sovereignty.

As I read through 1 Samuel, I am reminded of Gods utter and gorgeous sovereignty. The Philistines steal the ark, which seems like the greatest disaster imaginable, but does not take away from Gods glory. His hand is heavy on them and with time (without any help from the Israelites) God makes it so that they say What shall we do with the ark of the Lord?" We have to send this thing to its place, they say. We don't even want it. Because they quickly learn that God is not theirs. That he is who he is and he is over and above all things and they cannot stop his will. Not only do they willingly send it back to Israel, they send it with sacrifices in order to GIVE GLORY TO THE GOD OF ISRAEL. He will get glory. There is no question. There is no suspense regarding the end of the story. All glory belongs to him and will be given to him. Every knee will bow. Every voice will proclaim Him. We will ALL give glory to God. So for me, this means a more active seeking of Him and his will and how I can give him glory. That is my only purpose (ultimately). To glorify God. Not to be loved by God, except that his love for me glorifies himself and my love for him glorifies him as well. I often act as if I cannot know his will or be attuned to his spirit, as if that takes a spirituality to high for me. This morning he reminds me that it is simply a matter of spending time with him. And through an hour sitting with him in a coffee shop, I am sending letters to people I love, texts of encouragement, praying hard for people. I am able to do more in one hour than I can in weeks spent on my own strength and my own will. As Eli sai, "It is the Lord, let him do what seems good to him." How true.

Lord, do what seems good to you. Even if it takes glory from me. Even if it means I do less when I want to be busy. Even if it means I do more when I am tired. Do what seems good to you, because I want to love what you love lord. I want to love you more than anything else on this world. I want to grow and not let your words fall to the ground so that like Samuel it may be know that I am have been established as of the Lord. I want that to be known in my social work community where believing exclusively in your son is seen as discrimination and ignorance. I want it to be known in leadership programs I am in where downward mobility doesn't make any sense. I want it to be known to the girls and the kids you allow me to help you love that I am yours and that they can be fully yours too.

Your glory is such a beautiful thing father. Bind me to you. Deepen my attentiveness to your ever present spirit. Teach me to rest, to obey you in resting, in praying, in seeking the word. Give me the boldness to give all glory to you when its hard. I want to hold your words lord. To speak them in places where I didn't imagine ever speaking them. Speak into my relationships God. Speak into my thoughts. Speak into my classes.

 Lord you struck people, even your own people, when they look upon your ark. I am so thankful that you have struck Christ so that now I can see you face to face, not through the veil. Still though lord, I know you want to my sin, which clings so closely, destroyed. Crucified, nailed to the cross. When I hold it intimately, I think you are striking me but you're not. You're loving me perfectly by striking it and taking from me everything that I can't live without. You love me so well when you show me that you alone are good, when you leave me with nothing but yourself to cling to.

reflection from a weekend of rest

I am resting with the lord today. I must say that I have refused to do this all semester. And a lot has stemmed from that. A lack of writing. An abundance of stress. Bitterness. Self condemnation. Just being generally unhealthy from going too hard, too long and not for the lord. My praise in confessing this in a public way is that his strength is made perfect in weakness and his grace is sufficient for me. He came to meet with me today. The power in that last sentence floors me.

How lord? How when I have held back from you, ran towards other things, held my idols and let them hold me, will you come so lovingly, so tenderly and meet with me again? How is it that you offer me the same delightful, gorgeous promises of the word when I have been faithless and angry and so far from you? So far that I was becoming numb. That I began to lose sight to separate the sin resting in my mind and heart and thoughts from the truth. And you come. Not just a little. You pour love on me like I’m under a waterfall of pure grace. You say come and drink thirsty one.

I have hidden myself in a dark, internal cell where I can keep my sin and cling to it like it will save me but it will pull me to pieces and You come to the cell. You come in. I say, Jesus, you don’t want to come in here. You’re going to get dirty here, this is dirty place. Its dark here. That light that’s exuding from you is hurting my eyes, Jesus. It’s exposing the things I was hiding. And you come in and I look at your eyes and I see compassion in those eyes. There is no trace of disgust in the expression on your face. Only love. You pick me up and you hold me. You just stay and it is the most powerful you could ever do. To come here. To the depth of my sin. The darkest place in my heart. The darkest thoughts laid bare before you. And I am just like Eve, hiding in shame because I found out I was naked and I don’t want to see you now that I know that I am not what you are, that I have refused to love what you love and that I have bound myself to the enemies lies and allowed idols to dwell in the place that is only for you, the Holy One of Israel my Redeemer. I did not come to condemn, your eyes say to me. I came to be condemned with the condemnation you deserve. And as you hold me, a strange thing happens. All that darkness, that stain of sin that covered me starts to get on you, and I see spread the way cancer spreads through cells. And I see fresh pain in your face and marks upon you as you take it on. And as it spreads in you, it decreases in me. But it is not simply decreasing, It is being conquered in my very self, by something far greater, your perfection. My darkness is swallowed up in your light. My sin is destroyed by your beauty and righteousness. All the while, you gather me in your arms and cover me with your wings.

As Ken Gire said, your eyes are so severe yet so loving, so unmasking yet so protecting, so penetrating yet so caressing, so profound yet so intimate, so distant yet so inviting.

Lord, I must be honest and I say that I hide because I don’t want to be seen by you. I need you to know lord, it is not because I don’t love you but because fear that you will not be able to see me and still love me. This is a legitimate fear, because if not for Christ being seen and judged by you after taking on all my sin, there would be no chance we could be together, because I joined the enemy’s side. I took on sin, which is contrary to all that you are. But Christ became sin who knew no sin and now the enemy’s tactic is to keep me from realizing that the work is done and that you see me and proclaim that I am everything that Christ is.

