Where Is Your Faith, Part 2

God tested us through various trials by fire a few years ago, and one heavy-duty trial was our oldest daughter's health which crashed suddenly and severely during her study abroad program in Australia. She'd reacted strongly to mango just prior to leaving, and the ER doctor put her on one week of prednisone to control the allergic reaction. The prednisone crashed her health in a severe way that continued to escalate over the following weeks until suddenly she was allergic to most foods. Her first week in Australia she went to the emergency room two times with breathing difficulties and a swollen throat. In a nut shell, we were worried sick about her. And thankfully, we did not realise that this would be a 2-year-long agonizing road of multiple health issues.

One night in particular I remember laying awake fighting tooth and nail with worries and fears for her safety - and even for her very life. I prayed non-stop in the dark and on my bed and talked my way through the book of John reminding myself of WHO my Jesus is. He is my light. He is my bread. He is my gate and door and way. He is my very life. Until finally I was able to surrender to sleep.

I am so grateful that my God is every-where-present, and even though I could not be right there with her - as my mommy's heart was clamoring to be - I knew that I could trust Him to carry her and be her pillar of strength and support. Like He was my staunch support.

John 9:3, in talking about the man born blind, says, "...this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life." God put Himself on display through this trial by fire in our lives, and through our active choice to trust and rely on Him in it.

That next morning while journaling in my devotions, God gave me the following thoughts on faith to encourage me and remind me of how He works in our lives to develop and grow-up our faith. In Psalm 119 the psalmist says that it is good for me to be afflicted, that I may learn His statutes. God uses various situations and trials, whatever their shape or form, and they are designed to make me, not break me or destroy me. It has been permitted by God to mold me into the image of His Son, not to disfigure me for life. He does it for the sake of proving my faith....

This concept of 'proving' my faith made me think of a bridge. A bridge is designed and built to certain specs, and stress tests are conducted on the structure. But the bridge span doesn't then just sit there, being strong and fully equipped, but in-active; it is actually pressed into service. It is used. It is proven - by cars and trucks in massive amounts driving across its structure, depending on its span to hold sturdy and strong and to support the vehicles from one point to the next. The bridge is made useful. It is not just ornamental or a bridge-in-theory; it is a bridge in practice and in truth. It is there when needed, not buckling under pressure or failing to be what it was created to be.

Our faith, like a bridge, is pressed into service, to be useful in life, not just a 'theory' or idea untested, untried. Our faith is proven when it holds up under use and pressure and under the ferocious daily 'commute' of life and its fiery trials! Faith is not just a lovely pearl in our necklace of Christian spiritual gifts, worn on special occasions, but it is hardy, and made to get down in the trenches of life with us and support us in our endeavor to walk the walk and live the life that God has set before us.

God gives us faith - and then He grows it up. He matures it; He tests it.

He directs life to give us pop-quizzes: How ya gonna do here? And here? He wants us to be proficient in our use of this tool of faith; to be quicker to bring it to bear on the problems at hand. Quicker to lift our eyes in faith to Jesus no matter the swirling and storming waters of life. We know the One who is in control of all things. So, Where is Your Faith?

Where Is Your Faith, Part 1

[Excerpts from Martin-Lloyd Jones’ amazing book Spiritual Depression.]

There is a difference between the original gift of faith and the walk of faith, or the life of faith, which comes subsequently. God starts us off in the Christian life - and then we have to walk it. The faith He provides is part of our tool chest for life; He’s given us everything we need for life and godliness. (2 Pet.1:3)

Jesus and His disciples were at sea in a boat. Jesus fell asleep and a storm arose that frightened the disciples. They rushed to awaken Him - don’t you care that we are about to perish? Jesus rebukes the wind and raging water and calms the sea. And then, “He said unto them, ‘Where is your faith?’” (Lk.8:22-25)

He rebukes them for being in such a state of agitation and terror and alarm. It is very wrong for a Christian ever to be in such a condition. I do not care what the circumstances may be, the Christian should never be agitated, the Christian should never be beside himself like this, the Christian should never be at his wit’s end, the Christian should never be in a condition in which he has lost control of himself.

A Christian should never, like the worldly person without Christ, be frantic, alarmed, not knowing what to do. A Christian should not look like the world does when going through a trial - coming undone, falling apart, totally freaked out. We are not meant to be carried away by our feelings - whatever they are. These disciples were lacking in self-control. They needed to get a grip on themselves and their runaway feelings.

