Thanking God for His Mercy

This past week/weekend was emotionally tougher for me than I would like to admit. But thanks to God and individuals in His body, I’m in a much better place emotionally yesterday and today!

One of the things I knew I should do on Saturday was write a Thanksgiving list….but I couldn’t convince myself to do it. This morning, though, I did. The last three pages of the journal I just started in August are full of Thanksgivings that just barely begin to scratch the surface! I want to share it with you here as a testimony to God’s continued work & faithfulness in my life! In case you can’t tell, it’s in the style of Psalm 136 :)

Oh give thanks to the LORD, for You are good;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

Oh give thanks to the God of all grace & comfort;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

To the God who is eternal and supreme;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

To the Triune God in constant relationship;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

To the great God who defines love;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

To the most caring & personal Being;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

To You who formed all that we see;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

By Your omnipotent Word;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

The millions of stars by five simple words;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

Mountains and valleys, oceans and deserts;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

Trees and flowers in their colorful array;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

Creatures of almost limitless variety;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

The microscopic world which enables life;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

The way You provide & care for Your creation;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

The water cycle, an amazing design;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

The numerous scientific laws;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

Keeping life and nature in order;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

Oh give thanks to You, LORD;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

For how You are writing Your story in me;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

For the countless ways Your Grace moves in my life;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

For the matchless gift of salvation;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

For the godly heritage in my extended & immediate family;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

For parents who raised me in Your Truth;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

For Your unconditional love of me;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

That every twist & turn is part of Your plan;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

For the friends & community You have placed in my life;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

For the gifts & talents given for Your glory;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

For the many opportunities to know & love & serve;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

Oh give thanks to the God of heaven;

                For Your mercy endures forever.

God's Pursuit of Me, Part 1

I’ve been wanting to write this blog post for about a month. Warning, there’s lots of pieces involved…so it will probably be long!! {Edit: It will actually be a short (possibly!?) series of posts}

Last month as part of our Servant Teams training, we talked about the concept of Missio Dei, which describes the person of God Himself, as an outwardly-moving, lovingly-pursuing God.

As I wrote in my email newsletter,

“When you read the phrase, 'the Pursuit of God,' what is the first thought that comes to your mind? Because that simple phrase can be taken two ways, to mean two very different things. 

Option 1: We pursue relationship with God through reading the Bible, praying, attending church, etc.
Option 2: God has pursued and continues pursing relationship with us--primarily by incarnationally moving onto our turf and by speaking through His Spirit and His Word to our hearts. 

Talking about this topic in our training made me reflect back. In my childhood up through high school, I think I was more focused on option one, at least in the 'once I'm a Christian' sense. But sometime in the past 10 years, God opened my eyes and shifted my perspective. He's not sitting up in heaven waiting on us to respond to Jesus and come to Him. The Good Shepherd is out in the wide world, constantly searching for the hearts of His people--throughout their whole lives.”

So when Mandee asked us to draw a picture about the Pursuit of God before she started talking about it, this is what came out of my heart & soul:

At the end of our training on Missio Dei, Mandee gave us an assignment: To create an art piece showing three ways that God has pursued us in our life. Within a couple of minutes, I had jotted down a brief outline in my notes of what I wanted to do for my piece. The actual execution of it took most of a weekend, and some extra bits got added, even after presenting it to my class—but this is the finished project which came out of that assignment:

So the rest of this series I’m going to give you the back story behind each element. Because although I enjoyed being artsy and creating this, I’m still a writer first and foremost :D

But first, a caveat: I talked in my newsletter about how pre-college Esther heard “pursuit of God” and thought of herself pursuing God. So my art piece focuses on life after I began realizing that really, God pursues me. That does NOT mean that God never pursued my heart when I was a child. He definitely did!!! Maybe another time I’ll write more about that. But as far as my conscious recognition of God pursuing me, that has been more in the past 10 years.

Element 1: Heart Unshackled

This section could be a whole blog post!! And maybe someday I will do that. But I’m going to try to keep it short here.

