Bible – Page 10 – Our God is a consuming fire

Dust bunnies and Christmas trees

Posted on November 30, 2019December 3, 2019 by Sara

It finally all caught up with me.

I mean, you can only hide the dust that is threatening to engulf your home for so long before it rears its ugly head and exposes you for who you really are.

pigpen

Because even though we all may prance around like Lucy from a Charlie Brown episode, pretending to have our stuff together, if we’re honest with ourselves, sometimes we feel a little bit more like the dust-embattled “Pig Pen” of the series. Literally.

Let me explain. Some people use Thanksgiving as their gauge for the appropriate time to break out the Christmas decorations. In my little world, it comes the day after Halloween. After a month of dealing with ghosts and ghouls haunting the aisles of every store I walk into, I can’t wait to throw up the tree and string the lights! (Thanksgiving looks extra good in the reflection of Christmas lights … we don’t skip Thanksgiving in these parts, we just “accessorize” it!”)

So this year I jumped right in. Only, to my horror, I suddenly realized that this wasn’t going to be as much fun as I thought. It has been an exceptionally busy few months, and though I have maintained the “mandatory” cleaning of laundry, dishes, and the necessary loathsome toilets, I had blithely ignored the dust gathering in all the corners and surfaces of my home.

Until the lights came out and suddenly I could see it all. Everything ugly shone forth in shocking brilliance. And my dreams of glorious decorations stopped short in the depressing realization that I needed to put on my big girl pants and clean.

Truth is, I’ve been struggling with the thought of Christmas this year. I want all the joy, I want all the celebration, but sometimes it just feels like a lot of work, and I’m tired. It’s like I’m bursting at the seams (literally and emotionally) and then we take all these lights and decorations and songs and expectations and pile them on top of all this other stuff going on. And it starts to feel heavy and busy and cluttered.

Kind of like my house with decorations obscured by dust.

Sometimes it’s hard to see the beauty through the chaos, isn’t it?

Don’t blame Christmas. It’s holding out it’s arms with the promise of wonder and beauty … the opportunity to pause and remember. To put up impractical decorations just because they shine and make us smile and to give unnecessary gifts just because we love someone. To remember those important things that we build our lives on, but allow to get squeezed out in the business of life. The problem with Christmas lies in our capacity to receive it. We don’t know how to make space for it, so it just starts to feel like more work, more stuff, more than we have space for. We’re putting the beauty on top of the mess of our lives and it all dulls into incoherent clutter.

So I pulled out my dust rag, and I started to wipe. And as my home started to sparkle a little more, I felt the space around me work a surprising miracle. It was like the literal act of wiping away dust was starting to clear out the dusty corners of my heart. As the spaces around me cleared, I looked at my boxes of decorations and suddenly felt excitement grow over filling these spaces with lights and beauty.

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Are you feeling this with me? Is your soul feeling a bit cluttered these days? Do you have those spaces too – the ones that have been ignored too long and when you let your gaze linger, all you see are those stinking dust bunnies staring back at you? Has the calendar pressed in on you so that you no longer see the moments around you and only hear the ticking of the clock? Has the hurt that’s been done to you hardened your heart so all you hear when you call to God is your own voice echoing back? Are the necessary bills piling so high that every responsibility is just something else you can’t afford? There’s that diagnosis, that relationship, the drama that swirls around us and sucks the joy right out of our hearts… What do we do with all of that? Especially when Christmas comes along and tells us to put up the lights and rejoice and how do you do that when you can’t really find yourself in the middle of all the crazy?

It’s just easier to ignore it all and go on with the daily necessary requirements of life, isn’t it?

But then you hear the echo of that song and it feels a little different …

“Let every heart prepare Him room”… but if I’m honest, there really isn’t room most days.

Maybe what we need this Christmas is a different perspective. Maybe instead of trying to lay baby Jesus in His manger on top of all the other things in our lives, we could try inviting Him into that messy place? Maybe we could hold open our hands and simply ask Him to hear the cry of our hearts.

