Love isn't love, til you give it away

Love isn't Love til you give it away
How is it that we, as modern day Christians, have shoved love into our pockets like a dollar bill that we choose when and where to spend it? Jesus' love was his life...and he gave it away as a ransom for all. Is it our "elect" status as Christians that make us feel so proud and special that we can judge and decide who receives our love and when? I'm afraid the people we choose, out of our human failibility, would not be the people Jesus would choose first. We in America, live in a society where respectability is given to those who have great successes on earth. What about the humble and unrespectable? Were not those the types Jesus often shared company with? Philip Yancy speaks of seeing people through "grace-healed eyes". We should see others on the basis of how God sees us, sinners whom he loves and desires. How much more effective would our ministries be if we looked the heart of a person and see their great potential in the Kingdom of God rather than looking at their clothes or behavior and seeing their potential in the kingdom of man?
Jesus stated many times that he did not come for the righteous or the well, He came for the sinners, the lost, the sick. Shouldn't we, as self-proclaimed disciples of Christ, be mimicking this exact behavior. As a line from one of my favorite songs says "Jesus paid much to high a price for us to pick and choose who should come." Who do you know that would not "fit in" with our church of today? That's who we should start with. I believe Jesus would have dinner with them right now...as they are. Everyone has to start somewhere...the lower down you are the more you appreciate what God has to offer. Blessed are the poor in spirit! Shouldn't we be rejoicing that the worst person still has God's grace and love offered to them? If God's love can span the entire earth, on every human, so should our love. We should be reaching to them, loving them, and desiring them, the way Jesus did. Only then can we truly come close to the magnitude of God's love and grace.
"Assuredly I say to you, in asmuch as you did it to the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me." Matt 25:40 NKJV
We are to love beyond normal human capacity. We are to reach beyond our comfort zones. We are to desire the undesirables. This was Jesus' way and so it should be ours.

Share your tablecloths

Two churches once sat unified together. One actually built and financed the other. They were blissful sisters. They sit a mere 15 minutes a part from one another. Over time the 2 churches have had blessing in increase of membership. Combined they have almost 400 Christians in 2 small communities. As their numbers grew...so did their distance from each other. The older Christians can't tell you why they grew apart, they just know it happened. The two now speak of each other as "separate" churches....no longer sisters. It is as if they went through a divorce....they share a past, but no desire for a future together.
It happened one day that the preacher's daughter from one church was getting married and was planning her wedding shower. She wanted to borrow the tablecloths from the other church for her shower. So the call was put in to a deacon's wife and the request was made. The answer they got back was the saddest of all. The deacon's wife replied simply, " No. We don't loan them out to anyone because the elders paid way to much money for them." And that was that...and the distance grew further....
"Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers." Gal 6:10
Isn't it so sad that they missed it? They missed the chance to do good. They missed the chance to extend the hand of grace. They missed the chance to rejoice with fellow believers. They missed the chance to show neighborly love and kindness. They missed the chance to start bridging the gap...all over some material possessions that years from now will be thrown out to the garbage or eaten by moths.
It seems so silly doesn't it? But how often have we missed that very point? How often have we missed a chance to show God's love over something small? Opportunities don't always come in earth shattering moments, sometimes they come in very small, quick moments. Christ tells us to be watchful, but sometimes in our busyness we forget. So make a mental note to slow down...be still. Opportunities are everywhere. Seize them and share your tablecloths.

Lesson in Grace

If you had asked me 6 months ago what grace was, I could not have told you. If you had asked me a month ago, I could have told you about receiving grace. Right now, God is teaching me a very important lesson about giving grace.
You see, I'm quick to forgive and show grace to those who hurt ME. It's selfish really. I don't like people to be mad at me. So I take the blame or just make the first step and apologize to end the fight, then forgive and forget. It's when someone hurts the people I deeply care about that I struggle. They're not made at me so there's no personal consequence to forgive...but then again there is. There is a spiritual consequence. When I'm angry it leaves the door open for satan and that puts me in spiritual weakness...and weakness can be dangerous. "In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry" Eph 4:26
Recently a lot of people that I care about very deeply have been hurt and that made me angry. So I prayed and then I studied to see what God had to say about the matter and then I realized what grace was all about. Grace is when through clenched teeth, you take deep breaths and remind yourself that Christ tells us to love our enemies....yes, love. We need to love and forgive the people who deserve it least, but need it most. The people who are doing the hurting need our love too. Jesus came to seek and save the lost... He died for ALL of our sins and He love ALL of us. If we want to be His disciple, we too must have that same love and compassion for even those who persecute us, those who curse us, and our loved ones. We are to love our enemies. We are to forgive and trust in God and His judgment. Loving those who don't love us back, forgiving those who don't deserve it, seeking those who are lost and don't know it....that's what grace is all about.
Dorothy Day put it best " I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least" (this has become my new favorite reminder)