I’ve come to realize that at a relatively young age, I built a castle wall / tower cell around my heart. Instead of sharing with people how I was feeling and how things were affecting me, I started bottling it all up inside. This was at its worst during my “spiritual dark ages” of middle school/high school.

God was still lovingly pursuing me even through that dark period of my life. But it wasn’t until the second half of high school that I learned I could write (as God’s gifting) and that writing was the easiest way to give voice to what was in my heart. And it wasn’t until God took me away from everything familiar to attend college a five-hour drive away from home that I was able to start recognizing the poor relational habits I had towards God and towards those close to me.

A couple weeks ago, during some prayer closet time, I suddenly realized that God has always used times of taking me outside {usually WAY outside} of my familiar atmosphere/comfort zone to do the most work of growth/change/refinement in me. In a lot of ways that makes sense, I had just never quite phrased it in my head before.

China. World Views class. Moving away to college. Going to Uganda. Coming to Portland.

Each of those major life shifts have brought about major changes and growth opportunities, and I am thankful!! But that’s kind of a tangent….! :)

So I went to college, not realizing that my heart was shackled away in a high, dark cell of loneliness and not letting anyone see the REAL me. And I was tired….tired of acting and trying to put on the right outward mask.

Then one day in chapel, Paraclete spoke GRACE deeply, deeply into my heart:

“What you do is not a question of earning My love. You can never earn it. Salvation is a free gift, based on nothing you do, My child. I already love you more than you know – no matter what.”

You can read more about the context/ramifications in this other blog post. But this is the picture He gave me in that moment:

I have carried that picture in my heart for seven and a half years, but had never tried to put it onto paper. When this art project came up, I knew it was time. Time to pull out all the stops, finding images online, tracing them in Illustrator, putting it all together to show what God did in my heart that day.

I know, there’s a word there that most of you don’t recognize – Kisakye. That word wasn’t part of the original picture, because I didn’t know it until years later, in Uganda. Kisakye is the Luganda word for Grace, and is what I took for myself as my “Ugandan name.”

The beauty of God’s Grace has continued to be such an important heart concept for me over these past years. I’m still learning to apply it to my life…it can be hard for me to accept Grace rather than staying shackled in the cell of my own expectations and demands on myself. But God continues to faithfully work this in my heart! And I am thankful.

Well….I think I am a bit written out for the time being. There is more I could say about that heart picture, but maybe some other day. For now, it’s time to get ready for a day at UGM. I will come back another time to explain the other elements of my art piece!

An "Inciting Incident"

This is another of my old posts for Thrive80, a short-lived Moody Publishing blog for millennials. It was originally written and published in September 2012 on a now-defunct website. I want to share it here and now because the subject ties in closely with another blog post I am currently working on writing!!

The original blog prompt for this was to write about an "inciting incident" in my life...something that forever altered/changed me. It was easy for me, as a college senior, to know what to pick!! Enjoy :)

Tuesday, January 25, 2011. It seemed like a perfectly normal day, but I will forever mark it as the day God revolutionized my life. I stood in chapel at my small, Christian college singing during the worship time. For some reason I sat further back than normal—nearly under the shelter of the upstairs balcony.

As I sang, surrounded by hundreds of my fellow students and yet feeling alone, my mind returned to the questions I had asked so often throughout high school and my first year and a half of college. “Why God? Why is it that I feel like I want a deeper relationship with You and yet nothing changes? Why do You seem so silent? I try so hard.”

There was no rending of the heavens, no vision of glorious majesty. But there was a simple Thought, sent—I believe—by the Holy Spirit at just the moment He had crafted in His infinite plan.

“What you do is not a question of earning My love. You can never earn it. Salvation is a free gift, based on nothing you do, My child. I already love you more than you know – no matter what.”

