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How to Live through Painful Holidays by Doing a Gift Exchange with Jesus

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When I was a kid, Christmas couldn’t come fast enough. I loved the big family gatherings, seeing my cousins, all the great food (especially my mom’s fudge), decorating the tree, and of course all the presents. I loved it all. And my birthday is in December. It was the best month of the year.

Now, my family is broken, I have children who don’t speak to me, and all decorations are just work I don’t have time for. December hurts and January can’t come fast enough. I just can’t wait to get it all over.

December is hard for a lot of people. The physical darkness in the Northern hemisphere this time of year doesn’t help any either. It’s a well-known fact that depression increases this time of year, and the lack of sunlight is one component. Another, and probably larger, component is the holidays highlight the pain in our lives from broken families that we push down the rest of the year.

When parts of your family are dead to you, either literally, emotionally, or relationally, how do you get through watching everybody else’s happy family? What do you do when everyone else’s happy, jolly Christmas just screams to you your own loss and brokenness?

I had a pastor who, as a young boy, used to love visits from his favorite uncle. His uncle would always invite him into a pocket swap: “I’ll give you what I’ve got in my pocket for what you’ve got in yours.” The young boy always had something ordinary in his pocket he gladly gave his uncle. Sometimes a rock. Or string. Or a frog.

But the uncle always had something special in his pocket. Sometimes a piece of candy. Sometimes a shiny silver dollar. It was always worth the exchange.

Jesus is inviting us into a gift exchange with him this holiday season: “I’ll give you what I’ve got in my heart for what you’ve got in yours.” This is how I get through the holidays. By doing a gift exchange with Jesus. Sometimes every day.

I’ve got pain, brokenness, pain, betrayal, more pain, rejection, and yes, even more pain. I get away by myself, usually in the mornings, behind the closed door of my office at home. Sometimes I play my keyboards and worship. Sometimes I lay on the floor and cry. Sometimes I pour my heart out in travail. But there’s one common thread. In those moments, I give Jesus all my pain in my heart. It’ll probably look different for you. That’s ok.

And I stay there until I get what he’s got in his heart. Peace, joy, stillness, quietness of spirit, and most importantly, hope. Precious hope. And I realize, after receiving it, that hope is the thing I was missing and needing the most.

One of the most deceptive lies is that the current situation will last forever. “This is just the way it is.” Not true. It’s a season. We don’t know the length, but God does, and it is of limited length, one way or another. This pain will not pass into eternity, even if it’s not healed in this life, which a lot of it will be. Because that’s God’s desire. Hope blows away the lie that this pain is forever. It’s not.

My gift exchange with Jesus doesn’t change the painful situation. I’m still living in the loss and living with the pain. But it’s no longer overwhelming, and my sense that He’s on it, in control, not caught off guard by it and in fact is working in it. The blood of Jesus is stronger than the pain.

How about you? If the holidays are hard for you, how do you get through them? Have you come out of a season of hard holidays back to a season of blessed holidays again? Please share your story with us to encourage others. And please share if this would inspire and bless someone else.

Why You Don’t Want Clarity but This Instead

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We all want clarity before moving forward. But that’s not how God has wired the universe. Clarity is backward facing. It looks at the past events and actions in our lives and says, “Oh, that’s why that didn’t work out, but that’s why this did.” Looking back, we see how God orchestrated them for good in our lives. We see what we’ve learned. We see how far we’ve come. We see what God did.

Clarity looking through your rearview mirror. It does you no good driving forward.

My Favorite Mother Teresa Story

A reporter went to Calcutta to do a story on Mother Teresa. As he was leaving, he asked her, “I’ve got some important decisions coming up in my life that I have to make when I get back. Would you please pray for me for clarity?”

She said, “No.”

“What?!? You’re Mother Teresa! How can you not pray for me?!?” said the surprised reporter.

“I can’t pray for you for clarity because I’ve never had it,” she calmly replied. “But I will pray for you for faith.”

Read that again. That’s huge.

Another Word for Faith

Faith is often an abstract concept to us, and we don’t always know what it means. Another word for faith, on a very practical level, is direction.

Mother Teresa could just as well have said, “But I will pray for you for direction.”

Direction is forward facing. It requires faith because you don’t know if it’s actually going to work or not until you try it.

Sometimes it’s just a single next step. Sometimes it’s a few steps. But it’s almost never the whole journey, mapped out end-to-end, like we would like.

God Gives Direction, Not Clarity

Look at God’s call to the heroes of the Bible. Moses. Gideon. Samson. David. And in the New Testament, Peter, Paul, even Jesus’ mother Mary.

They were all given first steps. None of them were told the end of the story. They were just given direction. They objected because they didn’t have the whole story, quite reasonably, usually telling God why this is a bad idea or that it just outright isn’t going to work. But every time, God just chuckles and says, “Nevertheless, I will be with you.”

