The Kingdom is a bit of a mystery, like just about everything I’ve encountered while following Jesus.
I love mystery. The feeling that there is something bigger than I am. Something more curious than I can understand. There’s still mystery in the earth. There are even now entirely new species being discovered. Some of them are in places where it seems impossible for anything to live, such as the deepest trench in the ocean. A place where technology has only recently been able to go due to the great pressure exerted by the water at those depths. And yet, there are fish down there in that deep, dark place—a thing no one could conceive of. They have also recently discovered that the mysterious platypus, the mammal that lays eggs and defies classification as there is no other creature like it, has fur that is hollow like the feathers of a bird.
Exploring mystery is the land for the curious. The fearless. For those who are not afraid of being uncomfortable or of expanding their understanding. Mystery is for those who are a bit like children. Children move from place to place exploring, not really trying to get from point A to point B, but trying to experience the landscape in every way they can. Trying to understand the scope of the world around them. Taking in through touching the unknown, looking for the thing they’ve never seen before, even tasting the world to the dismay of parents everywhere.
What a grand model to follow in exploring the mysterious kingdom of God, wandering the spaces that God fills. The places He’s made to meet with us. Seeing this life with new eyes. Looking for evidence of Him. Of His creativity. His goodness. His love. His beauty.
You cannot take God out of the earth. He’s placed evidence of Himself in all of creation for us to find. To explore. To discover and to be transformed by that discovery.
It makes me think of George Washington Carver. The man who asked God for His mysteries. The man God gave the mystery of the peanut. The man, born a slave, discovered over 300 ways to use a peanut and initiated three new industries from his discoveries. The man who walked in the woods with God every morning exploring creation and discovered that you could see eternity in a flower. That is the way I want to walk, explore, and discover God’s kingdom.
This is my quest. I feel the invitation to come see what He’s placed in this kingdom for me to discover. The joy of the journey. The wonder that curiosity inspires. The peace of knowing He’s good and the journey is one of exploring His goodness and finding my way home.
I believe our curiosity about God and His ways delights Him and opens His heart to answer the questions in our hearts. This innocent expectation that He is here, that He is willing to show Himself, is the faith of a child that leads us into the mystery of the kingdom.
Exploration is a worthy endeavor and one filled with experimentation. Trying the things God’s said we can do. Believing in the things He’s said we can have. Simply taking Him at His word and wandering forward in expectation toward something we long for but have not quite seen yet.
Every morning I awake breathing air I didn’t create. Every day I drink water formed in an earth I had no part in making. Yet, utterly dependent upon air and water for life. A picture of dependency I do not recognize or acknowledge. Perhaps, like my dependency on God. Created to depend upon Him, yet not seeing it as a way of living or acknowledging my need. My need for God is great, maybe even more significant than my need for air.
Perhaps the most subtle form of rebellion is my failure to embrace dependency upon God. Thinking I am self-made. Something special on my own. Thinking I did life my way and did it pretty well. Sort of like King Nebuchadnezzar, surveying His kingdom and claiming his hand had created it all. Or the flip side, thinking I can’t do anything right or very well. But in both scenarios, I think I am doing it all. That everything is up to me and I don’t think about depending on God.
But what do I have that I haven’t been given? Not my breath, my ability to think, any of my innate skills, or even my body’s capacity to move. It all came from the mercy and grace of God.
I didn’t create my brain. I had nothing to do with its ability or capacity, yet I take credit for everything I create or accomplish. Even my desire to know God, to be free, to want more—desires all pointing to the truth that there is more—but God planted even these desires in me. He put eternity in the hearts of men. He gave each one of us a measure of faith. He causes me to will and to do of His good pleasure. He is the author and finisher of my faith. I didn’t do any of it. It wasn’t me.
God resists the proud, says James 4:6, but He gives grace to the humble. Perhaps I should look at the areas of my life where I resist depending upon God and see where I need to turn around and embrace who He wants to be in me, to me, and through me. And as I pray, “Create in me a clean heart, Oh God.” I see that a clean heart is another thing I can’t do. Another thing that I am dependent upon God to work in my life.
TRANSFORMATION
I can’t transform myself. Or heal myself. Personal empowerment and self-sufficiency are cultural values. But they do not lead to true transformation. Behavior modification is simply that: changing how I act, but it doesn’t address my heart. Or my spirit. Or truly, even my soul. Only God can bring truth into the inward parts of me. Only the Spirit of God can heal my heart.
His transforming power comes when I choose to depend upon Him. When I come closer to Him as it storms in my life. When I come closer because I am afraid of the circumstances and darkness surrounding me. When I lean on Him as my strength fails. Then He does it all. I’ve experienced so many blessings that didn’t require any help from me. Everything I need is in Him.
