Hammer on Anvil '

Do you ever get impatient about progress in your spiritual life? I sure do. Just when God has me where He wants me, I hear a sermon or overhear a conversation about what someone ELSE is doing, and I think to myself, "Man, I am so lame! I need to be doing THAT!"

Wrong. God does not direct our lives based on what somebody else is doing for Him. In fact, many times those situations are temptations the enemy throws in our path to divert us from what God wants US to be doing.

Case in point: the past month or so, God has been tenderly bringing me back to the basics. He has to remind me frequently that I need to be simple like a child. This particular time, He used a well-worn book I have had for years -- Brother Lawrence's The Practice of the Presence of God. Something happened in me spiritually as I read it again (for the zillionth time!). This paragraph really resonated with me:

I'd been brought up to be a regular church-goer, and for all my conscious life I'd believed in God and wanted to please Him. I'd assumed this was done by deliberate acts of worship, by prayer and study, by discipline and self-control. And I was discouraged because, instead of getting better as I got older, I found I was actually getting worse. The harder I tried, the more I failed.

As he walked one day, contemplating this conundrum, Brother Lawrence came to a beautiful tree he had passed many times. Its branches were weighed down with chestnuts. That's when God spoke to him.

It's hard to explain, but this is how it came to me. In the winter this old tree was bare, stripped of its leaves, apparently dead. In the spring, new life flowed up from the soil through its trunk and branches. Then later, the flowers and finally the chestnuts appeared.

I was like the tree in winter. Myself, I was nothing -- dead, barren, without fruit. And, like the tree, I couldn't change by struggling or sheer effort. I, too, must wait for the hand of my Maker to touch me with life and change my winter of barren unfruitfulness -- in His own time -- into first the spring of new life and then the summer and fall of flower and fruit.

As I read these words, I felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from me. Suddenly I realized my focus had been all wrong. Instead of striving to reach a certain state of spirituality [focus on self], I need to simply rest in my Maker's presence [focus on Him]. I can't do anything to speed up God's purposes for my life, or make anything happen that He knows I am not ready for. Rather than doing things out of obligation and duty, I can do everything as a labor of love for my Father. It is a freedom I have never known before. I get giddy just thinking about it!

Then came the temptation. I heard an amazing sermon, and the one who delivered it is a missionary to Muslims. He and his wife live in very dangerous places, and he has been imprisoned for his faith. He issued a challenge for Christians to stop being so content in their comfort zones, and be willing to do dangerous things for Jesus.

My response? I am so lame as a Christian. I need to go overseas and be martyred for my faith. There's just one problem with that line of thinking. It takes my focus off of God, and back to spinning my wheels, thinking I need to be doing what somebody ELSE has been called to do. I was experiencing condemnation instead of my new-found freedom. God graciously showed me the trap I had fallen into, and helped me crawl out of it. He reminded me of Brother Lawrence's words: "The One who patiently led the trees and the plants through their seasons would also lead me, if I would only submit to His loving and powerful hand."

It is fine to have ideals. It is fine (and highly recommended) to have your heart broken with the things that break God's heart. It is fine to be challenged by a call to action. But we all need to pray for discernment, and ultimately submit to God's will and His timetable.

Are you tired of spinning your wheels and trying to do things in your own strength? Do you play God, thinking you know what's best for yourself and others? I have been there and done that, and it is exhausting.

If you are there now, I encourage you to "Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens" (Isaiah 40:26). Shed the weight of self-imposed "religious activity," and embrace the freedom of a child.

Recently my husband, John, and I were called upon to provide respite care. It was our first opportunity since being licensed as foster parents in April, because I have had some health issues that would have prevented me from running after small children.

For those who are not familiar with respite care, it means providing care for children whose foster parents are temporarily unable to do so. In this case, the foster family had to go out of state for nine days to attend a funeral.