We all want to move a little slower so we can take it all in, but until we can, let’s “prepare Him room”. Maybe we can dust out the corners of the heart, release some resentment, soften some anger, forgive a hurt – and let Jesus in. Recently I found myself needing to utter a simple, “I’m sorry” to the God of the Universe who I had unwittingly shut out of my heart. Hurts in various form had caused me to want to protect myself and those I love and so I let myself grow hard – and God can’t be heard when the walls of our heart turn to rock.

Maybe this Christmas season, we can string the lights and remember the Light who scatters our darkness. (John 1:5)

manger cross

To hear His precious promises – and truly believe them!

“He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
    to proclaim freedom for the captives
    and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
    and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
    instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
    instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
    instead of a spirit of despair. – Isaiah 61

Maybe with each twinkling light we see, we can take a deep breath and see the face of Christ – “For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.” 2 Corinthians 4:6

Oh how my soul needs to hear that truth! Pig Pen and I have some work to do around here! But we’ll have the Christmas music blasting while we do it…

Living this Life

Rest for the soul

Posted on March 25, 2019March 25, 2019 by Sara

I haven’t written in a while.

Thing is – I’ve been chewing on something for a long time. This is, in fact, my New Year’s post – delivered to you about 3 months late. Because on January 1, 2019, I sat in the quiet of my room, taking stock of my 2018 and peering into a new year.

window

I was worn and bruised. And I needed more Jesus. But His answer wasn’t really what I was expecting.

And here I sit, 3 months later, still trying to digest it and work it into my system. To believe something is one thing – to make it a part of you, something different altogether. So I have been a bit silent.

There’s no way to sugar coat it – I ended last year a bit out of tune. A summer adventuring across this country, seeing God’s glory in a thousand places and watching Him work miracles. Meanwhile, I felt like this mama’s heart couldn’t really absorb it. My boy was in a world of pain – with migraines that we couldn’t seem to stop and all number of challenges stemming from that.

I came home longing for peace. Longing to be restored. And life picked me up and swirled away with me into a sort of busy-ness that withers my soul and leaves me shallow of spirit.

I sought Jesus in brief quiet moments. I found Him in breathtaking beauty – and wonder would beckon. I would ask Him to fill all my moments with His peace. With His glory. But too often I would rush around trying to “fix” it all by myself.

That’s where I found myself as I sat in the quiet of my room that New Year’s Day, I asked Jesus once again to fill my life with peace. To flood my home with wonder. To fix this crazy I had inhabited.

And in the quiet of that place, I felt Him speak to my soul – “what if I don’t?”

What kind of question is that? You are the King of Peace, for crying out loud!

That’s when it hit me. I had been asking for more of Jesus all these months, but looking right past Him at what He offered. I wanted His peace. I wanted Him to “fix” my crazy. But would I be content in all this crazy with just Him?

staring

Is Jesus, just Jesus, truly enough for me?

I know Jesus promises great things to those who trust Him. And I know it is a good thing to rejoice in the healing He brings and the blessings He pours out on us. But what about when life is a mess? And you don’t feel that peace. The loneliness invades your soul until you feel like you can’t breathe. And there don’t seem to be any answers to the hurt you see all around you?

I opened up my Bible last week to these words: “He Himself is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14). Oh how my soul needed that reminder! Because how quickly I forget and fall back into old habits. Looking for the effects of His peace rather than for Jesus alone to be my peace.

I can identify with Moses, sometimes – Moses, the man who had a tendency to argue with God. Especially on the day that Moses found that instead of an argument on his tongue, all he was left with was a desperate plea. He reminded God of His promises, he asked to understand the ways of His God – and then he simply said “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here.” And God’s gentle answer? “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.” (Exodus 33:15-17)

And I have no more words. Isn’t this what it all boils down to? Knowing God and being known by Him?

girl praying worship

longroad sitting

Is this the secret that kept Joseph true when he was trapped in a hole in the ground – and later in prison for a crime he didn’t commit?

The promise that kept Abraham faithful when God asked the impossible?

The reality that kept Esther grounded when facing the annihilation of her people?

The key to Noah’s obedience when it seemed ridiculous?

The truth that made the disciples bold and unflinching in the face of death?