Hearing that truth and truly realizing what it meant in my life for the first time acted as a single beam of light into what had long been the dark room of my spiritual strivings. Looking back now, I can see that I have always tended toward attempting to earn assurance of others’ love and affection for me by working as a people pleaser. I naturally brought that same idea over to my relationship with God.

Yes, I knew intellectually that I could not earn my salvation. And yet as a Christian I had spent the previous years of my life trying to make myself worthy of God’s love and approval – lacking the faith that the Immanuel who came to save people from sin could truly accept me with all of my shortcomings and failings. In some ways it seems so simple and silly – it is in Scripture…I learned those verses and I should have known that receiving salvation did not suddenly mean that I must curry God’s favor (Gal. 3:1-3). Nevertheless that was how I thought, and it is still a trap I often find myself falling into.

I am still nowhere near the perfection I would love to achieve. But the embedding of that truth deep into my spiritual psyche started me on a journey of personal revival which God is still unfolding. The beauty of it all is that there was nothing special about that day – no reason from my end for the blessings I have since received. It is all Grace – God’s amazing Grace. And that’s the whole point. Yes, it is tempting to question why not sooner. But the answer goes right back to the lesson. God’s Grace is not bound by human understanding. No, I didn’t deserve what happened on January 25^th any more than I had any other day. But that is the beauty of Grace.

I could have written that last paragraph yesterday, not six years ago!!! The ramifications of this inciting incident are still reverberating through my life as I continue to learn the importance of practicing the truth Paraclete spoke into my heart that day. Thankful to God for His faithfulness in leading my journey up to that point, through that revelation, and every day since then--even in the trials and the challenges.

My New Covenant Vow

This is something the Holy Spirit led me to work on last week. I used Tuesday morning, when I didn't go into UGM, to "research"/"write" it. Maybe some other time I will write the story of what led up to doing this...but for now I just want to share it with you. It turned out differently than I initially thought it would - but I like it better this way.

In the name of the Triune God, because of who HE is, and by His leading.

The Theological Foundation of My Identity

v  I declare that I am God’s creation, made by Him in His image for His purposes and glory, and so that I may enjoy Him forever in eternally present/future relationship. {Gen. 1:26; Phil. 1:19-23}

v  I am fearfully and wonderfully made; all the days fashioned for me are God’s marvelous work in and through my life; and that my soul knows very well. {Psalm 139:14-15}

v  Jesus Christ is the Son of God and He is the loving Redeemer of my soul; for the joy set before Him and for God’s glory as well as my good, He bore the punishment of my sin on the cross. {Heb. 12:2}

v  I was dead in my trespasses and sins, unable to do anything to resurrect or save myself; God made me alive and saved me by His grace, totally undeserved by me. {Eph. 2:4-5}

v  In Christ, I am God’s beloved adoptive daughter, a child of the Most High King of heaven; I am a co-heir with Christ through suffering with Him. {Rom. 8:15-17}

v  God lavishes His unconditional grace & love on me, moment by moment and day by day {Eph. 1:7-8; 1 John 4:10}

v  It is God who works in me both to will and to do for His good pleasure; but I also have the responsibility of working out my own salvation. {Phil. 2:12-13}

v  Christ’s resurrection power is what is working towards me, within me, and what should be flowing out of me. {Eph. 1:19-20; Phil. 3:10}

v  I carry the treasure of the knowledge of God in Christ as a mere earthen vessel.
{2 Cor. 4:6-7}

v  Paraclete, the Counselor and Spirit of Truth, abides in me forever and reminds me of what Jesus taught; He is the guarantee of my inheritance. {John 14:16-17, 26; Eph. 1:13-14}

v  I am not sufficient in myself; nothing good comes from myself but rather from God; He has made me sufficient and makes me a minister of the new covenant of life in the Spirit.
{2 Cor. 3:5-6}

