Fix your eyes and run!

I've been thinking about criticism.  Of course there is good criticism that, as a mature adult, you learn to take and use it to push yourself to greater heights.  If you're not there yet, keep working on it.  It's a great step to allow someone wiser than you to speak into your life out of love and to take their guidance seriously.

Then there is the other kind of criticism.  You know the difference.  This criticism doesn't come from a place of love or respect but it comes from a person's jealousy or anger.  The truth is, we will always have "haters", as they say, in our life.  In fact, if you don't have it, you may not be impacting the world around you as much as you could.  Any time others sense you are headed for greatness or on the right track, especially if they have their own insecurities and baggage to deal with, you will have the jealous people, or the doubters, or let's face it, people who are just plain angry.

Following Jesus many times requires difficult decisions or bold moves from us.  We've been making some of these lately in our own house.  Our lives many times may look upside down to others around us.  What God is planning as promotion or increase may look like doom or self-destruction to others.  But we must stay the course.  We know that our trust and our future is in God and God only (like Kelly talked about yesterday) and when things don't make sense on the surface but we feel that intensifying God-energy bubbling up inside, we can put the doubters out of our mind, fix our eyes and turn and run toward our Father.

So, take heart today!  Fix your eyes where they belong and run!  Run, run, run!

Obedience and His Faithfulness or How I Learned That His Word Is True

No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear. Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing? Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?

And why worry about your clothing? Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are.  And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith?

Matthew 6:24-26

In my Bible, there is a separation added between verse 24 and 25 (the first and second paragraphs seen here).  It's fine.  This is just how they decided to organize what amounts to a very long teaching with lots of parts.  However, if we're reading the whole teaching we see some very important transitional words in verse 25.  "That is why I tell you..."  In other words, the thing Jesus said about serving money has everything to do with his continuing teaching about worry.

If we're honest, we might admit to cringing a little when we hear Jesus refer to money as a master that people can serve.  If we're honest.  After all, we serve Jesus!  We would never want to think about serving something as dirty and man-made and materialistic as money!  But we do, don't we?  We trip up on this one all the time.  Even if we're someone who doesn't have much money.  If we're honest.  Jesus' correlation between serving money and worry proves it.  In fact, those who don't have much might fall into this form of slavery even more.   

I'm going to be honest.  Then I'm going to tell you about some real-life miracles.    

I grew up in church.  My dad was a pastor and I heard preachers teach on tithing and giving many times.  But I was just like everyone else.  I was afraid to really give.  Even after I was a real adult with a real job, I struggled to give this part of my life to Jesus.  And, I struggled right along financially.  You could say I was struggling on many levels.  I knew God's word but I didn't believe Him.  Not really.  I would justify my disobedience by saying things like "Well, I give so much of my time to God and the church.  That's my tithe." or "My singing is my way of giving to God"  or "How can I give that amount to God when I owe this much on this bill?  That's just not good stewardship!  After all, doesn't God want my family to come first?"  And, I continued to struggle.  Bills were a struggle.  The budget never worked out.  Struggle, struggle, struggle.

Despite my private excuses, I could never shake the deep conviction that I had never fully given this part of my life to God and that really meant I didn't believe Him.

One day, and I don't know when it was, I decided to obey.  Period.  Our family gave 10% of our income and we did for years.  I began to realize that even though on paper it looked like we were over-extending ourselves, somehow we always had enough and often we even had more!  How was this happening?  We weren't finding anonymous checks in our mailbox (although I know people who have prayed and had this happen).  We weren't getting a raise.  If anything we even took some income hits over the years.  Still, there has always been enough and sometimes even more.  Now, that really doesn't make sense!  

We now, as a family, give more than 10% to the church and have for a few years now.  And, let me tell you, in  this earthly kingdom, in this country, it makes NO sense.  In fact, I bet a financial advisor would laugh at us and call us foolish.  But, guess what, there has always been enough.  Always.  Here's what happens...

One time someone gave us a leftover leaky bottle of detergent from a college detergent drive that the church did.  No one wanted it because it was sticky and leaky but I took it and put it on the top shelf of our laundry room.  Months later it was one of those weeks where you run out of all the big stuff at the same time.  We were out of detergent and I couldn't spare the $7 to buy some.  Then I spotted that sticky bottle of detergent on the back of the shelf.  See? God knew, months before.

I recently felt stretched financially.  I was really working hard to get the budget tighter and plan for an upcoming trip this summer.  I knew I had a lot of little expenditures coming up that couldn't be avoided.  Then I got an email from a company offering to refund something that my kids accidentally bought electronically 2 years ago.  Seems that others had that problem with their kids buying stuff and they were reaching out to refund whoever wanted to submit a claim.  I did and suddenly I got a message saying I would be refunded $47 for something that happened years ago!  Totally unexpected.  You may not think that's all that amazing but I call that a miracle.