There is a question I ran into today…one that I had an underlined but forgotten because it struck me deeply once again.

Are you too exhausted to run and too scared to rest?

Yes.

Sometimes, the pastor said, we get so worn out with being useful we become useless.

As we are liberated from our own fear, Nelson Mandela said, our presence automatically liberates others. Wow. That is powerful thing. My very presence has the capacity to be liberating when I am liberated. When I am bound, back in the Egypt I was delivered from, secretly worshipping the idols God told me I had to destroy, no matter how much energy I exert I can’t be liberating. Christ alone brings liberation. We only carry Him to people and carry people to Him. 

thoughts from portland

To be quite honest, I have become far more self-conscious of myself as a writer recently than I have been a long time. Humility is good. It is good that I recognize that Gods words are millions of times better than mine. That he has said all that needs to be said in his Word. That Jesus is the AUTHOR and perfector of our faith so anyone reading this should probably turn to the scripture because it is far better. At the same time, I am a signpost for God. He has appointed me as an ambassador. Made me the fragrance of Christ. Called me to be bold with my words and point to Christ. And if writing is a means by which I can point to Christ, then it is good. And I know that my discomfort with writing is from a lack of writing, a lack of time with the lord, a lack of reading, probably more than it is due to humility. But tonight I can say, Christ’s love for you and for me is enough. He is loving us in this moment. There has never been a moment where he did not love us dearly. I am in Portland this week, and I love it. And loving being here clearly shows that God has chosen to help me experience joy, and freedom and full life. And that God counts laughter as holy. He loves to see us enjoy ourselves, and calls us to Himself knowing that he is the ultimate enjoyment for any soul because all were made for Him and Him alone. He knows how to love each of us. He knows when to push us in hard ways, when to lavish us in adoration, when to bring the right person into our day or life. Or bring cancelled plans or hard times or frustrating days. I read something really beautiful in a book on biblical perspective on addiction which is that

Change starts proceeds and ends with Jesus.  

It is all His. As I am at this social work conference I feel the tension of being with so many people who have another method of change, even amongst Christians who feel that faith is a way you love people with the way you act but not something to convince them of.

The holiness of God, demonstrated in Christ’s death and resurrection is the final answer. God’s love is defined by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. To offer anyone my own love, which pales immeasurably in comparison, instead of this love is doing them harm. He goes so far to say that all problems that plague all people must find their resolution in this gospel. He makes it clear that you can overcome things (addiction etc.) without Christ but that God has something better in mind for us: serving, fearing, knowing and loving Him. That his desire and intention for our lives.

Recently my heart has been on the church in Montenegro. I have been given the unbelievable opportunity to go there this summer, in the hopes that if he is willing, God will use me to minister to this church and country and use them to minister to me. Mike, the missionary we will be working with who has been guiding my friend Caroline and I as we prepare to come told us that in the entire country of Montenegro there are less than 150 followers than Christ. That in cities of 60,000 there are 30 Christians. Can you imagine? Can you imagine the Christian community in your city being 15 or 20 people? There are some cities, he told us, where there are one or two Christians. A girl they know that is a college student is the only Christian in her university. The only one. We must be praying for this little church. We must lift them up to the Lord, thank Him for them, ask him to grow them and to abound their love more and more. Just the opportunity to pray for them is a gift. I think of our churches, with hundreds of people, our ability to move from one to another to find the one we like, my campus with easily over 30 Christian ministries, and this beautiful little church where people give up so much to follow Christ. He is worthy. He is worthy of our devotion if we are in Montenegro or in the U.S. He is worthy of my heart this week in rainy, lovely Portland and worth my heart every day in Raleigh. Every day I am in Chesapeake. Worthy of each orphan in Haiti. Worthy of each middle school girl struggling in inner city homes. Equally worthy of the rich and the poor. The beautiful and the unnoticed. He has claimed us as his own and his love for us is the greatest we will ever know.  

arms wide open

Come in. The Fathers arms are open wide. When I’m tired, like I have been for too long, the Fathers arms are open wide saying come, rest in the shadow of my wings. When I am running hard after thee, your arms are open wide saying, we have just begun or journey together. When shame and guilt and the weight of my sin weigh down on me til I am on the ground, you say come, my arms are open wide, I will gather you from the low place and draw you up to the highest place, with me. When I fail your arms are open wide saying my strength is made perfect in weakness. When I am happy your arms are open wide saying I want to rejoice with you. When I have idols and I don’t know how to let go, your arms are wide-open saying, nothing is to great for me, nothing compares to my glory. The more you know it the more you will be able to count as loss all that used to capture your heart and hold it captive. I have ransomed you from the pit. I say to you come, all ye who are weary and heavy laden I will give you life. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Come my sons and my daughters, come to your Fathers house, once we were enemies as far as we could be from each other, once you hid from me, but now you run to me. Now Christ has stood in your place to bear the deep, terrible weight of your own sin and the wrath of God which was turned on you and heading toward you.

I see the grave error of my ways lord. I have attempted to be perfect instead of pointing to the perfect one. My life is a signpost to my greatness as your follower when it should be directed to you, to the triune God.

I can be whole and I can be healed. Because you know how to heal me. You say, go ahead dive into your mess that you have been told to run away from and I will meet you there and I will walk with you through it and all that is dark will be brought into light and all that is scary I will take you through.