The Practical Application Points as a Result:

v  Jesus calls me to abide in His unconditional love, and to extend that love to others—laying down my life for them—as well as to myself. {John 15:9-13}

v  Jesus calls me to daily take up my cross and follow Him; to save my life by losing it for His sake {Luke 9:23-25}

v  God calls me to submit to Him as clay does to the potter’s hands. {Rom. 9:20-21}

v  I am called to recognize and worship the holy sovereignty of God, and to repent before Him when I find myself questioning His purposes. {Job 42:5-6}

v  Jesus calls me to come to Him when I am heavy laden by the burden I bear; to take His light and easy yoke in its place; to find rest in Him; to learn from Him. {Matt. 11:28-30}

v  I am called to follow in Jesus’ example, humbling myself and taking the form of a bondservant. {Phil 2:4-8}

v  As Jesus spent hours in solitude and prayer with His heavenly Father to balance out intense times of ministry, so should I. {Matt. 14:23}

v  I should follow Jesus’ example in crying out to God for strength during challenging times and in asking those close to me to pray with/for me. {Matt. 26:38ff}

v  I am called to daily practice authenticity as I intentionally put off the old Esther and put on the new Esther, being renewed by God in holiness & righteousness. {Eph. 4:22-24}

v  It is okay and needed to sometimes pull back, say no, and practice spiritual self-care. {Luke 5:15-16}

v  I am not yet perfected; but I am called to forget the things which are behind and press on toward the prize in Christ; knowing He will continue His work until He returns! {Phil 3:12-14; 1:6}

v  I am called to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. {Micah 6:8}

v  I am called to cast all my cares upon God; to humble myself under His mighty hand; to let Him be the one to exalt me in due time. {1 Pet. 5:6-7}

v  Jesus calls me to rest in the sufficiency of His grace and strength, especially in my weaknesses; to boast and even take pleasure in my shortcomings. {2 Cor. 12:9-10}

v  I am called to be a member of the body of Christ—suffering and rejoicing with my brothers and sisters in Christ (and letting them do the same with me), as well as using my gifts to minister alongside them. {1 Cor. 12:12-31}

v  I am called to live in community – bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to maintain the unity in the Spirit. {Eph. 4:1-6}

v  I am called to confess my sins to my fellow believers, that we may pray for one another and be healed. {James 5:16}

I commit to these things in the name of Abba, Jesus, and Paraclete. Amen.

Two Sabbath Healings

At our church here in Kasana, our pastors are preaching through the book of John. This past Sunday we were looking at the story of the man healed by the pool of Bethesda, from the first part of chapter 5.

The preacher reminded us that we must watch out for false religion, which makes us feel comfortable but actually fails to give glory & praise to God when He works in our lives.

Later in the afternoon, I spent some time journaling & reflecting, and the Holy Spirit helped me draw a contrast/see a lesson by comparing this man in John 5 and the blind man in John 9.

On Sunday morning, the Holy Spirit stopped me in the middle of a funk mood when the preacher was reading the passage, before he had ever spoken a word of his sermon. It was verses 6 & 7 that caught me: Jesus asks this man who had been an invalid for 38 years, “Do you want to be made well?” And his answer? “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me.”

Sitting there in church, I could suddenly see that too often I’m like that man. I want some person or some physical situation to provide the setting for healing. I want it to seem momentous.

What this man didn’t know was that The Healer was asking him this question. Jesus simply said the words, “Rise, take up your bed and walk” – and immediately this man did! After THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS. [I haven’t even been alive that long yet!!!]

But, Jesus had done a big no-no! It was the Sabbath day when He did this! And so when the Jews found this man carrying his bed, they scolded him soundly. But the man didn’t know who had healed him. Then Jesus found him in the temple, and said “See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.” (vs. 14)

And what did the man do? Worship the one who had made him well? No, he went back to the leaders and told them it was Jesus who had healed him, and that made serious trouble for Jesus (vs. 16) – this is the first mention of the leaders wanting to kill Jesus!!!

Contrast that to the man in chapter 9.

In this case, the disciples start the conversation by asking Jesus “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus’ reply brought tears to my eyes & a catch in my voice yesterday afternoon: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him” (vs. 3).