Take that first step. Do the next right thing.

Uncharted Waters

God can’t give us the whole plan up front because each step is a direction of its own. A direction assumes a starting point.

If I was giving you directions to New York City and said, “Get on I-95 North,” that only works if you’re roughly in the same geographical location I am. I’m in the Washington, DC, area, so those directions would work if you’re starting south of New York City somewhere along the East coast.

But if you’re starting in Los Angeles, CA, then “get on I-95 North” does you no good at all. You’d better get on I-10 East first.

Directions only make sense if the starting point is known. Suppose God gives you Step 1. But he can’t give you Step 2 until you’ve done step 1, because you wouldn’t understand it. Because it’s from a different starting point than you expect. Because Step 1 is going to take you to a place you didn’t expect.

That’s the way it so often works, isn’t it? We tend to think so binary, either this is going to work or it isn’t. But what happens is often in the middle. It works, but differently than we expected. So the starting point for Step 2 isn’t where we thought we’d be.

So after we actually do Step 1, and get to whatever surprising place God knew it would lead us, now we’re ready for Step 2. Having completed Step 1, we’re finally at the starting point for Step 2. Now it makes sense. But it never would have made any sense before we completed Step 1.

Clarity Needs These 3 Things. Especially #3.

Yes, God does bring us clarity. But it requires these three things.

As we’ve said, clarity is backward facing. After we’ve done the thing, then we get clarity about it, looking back and learning from our experience. So the first thing clarity needs is action. That’s why “analysis paralysis” is a thing. There’s no clarity until you do something.

Second, clarity needs time. You don’t always get clarity the day or week or month after doing something. Sometimes, you’re still too close to it.

Have you ever seen those science pictures where they show you a close-up of something, and you have no idea what it is? Then they zoom out and you can clearly distinguish what the object is? Clarity and time are like that. Sometimes, you need some distance.

Third, and most important of all, clarity needs healing. You can look at events in your life, even from a long time ago, and still not have clarity about what really happened if you haven’t received healing.

Healing’s a two-way street. God is more than willing to give healing, and sometimes it comes over time, which is one reason why time is so important in all of this. In fact, he’s dying (literally) to bring healing into our lives. He really wants to heal.

But we have to be just as willing to receive it. That requires several difficult things on our part:

  • Humility. “Healing?!? I don’t need healing. I’ve got this.”
  • Vulnerability. It’s scary letting someone else, even God, into a place of pain.
  • Spiritual Maturity. The more healed you are, the more you’ll accept more healing.

Your Turn

So cut God a break. Don’t pray for clarity. Pray for direction.

What is your “next right thing” that God is leading you into? Are you hesitating? If so, you’re in good company; everyone in the Bible did. But when you know it’s God, even if it doesn’t make sense, follow his direction and step out. The clarity comes afterward. We’d love to share the journey with you. Reach out to us on the Contact page. And please share this post if it would bless others.

2 Practical Ways to Faith Jesus

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On July 15, 1859, daredevil and tight rope walker Charles Bloudin walked across a tightrope 1100 feet long, suspended 160-200 feet in the air, without a net. Over Niagara Falls. Pushing a wheelbarrow. Walking backward. Blindfolded.

When he reached his destination on the other side, the crowd roared with amazement. When he was ready for his return trip, he asked the crowd, “Who believes I can carry a person across in this wheelbarrow?” Everyone raised their hand and shouted an enthusiastic “Yes!”

His next question quieted the crowd. “Who wants to get in the wheelbarrow?” Every hand went down. He had no volunteer from the audience on the return trip.

This story shows us two very practical things about walking out our faith.

1) Faith is a Verb. Practice It.

The crowd believed Charles Bloudin could re-cross Niagara Falls with someone in the wheelbarrow. But none of them had faith that he could.

“To believe” is just intellectual ascent. It’s something we do with our mind. Once a thing is proven to us, it gets filed in our mind under “Things We Believe.” We don’t need to waste energy thinking about it again. So if you’re like me, you free up that memory and forget the proof, just remembering that it’s something you believe. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s an efficient way to manage our finite intellectual capacity. But it’s got nothing to do with our heart.

Faith, on the other hand, is all from the heart. It’s an on-going thing. This is the sense of the Greek word often translated “faith” in the New Testament. The closest we can come in English is “to believe”, which diminishes it to just theoretical intellectual ascent, or “having faith”, which makes it sound like a possession we bought and keep on our shelf with other keepsakes.

But real faith is an active thing. We would understand it better if we treated it like a verb, saying things like, “I faith in Jesus.” Continual. On-going. From the heart.

2) Don’t Be Afraid to Go First.

Everyone watching Charles Bloudin that day believed he could carry someone else across the Niagara Falls tightrope in the wheelbarrow. They all wanted somebody else to go first.

