in Libya or presidential condolences about the tornadoes. NOT uninterested in the tornadoes or damage, just what he had to say about them.  I then saw the name Osama  in one of the tweets and well, if that was the news, it was going to be too historic to miss.  The speech time (and my bed time) came and went several times and by the time the President came on, it was simply confirming all the details Twitter had already told me.  Osama was dead.
It was in that wait time that folks on Twitter and Facebook began reacting that still has me reeling.  What exactly should be my response?  Christians at large?  People at large?  I wasn’t celebrating but I was glad it had happened.  Not often I hear of a death and say "Good".  Can death be good?  I’m not sure it was the death that was good but the removal of his schemes and impact.  That indeed, is good.  But all I could think about was a tweet I read that something to the effect of you kill a hornet, you stir the nest.  I feel LESS safe than I did.  Suddenly folks would want to retaliate.  Would they try to attack on US ground again?  Would our troops be attacked?  Would other US folks in countries be attacked?  I didn’t feel safer at all that he was dead in the immediate future.  And really is his death a death of the extremism?  No. Someone else will likely rise to power in his place. 
Many claim justice was done.  He got what he deserved.  But didn’t Jesus say you don’t get revenge?  Does that mean they should now avenge his death?  It’s a vicious cycle and it’s easy to claim death was good when you’re on the killing side. 
And what of his soul?  Clearly he did evil.  But it doesn’t make me happy he died without Christ.  It makes me sad that Satan won. That he was able to carry out so much evil through him and yet, in the end, no one won but Satan.  He’s separated from Christ.  Some would argue we still don’t know if he is in fact separated from Christ.  I mean, wasn’t he doing this for God?  Maybe in a convulated way he thought he was doing the right thing.  Does that "count"?  Talk about a hornet’s nest, I know.  All I know is my heart’s a little sad that a life was lost to such evil and likely an eternity. 
Why does God allow someone to be born who would live a life like this and never know him?  I don’t understand at times like these.  Did someone miss a chance to tell him the truth?  Did we not pray enough?
You’d think his death would bring peace but I think it brought the opposite.  I think there’s fear and doubt and confusion.    Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe I should talk to a mother of 9/11 victim and see what she’s feeling.  Perhaps to some they have peace.

There’s a lot wrong with that.  Just a stream of consciousness with no ending really.  But the best thing about this is Lysa  posted this urgent message yesterday about lunchtime and it was almost uncanny how it spoke directly to what I had written only minutes before.

Indeed, we are not alone.  And we are not just bonded with our fellow man with all our doubts but also to God.  He understands all these fears and knows the confusion.  He is there to comfort us when all we know to do is throw up our hands and say I don’t know.  Jesus.  Jesus.  Jesus. We always can count on him to be never-changing.  Steadfast.  Loving.  Good.  Beyond that, I don’t have answers. 

This too shall pass but He never will.

Tomorrow morning I will read the final words of Revelation, closing out 88 days of reading through it.  I’m so in love with spending time with it every morning and finishing is bittersweet.

I saw this video today and felt so blessed at having about 82 different ways I could have completed it and honestly, ashamed at our lack of respect and excitement about the OPPORTUNITY and PRIVILEGE we have to read His word every single day.

The Kimyal People Receive the New Testament from UFM Worldwide on Vimeo.

Hat tip to @drpoulette for the link.

I haven’t done these in a while.  Not sure why.  No one has complained that they are missing but still, I want to share yesterday’s.  We are in between series and yesterday was from our Journey Group Pastor.  To be honest, he wasn’t very clear on what exact question he was answering but it turned out to be on addictions.

I struggle with addictions.  I just have this thing where if I love something, I don’t know how else to love it but all the way.  And sometimes, love hurts.  Yes it does.  It hurts a lot of things including my relationship with Christ because I being replacing Him with those things.  I took lots of notes and just wanted to share them. I know these notes are difficult to follow sometimes without hearing it but maybe you can get enough to see if it’s something you need to go listen to.

Our past does not dictate our next steps.

We have strong compulsions to obey God; our spirit is willing but our body is weak. 

Good intentions are not good enough to overcome life-affecting habits and hang-ups.

God invites us to change our character and identity.  Religion says let me “do”.  Relationship changes who you are. 

Myths about addictions:

1. It’s a destination.  Christ invites us to go on a journey, changing our character so that our actions change to match the inside.

2. You can use all your strength to overcome your addictions.   But behavior modification does not work.  I believe it was here he talked about where Christ says if you sweep out a demon and do not replace it with Christ, then seven more come in.  If we have these addictions and then do not replace them with good habits, it’s only going to get worse.

3. I can be this on my own.  You are in denial about how bad your addiction is.  Only God can change you from the inside out.

We walked away with the question, what is your addiction right now?  What needs swept out of your life so that you can grow on your journey with Christ?  We all have addictions. It comes in many forms; alcohol, drugs, porn, a relationship, TV, food, sports.  Whatever it is, we have to surrender it.  Remember, our past does not dictate our next step.  Just do the next right thing!