Walking with Jesus is not about doing or being good. It’s not about being strong. It is about letting Him come close to us. Depending upon all that He wants to be for us. Leaning on Him to see all that He dreamed of doing with us and receiving that goodness into our lives. I don’t transform myself. That’s His work. He works within me. All my rightness, my righteousness, comes from Jesus. From the completed work of the Cross. His full intentions for the dream He had of me were set in place when He rose from the dead. I didn’t do it. He works the fullness of His salvation in me.
But He doesn’t act without my participation. Without my understanding that I depend upon Him. His promises, His gifts do not move into my life without my “Yes” and “Amen.” Without my response, “Be it Unto Me according to Your Word.”
THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
My walk for a while now has been a discovery of the right questions to ask God. There are some He doesn’t answer, but some He loves to tell me all about. He’s never answered my ‘Why’ questions. “Why did that happen? Why didn’t you do it this way? Why don’t you fix that problem?”
I feel those questions are from my head and may be irrelevant to abundant life. Or they are questions from my pride perhaps, thinking God needs to explain Himself to my brain as though it’s even big enough to hold the thoughts of God.
But He does answer my heart questions such as,
“What do you want me to know about this thing I’m facing?”
“Will You work in me to change the part that resists You? The part that won’t receive from You?”
“Will You show me the lies I believe that keep me from seeing how close you are, how good you are?”
“Will You show me what to do with the lie that I am responsible for my salvation?” “Will You create a clean heart in me?”
GOOD GIFTS
All good gifts come from above. From God my Father. From Heaven.
Yet in all His work in my life, the only thing He asks me to bring is my “yes” and “amen.” My agreement with His work. He simply asks me to place my faith in Him. To believe in His ability, capacity, and desire to make me whole, free, and living an abundant life. And He asks me to see I depend upon Him. That it wasn’t me who authored the amazing light and life that grows inside my heart and saves my soul. I didn’t do it. God did. And He always will.
REFERENCE
1 Corinthians 4:7
For who regards you as superior or what sets you apart as special? What do you have that you did not receive [from another]? And if in fact you received it [from God or someone else], why do you boast as if you had not received it [but had gained it by yourself]?
Ecclesiastes 3:11
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men, yet they cannot fathom the work that God has done from beginning to end.
Romans 12:3
For by the grace given to me, I tell everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought, but to think with sober judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.
Philippians2:13
for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.
Hebrews 12:2
Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
James 4:6
But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:“God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble
Psalm 51:10
Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.
2 Corinthians 1:20
For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.
Psalm 62:5-8
I depend on God alone; I put my hope in him. He alone protects and saves me; he is my defender, and I shall never be defeated. My salvation and honor depend on God; he is my strong protector; he is my shelter.
Trust in God at all times, my people. Tell him all your troubles, for he is our refuge.
Psalm 73:26
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
John 15:5
I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
Isaiah 40:29
He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.
Ephesians 2:8-9
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.
James 1:17
Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows
In this past year of mourning my husband Mike’s passing I’ve learned some things about pain. It never occurred to me there could be anything good come out of suffering. Most of my life has been spent actively working to avoid pain, but as I followed Jesus into this place of mourning I discovered new things about myself. New things about God.
I saw how much bigger He is than I imagined. How much deeper His love is for me than I ever knew. How much higher His thoughts are than I can understand. Without Him alongside me, teaching me, I would never know how He thinks and what He wants to share with me about who He is.
Darkness & Light
Even darkness is not dark to You,
And the night is as bright as the day.
Darkness and light are alike to You.
Psalm 139:12 NASB
God sees in the dark. I, on the other hand, don’t know what is in the black unknown. I don’t know how to navigate what I cannot see. In the pain of losing all my planned tomorrows, I don’t know how to go forward. I don’t know where the new path begins.
What I’ve discovered is that the new path is the same as the old one. It’s still about the simplicity of following Jesus wherever He leads. He’s never told me the exact map of my future. He’s only told me He’s given me one day at a time and that I should follow Him well in this day. And if I stay close to Him, listening, it doesn’t matter if I can see in the dark because He can and with His voice He will lead me through it.
Bread & Water
I stumbled across a couple of Bible verses:
And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity
and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide
himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher.
And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying,
“This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right
or when you turn to the left.
Isaiah 30:20-21 ESV
The words spoke to me about how I can approach everything with curiosity and expectation. Even pain. Even suffering. My Teacher can be found in affliction or adversity. And when I find Him He will speak, leading me in the direction I’m to go.