That’s a problem in the Kingdom of God. Because God always calls us to go first. He’s calling us to something unique that no one’s ever done before (at least not like we’re going to do it). He makes all things new, and our calling is no exception.

Moses had this problem of belief without faith. When God called him, Moses saw and heard some amazing things (Exodus 3):

  • A bush burning that didn’t burn up.
  • God standing in the middle of the fire and speaking with him.
  • Getting God’s name, a completely new revelation on the Earth of who God is.
  • His staff turns into a snake and back again.
  • His hand turns leprous and back again.
  • God’s promise to be with him.

Moses’ response? “Please send someone else to do it.” He believed God could do it. But he didn’t have faith that God would actually do it through him. He wasn’t “faithing” God.

In the end, God gave Moses the boost he needed. Moses had the faith to get into God’s wheelbarrow as long as his brother Aaron got in with him.

God’s ok with that. He knows it’s hard for us to actually step out into the impossible realm he’s calling us to, even if we want to. If our hearts remain soft and willing, he will give us the boost we need. By Exodus chapter 8, Moses was talking to Pharaoh directly without needing to speak through Aaron. Moses grew into who God already knew he was.

So will you. So will I. Continue to practice your faith, don’t take it for granted. Faith is not a “one and done.” Treat it like something that needs constant maintenance, like a car or a garden, because it does.

Don’t be afraid to go first. God is calling you to something unique, that the world’s never seen before. Even if it’s something others have done, the world has not seen anyone do it with your unique gifting and style, and the world desperately needs to.

Your Turn

Tell us your story in the comments. What is God calling you to do that’s bigger than you? What have you done in the past that you never thought you could? We’d love to walk this journey with you, and please share this post if it would bless someone else.

Credit where credit is due. I got the excellent concept of faith as a verb from Pastor Jim Bethany at Richland Baptist Church. You can listen to his excellent teachings here. And the story of Charles Bloudin comes from Creative Bible Study.

How to Walk in Faith without Being Stupid: 4 Steps to Correctly Use Fear

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In the midst of COVID-19, the world right now is living in fear. Hoarding toilet paper, or anything else, is living in fear. That’s not God. However ignoring the danger, like some churches are doing and meeting in large groups anyway, is not God either.

Fear, in and of itself, is not bad. Fear is a God given, sanctified emotion.

Fear and faith are not mutually exclusive. We can walk in faith and still use fear to our advantage. Like so many things in the Kingdom, they are two truths that hold each other in tension. In fact, problems arise when we obsess on one to the neglect of the other.

When it gets out of balance—either by dwelling on it (all fear and no faith) or by ignoring it (all faith and no fear)—that’s the problem.

Here are 3 steps to keep fear and faith in balance without being stupid.

1) Collect the Information

The fear is trying to tell you something. Listen to it. Fear heightens our senses when we need them most. In a time of danger, we need all the information from the environment around us we can get. And we need it now. Fear makes that possible.

Fear is like the oil light on your car’s dashboard. Say you’re driving down the Interstate in the fast lane, and your oil light turns on. Your car is giving you critical information you need right now to deal with a situation you otherwise would not have known was serious.

So listen to what it’s telling you, but don’t be overwhelmed by it. Don’t let the fear-mongers in the news media drive you into panic. Realize they have a business model: selling fear and outrage. They are not trying to inform you; they are trying to stir you up. So before you tune in, decide up front that nothing they say is going to steal your peace, your joy, or your trust in God.

You have to read or listen to some news to find out what’s going on. Personally, I prefer reading the websites because then I don’t have their tone, body language, or background music to stir me up. I mute my computer before going to their sites, so the auto-play videos can’t hook me before I have a chance to click pause.

So be informed. Get the information. But if you feel your anxiety rising, turn it off.

2) Don’t Panic. Don’t Be All Fear and No Faith.

When your oil light turns on, you don’t pull onto the median of the Interstate, half blocking the fast lane, and jump under your car to drain the oil onto the pavement.

One, that would be extremely dangerous. You’ve got a great chance of getting killed.

Two, it would be totally fruitless. It’s the wrong action completely. You don’t need to drain the oil your car still has; it needs more! Acting in fear is like that. You do completely the wrong thing.

Our emotions should not be driving this boat. For the world, their spirits are dead and hence their emotions aren’t anchored to anything. But as Christians, our emotions are connected to our spirit that Jesus has given life. And our spirit is connected to his spirit, the Holy Spirit.

Having said that, we all are in different places as we walk out our salvation in fear and trembling. If you find yourself panicking, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad Christian. It just means God wants to show you another aspect of his character you haven’t discovered yet, and it’s just what you need right now.

If you find fear getting the better of you, do two things.