Being Less Self-Reliant

Have you noticed that over the last decade or so that customer service has gone oh let's say....into the witness protection program. I mean you can rarely find it. A phone call here and there, but that's about it. So being a stay at home, mother of 4, let's face it, I have to be self-reliant ESPECIALLY when facing such battlefields as Wal-mart. They all stare at me....they know I could use a kind hand, but no one dares lift a finger because let's face it...that would be walking that extra mile and, well, that requires walking.
The problem I have is not with my missing persons report on customer service representatives, it's with my strong sense of self-reliancey. I've become so good at it...too good at it. I've become so good at it in fact that it actually takes effort and special thought on HOW to accept and IF I should accept help from others even as I'm falling all over myself. But the other problem is and the most tragic one, is that it is carrying over into my relationship with God. When I meet him in prayer and in worship or just in every way, I have a hard time with shucking the self-reliant for the self-deniant. Christ tells me to deny myself, but everyday, I feel, in a sorts, that I'm all I've got. My bible tells me that's not true because God is ever with me, but why then am I acting as if the world is against me and it's me....alone. It's me just like Jacob was before he wrestled with "the man". He stood on his own "alone" Sometimes I kind of wonder if God doesn't kind of zing me in a way like he took out Jacobs hip to, I don't know, wound me in a way to remind me, I'm not self-reliant, no matter how hard I try. No matter how hard I train I will never be super mom and I will never stop needing the Creator who created me. I am the creation, he is the Creator and sometimes I just needed to be reminded of my place with a little wounding...a little humility...it does the soul good. Self-deniant not self-reliant, that's where I should be. Relying on God for my strength is what I should be doing. As CS Lewis put it in his book The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe "He's not safe. But He's Good". That's my God.

Unity

Do you know those people, those complainers, those fault-finders? You know the ones...they don't like the songs we sing or the person who leads the singing either. They think the sermons are too long and the pews are ugly. Do you ever wonder how they got so unhappy or are you one of those people?
It's so easy to let our fire for Christ burn out and leave us with nothing but smoldering discontent. Where did we lose it? Where did we get off track? How do we get back? So many times these are the questions we never ask ourselves or heaven forbid ask others. But the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. We do not have time to waste with simple politeness. Don't get me wrong, we can't change complainers with a chastening rod, but shouldn't we at least try. If we are examples to other people, so is every single Christian complainer out there. If we are to help the world let's start by helping each other.
It deeply concerns me to hear of the unsettling that has been taking place for many years among the Church. Yes, it's true we have a purpose to win souls for Christ, but how can we ever expect to win anything when we are not unified. I cannot stress enough how I feel so deeply down in the very depths of my spirit that my message is unity. We must learn to live together, learn together, love together, and fight together or we shall be scattered in the wind. Unity is so very important and yet so very hard. How do you take millions of individuals and tell them that they must be as "one" as Christ has commanded? If I had that answer, well, I suppose I'd be more famous than Oprah. I don't have the answer. But I know where to find it. Christ holds the answer. It's in the answer book. Our Bibles. You know that book the preacher always refers to on Sunday. I don't mean to sound critical. I read it and to tell you the truth...I feel overwhelmed a lot. I have trouble filing all the information away in my brain. I've found bits and pieces of the answer...kind of like finding only a few pieces to the puzzle but not all of them so I don't see the whole picture yet...and I may not for years and years yet to come...so again, how do we take millions of people and make them as one, hypothetically speaking, if they were where I am and even truly seeking that answer? I think that if we spent more time studying together, praying together, seeking together....I believe the Spirit would step in where we fall short of the perfect bond. But alas we are all so busy these days. We have packed our lives so full of what this world has to offer that we have left little time for what the Spirit has to offer.
I speak for myself when I say I cry out for others. I so desperately seek the deep Christian companionship of others. I've found it with a few, but I desire it with many. I desire it with many from around the world. I want to truly know that I have thousands of brothers and sisters. I want my heart to be over flowing with the love from a community . I pray for it. I dream about it. I read about it in the early churches and I know it's possible with God as all things are. I only wonder how many feel the same. How many are willing to lay aside selfish ambitions, desires, complaints, "I-don't-want-to's" and join hearts and souls completely, without looking back for the cause of Christ? How many consider their life nothing for Christ? How many are willing to not consider themselves at all?
This is a concept we "modern Christians" are not taught. But in the first Church this is the way they lived. That seems most wonderful to me. Someone once said, " Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less." Ask yourself this, if you sold everything you had and kept only what you needed and had to rely on your church community to provide for your needs, how different would your relationships be with the people you attend church with on Sunday? How close would you be to your fellow Christians then?