For most of my life I have not spent any time looking for where Jesus is hiding amongst the challenges, fearful circumstances, or painful experiences. Instead, I’ve only tried to pray it away, to manipulate or bargain with God to fix the problem. But in my experience of saying goodbye to Mike, I found a place of surrender that’s bigger than the pain. Not surrender to the pain, not giving up and falling into despair, but taking the problem, the fearful imaginings, and the pain and giving them to Jesus. Looking into His face and asking Him where He is in this place. Asking where He’s hidden food for me in this ordeal. His word is absolutely true. He does not lie. My Teacher will not be hidden from me if I am looking for Him.
But If I only focus on the circumstances or adversity and that’s all I can see, then I’m not looking. I’m not listening. I will not hear His sweet voice of direction. I won’t feel His arms of comfort. I will have allowed this pain to become bigger than God until it fills my world and pushes out everything good.
I’ve been tempted to give up to the pain. I’m not sure why that feels so compelling at times. Maybe it’s just the enemy’s way of seducing us into a place without God. A place without hope. Even though a life without Mike wasn’t what I planned and doesn’t look like what I expected, there is goodness. There is grace. There are still great mysteries in God to explore. Mysteries that pulse with a life that never dies. Mysteries that explode with wondrous beauty and that feed me until I am full.
Bread and water are food. They sustain life. They are nourishing, leading me to think that what I’m sure has come to destroy me will actually feed me if I find my Teacher, Jesus, in this place. So I let my curiosity come forward into the problem. Into the pain.
Where is Waldo?
It reminds me of the Where is Waldo (Wally) illustrations with pictures of hundreds of faces, but Waldo’s face is the only one you search to find. You know he’s there because that’s the point. You know the artist scattered Waldo’s face in various places throughout the drawing for you to find.
When I begin hunting for Waldo, I’m not looking at any of the other faces. I am only focusing on one face. And I find him in the most unlikely places. I find him everywhere when I am looking.
That’s how I want to walk in life. Looking for Jesus in everything. Training my eyes and heart to be constantly searching. Knowing He has placed Himself in every adverse situation for me to find. For me to be nourished. For me to grow in my trust and dependence upon Him. To expand my curiosity and wonder of who He is, how He works, and how He loves.
I think God likes to work with us because it’s one way we can get to know Him.
Like friends who like to be together, accomplishing something side-by-side is a way of enjoying each other’s company. Learning new things about each other’s character, sense of humor, and personality.
Sometimes when people ask if they can help it doesn’t mean they don’t think you’re not fit for the task. It just means they want to get to know you better. That they like you and want to spend time with you.
Working with others is a way of learning about giving and receiving. Letting someone else into your life. Sharing ideas. Gaining another perspective. Building a relationship.
God created us. We are designed in His image. He knows we are capable of so much. Even more than we know. But He enjoys being with us. Getting to know us in relationship as we work and talk with Him. Listening to His ideas.
He never planned to be a God who stands far off knowing his loved child simply by observing rather than interacting with us.
I don’t think we quite understand how big God’s heart is for us. How much He longs to be with us. How much He wants to be invited into all areas of our lives. How precious and valuable we are to Him.
He is a person with a personality and His heart hurts when we reject his invitations. As Jesus wept over Jerusalem because they would not look and see Jesus as God’s greatest invitation ever made to mankind for relationship. I believe Jesus wept over the pain of being rejected and He wept over what He knew it would cost them. He loved them so much and longed for a relationship with them that they would not choose.
When Jesus asks us to give Him the weight of our worries and concerns He’s really asking us to invite Him into our lives to walk with us and work with us. The One who brings a different perspective to our work. Who wants to share in our lives deeply. Who wants to know us as a friend and have us know Him that way too.
So the next time someone asks if they can help you, look up and see beyond the words to the longing and invitation to share in your life that it really is.
And when God nudges you to invite Him into your project see His heart asking you if He can come closer. Asking if He can be your friend.
Luke 19:41-44 NIV
As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.
The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls.
They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”
Is 60:1-2 TPT
Rise up in splendor and be radiant, for your light has dawned, and Yahweh’s glory now streams from you!
Look carefully! Darkness blankets the earth, and thick gloom covers the nations,
but Yahweh arises upon you and the brightness of his glory appears over you!
I woke up this morning thinking about all the people around me who are expressing the Lord in some creative way. Those verses in Isaiah no longer felt like a mysterious promise of something in the future. I saw His glory rising on His children everywhere. All those who have been seeking and obedient to step out, to press on, to not give up their creative work even when they feel their gift is small, their offering inferior.
As you have given yourselves, your time, and your gifts to God, He is raising you up. As you lift the name of Jesus, the name above every name, He is being glorified.
Like the moon lights the darkness with the reflected light of the sun, so we reflect the glory of God in the despair that covers the earth.