First, ask God who he wants to be for you right now. And second, call a trusted friend to pray with you, or even just chat. Sometimes just talking it out with another person helps tremendously.

If you have chronic panic attacks, talk to both your pastor and a professional counselor. Sign a release so they can talk to each other, work as a team, and help you. There’s no shame or anything un-Christian about getting help when you need it.

3) Process It. Don’t Be All Faith and No Fear.

Back to our oil light example. While you don’t stop in traffic, you don’t ignore it either. That would be equally disastrous. Taping over the light so you don’t see it only works until your engine blows up. And it will—guaranteed—if you don’t heed the light.

But my engine won’t blow up, I’m trusting God! Gag a maggot! Who do you think turned on the oil light early enough so you could deal with it? Don’t ignore the signs and warnings God is sending you through your fear.

In the midst of COVID-19, don’t be stupid. Practice social distancing. Don’t gather in large groups. Being wise is not a lack of faith.

Don’t ignore your fear. Instead, process it. Take it to the Holy Spirit. What does it mean? God knows. Ask him. In particular, ask him what it means for you personally. What a situation means for one person may not be what it means for another. God has a different calling for each of us.

The Psalms are a perfect example of processing fear with God. David takes his fears and anxieties to the Lord and dumps them on him. (Read Psalm 13.) God’s the one who can, and wants to, take all your anxieties and fears. He wants to do an exchange with you. Your fears and anxieties for his peace and joy. Pretty good deal.

4) Decide and Act

Once you’ve spent enough time with the Lord to get his heart on the matter, ask him what to do about it. Sometimes I hear his strategy for action clearly in my spirit. Other times, not so much. In those times, I take my best guess, and trust that he’ll correct me if I need it.

Decide. Make a measured, wise decision, as best you can. Don’t make any decision out of panic, but use the information your sanctified fear has brought to your attention.

So what do you do when that oil light turns on? You make a measured, wise decision to get off at the next exit, go to the first gas station, buy some oil, and add a quart. You trust God that you’ll make it to the first gas station before your engine blows up. But you also take the most reasonable action you can.

God has a part, and so do we. He’s designed life that way, because he loves partnership with us.

How about You?

How do you handle fear? How have you found balance in your life, or are you working on it? We might have perfect balance in one situation and be off the charts in the next. Tell us your story of balancing faith and fear in the comments. And please share if this post would bless someone else.

How to Say “Yes” to God’s Promises when Life’s Pain Says “No”

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Has the pain, abuse, and unfairness of your life erased God’s promises to you? You believed, but where are they? Instead of your Promised Land, all you see for miles around is desert. This post is for you. Caleb, through no fault of his own, finds himself in exactly the same situation. Check this out.

The Israelites had been miraculously delivered from Egypt. They’d seen God’s wonders and his glory over and over again in the desert. They tasted the sweetness of his faithfulness, and also the sting of his discipline at their rebellion (more than once).

But now, all that is just about to pay off. They’re at the borders of the Promised Land and just about to enter their inheritance. And that’s when it gets insane. All chaos breaks loose. The insanity in your life means God wants to break in and do something.

First, there’s internal attack. Miriam and Aaron, Moses’ co-leaders, more than that, his siblings, his own family, start bad-mouthing him (Numbers 12). It’s the struggle of religion vs God’s heart, the very same struggle that nailed Jesus to the cross. Miriam and Aaron don’t think Moses is following the rules properly. Actually he is, but not according to their understanding. In fact, their case against Moses is really thinly veiled jealously. The Lord has none of it and comes to Moses’ defense. God settles it quickly by turning Miriam leprous for a week.

Do you struggle with internal chaos, internal condemnation no matter what you do? God is on the verge of breakthrough in your life.

Then there’s external attack. Moses sends twelve spies to explore the Promised Land (Numbers 13). They all come back with the same report. The land is awesome, it’s flowing with milk and honey just like the Lord said. They bring back some of the fruit, huge grapes and other goodies. Oh, and by the way, the land’s filled with giants who are much stronger than we are. We looked like grasshoppers to them. The external obstacles are insurmountable.

Although they all agree on the state of the land, it’s inhabitants, and what they found, the twelve spies have two opposing recommended courses of action. Ten of the spies are terrified and say there’s no way we can do this. We’ll get slaughtered.

But the other two, Joshua and Caleb, are all for taking the land. They have a promise from God that he’ll be with them and they can do it. So I imagine it goes down something like this:

Ten Spies: “The people in the land are huge giants, infinitely bigger and stronger and more powerful than us!”

Joshua and Caleb: “I know, right! It’s going to be exhilarating beating those guys! I can’t wait, let’s go! This is going to be so epic! They’ll sing songs about us for centuries! We have a promise from God, we can’t lose! Stinks to be them. Let’s go do this!”