Anything that comes across our path and puts us in difficulty, at once shows whether we believe in Him and trust in Him, by our response and reaction to it. We must never allow ourselves to be agitated and disturbed whatever the circumstances because to do so implies a lack of faith, a lack of trust, a lack of confidence in our blessed Lord and God.

Scripture is full of examples of ‘the trial of faith.’ Take the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. Every one of them was ‘tried.’ God gives the gift of faith and then the faith is tried. Tested. “Though you are in heaviness for a season” because of certain circumstances, the object of that is “that the trial of your faith which is more precious than of gold that perishes, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” (1 Pet.1:6-7) That is the theme of all the Scriptures.

Our faith will be tried. God permits storms, He permits difficulties, He permits the wind to blow and the billows to roll, and everything may seem to be going wrong and we ourselves to be in jeopardy. As His people we are not protected from all ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.’ Not at all. We are living in the same world as everybody else.

“In the world,” says our Lord, “you shall have tribulation but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” (Jn.16:33) “Be of good cheer” - yes, but remember that you will have tribulation. “…we must through much tribulation enter the Kingdom of God.” (Acts14:22)

You observe our Lord’s question: Where is your faith? It seems to imply that He knows perfectly well that they have faith. The question He asks them is, “Where is it?” You have got faith - but where is it at this moment? It ought to be here - where is it? That gives us a key to understanding the nature of faith.

Faith is not a mere matter of feeling. It couldn’t be, as one’s feelings in this kind of condition can be very changeable. Faith is also not something that acts automatically or magically. If it did, these men would never have been in trouble, would never have been agitated and alarmed. But faith is not like that.

Faith is an activity. It is something that has to be exercised. It does not come into operation by itself. Where is your faith means, “Why are you not taking your faith and applying it to this position? To this circumstance? To this trial?”

Faith is a refusal to be controlled by the situation. Faith is a refusal to panic, come what may. Browning’s definition of faith: Perpetual unbelief kept quiet. Faith is unbelief kept down, kept quiet. These men allowed the situation to grip them; they became panicky. Faith, however, is a refusal to allow that. It says - I am not going to be controlled by these circumstances - I am in control. So you take charge of yourself, pull yourself up; you control yourself. Then remind yourself of what you believe, what you know. Remind yourself of truth.

Faith says, okay - I see the billowing and raging storm - BUT. But what? But God! But the Lord Jesus Christ! All things may seem against me to drive me to despair, but I know this - I know that God loves me and sent His Son to die for me.

Where is your faith? - You have got it, why don’t you apply it, why don’t you bring all you know to bear on this situation, why don’t you focus it on this particular problem? Nothing can happen to you but what He allows. God permits that thing to happen to you because it is ultimately for your good.

Having applied your faith - you then hold on. You just refuse to be moved. The enemy will come and attack you, the water will seem to be pouring into the boat - but you say, let the worst come. You stand on your faith. You stand. You believe. You rest in God.

And in the midst of this, your faith is purified. It is established. It is stretched and strengthened and proven true.

Morning Walks

My early morning walks take me through the blueberry fields surrounding our house in the country. The early morning crisp dew-wet grass and the tangy fresh smell of green things is so delightful and fragrant to my soul. Rounded, soft hills surround me, and red barns, distant secluded houses nestled in trees, and crops with their various colors of soft green and pale yellow create a patchwork of such lovely design.

Birds sing and flit about and watch me warily as I walk along past their nesting places. Killdeer, robins, cowbirds, yellow finches, red-tail hawks, starlings and sparrows all dance and hop around in the joy of fresh morning. Birds always fill my heart with singing.

I filled the bird feeders yesterday for the first time this spring. The incessant rain clouded over my realization that we are well into spring and even beginning early summer; you sure couldn't tell by the weather. Red house finches and yellow finches discovered the feeders by late morning. I'm always amazed by how quickly the news travels to the other birds. They must have quite a chatty system going.

This summer we have about 7 hanging baskets of flowers in the front and back yards. Ruby throated humming birds are prolific this year - yea.

Well, I really have nothing profound to say in this post except that I was so filled up with joy in the Lord as I beheld His beautiful creation this morning. I think part of the joy was seeing the sun for the first time in weeks. I generally do not mind the rain, but enough is enough already, and it is amazing what a little sunshine will do to lift one's heart aloft in happiness.