Art speaks. It tells stories in the language of the heart. Each creative work carries the voice of God. As trees, rivers, and flowers express God’s beauty, creativity, and love, so our art speaks light in a world filled with sadness and fear.
It’s not the beauty or perfection of the work as measured by a critic’s standard that makes our art valuable—it is the fingerprint of God; the heart of God coming through our brush, our pen, or musical instrument. When His voice lives in me, in you, when He is at home in us, everything we create is uniquely ours and God’s. No one can produce the expression of God that I do or that you do. God is to you and through you something the world is crying to see, to experience in their hunger, fear, and pain.
HIS GLORY
I do not argue the technical merits, features, or importance of a work of art or piece of writing or music, but one thing I know. If God is in you, then God is in your art. He is in your creative work. The Spirit of God living in the spirit of you and I, the artists, writers, poets, musicians, sculptors, inventors, and makers of all kinds touches all that we make.
As we send our work out into the world to speak, it shimmers in ways we do not even understand. His glory in you and I and in our work begins to fill the earth. Our art can take God places no person can go. It can touch parts of people’s hearts that they don’t even know exist. Our art can begin to heal wounds people aren’t even aware they have. God’s Spirit can speak so loudly and clearly through our creative works. Which is why it’s critical for us to do this work. To steward our creative calling.
SEEDS
Creating artistic work is a spiritual matter. Its effect can only be measured by God. Its impact can only be delivered by God. I don’t know how to measure or judge God’s outcomes.
Counting seeds in an apple tells me how many trees might grow from this one fruit but it doesn’t tell me how many more apples will grow on all those trees. There is life in the seeds that we have no capacity to see. There is the touch of God’s life within seeds that we have no ability to measure.
That’s how I am with my creative work. I get all excited seeing that I’ve finished something or I get discouraged, wishing I was creating more or better work, while God waits, oh so patiently, for me to plant the seed so He can bring forth the life He’s put within it.
OBEDIENCE
I’m learning to obey this call to create. To honor this gift. To give God time to be with me in my creating. I’m learning to make room for it. Intentionally, giving space in my schedule to create. There’s been a shift in how I think about being creative. I used to struggle to give myself permission to make art. To create stories. But a few months ago, I felt this call became a point of obedience. He was no longer gently coaxing me to follow Him down this path. He was there. Standing in front of me, asking me whether I would write or not. Giving me a choice to decide whether I would follow Him in this. Or not. And I understood how very important artists and their creative activities are to God.
DESIGNED TO CREATE
We are authors, poets, musicians, sculptors, and artists because God calls us that. Long before there were art critics or success standards, there was art. There was God’s expression of creativity and love.
God created us artists before a single day of our lives began. While He was thinking of us with love, God designed us to create. He called us artists. If He has said it is so, who can say it is not? No one. Not even us. We, who are sometimes so unsure of what we carry, cannot say against the voice of God that we are not creative. That we are not artists.
Our art, our works, speak life, peace, and hope because we live with God. He is in our very cells. He is in our creating. We are anointed to create and our works carry God into the world. Wherever it goes, our work speaks to hearts in words only they understand. Heals in ways we cannot imagine. Write, sing, paint, sculpt, draw, craft and create….
No amount of mental stretching makes you fit for the experience.
No exercise in being strong or tough prepares you.
There is no way to know ahead of time just what places of your heart will break.
No way to experience just how deep the loss will be felt until it happens.
If not for Jesus, the loss of my husband, Mike, would be too heavy for me—the weight of its emptiness would crush me.
Mike was my best friend. The one who believed in me long before I did. The champion of all my efforts. The one who made a safe place for me to explore God, writing, and art. He brought daily laughter and kindness into my life. He introduced flowers, bubbles, cartoons, and joy into our life together.
When God called him home in August, my life changed forever.
“The past is prologue.” Shakespeare
Every ending is a beginning. For me, this ending opened a new awareness of God as comforter. Jesus as the lover of my soul. Grace as an empowering force that holds me each day and enables me to see a new future. To live, hopefully, in a new beginning.
Life is a series of changes, transitions. Stretching my faith. Calling me always ever deeper into intimacy with God. Calling me to explore who He is for me and with me and in me.
Increasing my awareness that every breath I take comes from a love for me so deep I can’t even imagine it.
There are new rhythms to explore now. New things to see and draw my focus. I’m walking carefully. Watching where my foot falls next. But always aware God is with me. Still leading. Still making a path before me.
I’m exploring an unknown, unimagined, future from His heart and a call to explore the newness in what looks and feels sometimes like a barren land when I can’t let go of the ending and face fully the beginning.