Then Jesus made mud, “anointed” the blind man’s eyes, and sent him to the pool of Siloam to wash.

“So [the man] went and washed, and came back seeing.” As simple as that.

But again, it was the Sabbath day. And evidently spitting on the ground is work?? Because again, this man and Jesus got in trouble with the religious leaders of the Jews. This time there was almost a whole trial – they called the man’s parents and everything to make sure he had really been born blind. The parents hedged because of a threat from the Jews (vs. 19-23).

The formerly blind man shot straight though: “One thing I know: that though I was blind, now I see.” And so they excommunicated him. But Jesus came and found him (vs. 35-58):

            “Do you believe in the Son of God?” He asked him.

            “Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?”

            “You have both seen Him and it is He who is talking with you.”

            “Lord, I believe!” And he worshipped Him.

Do you see the difference? A totally different response & attitude on the part of these two men!!

But really, which one had more reason to be bitter about the years of less-than-full life, or which had reason to boast for his role in the healing?

Jesus seems to imply that the man in John 5 was sick because of some sin he had committed (vs. 14). But the John 9 man is specifically cleared from any connection between the blindness and a sin.

The John 5 man did nothing to be made well – absolutely nothing – Jesus spoke the word, and he was healed. Whereas the man in John 9 is the one who washed the mud off. If he had wanted to, he could have argued that Jesus had made things worse by smearing spit & road dirt on his eyes. His eyes didn’t open immediately, only once the man himself had washed the mud off could he see.

But look at their responses.

The man who may have been sick because of his own doing but who did nothing to heal himself is the one who shows no indication of saving belief, who instead went and ratted to the religious leaders.

But the one who was innocent of sin connected to his blindness, and who worked (in a small way) to bring about his own healing? He is the one who stood up to the religious leaders and defended Jesus’ righteousness (vs. 17, 30-33), and who worshipped & believed Jesus when he saw Him again.

Our preacher on Sunday pointed out that the John 5 man’s faith & trust were in the angel, a moving of the water, and in his own ability to get into that water first.

The man in John 9 also had faith – but it was the simple faith of hearing & obeying the instructions he was given. He somehow knew it was Jesus (vs. 11), though we don’t know how much he knew about Him. Maybe he had heard about Jesus & already believed His claim to be the Son of God. We aren’t told that, but from his fruit we can see that his faith had the right focus.

I don’t want to be like the man in John 5. I want to be more like the one of John 9.

But all too often, it’s too easy to be stuck in misplaced trust, or in the ensnarement of false religion.

May the Lord continue to heal & purify my heart!!!!

How Long, O Lord?

As a middle-class, urban, citizen of the U.S.A., I have led a very sheltered life. This time I’m not talking about the cultural sheltering, though I was that too. I’m talking about being sheltered from the hurt and pain, from the needs and hungers of the vast majority of the world outside the comfort of “home.”

Sure, I lived in China for more than six months and saw people who swept the streets, probably as their only source of income. But I was only 12 at the time, still pretty happy-go-lucky. I don’t remember it ever affecting me very deeply. Sure, I’ve seen homeless people on the downtown streets of Hollywood, Washington D.C., and Dallas. That can definitely be a picture of true need, and I have wrestled with how to respond. But here I’m talking about something more.

Here I’m talking about living in the African bush, in the rural setting of a third-world country. Where life is so immensely different than what I enjoyed growing up.

Even in China, I only thought it was inconvenient that the washing machines were on the first floor when we lived on the second floor. I only remember one day that the power went off—and we knew it would be off ahead of time. I was sometimes annoyed that I had to use a squatty potty when we were out and about.

The past three months, I have learned to live in an entirely different way. When nature calls, I usually have to walk to a pit latrine—no seat to sit on there. I haven’t seen a washing machine or microwave in the time I’ve been here. Power is off around half the time. Almost everything—plowing, mowing the grass, shelling maize—is done either by hand or with simple hand-powered machines.

But these are minor inconveniences compared to what I really sat down to write about.