Desire for Deeper Life

There is a deep desire in me to write about this "deeper life" as it is called, but the fear of being lumped in with the cultist and the extremist has held me back, but I need to write. I must write. I feel there is so much more than this surface Christianity most of us speak of and sadly most of us only experience. There's a relationship with God so deep, so spiritual, so awesome, words cannot describe it. A heart cannot fully contain it or it would explode. It's a deepness that stirs you deep down inside so that you cannot sit still, you want to dance as David did when the Ark finally reached Jerusalem. It's powerful beyond understanding.
I ponder this a lot. And sometimes I get so fired up. I'll be listening to one of my songs that says
"What if the armies of the Lord
Picked up and dusted off their sword
To finally set the captive free
And not let satan have one more
What if the Church for Heaven's sake
Finally stepped up to the plate
And took a stand upon God's promise
And stormed hell's rusty gates."
I'm ready to shout out " Yeah, satan you're goin' down!"
And then Emmy starts crying in the backseat and my mind suddenly switches gears. Oh how I long for the day that my faith is so deep seated in my soul that not even my child's cry can turn my mind or my focus.
And no I don't believe my children are an excuse for me. So many of you out of your loving, compassionate, kind, and big hearts have tried to comfort me by telling me that essentially my young children are an excuse for slowing down my work for Christ. But I believe if I were to pose the question to Christ he would tell me that if he thought I couldn't handle both jobs then he wouldn't have given me both jobs. When he was calling men to follow him, he gave not a single one an excuse...not even the man whose father had just died and needed to be buried. Why then do I need an excuse to remain behind because I have a few dirty diapers to change? The Master has given me talents and I don't know when he'll return so I must make haste, not excuses.
I feel my heart has been opened to this deeper life that so many of us misunderstand and so we write it off and become complacent with where we are. I know. I've been that person. As the song says " to label me a hypocrite would be only scratching the surface of who I've been known to be". But I don't believe this is all Christ died for. I believe we can do better than this. I believe there is so, so much more. It requires deeper love, deeper devotion, deeper prayer, deeper faith, and deeper exploration into God's word. Only then can we hold that deeper peace of the deeper life with God. The all consuming love of Christ. Nothing can compare.
And if we as a Community of Christians, not just individuals, help each other in seeking and finding this deeper life...I promise, the whole world will know....and want to know what we have that they don't.

Brook Besor from Facing Your Giants

It's been a long time since I written...I know, I know...I've been busy. But convincing myself that it is legitimate busyness and not just laziness has been the toughest issue for me. I guess you could say I have been very unforgiving of my lack of "doing" in the last few months. It's caused me to hide behind a wall of "I'm fine" and "Every thing's great" and "It's not that hard". I have felt that if I rest it is lazy....if I don't keep moving, I am failing. So yes over the last few months I have struggled...silently...I have wrestled with myself. I found myself needing to face my giants. Then I went to walmart and found this book on the shelf called Facing Your Giants by Max Lucado. It's the story of David's life and how it relates to ours today. I have found it very insightful in my struggles...obviously because I'm actually admitting to my struggles. But today I read a chapter called Plopping Points that really hit home with me and I wanted to share a portion of it with all of you. I think you will also find it very insightful.