But the other ten convince the people not to trust God and rebel. They talk about stoning Moses, Joshua, and Caleb, heading back to Egypt, and just forgetting the whole thing. Quitting. This is not what we thought it would be. It’s just too hard. Time to cut and run.

Are you going to quit on the promise of God in your life? When life gets impossible, God’s promise is on the verge of fulfillment. Just like with the Israelites, the hardest struggles, both internally and externally, are on the borders of our Promised Land.

And you know the scariest part about this? God honors your choice. The people rejected God’s promise and chose to believe in their fear instead. And you could say they benefitted from it. They lived out their lives in safety, not having to take the risks that God’s promises required. But it was a hard, meaningless, bland life in the desert, on the border of God’s rejected promises. Nothing horrifically bad happened. But nothing amazingly good happened either. Like a ship chained to the dock, or a Lamborghini that never sees the light of day outside the garage, they all died in the desert of complacency. How sad. Don’t let this be your tragedy.

I think the saddest part is, Joshua and Caleb also waited 40 years. That’s the part that seems really unfair to me. Even though they had nothing to do with it, they were caught in the consequences of their unbelieving community. They were ready to grab God’s promises with both hands, but they had to wait 40 years too.

But it was worth it! They did eventually see the fulfillment of God’s promises in their lives. And this is the most amazing part of the story—how Caleb finally entered the Promised Land. Think about this.

It would have been easy for his passion to grow cold through the pain of life. He could’ve turned bitter over the unfairness of it all. 40 years in the desert? Are you kidding me?!? Many of us turn bitter in the desert. Do you know someone who has? Have you?

But Caleb didn’t. He just became more and more determined to seize God’s promises when he finally got the chance. Listen to him talk to Joshua, who had seceded Moses as leader, when the people are finally ready, 40 years later, to enter the Promised Land, really this time.

Keep in mind reading this that in war, you want the high ground. So the “hill country” Caleb’s talking about here is where the enemies have the high ground. It’s the hardest land to take by far. There are only two types of people who would even attempt it. Soon to be dead fools who don’t have a lick of common sense, or soon to be victorious recipients of a promise from God.

Caleb to Joshua: “You know what the Lord said to Moses the man of God at Kadesh Barnea about you and me. I was 40 years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh Barnea to explore the land. And I brought him back a report according to my convictions, but my fellow Israelites who went up with me made the hearts of the people melt in fear. I, however, followed the Lord my God wholeheartedly. So on that day Moses swore to me, ‘The land on which your feet have walked will be your inheritance and that of your children forever, because you have followed the Lord my God wholeheartedly.’

“Now then, just as the Lord promised, he has kept me alive for 45 years since the time he said this to Moses, while Israel moved about in the wilderness. So here I am today, 85 years old! I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I’m just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then. Now give me this hill country that the Lord promised me that day. You yourself heard then that the Anakites [the giants] were there and their cities were large and fortified, but, the Lord helping me, I will drive them out just as he said.” (Joshua 14:6b-12)

The guy was 85 and wanting to go take the hardest part of the land! And this time, he would not be put off. He had yet another promise from God he was believing. I could see people saying, “But dude, you’re 85! How about you plan the battle, but we’ll go do the heavy lifting on this one.”

Caleb: “Don’t you ‘but dude’ me! I’ve waiting 45 years for this, and I’m going giant-whomping!”

And you know what? The “unfair” delay really wasn’t. It made Caleb’s character shine all the more brightly and made his victory all the more spectacular. The promises of God triumph over the pain and unfairness of life.

God didn’t forget about Caleb. And he hasn’t forgotten you. What promises have you seen fulfilled in your life that you thought were gone? What promises are you still waiting for? Tell us in the comments, and please share if this post would bless and encourage someone else.

How to Believe in a World that Mocks Faith

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Wild animals surrounded him. This was not looking good. They were all looking at him and making their wild animal sounds. “How did a respectable English scientist like me get here,” thought Uncle Andrew. “What did I do to deserve this?” Indeed, when he could avoid it, he himself never actually did anything. Safe in his laboratory, he convinced or tricked or blackmailed others to do his experiments and take the risks, even his own nephew, Digory. Uncle Andrew had to stay safe in order to objectively evaluate the results. All for the greater good of science, of course.

He was sure this all must be his nephew Digory’s fault, that bratty child who wasn’t even afraid of all these wild animals. Fear gripped Uncle Andrew, such fear as he had never known. He knew from his scientific training and great career as a master of rational thought that his best chance of survival among all these wild beasts was to be silent and perfectly still. So he was, while the animals continued to bray, howl, trumpet and bark at him.