Two weeks into my stay here, a friend sent an email asking about disease and illiteracy here. At that point, it made me mad. I was almost exclusively seeing the beauty: the beauty of a culture which remembers how to live in community so much better than most Americans; the beauty of living again out in the countryside rather than feeling somewhat stifled by the big city; the beauty of feeling at home, even in a new place with new people, because it is a common Love which brought us together; even the beauty of the fantastic variety of birds I observed within days.

And it is true. There is an amazing amount of beauty here. God is at work here, of course, and He naturally has people here who seek to love and serve Him. I definitely believe there are so many things the people here “get” that our comfortable lives (or at least mine) “back home” make it easy to lose sight of.

In the subsequent 10 weeks, though, it hasn’t been all a bed of roses.

I have heard people at meals talking about how they had to run, run, run when soldiers came to their villages and started shooting.

I have seen a mother and daughter who come to church every Sunday in the same clothes…perhaps because they have no others. Their hair is not black, but a reddish color that I have read is evidence of malnutrition.

I have heard that parents here simply expect to lose one of their children to death by disease.

I have seen a toddler, usually full of life of laughter, lying almost motionless on a couch. His body, burning with fever; his breath shallow and labored. His parents stand by, seeming unsure of what to do because they have already taken him to the clinic and what they were given hasn’t helped.

I have heard stories of boda boda accidents, where men have been lying on the ground obviously injured badly. That sometimes people just keep driving by them, because if they stop and try to help they may just get blamed for the accident.

I have seen a ja ja (grandmother/elderly lady)—who can walk only slowly, slowly—gently lower herself to sit in the slim shade of a telephone pole to try and get out of the hot sun.

I have heard about the superstitions that are so deeply ingrained into peoples’ minds, even Christians. That if an owl perches in a tree over your house, somebody will die. That if you step over a pile of items arranged for witchcraft, something bad will happen to you.

I have seen masses and masses of people going about their daily lives in Kampala or even in Luwero and wondered on a deeper level than ever before if they have heard about the love of Jesus. {In the States, it’s easier to assume that the general population has had the chance to hear the Good News, in some form or fashion.}

I have heard stories of the death of parents or grandparents, or of poverty from widowhood, or of abandonment, or of broken families. And it could possibly be because I live at a ministry dedicated to helping those who have experienced losses such as these….but I can’t recall hearing a single person’s family history that didn’t include some sort of loss.

I have seen a young lady who wanted to go into the medical profession. But her parents died, and she had to drop out of school halfway through secondary school (high school) and take a low-paying job working at a hotel to maybe get enough money for tuition to go back.

I have heard a Ugandan say it’s true that if you’re in a boat that sinks you’ve got to dive down, swim as far away as you can, and wait until everybody who can’t swim has panicked and drowned before you swim back to find something to float on. Because if you try to help, they’ll just pull you down and you’ll die too.

I have seen that life here seems cheap. That death is easier to talk about plainly than in the States. That there is less sugar coating. No guarantee of treatment at a clean hospital with even basic modern equipment. Here, serious disease and subsequent death are a part of daily/community life, as contradictory as that sounds.

And as I have seen and heard all these things, my heart has wept and cried out to the Lord. “God, don’t You see this????? Don’t You hear the suffering of Your creation?” In my sheltered, developed-world upbringing, I have never been confronted with such a widespread view of the effects that sin and evil have brought into the world.

But in one of the moments of crying out late in January, I sensed the Spirit’s voice speaking truth back into my heart: A reminder that…as strange as it seems to us…God’s withholding of the end of time and suffering is actually part of His mercy. That even the pain that occurs is not yet put to an end because He is still calling people to Himself.

The call is to trust Him and His goodness, even when our human minds don’t see that goodness or grace in the pain.