I’ve been asking God how to mourn as though I don’t* and I see as I mourn any loss—of a dream, a career, a place, a person, I see I don’t move at all if I’ve got one arm holding onto the ending and one reaching toward the beginning.
In faith, with trust, I must fully embrace the new. In surrender and sometimes forgiveness, I must let go and turn my back on the old dream, old place, old way of living.
One day, I felt God nudge me to write down all the goodness I received from Mike. All the things he brought into my life that changed me. I saw the legacy he’d left within me.
I felt the heart of God telling me to take those things and live them for others.
Hunger for what is gone can never be filled. It can only consume me. Immobilize me.
But if in trust I surrender it to the One who knows me best and loves me most, I can face the new beginning.
His plans and thoughts and love do not stop because I experience great loss. Darkness and light are alike to Him. He is with me through the valley of the shadow of death. No matter what kind of death we’ve encountered, His life, light, and love will forever be calling us forward into exploring the unknown mystery of new life.
*1 Cor 7:29-31
29 What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they do not; 30 those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; 31 those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.
“Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” John 3:3 NIV
Every born-again child of God is invited to facing reality in this unseen kingdom.
FACING REALITY
What does facing reality really mean? And I also ask, “whose reality am I facing?”
For over 14 years I worked in community development. My job was to imagine a better future and create a plan for the community to accomplish it. If we cannot imagine or envision a different reality than what darkness shows us then there is not much scope for dreaming or achieving.
In my job with communities I told stories of what they could be because they couldn’t imagine what they had never seen. I found other cities that had been transformed—cities like theirs—and as I shared the ideas, the residents began to have a vision for a different future. A future with hope in it. They could see a new reality.
Every once in awhile people will tell me I need to face reality, by which they mean I must see and be overwhelmed by the darkness as they are. I must become miserable or hopeless or angry because surely any halfway intelligent person can’t look at the world and not fear.
But throughout the Bible we hear God telling His children, His followers, to fear not. To trust and be at peace for He is with them. Every person who met God saw a different reality than the rest of the crowd.
Noah built a boat in a land where some scholars say there had never been rain.
David put a stone in his slingshot imagining, believing in a God who was with him. A God that no one else could see. And truly no one else saw a reality in which David was victorious. But God did.
When people say I must face reality they point to governments, crime, inflation, or some broken local system; some freedom no longer available; some future without hope. I heard someone say that fear is simply imagining a future without God in it. It’s like faith pointed in the wrong direction. Fear is having more belief in the darkness than in the light.
THE RENEWED MIND
“The renewed mind reflects the reality of another world.” I think Bill Johnson said that.
Everything, every single thing, in our ‘real’ world was born from an unseen world. The earth formed, stars created and named, our very breath given by a God we cannot see. By a spiritual Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
There is only One who created everything. Every amazing thing from atoms to the Milky Way – from fish that glow in the dark to our complex human bodies. Every system in creation was designed, given, and is upheld by the God we seek. By the God who loves us.
Out of this unseen realm comes a reality stronger than death. A love that cannot die. Cannot be silenced. Beauty that never ends…every book I will ever write, every vision I will ever see, every plan I will ever need comes from an unseen realm.
This reality with things I can see and touch, things with mass and form is the fragile one. The unseen reality of my Heavenly Father, of my God, is the substantial one. The one that cannot be destroyed. Its elements are eternal. The space-time continuum does not exist in His reality. Only in ours. He made it for us-for our world, a place with scientific restraints where we could begin to know Him. To have relationship with Him. Exploring the boundaries of who He is and who we are and what He’s given us in creation: naming animals, discovering hundreds of ways to employ a peanut – ways God knew when He created the little legume. Hundreds of ways that are designed into every realm of life. Ways He has always wanted to share with us.
THE CALL OF LIFE
My biggest challenge is in thinking I can manage this life and its reality without Him or that I’m on my own and supposed to do it all myself. Not understanding that His heart’s intention was always to unfold it all with me. To share the mysteries of His reality with His children. To let us stand on the mountains and hear how He flung the stars into space. To wander the desert with Him and see springs come alive under our feet. To experience real life. The true life in our Father, our God, that never ends.
His reality always produces life. Everything it touches rises up in answer to the call of life. A life so big, so thick it pulls us into eternity when we choose it. When we choose Jesus we encounter a reality that is full of life and light and beauty. A reality not dependent upon how I am treated, what people say, or what the circumstances around me are doing. The anchor of my reality is held fast in an unseen world.
And yet we look at one another and say, “Be real, darkness is winning.”
I’m not willing to face that reality. I don’t believe in it.