What really happened, on that remarkable first day in Narnia, was this. Aslan, the lion, had just created Narnia and all of its wonderful talking animals by singing everything into existence. Young Digory, his friend Polly, his Uncle Andrew, a carriage driver and his wife, along with an evil destroyer of worlds – the sorceress Jadis, had found themselves witnessing the whole thing. How this happened is too long a story to relate here, but CS Lewis tells it masterfully in The Magician’s Nephew, Book 6 in The Chronicles of Narnia. It’s actually the prequel to the rest of the 7-book series, explaining, among other things, the origins of the White Witch and why there’s a lamppost in the middle of a forest.

Anyway, the animals were actually talking to Uncle Andrew, but the way he’d prejudged the world, in his scientific, humanistic arrogance, prevented him from seeing, hearing and accepting what was really happening. Instead, his mind only allowed him to hear generic animal sounds, not the words and syllables they were actually speaking.

When he wouldn’t speak back and interact with them like the other humans did, the animals had a hilarious discussion about whether or not he was really a plant, probably a tree that needed to be planted. The bulldog was convinced, by the amazing sense of smell Aslan gave him, that Uncle Andrew was, in fact, a human. But the other animals prevailed, and they planted him up to his waist in a hole. Then the elephant watered him, hoping it would revive the droopy vines on top of his head.

Although they should’ve listened to the bulldog, you have to give the animals a break here. It was their first day in existence and they weren’t experts in biology yet. When Aslan rescued poor Uncle Andrew, although all Uncle Andrew allowed himself to hear was a lion roaring and growling, Aslan lamented, “O, sons of Adam, how well you protect yourselves from everything that would do you good!”

Although we laugh at poor Uncle Andrew, we do this all the time, both as individuals and as a society. At the root, we don’t want a God hanging around telling us how to live our lives, so, in our arrogance, we explain him away in the name of “science.” Never mind the fact that our “scientific” theory of evolution has more holes in it than a fisherman’s net and leaks logic like a sieve, not standing up to scientific scrutiny itself (that’s another blog post, don’t get me started). But it protects our desired world-view from the reality of the world-view we don’t want.

“Denial protects what we want to believe from being overthrown by what is real.” – Dr. Theresa Burke

We live in a secular society that denies, mocks, and often persecutes any type of faith. So how do you believe in the face of so much scorn? Here are 3 key take-aways.

1) Dare to Take the Risk. So often people say, “Well, if God does a miracle for me, then I’ll believe.” That’s a safe bet. The problem is, God’s not into safety, he’s into faith. Dangerous faith. Faith that puts you out there on a limb. Faith that remains out there, even when the limb breaks.

In the Kingdom of God, everything’s upside-down and backwards from human thinking. There are exceptions, but in general you get your miracle after you believe, not before. God responds to faith; he just laughs at ultimatums.

People don’t believe because they don’t want to look foolish if they’re wrong. Perfect love drives out all fear. Faith takes the risk, and it doesn’t disappoint us (Romans 5:5). In fact, in the Kingdom you spell faith R-I-S-K.

2) Know Experience the Reality of Jesus. As Christians, we have the advantage of personally knowing who we believe in. Jesus is a living person we can really talk to, and who really talks to us. In the Bible, the word “know” can be translated “experience.” It is Greek philosophy, not Hebrew, that separates the two. As Christians, loving the Jewish Messiah, we follow Hebrew, not Greek, thinking. In fact, Proverbs has a special word for someone with head knowledge but no experience—fool.

God wants to make himself real to you. That looks different for every person. What works for me won’t work for you, and vice versa. But there’s something that will work for everyone – pursuit. God promises us, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13)

How long do you have to pursue him? As long as it takes, through all the pain. Until he shows up in your life in the middle of that pain. And he always will. He wants it more than you do.

3) Share without Apology. We don’t have to prove there’s a God. Honestly, people know there is, they just don’t want to admit it. The word of your testimony is powerful (Revelation 12:11). Just share what God’s done for you. Answer their questions when they ask, but don’t waste your breath answering questions they’re not asking.

The truth is, many people really want to believe, but their fear and their wounding are holding them back. But we have the perfect love that drives out all fear (Jesus himself). When they are mean to us, and we still treat them with love, respect, and honor, it shatters their bitter-root expectation about how people will treat them, and they want what we have.

So how about you? How do you practice believing in an unbelieving world? Your faith changes the atmosphere when you walk in the room. Have you seen how it affects those around you? Share it with us in the comments, and please share if this post would bless someone else.

How to Experience the Extraordinary in the Ordinary

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We are honored to have a special guest post by Rachel Larkin. Rachel lives in New Zealand with her husband and their three young adult sons. She is the author of Simple Prayer: The Guide for Ordinary People Seeking the Extraordinary. She writes about growing in faith and developing your potential on her website at http://rachellarkin.com/. She is also a practising Chartered Accountant, home schooler for fourteen years and craves chocolate constantly. 