In the past month or so, I saw this quote posted on Facebook: "Underneath our anger is a certain mistrust of God. Somewhere along the way we stopped believing that God is a God of love and justice. If we truly believed that our lives, our hopes and our dreams were in God's hands we wouldn't be quite so shocked when imperfect people hurt us or let us down."[1] It actually comes from a book about marriage, and it’s referring to a more specific pain than I’m writing about here….but the truth of it remains.

Whether I can understand it right now or not, God IS a God of love, and His character is as the One who is “just and the justifier,” even when He passes over sin in His forbearance (Romans 3:25-26). It is only through confidence in the One who brings beauty from ashes (Isaiah 61:3) that I can face the brokenness of the world.

And as I prayed for the youngest member of our Institute family, that little boy lying there so sick, I felt God asking me to pray with confidence and yet also with humility. Because in the end, He is the one who knows all things. He is the only One who knows what is eternally best for each person. And yes, I am immensely thankful that God brought healing to the little one. But God would be just as sovereign and just as good, even if He had called that little child home.

Several weeks later, this is one of the puzzle pieces God brought together with some others to create a picture calling me into deeper trust of Him. You can read about that here.

So I don’t have answers to the questions about what I am supposed to do about the hurt and brokenness I see. I do know I am called to love and service for my Lord. But even if I did everything I possibly could…even if I were a real-life superhero…I could not eradicate poverty or suffering. Only God can do that, and right now He is not finished with the world yet. Which means there is still greater good and glory which can come from it.

---

[1] Susie Larson, Alone in Marriage, Moody Publishers (2007), pg. 24.

Jan. 23 CQI - Developing a Spiritual Rule (Webb S.1, Pt.1)

Our reading for that day came from a booklet written by Christopher Webb and printed by Renovare.

Claim 1: Webb takes the six streams of Christian tradition from Foster and makes them into categories for the shaping of a rule of life. He says, “as our passions and character are aligned with those of Jesus, so we increasingly become intentional about expressing each of these aspects of his life in our walk with him” (pg. 7). I took Integrated Theology last semester, and we read parts of Foster’s Streams of Living Water to cover the spiritual formation section. Foster seemed to be much more focused on providing a  descriptive look at these six areas, while Webb is seeking to turn them into a prescriptive guide for creating Christ-likeness in our lives. I don’t know if I just don’t remember correctly or if this was actually the case with Foster. At any rate, while I really enjoyed reading Foster’s book (particularly the Sacramental section), I can’t say it changed anything in my life. I’m hoping Webb will be otherwise.

Claim 2: Gradual change is more effective than sudden shifts. As Webb writes, “You are far more likely to successfully build a modest rhythm of prayer into your day than to utterly reorganize your life around hours of devotion” (pg. 9). He later provides an example of this by discussing how his almost simplistic rule of life has “had a profound impact on every important area” of his life (p. 13). I can certainly see the wisdom and common sense in Webb’s statement. But I don’t like having to keep working at something. I am much more of a pendulum person. My tendency is to attempt making a drastic change, get it all taken care of, and have it done–crossed off my checklist! I don’t naturally like being in a gradual process.

Question 1: Given Mulholland’s definition of spiritual formation (the part about “for the sake of others”), why is it that the monastic desert fathers tend to be so revered? Their idea of holy living frequently lacked the horizontal plane of interaction. They often tried as hard as they could to never be around people, though that was typically a difficult task because people would try to flock to them. Webb describes Anthony’s life – he tried “to strip away every distraction this world had to offer so he could seek God with his whole heart” (pg. 4). Clearly, that sounds like a noble and good ambition. And his commitment was admirable. But what happened to “for the sake of others”? From later parts of the chapter, Webb clearly believes in being in relationship with other people. But when I read this early bit on Anthony it just made me wonder why it is that we tend to put monastics on such a pedestal? If we look at it holistically, they were, in some ways, trying to be very selfish in their holiness. I am certainly prone to do the same as an introvert – so it’s a good reminder to me to be aware of that.