"I recently saw a woman walking a dog on a leash. Change that. I saw a woman pulling a dog with a leash. That day was hot, brutally. The dog had stopped, totally. He'd plopped, belly down, in wet grass, swapping blistering pavement for a cool lawn.
The woman tugged and tugged. She'd have had more success pulling a parked semi.
The dog's get-up-and-go had got up and gone, so down he went.
He's not the last to do so. Have you ever reached your "plopping point"?
Blame it on your boss. " We need you to take on more case."
Your spouse. " I'll be out late one more night this week."
Your parents. "I have one more chore for you to do."
Your friend. " I need just one more favor."
The problem? You've handled, tolerated, done, forgiven, and taken until you don't have one more "one more" in you. You are one tired puppy. So down you plop. Who cares what the neighbors think. Who cares what the Master thinks. Let them yank the leash all they want; I ain't taking one more step.
But unlike the dog, you don't plop in the grass. If you are like David's men, you plop down at Brook Besor.
Don't feel bad if you've never heard of the place. Most haven't, but more need to. The Brook Besor narrative deserves shelf space in the library of the worn-out. It speaks tender words to the tired heart.
The story emerges from the ruins of Ziklag. David and his six hundred soldiers return from the Philistine war front to find utter devastation. A raiding band of Amalekites had swept down on the village, looted it, and taken the women and children hostage. The sorrow of the men mutates into anger, not against the Amalekites, but against David. After all, hadn't he led them into battle? Hadn't he left the women and children unprotected? Isn't he to blame? Then he needs to die. So they start grabbing stones.
What else is new? David is growing accustomed to such treatment. His family ignored him. Saul raged against him. And now David's army, which, if you remember, sought him out, not vice versa, has turned against him. David is a psycho in the making, rejected by every significant circle in his life. This could be his worst hour.
Be he makes it one of his best.
While six hundred men stoke their anger, David seeks his God. " But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God" (1 Sam 30:6).
How essential that we learn to do the same. Support systems don't always support. Friends aren't always friendly. Pastors can wander off base and churches get out of touch. When no one can help, we have to do what David does here. He turns toward God.
" Shall I go after these raiders? Can I catch them?"
" Go after them! Yes, you'll catch them! Yes, you'll make the rescue!" (30:8 MSG)
(I used to believe only saints could talk with God like this. I'm beginning to thing God will talk with anyone in such a fashion and saints are the ones who take him up on his offer.)
Freshly commissioned, David redirects the men's anger toward the enemy. They set out in pursuit of the Amalekites. Keep the men's weariness in mind. They still bear the trail dust of a long campaign and haven't entirely extinguished their anger at David. They don't know the Amalekites' hideout, and , if not for the sake of their loved ones, they might give up.
Indeed, two hundred do. The army reaches a brook called Besor, and they dismount. Soldiers wade in the creek and splash water on their faces, sink tired toes in cool mud, and stretch out on the grass. Hearing the command to move on , two hundred choose to rest. " You go on without us," they say.
How tired does a person have to be to abandon the hunt for his own family?
The church has its quorum of such folks. Good people. Godly people. Only hours or years ago they marched with deep resolve. But now fatigue consumes them. They're exhausted. So beat-up and worn down that they can't summon the strength to save their own flesh and blood. Old age has sucked their oxygen. Or maybe it was a deflating string of defeats. Divorce can leave you at the brook. Addiction can as well. Whatever the reason, the church has it's share of people who just sit and rest. And the church must decide. What do we do with the Brook Besor people? Berate them? Shame them? Give them a rest but measure the minutes? Or do we do what David did? David let them stay.
He and the remaining four hundred fighters resume the chase...

Don't do that after what the Lord has given us. He has protected us and given us the enemy who attacked us. Who will listen to what you say? The share will be the same for the one who stayed with the supplies as for the one who went into battle. All will share alike ( 30:23-24 NCV)

Note David's words: they "stayed with the supplies," as if this had been their job. They hadn't asked to guard supplies; they wanted to rest. But David dignifies their decision to stay.
David did many might deeds in his life. He did many foolish deeds in his life. But perhaps the noblest was this rarely discussed deed: he honored the tired soldiers at Brook Besor.
...How many sit at the Brook Besor? If you are listed among them, here is what you need to know: it's okay to rest. Jesus is your David. He fights when you cannot. He goes where you cannot. He's not angry if you sit...
...Brook Besor also cautions against arrogance. David knew the victory was a gift. Let's remember the same. Salvation comes like the Egyptian in the desert, a delightful surprise on the path. Unearned. Undeserved. Who are the strong to criticize the tired?
Are you weary? Catch your breath, We need your strength.
Are you strong? Reserve passing judgment on the tired. Odds are, you'll need to plop down yourself. And when you do, Brook Besor is a good story to know.

Under the shadow of the steeple

This comes from a line from a song by one of my favorite groups Casting Crowns. The song is called " Does Anybody Hear Her" and in the chorus goes
Does anybody hear her
Can anybody see
Does anybody even know she's going down today
Under the shadow of our steeple
With all the lost and lonely people
Searching for the hope that's tucked away in you and me

From that song I picture this girl about 19 whose like I used to be...a person who made all the wrong decisions... a girl who was "running a hundred miles an hour in the wrong direction". She's too ashamed to enter the church and too afraid to walk away so she stands there with the other lost souls who feel the same in the shadows.
I don't identify myself with the meaning of the song as much as I do that picture of the girl standing there.....but for different reasons. I stand under the shadow of the steeple as it represents "tradition"...as in the "traditional church" that I grew up in. I stand in the shadow of that tradition....not quiet traditional, not quiet modernized.....too afraid to stay, too afraid too leave. I stand outside that tradition because I don't belong there...I don't believe anyone really does....that church is not like the 1st century church was and therefore it is not true tradition...it is a charade...but I don't yet know where I'm going outside of that shadow yet either so I don't move. And sometimes that shadow prohibits me from doing more than I do, but one day I know I will move....
But for now, I will write my "blogs" from the under the steeple. I will talk with people who go in that church, people who scoff at that church, people who don't' even notice that church, and the people who stand in the shadows with me because of the "lofty glances from lofty people". I'll watch the people laugh and hug, the people cry and fight....the people jump off bridges near by and kiss on park benches down the walk. And I'll wait.....I'll wait til God says it's time to move...and then..................................................then I'll move on.