I highly recommend Rachel’s free eBook, available here: The Untold Story: 7 Steps to Seeing God in the Midst of your Real Messy Life. I’m sure you’ll be blessed by it and enjoy it as much as we did. (BTW, these are not affiliate links. We get no commission or anything if you click them or buy from Rachel; it’s just an honest recommendation.)

 

God often takes what is ordinary in life and sprinkles it with extraordinary divine moments.

Look at Jesus’ first miracle while He was on this earth. He took ordinary water at a wedding of a family friend and changed it into the best wine that the guests have tasted. He showed up powerfully in the middle of everyday life!

Jesus was involved in many occasions of adding the extraordinary to the ordinary. The crowd was hungry as they had been following and listening to him all day. The call went out for supplies, and an ordinary boy gave up his ordinary fish sandwiches to Jesus. A prayer of thanks was said over the food. Something divine then took place. Multiplication happened. An ordinary lunch turned into an extraordinary feast for over five thousand people. This kind of miracle wasn’t a one-time event either.

I remember a time when we had a young family and very little spare money. I prayed that God would stretch the very little that we had. I ended up calling our car the Elijah car because of an unexplainable situation when the gauge was signaling empty. I went to the gas station to fill the car. But to my surprise the car filled quickly and the cost was only a quarter of what I would normally pay for a full tank! It struck me right there on the pavement of the gas station that something divine had taken place. There didn’t seem to be any other way of explaining what had just happened. God turned up in my ordinary life!

My life is filled with accounting work, home-schooling, keeping a home, writing, loving my husband and raising our children — all ordinary work. But when I pray over my ordinary work God starts to work in the background. I notice moments that have a dash of the divine in them.

  • A conversation with one of my young adult sons turns into something deeper and hearts are affected.
  • A ‘chance’ meeting with a stranger becomes a moment of extra encouragement for my soul.
  • A morning walk generates ideas that can only originate with God.
  • The simple act of driving to work is transformed into a sacred journey of communicating with my Heavenly Father.

Ordinary people with ordinary abilities, possessions and tasks can see the fingerprints of God touch their ordinariness and create divine moments.

Take Action

Change your mind about your ordinariness. Decide to believe that God can use whoever you are and whatever you have. Spend time in discussion with God. Use the ordinary moments of your day to communicate with the Father. Have a mindful attitude about the events and people that come across your path. Look for God in those places. Seek His glory, it’s there.

Have you discovered God in the ordinariness? Feel free to share in the comments below.

Dependence vs Responsibility

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So much truth in the Word of God consists of two opposite truths that hold each other in tension. They may even appear to conflict at first, but they really don’t conflict with each other – they complete each other. One brings balance to the other and vice versa. We’re going to talk about one of these today.

There’s a degree to which we’re supposed to depend on God and a degree to which we’re supposed to be responsible for ourselves. Two truths held in tension.

When we depend on God for our well being – for being loved and for our world working – we live in a blessed Relaxed Security. We can relax knowing that, whatever crazy circumstances life throws at us, whatever suffering we must endure, God is working in everything for our good (Romans 8:28). We have inner peace through the storms of life. We live fearlessly through fearful circumstances (Psalm 23:4).

This gives us a life of Autonomous Freedom. We are free to give, free to serve others, free to hold the things of this world loosely. We, in freedom not in fear, take responsibility for our actions and their consequences. In freedom we act proactively, meeting our own needs where possible, and it feels good. A job well done, a healthy sense of accomplishment.

This is the outcome when we rightly depend on God for his part and take rightful responsibility for our part. The hallmark of this godly balance is that belief “I’m OK because I’m loved by my God. He makes my world work in spite of my circumstances.” And because “I’m OK”, we live in the glorious freedom of not fearing failure, of taking the risk of daring to be all that God has created and called us to be.

On the other hand, when we mix these up, things don’t work out so well. Often we get it backwards – even Christians. Out of our wounding, we try to take responsibility for God’s part while blaming him for the logical consequences of failures in our part.

When we take responsibility for being loved and for making our world work, we live in Fearful Idolatry. We take responsibility for our own well being and security, so we have none. The hallmark of this ungodly imbalance is, “I’m OK if _____.” Fill in the blank. This is where addictions and co-dependencies come from.

Then, instead of glorious autonomous freedom, we live in Depraved Defiance. We blame God for the negative consequences of our unhealthy dependencies. The more we try to control our world, the less control we have, like sand slipping through our clenched fist. And, living in fear of failure, we don’t dare take a risk on our God-given dreams. Instead, paralyzed by a false sense of entitlement, we just drift along expecting happiness to drop in our lap, and blaming God when it doesn’t.

The way out of fearful idolatry and depraved defiance is through honest confession and repentance. Then giving the best part of our day over to intimacy with Jesus (in prayer, worship, and reading our Bible – just hanging out with God for bit each day without an agenda) is the path to relaxed security and autonomous freedom.