Godly Labor

Childbirth is attended with much preparation, focused attention, and purpose: to bring that new baby into the world and into your family. You take childbirth classes, learn a special way to breath (hee, hee, hee, hoo), eat well, exercise, read mother-baby books, assemble the nursery nest, dream, and wait, wait, wait.

And when you are laboring to push your baby out, every bone and sinew and muscle is involved - your whole heart and soul is involved - in that one high and holy intense purpose. You want that baby OUT. You are not merely a disinterested bystander but a totally all-there participant. I’m sure sometimes you wish you could disembody yourself and watch instead of doing the labor required to hatch your baby chick! But like it or not, you are totally immersed in the experience.

You are to have that same focused high and holy attention and purpose, naturally given to the delivery and birth of your baby, and you are to apply it to ‘forming Christ’ in them.

Paul says to the church in Galatia: “My dear children for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you…” (Gal.4:19)

Think about what Paul is saying. He is laboring, toiling, struggling, sweating, and striving industriously to bring them along in Christ, to grow them up in Christ, to make them like Christ!

You give such alert and all-there attention to bringing your little one into the world. In the same way, give your all to forming and shaping Christ in them, to raising them in the Lord and in His word. Apply that heart and energy to forming Christ in them throughout their babyhood, toddlerhood, childhood, adolescence, teen-hood and beyond.

This vital upbringing and training often falls to the wayside or is delegated to the scattered, occasional hit-and-miss. How then can Christ be formed in your children? I challenge all of us to evaluate our lives. Is the important, most important relationship with God squeezed out by the frantic, frenetic living of life?

We can be diligently faithful to get our kids to every sport practice and game, every music lesson and recital, but fail to diligently and faithfully bring them to God to feast on His word. Think about that. Evaluate. Eliminate.

If raising them in Christ and in His word is truly most important, then it should have daily precedence in our lives. Coming to God’s word with our children should be as daily and for-sure regular as sleeping, eating, and brushing our teeth.

To develop a love for God and His word demands taking time, coming to rest, and not just a quick slow-down, but a stopping. The years that your children are in your home - all the way through high school - are vital in establishing this vital routine and expectation in their lives. This diligence of coming to God is at the heart of knowing Him, of becoming like Him. Develop this habit and hunger in your children. God’s word speaks and works and they are never too young to benefit from the banquet available to them in the Bible.

Confessions of a Foodie Family

We take our food seriously in this family - we are dedicated, passionate foodies (and drinkies).

Our lives spin and gyrate around food. Good food - snacky food - gourmet food - chocolate food - we really aren’t that picky. But we are religiously firm believers in the mantra: God-gave-us-all-things-to-enjoy. That’s a command, isn’t it? So we are busy about the enjoying of ‘all things’, which means we are diabolically good at coming up with reasons to celebrate something…anything.

We are really not all that picky about the pretext we come up with to justify our ritual imbibing. Birthdays help a lot; weeklong or month-long birthday revelries are respectable. Graduations are good. So are anniversaries. But then we are left to our own strategic devices; believe me, we can get imaginative. It’s the first Friday of the month; the last Friday of the month; the beginning of a new month; a favorite month. Get the idea?

Planning a car trip only partially entails motel reservations and planning the route on our map. Mainly it involves the gleeful discussion of what special snacks and drinks we’ll take along. Admit it, as soon as those wheels start rolling, you want a bright yellow peanut M&M, too, right along with your chai tea latte. Right? Now do you know why we like road trips?

Our holidays start and end with meal planning, dessert making, food consuming. Our advent celebrations are undergirded with special treats of cinnamon dolce twisted pastry sticks or Belgium chocolate or homemade coconut joys or garlic flavored Boursin cheese on crackers.

Hubby will ask - “Are you ready to start celebrating advent season?” He isn’t asking if I have researched special Bible passages or whether I have all the candles I need or whether I have the advent wreath unpacked and arranged - no - he’s asking if I have the FOOD we need to celebrate. Advent hardly goes forward without these things. Seriously.

We play games as a family and watch movies all together while propped on our bellies lies a luscious bowl of oiled and salted popcorn. Or we pass around a couple of deluxe chocolate bars. You gotta try the new coconut white chocolate bar or the blueberry chocolate bar. We’ve done research. Num.

I can hardly even read a book without eating. And I read a lot of books. I’ve always thought that if I gave up reading, I’d be skinny as a thin line notebook. But I love reading - I could read my life away - and that becomes much more plausible and excusable if not only am I engrossed in a catering mystery or a who-done-it book, but I am also eating breakfast. Or lunch. Or my afternoon pick-me-up snack. I read to eat. Or, do I eat to read? - One of life’s large and looming dilemmas.