In fact, I choose to not be part of the darkness – to not spread the darkness. I choose to be a seeker of light. God is in everything in creation. Every single creature, every single one of us. We cannot keep Him out or stop Him. He can be found. He wants to be found by us.
In God’s reality you and I are alive and free. We have each become all He dreamed we would. In this reality, where He calls us, woos us with His faithfulness, we bow to our Warrior-King-Savior who fights for us, not the dark thief who only enslaves us with lies. When we face God’s reality, we hardly even see the liar because the light of Jesus is so bright.
Only God knows what is real. Reality is not what we observe or experience or believe to be true based on the only facts we can see. Reality is what God knows to be true. Reality is something I will never see if I don’t ask God to show me what it looks like to Him.
We, God’s children, God’s artists, writers, and poets are the storytellers of His reality. Painting, writing, dreaming, sharing the the glory and hope of the unseen realm with those whose hearts are longing for a place, a future….a God who loves. It is an adventure to face God’s reality. A joyous exploration of real life.
Heavenly Father, what do you want us to know about being connected to your Heavenly realm? to your reality? Where, how, and to whom should we go and share Your future and hope and reality for them?
What I don’t give to God cannot be touched by Him. Cannot be healed by Him.
He cannot show me the truth of any of the things I don’t or won’t give to Him.
Like the boy who gave his bread and fish to Jesus. So trusting and small, yet so big in the hands of Jesus.
I recently stumbled upon a better way of giving my fears to God. Fear has been a driving force nearly all of my life. Someone said that the enemy has only a few things in his arsenal to use against us. Fear, guilt, and shame are the things he uses most effectively to move us off track, keep us distracted, or to immobilize us completely from experiencing God’s good intentions for our lives. That’s been so true in my life.
I’ve been listening to Jamie Winship, the author of Living Fearless. He teaches about our identities and truth-telling with God. About a process of simply bringing our real fears to God and asking Him, “What do you want me to know about this?” This situation, this fear, this circumstance, this confusion, this darkness.
I’ve done something like that in my prayers, but I wasn’t actually asking God what He wanted me to know. I was asking God what He wanted me to know so I could fix the thing. To make the outcome what I wanted it to be. I did not consider He might have a different outcome in mind. Or a different path. Or even a place of peace in the midst of the storm. I was pushing for peace that came because I knew I was going to have my results one day soon.
That is how I discovered truth in the inward parts. I didn’t know those were my thoughts. My motives. I didn’t realize I did not trust in my Heavenly Father’s plan. Not really. Not when I wasn’t seeing anything change in my circumstances. I knew what His blessings should look like and they weren’t coming my way. And I was afraid. Afraid I was too bad, too unfaithful, too broken for Him to give me what He said was mine. Afraid I would always fail. Afraid I would reap all the consequences from a life not lived well. All the consequences that were surely due me.
One morning recently, I heard the Lord say my true challenge was my biggest fear and I had made that fear an idol. I was serving it. Listening to its lies more than I was listening to God’s truth. I was spending time, energy, and resources on trying to change things because I was afraid. I was working in my own strength and with my own reasoning. I even made prayers to God encouraging Him with His own Word to fix the problem as I saw it. I didn’t see the true issue. I needed Him to show me the actual truth, which was that I was bowing down to the god of fear and it was stealing the life, the hope, and my future from me. I was threshing wheat in a cave like Gideon because I was afraid.
I was led to see how Gideon finally accepted the identity word God came to give him. The identity of Mighty Warrior. Gideon’s first act of obedience before he fully experienced his true identity as a mighty warrior was to tear down the idol that had been built because the people feared the gods of the Amorites.
That morning, The Lord asked me to tear down my idol to fear. To serve only Him not fear of unknown outcomes; not fear of others’ opinions; not fear of hidden disasters waiting for me. To serve only The Truth. Jesus. Bow only to Him. To ask Him each day, in each thing I encounter, in each fear that comes what He wants me to know about it. What is His truth in it. And then what He wants me to do with it.
As unbelievable as it sounds, the fear is gone. Nothing changed in my outward circumstances but the white-knuckled grip I had on each moment of every day is gone. There is peace, yes, beyond understanding, filling my heart, spirit, and mind. There is trust that He truly has it all figured out and ALL His intentions for me are good. That He always intended to take me to a promised land not have me die in the desert. I just didn’t believe it when all I saw was an empty landscape covered with gritty sand.
It is not the mountain in front of me that is my problem. It’s my fear of the mountain. It is not the river in my way that is the real challenge. It’s my lack of trust in God’s Word when He said, “Speak to the mountain and it will move.” When He said, “I am taking you to a land of promise that is yours and I will make a path for you, even to parting the sea that stands between you and my promise.”
“Do Not Fear. I will be with you.”