Kudos to Dr William Clark from The Lay Counselor Institute for these excellent concepts.

So how about you? Are you living in the autonomous freedom of relaxed security, in the depraved defiance that comes from fearful idolatry, or, like us, on a journey from one to the other? Are you responsible for being loved? Who makes your world work? Tell us your story in the comments or shoot us an email with the Contact Us link above. We’d love to hear from you. And please, if you think this would benefit someone else, share it on Facebook, Twitter or your favorite social media (share buttons for just about everything below).

So what do you think about all this?

Getting to Point B

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Sometimes we approach our healing as a destination rather than as a process. “If I can only get from Point A to Point B, my life’ll be fixed!” Point B might be a valid goal:

  • “Fix my marriage.”
  • “Stop my addiction.”
  • “Not be depressed anymore.”
  • “Control my anger.”
  • “Have a good relationship with my spouse, child, parent, sibling, boss, etc.”

Because we think our healing is in the destination, we come at it with a wrong perspective:

The False Belief: “I have to get to Point B.” Maybe, maybe not. Being at Point A may not be the real problem, and Point B may not be the real solution. Maybe there’s something deeper going on.

The False Myth: “There is a path to Point B.” The truth is, Point B may be unattainable, especially if it involves relationships with others. Healthy relationships depend on the other person as much as they depend on you, and they might not be willing to go there. What do you do then?

The Unyielding Demand: “You, O Pastor/Counselor/Friend/Whatever, are going to get me to Point B.” Already setting up the blame shift if it doesn’t work…

The False Formula: “I know I have a part to play.” When someone says that, they really mean, “If I do the steps, I’ll get to Point B.” Maybe, maybe not; life’s just not that simple.

The Big Denial: “I can get to Point B without looking at my heart, or my story, or my sin.” Good luck with that.

The Secret Fear: “What if it doesn’t work?” Or what if Point B’s not all it’s cracked up to be? What if I get there and I’m still miserable?

The reality is, God’s much more interested in the process than he is in the destination. The ends do not justify the means.

Romans 5:3-5 says, “We glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”

It’s the character and the hope that God is after. Another word for hope is faith. It’s our faith in God, that he’s enough for us even while we’re stuck at Point A, that he’s trying to build in us through this process.

Here’s the right perspective to approach healing (and life) with:

The Truth: “There may not be a path to Point B.” But I’m trusting God anyway.

The Hope: “I will be different whether my circumstances are or not.” And it’s who I am, and who God is, that makes the difference of whether I can thrive in these circumstances or not.

The Right Question: “What are you up to, God?” What does God want to do in me through these circumstances?

If we approach our life with the right perspective, we will suddenly realize God has taken us to Point C!

Kudos to Dr William Clark from The Lay Counselor Institute for this excellent material.

Does this strike a chord with you? Tell us in the comments or shoot us an email with the Contact Us link above. And if you think this would be valuable to someone else, please share it on Facebook or your favorite social media (share buttons below). We look forward to hearing from you!

The Hobbit

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I love the hobbit Bilbo Baggins. Do you know the story of how Gandalf the wizard crashed into his life and took him on an adventure? Good old Bilbo liked the comfort of his hobbit hole and did not want to leave his familiar Shire. He said that he had always been “respectable.” I just love him! I totally understand the comfort of the familiar and boring…. Yes, boring!

You know, when the Lord Jesus crashes into our lives and takes us on an adventure it’s not predictable or boring. The Christian life is anything but boring. Graham Cooke says that the church is boringly predictable. We’ve got it backwards! Our safety should be in the predictability of the character of a loving God who is good. All the time. Our security should be in the character of a God who never changes.

Storms will hit our lives. We cannot depend on people or circumstances. The world we live in holds so much uncertainty. If we focus on the bad things in the news we could all go crazy.

When the world around us is crazy, when our lives are spinning out of control, as humans we yearn for stability. But we put our trust in things that are not stable. In fact, they could be damaging or at least not healthy.

We can put our trust in finances or our checkbook. But the Bible tells us that riches are fleeting. (I am not saying that we shouldn’t work or use wisdom in our finances).

We can put our trust in that wonderful man or woman God has (or maybe hasn’t) brought into our lives. But the problem is, no one person or one thing can ever be what God is meant to be. He is the one we trust in when all else fails around us. He is the one who has promised to never leave us or forsake us. He is the one with the wisdom to figure out all the mess around us.

Will you trust this God who sent his son Jesus who loves you so much? Will you trust him with your life and your future? Will you trust him with your dreams? Will you trust him with your pain?

This loving God knew you in your mother’s womb. He knew all your days before you were born. He can carry you through the darkest days. He knows the good and the bad and he desires healing for you. He has the blueprint for your life.

Let’s go on the adventure God has for us and trust him.

What are your thoughts? I would love to hear from you.