We live in an expensive housing market.  This is no news to you.  Last fall we were supposed to move and we looked at house after house and they just amounted to gross after gross to the tune of about $1500 a month.  "Here, I'll offer to rent this dingy dump to you and you give me $1500 in return. And on top of that, you better hurry and put 2 months down now because someone else will get it tomorrow!"  The search seemed impossible.  Because we wanted to be good stewards of our money and not over-extend ourselves we started making arrangements to settle on a condo with no yard and 2 parking spaces.  Not exactly the best place to host a church cookout but we saw no other open door.  Then God spoke.  "Do you think this is my best for you?  That it's the best I can do?"  I decided to make a private list: a list of all the needs and wants that I thought were right for our family in a house, even down to a screen porch and a counter with a bar for my kids to eat breakfast at.  Long story short-- God gave us a house, even in our price range!  And it was a crazy story.  As we walked through (for the first time) the day we signed the lease I almost cried and laughed all at the same time.  EVERYTHING on my list was there, even down to the screen porch and the counter with a bar. 

See, I think miracles sometimes look like this: an outrageously good deal on deodorant because God knows you're going to run out in a month even though you haven't even thought about it...a friend goes on a trip and needs someone to give their soon expiring milk and eggs to, just before your car gets a flat tire and you have to choose between groceries and a new tire in the budget...the dentist gives your kids one of those little packs with a free toothbrush and travel toothpaste in it and you haven't even realized they're about to run out in the next couple of weeks, the same week rent is due...

That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear. Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing? Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? 

Starting 2014 with a photo dump...

She's learning to crawl these days.  The past 9 months have flown by.

Leximus. Ever in costume. Even when he has strep throat.

Isn't she lovely?

We spent Dada's birthday at Busch Gardens over the holidays.

Santa came, bringing gifts, as promised.

Spending time with their new and only first cousin was an added bonus of Christmas 2013.

Fear & Joy

For the Lord your God is living among you.  He is a mighty Savior.  He will take delight in you with gladness.  With His love, He will calm all your fears.  He will rejoice over you with joyful songs. Zephaniah 3. 17

This scripture was in my morning devotion today.  As is usually the case, somehow it was tailored for my journey long before I set out to read it.

I have been thinking a lot about emotions and feelings lately, as they relate to myself and to others in our church community.  I am finding that I hear more everyday from people who are so overcome by their emotions or feelings that they are unable to fully participate in the life God has for them.  People are surrounded by encouragement, ministry opportunities, potential friendships.  They couldn't be more surrounded in their church family by love, appreciation, support and resources.  The platform is just sitting there waiting for them to step up and somehow they can't even see it.  They are blinded and bound by a false cloud of emotions.

Emotions can be very convincing.  I know.  I have struggled as an introvert since I can remember.  Seriously, if it were not for my parents pushing and pushing me from a young age through ministry opportunities and relationships, I would probably just stay home all the time and draw or something.  Most people don't realize how introverted I am because I've had to learn to be disciplined about pushing through my feelings.  Don't get me wrong.  There is nothing wrong with being an introvert.  In fact, there are beautiful aspects to that personality and introverts can have a special quality to their ministry that extroverts could never grasp. But, it's like any other part of your character.  When you let it take hold and control your every decision, it will hold you back.

The same can be said for worriers, planners or cautious people (actually, I'm all of those too).  Those of us who have the gift of organization and planning tend to want all the facts or see the "big picture" before we make a decision.  The trouble with letting this lead you is that sometimes God just wants to lead you.  Sometimes the decision He wants for you to make or the place He wants for you to wait doesn't make any sense on paper.  It may even look disastrous on paper.  I heard someone say the other day that God just seems to LOVE impossible situations.  He LOVES them.

The scripture I mentioned above in Zephaniah says that our God is a mighty Savior and He wants to calm our fears and rejoice over us.  He has a plan and that's all we need to know.  Our job is to just do the next right thing that He has put in front of us.

I am learning, and have been learning for years, to wake up every morning and get control of my emotions and feelings.  I have to be disciplined to give them to God, first thing.  That's why, if you know me, you know that I wake up and spend a great deal of time first thing in the morning gathering my thoughts for the day.  I just sit, drink my coffee and practice the discipline of taking back my day, from the start, before it gets away from me, and I spend time giving it to Him.  Sometimes this doesn't happen until everyone is on the bus and napping but the goal is always first thing.

I don't want my life to control me.  I don't want my fears about what could be or what has been in the past keep me from God's full potential for me.  Life doesn't give me time to waste.  I don't want every day to just be me and my thoughts.  Yuck!  Can you imagine?! Depressing.  God knows me and He is my Creator and He will provide sufficient time for me to reflect and have quiet time (once my 3 kids are out of the home, right?).  He loves me and has great plans for my life.  I'm just going to follow Him, a few steps at a time.