Maybe God sees peace differently than we do. When it is embodied in the face of Jesus and not in our circumstances, it takes a very different hold of us. And empowers us in ways we cannot quite comprehend.

come to me drawing

I don’t think Jesus means the kind of rest that comes from our circumstances, but the kind of rest that invades your spirit with His presence.

“He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only.” ― C.S. Lewis

I was going to end here – but then this truth! The blazing honesty of Spurgeon plunged into my soul. So here – some meat to chew on, for those who want to dive deeper. Let this truth change you and help bring rest to your soul!

“Remember, therefore, it is not thy hold of Christ that saves thee—it is Christ; it is not thy joy in Christ that saves thee—it is Christ; it is not even faith in Christ, though that be the instrument—it is Christ’s blood and merits; therefore, look not so much to thy hand with which thou art grasping Christ, as to Christ; look not to thy hope, but to Jesus, the source of thy hope; look not to thy faith, but to Jesus, the author and finisher of thy faith. We shall never find happiness by looking at our prayers, our doings, or our feelings; it is what Jesus is, not what we are, that gives rest to the soul. If we would at once overcome Satan and have peace with God, it must be by “looking unto Jesus.” Keep thine eye simply on Him; let His death, His sufferings, His merits, His glories, His intercession, be fresh upon thy mind; when thou wakest in the morning look to Him; when thou liest down at night look to Him. Oh! let not thy hopes or fears come between thee and Jesus; follow hard after Him, and He will never fail thee” – Charles Spurgeon

Living this Life

Unbroken Melodies

Posted on December 3, 2018December 5, 2018 by Sara

I watched them this last Saturday morning.

Father and son. With their guitars out, the son was performing for a Christmas event.

The young boy’s music wasn’t refined. He was just learning his notes and his fingers didn’t know their way around the strings of the guitar like his father’s did.

But none of that mattered, because there in that moment, the music was beautiful.

The father, an accomplished musician, sat with his son and played along. He laid the melody and carried the tune. And in that safe place, his son’s plucking rose to a new level.

His dad could have left his son alone on that stage to rise or fall on his own. He could have considered the venue not “worthy”of his expertise. He could have waited for his son’s playing to reach a higher level of skill. But he didn’t.

He simply sat down, and played with him.

And my heart shook a little within me. Because I saw myself there.

More than that, I saw my Jesus.

I remembered all those times I had wanted to hide from God’s voice. All those times I told God that I was not enough. That I don’t have the strengths, the talents, the abilities to do what He was asking of me.

And in these days of self help and innumerable books written on the building of our self esteem, of confidence based on ourselves alone, the hard truth came crashing in like a house of cards. Because I know that though I may try to disguise it, on my best days, the music I pluck on the strings of my life are clumsy and out of tune.

Isn’t that the source of some of our greatest fears? That when the moment of truth comes, we will find that we are not enough?

But as I watched that father play a beautiful song with his son, I realized that this truth should bring peace and confidence rather than fear.

Because we don’t have to depend on our own ability. We don’t rely on our own strength. And when the great Maker of the Universe descends to play the music of our lives alongside us, the beauty that rises is inexplicable!

With every hesitant note I play, I hear Him play strong and true beside me, carrying me and creating beauty I never dreamed of.

I see how my stumbling feet have learned to walk true because of the strong feet of Jesus walking beside me. I see how my warbling voice has gained new strength because of the strong voice of my Savior resounding in my heart. I see how all my insecurities and fears have been held in that safe place. And in that safe place, I find a strength I never knew existed.

“But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed” 2 Corinthians 4:7-9

“He Himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else… God did this so that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from any of us. ‘For in Him we live and move and have our being’.” Acts 17:25-28

I find a deep soul sigh escape my lips. And the old gospel hymn springs from my heart

“Precious Lord, take my hand
Lead me on, let me stand
I’m tired, I’m weak, I’m worn
Through the storm, through the night
Lead me on to the light
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home”

Are you unsure of yourself today? Are you tired? Do you wonder where your strength will come from for what lies ahead of you? Do you find the notes of your life-song warbling a bit? Listen – do you hear it? The sound of His beautiful, steady tune rising up around you to complete your song?

Come, rest with me. In the great overflow of Jesus!