I know now that every time I am afraid I must tell Him and ask Him what He wants me to know about the circumstance. I heard Jamie say that fear simply points to a lie we believe. That was true for me. I believed the lie that God couldn’t want to be good to me when I had so many times not followed well. The lie that God didn’t care about this area of my life. That I was not worthy to have a solution and it made me afraid and unbelieving.
God came and reminded me His Word is the ultimate Word over everything. That His love for me is never ending. That He is with me always. That ALL His ways are for my freedom. For my relationship with Him. For my transformation. His mercy is new EVERY morning and all I have to do is receive it.
May you be blessed with a fearless journey today and always.
Hugs & Blessings, dear friends,
Belinda
Next time I’ll tell you what I’m learning about receiving!
Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished. Luke 1:45
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Jesus keeps quietly, gently inviting me to follow Him into places I’ve never been. Places with people. Creative environments with artists. Even into unfamiliar business trails. He keeps asking me to say, “Yes.” “Yes,” to His request that I follow Him into a vast unknown kingdom land.
Mary’s Yes
In reflecting on the birth of Jesus, and Mary and Joseph’s part in this great event, I saw the Christmas Yes. I saw it was Mary and Joseph’s response to God that made Christmas come alive for us all.
They were waiting. Looking for the One who had been promised to come. Isaiah prophesied Jesus’ birth 700 years before He was born. Generation after generation had waited. Until all they knew was waiting. Until the day an angel came to Mary.
In that one moment, that one choice, Mary’s life was forever changed. As was ours.
As Mary said, “Yes, be it unto me according to your word,” in that minute she must have known where her yes could lead her. She must have known she could be shamed and rejected by her family and friends. Shunned by her betrothed and the community. Although the prophecies spoke of the virgin birth of the coming Messiah, who would ever believe that it could be her?
In spite of any of her doubts, Mary honored God more than all those others and said, “Yes.” From then on, this seed God planted in her was His work. He formed this child in her womb.
Joseph’s Yes
And then I thought about Joseph. About the angel that kept showing up in his dreams and giving him messages from God. I found four records of his encounters with an angel as he slept. In every case, Joseph’s response was the same: he immediately got up and obeyed the directions given. This was Joseph’s yes. Complete, immediate obedience.
The Ungiven Yes
I thought more about my own, “Yes,” to God. When He speaks to me of His plans or purposes for my life, His dream seeds. Is my response, “Yes, be it unto me according to your word?” Or when He speaks quietly, softly nudging me to make more room for Him in my life, is my response to immediately rise and do what He said?
As He comes to me planting promises of who I am in Him. Of where we will go together. And my “yes,” like Mary’s, is an abandonment of trust that opens my life to His work within me. His forming of something within me I do not recognize and cannot see until I say, “yes.” Then, in expectation, I watch Him create this work in me. I wait as He births this promise. This “yes” requires only that I believe in what He has said.
I realized I was fairly good at giving Mary’s “yes”. The one that signifies a level of trust in God. In who He is and in His power to do the work. I say, “yes,” knowing the how and when is up to Him. What I don’t do so well is Joseph’s “yes”. The “yes” that requires obedience. I say my “yes,” expecting God to do the rest. I saw that in Joseph’s “yes”, he understood there was a responsibility to God, to Mary, and to Jesus and he was committed to do whatever God said to steward these lives placed in his hands.
I found Joseph’s immediate, obedient, “yes,” so amazing. I don’t always do that. I tend to ponder and then wonder if I really heard from God. I wait, sometimes thinking perhaps I need confirmation. I may look for a Bible verse. Many times I just forget about the words because I am not sure they are real…
In my author journey, I have not seen that God’s call on my creative life requires a commitment. That there is a responsibility attached to my “yes”. That when I say, “Yes, I trust you,” I am also receiving an assignment to go and do. To follow the nudges of the Holy Spirit and act.
I was so convicted by Joseph’s, “yes.” I had to sit with God and repent for the many, many times I did not acknowledge His word to me. I prayed for empowering grace to trust and obey. Trust like Mary did. Obey like Joseph.
Trust and Obey
There’s a fullness in the lesson of Mary and Joseph’s faith in God. There was an expression of trust and an expression of obedience. Mary surrendered to God’s work within her womb. There was not one thing she could do to form the Messiah child within her body. God planted the seed of this child. She had faith in His word over her life. She had an absolute trust He would fulfill all that He said. Her only part, as far as I can see, was her “yes”. Her willingness to be what God called her “favored one.” Mother of the Messiah. Her response was one of surrender. As God chose her, she chose Him.
One “yes” in our lives is our willingness to be what God calls us, whether it’s artist, author, craftsperson, singer, poet or architect. To trust in the word the Lord has spoken to us about what’s in us. To surrender to His life within us.