Insight 1: “Every day we live is like a miniature picture of our whole life…” (pg. 4). This was a really important point for me to hear. As I mentioned in class, what I actually do with my time is frequently quite different than what I would say my Rule of Life is. I need to remember and to seek to live out the fact that my daily, moment by moment choices are what shapes who I am in fact.

Insight 2: As a recovering practitioner of Christian legalism, I greatly appreciated the way in which he differentiated between commands/regulations and the guiding principle of the quest for a regula vita which he advocates (pg. 5). It’s like he said. If we want to shape our life to a particular pattern, it is very helpful to have a ruler to guide our pencil. Without it, our shape is much more likely to not match what we had in mind. BOTH flexibility AND guidelines – a balance that is so much fun to try to maintain for an extreme perfectionist just barely beginning to recover, like me!

"Here I Am" - A Spiritual Biography

In high school, I would have told you that in some senses I’ve always been a Christian. I have spent most of my life in an almost exclusively Christian environment. It took me some time, however, before I began to take personal ownership of my faith, allowing God be at work in my life instead of me making my life perfect for God. Due to my personality and the way I grew up, my early spirituality was based a lot on theological knowledge and not much on religious experience.

One night in February of 2000 (age 9.5), our family read a devotional based on 1 Peter 2:24, “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree.” I recognized for the first time the weight of my sin and the great cost of Christ’s redemption. I started crying. I had previously prayed a prayer of repentance, as many young Christian kids do (I don’t remember it), but that night my dad read Acts 2:38 to me. In that moment, I felt a call to respond by being baptized, which I did a couple months later.

In 2002, my life changed (age 12). Our family decided to teach at a Chinese university for a year. I loved our time in China. While there, I witnessed the other foreign teachers worshipping and experiencing God in a different way than I had ever known. Somehow, God became more real to me there, and I learned experientially that He wanted to be involved in our lives.

In September 2003 (age 13), we were starting to get settled back into our normal lives – new job, new house. But within a month that fairytale blew up in a complex explosion that is still painful to me. Long story short, there was an ugly church split. My dad also lost his job, and was severely under-employed for two years. I ended up holding onto bitterness and anger toward Dad and God.

Last night, as I was thinking about that period of my life, I realized I expected God to fix it all. I believed He could, and would. When things got worse instead of better, I unconsciously began to doubt and question God’s goodness, I guess. I had never before seen sin and evil so wreck a community of believers. I don’t know exactly how to explain the correlation, but it created some sort of break down in my relationship with God. That, combined with the need I’ve felt all my life to earn love and favor by making sure I meet people's expectations, developed in me a twisted picture of spirituality.

I had tons of head knowledge about God, and from the outside I looked like a really good Christian kid. But inside, I was a mess. I trusted no one, no one felt safe. I wasn’t willing to admit the brokenness inside. There were numerous nights when I would cry in my room, not understanding why I felt the way I did. I was so hungry for a relationship with God, like I had tasted in China. But I could never feel Him – He seemed distant and I knew that couldn’t be His fault, so it must be because of sin in my life. I just wanted to die and be done with having to fight to have a right relationship with Him. That is the overarching memory of my spiritual journey between 2003 and 2009 – pain and unfulfilled hunger.

Coming to JBU (August 2009) was the best thing that ever happened to me. God knew exactly where I needed to be for Him to do His work in my life. Through a variety of new worship experiences, He started breaking outside of the careful boxes I had packed Him into. Then on January 25, 2011, He changed everything. By His grace alone, I finally came to truly know that I didn’t need to earn His approval because He gave it freely as a gift. He revealed His overwhelming love, and He reoriented my whole life.

Since that day two years ago, there have still been plenty of ups and downs. But always underlying has been a deeper, more real knowledge God accepts me. That He loves me no matter what. That His call is to trust, not to understand; to accept grace, not to work to deserve it. And though my spiritual life is still very much a journey, I now know that He is at work and that He will not leave me alone. He is faithful, and He works in His time and His ways. Praise be to His name, Amen.

{To read more about my more recent spiritual learning, start here and read more at my spiritual blog.}