It begins to look like we foodies may even play games and watch movies to eat. Even celebrate advent to eat. Go on road trips to eat.

One of life’s real joys is stumbling across a fellow foodie. Is that you?

Marinated Friendships

Much interaction occurs in this day and age, but are we really corresponding? Are we really communicating? Email, Twitter, Face Book, Instant Messaging, Texting - etc. - all ways to instantly stay in close contact. You can twitter the world at large that you are eating broccoli, ironing a shirt, trimming your toenails, studying for a test, or petting your cat - and said world is very moved and stimulated. So we must think, because millions of such messages flood the wires and our email accounts and we flatter ourselves that we have ‘communicated.’ Really connected. Stayed. In. Touch.

But is this real communication? Have we really made a soul connection? Touched each other’s lives in a meaningful way? Encouraged each other in the midst of life and its upheavals and challenges? Is this correspondence time invested with a rich result?

We are reduced to correspondence in our relationships due to the fact that we are such a mobile society that today’s dear friend is tomorrows long-distance friend and next years distant memory. Our lives fill with dissolved, abandoned, and discarded friendships like so much dead wood stacked in the recesses of our minds and hearts.

We’ve lost the skill and time commitment and energy that is required to slowly marinate a friendship in meaningful, time-investing ways. The phrase ‘stay-in-touch’ implies a meaningful heart-to-heart sort of connection. But to maintain this requires time and special care, and it is just as much true for friends in close proximity as it is for long-distance friendships. We cannot afford to get sluggish or slothful with the meaningful efforts needed to maintain a relationship.

To stay in touch, you must see it as your personal responsibility. You cannot rely on the other to do the hard work of correspondence while you sit back in indolent ease. You must make the effort, or believe me, this friendship will die on the vine even full of the ripe fruit of possibility for a long-lasting bountiful and blessed friendship. Because people take love and care. They need nurturing. Negligence does not a beautiful friendship make. Negligence does not a beautiful friendship keep.

The King's Own Face, Pt 2

"HOLINESS" by JC Ryle

As I continued reading, I came to Ryle's wonderful words about how Jesus treated His disciples, and I decided to add that to my search as I read through the gospels. Jesus is a lovely Savior - so perfect in how He lives and handles the people around Him. We have a perfect example to follow, a perfect spiritual Mentor in Christ. Be encouraged, not only in the kind of Savior YOU have, but in following the example He sets of how we should treat one another.

"The whole of our Lord's conduct towards His disciples on earth deserves close consideration. It throws a beautiful light on the compassion and longsuffering that there is in Him. No master surely ever had scholars so slow to learn their lessons as Jesus had in the apostles. No scholars surely ever had so patient and forbearing a teacher as the apostles had in Christ. "

"At no time of our Lord's ministry did they seem to comprehend fully the object of His coming into the world. The plainest words and clearest warnings from their Master of what was going to befall Him seemed to have had no effect on their minds.... But what do you see in our Lord's behavior towards these disciples all through His ministry? You see nothing but unchanging pity, compassion, kindness, gentleness, patience, longsuffering and love. He does not cast them off for their stupidity. He does not reject them for their unbelief. He does not dismiss them for ever for cowardice. He teaches them as they are able to bear. He leads them step by step, as a nurse does an infant when it first begins to walk."

"He cares for the least member of His body, as well as for the greatest. He cares for the babes of His family as well as the grown-up men. All are in His book of life, and all are under His charge. All are given to Him in an everlasting covenant, and He has undertaken, in spite of all weaknesses, to bring every one safe home. Only let a sinner lay hold on Christ by faith, and then, however feeble, Christ's word is pledged to him: 'I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.' He may correct him occasionally in love. He may gently reprove him at times. But He will never, never give him up."

"That same Lord and Savior who bore with the disciples is ready and willing to bear with you. If you stumble, He will raise you. If you err, He will gently bring you back. If you faint, He will revive you."

Wow. Again, what a beautiful Savior we have in Christ. So, as I venture forth to study the gospels, I want to have eyes to see deeply how Christ loved and walked with His little beloved flock. It will be comforting to see, on my own behalf, and inspiring to be challenged onward in my love for the flock of God that I personally rub shoulders with in life. Onward.