Joseph’s instant obedience to the word of the Lord was a different expression of faith in God than Mary’s, but without his immediate action, the mother and child would have been in danger and could have died. It’s obvious that God knew when He chose Joseph, He had found a man whose heart was committed to God.
I am inspired and convicted by Joseph’s “yes” to God. I know I need to listen more clearly to God to understand better what is His work and what is mine. What is He birthing and what am I being asked to steward in obedience?
The Event
Another thing that struck me was the context of Mary and Joseph’s faith. After generations of waiting, He was coming. The Messiah. Their trust and obedience opened the way for the birth and protection of the son of God, Son of man, Jesus.
We sit in a similar place today. Waiting. Waiting for the Beloved Savior to return. Foretold so long ago, we have almost despaired, but He’s coming back. All that God said will come to pass. Our “yes” today, our faith and obedience, ushers in His kingdom. Advances His kingdom in us and through us. Our “yes” gives Him permission and room to fulfill His word to have a bride without spot or wrinkle. To form in us and act with us in bringing Jesus to the world in the way that He dreams. Each one of us has a Christmas Yes waiting for our response. A “yes” of trust and a “yes” of obedience.
The Blessing
In the Name of Jesus, I bless you as you trust and obey. May the seed of your “yes” be watered this day with the love that falls from heaven and brings new life to you and all God’s planted within you.
Some time ago, when I was whining about my character defects and failures, I heard Jesus say, “You’ll be healed as you go,” and I realized He didn’t want me to seek Him for solutions to fix my flaws. He wanted me to follow Him. To intently look for Him in each day. To focus on finding His face in my everyday life.
I don’t believe it’s because He’s excusing my weakness or ignoring my wounds but because He knows what’s in me that needs healing. He knows the broken places and the rooted lies that have grown deep in my soul. Things in me that I’m not even aware are there. As I come closer into His presence, the lies, the fears, and the wounds are revealed, removed, and healed.
My journey is not to become perfect but to find Jesus. The One who is unfolding my wholeness as I go. The wholeness He paid for with His pure life—with His redeeming blood. This is not an accidental journey. It is my intentional choice to follow.
My heart longs for Jesus. In my hunger, I hear a song I recognize, though I’ve never heard it before. It’s a song Jesus is singing. It’s the song of my heart echoing around me when I am with Him. I stand quietly, intently focussed on the song as I hear the longing of the singer for me. I’m the one He’s singing to. I know I have to find Him or life will not matter at all. When I locate the sound of His voice it’s an act of my will to follow Him into the unknown.
When I’m frustrated with myself for all the things I can’t seem to get right, everything from losing weight to increasing my productivity; when I’m scrambling and striving with my self-help regime, I realize He’s not as interested in my self as He is in my heart and the increase of His Spirit within my spirit. If I walk in the Spirit I won’t fulfill the lusts of the flesh…
For me, perfecting myself doesn’t serve me very well and not in any lasting way. I may change some behaviors for a time. I may look better to others but I’m still lacking inside. Still empty in the place where some lies rule. Still aching where a wound festers.
Healing in the inward parts of my heart is the Holy Spirit’s work. This deep work of revealing Jesus who is the Word. Who is the One who separates the joints from marrow. Who can divide so mysteriously, and with such precision, the things that He didn’t plant within me. He is the One who comes with healing in His wings.
Healing is the work of God. A Divine touch from the One who is truly Divine. None of my freedom, my healing, or my wholeness is dependent upon me. It is His work. He continues to speak to me to follow and to cultivate my relationship with Him, my true savior. The lover of my soul.
He tells me my work is to believe every word He speaks. Every word from Him is true. It Is truth. Not just the words that are comfortable or make sense to me. Who am I that I should filter God’s words through my understanding? But rather, as He’s taught me, I should sit with Him asking for His insight about what He’s said, seeking understanding about what He’s promised, until I see what He sees. Until the promise comes shimmering into reality, covered in faith. The substance, the evidence of His truth alive and healing in me. Until the song I’ve followed into an unfamiliar place is so loud it fills my very being and I become a part of it.
There are so many ways I condemn myself. So many things I think I should be doing better to please God and others in my life. Conduct I expect to look more Christ-like but is not. Evidence I want in my life that speaks of God’s goodness to His children but I don’t see it. And yet Jesus still says only one thing to my doubting, frustrated, impatient heart:
“Follow me, you’ll be healed as you go.”
Ps 119:105 NIV
Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path
Hebrews 4:12 NIV
For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
Zephaniah 3:17 NIV
The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves.
He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you,
but will rejoice over you with singing.