Three children, ages 5 and under, were our guests for those nine days. The youngest was still a baby, under two years of age. My biggest challenge was that at times she was inconsolable. She wailed and cried, and generally in those circumstances I am able to hold and comfort a child till they calm down. Not this child. She arched her back and pushed me away. It broke my heart because though comfort was there for the taking, she refused it.

At first I think my pride was a bit hurt. I reared three sons and am now the mother of three beautiful grandchildren, and I can't get a baby to stop crying? Have I lost my touch? John saw how distraught I was, and reminded me that it's not about us. My parenting skills were not in question.

I began to try to put myself in this little one's place. Though she was very young, she displayed definite attachment issues -- and it's no wonder. Already in foster care, suddenly she was dropped off at the home of total strangers. She had a blanket to call her own, but everything else in our house was totally unfamiliar to her. Why should she allow me to comfort her? Why should she trust me?

God used this situation to remind me that I am like this little girl. He is there all the time, and has promised to provide all that I need. Yet I have little tantrums and push Him away when He tries to draw me to himself. I have struggled with "attachment issues" with God because my relationship with my earthly parents was far from ideal. So how can I expect this precious little girl to attach to me in nine short days?

Yet she did attach. After a week or so, she was no longer content to simply be laid in her crib at night. She would squawk, and I would come in and rock her. Just a couple minutes was all she needed, and then she was ready for sleep. We had learned to communicate, and trust was established.

Are you like a little child who refuses to be comforted, or have you learned to trust in your heavenly Father? Even if your parents were abusive and/or toxic, you can learn to see God in a different light. He is not like earthly parents. He will never leave you nor forsake you. He truly is a Father to the fatherless (Psalm 68:5).

Recently my husband and I have been privileged to attend a number of weddings. We consider it an honor to stand with young people who are committed to God and each other. We understand the seriousness of the wedding ceremony, and that we are not there merely to observe -- those who attend are expected to actively support the bride and groom by praying for them and being there for counsel if/when needed.

At one of the ceremonies we attended, a couple sat next to us and we chatted briefly. During that time, we found out they are missionaries.

Imagine my disbelief, then, when the man proved to be one of the most self-absorbed individuals I have ever had the misfortune to meet. I witnessed what in my experience is a new low when it comes to disrespect and boorishness in a joyous public celebration.

Before the ceremony began, this man whipped out his cell phone and began playing a game on it. Throughout the entire thing, he sat there mesmerized by his phone. Through the sacred vows. Through the bride's tears, and the groom lovingly wiping them away. He didn't even look up when the couple was pronounced man and wife. And yes, he missed the kiss, too.

I would sort of understand if this person was a young teenager, or a child whose parents gave him a game to play to quiet him during the ceremony. And I would understand if he was a nonbeliever who simply didn't understand the sanctity of marriage. But this was a grown man who, as a missionary, should understand what God has to say about a man and a woman becoming one flesh.

I thought perhaps his wife would ask him to turn off his phone, but when he was stumped at one point about the game, she took the phone and played it for him! My husband and I couldn't believe it -- and it's not just because we're old fuddy-duddies. Our 22-year-old daughter-in-law, who was sitting with us, couldn't believe it either.

In society today, marriage is seen as irrelevant by an increasing number of people. Christ followers don't need to add to that warped view by being publicly irreverent during a holy celebration of a man and woman being joined together.

A dear friend took me aside at church Sunday and asked me to blog about this topic. Probably many of my readers have heard someone say, "God will never give you more than you can handle." Perhaps someone said it to you after you lost a loved one. Or maybe when you were in the throes of a nasty divorce. Or when your child had just been diagnosed with autism.

Though I don't doubt that people have good intentions when they use this phrase, the problem is that it is not scriptural. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that God will not give us more than we can handle.

Then where did this awful phrase come from? Probably 1 Corinthians 10:13, which says:

The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure (New Living Translation).

Paul is talking about temptation here -- not suffering or overwhelming circumstances. Things happen in life over which we have no control. But we do have control over how we respond to temptation. God promises to give us victory in times of temptation; He does NOT promise that nothing will ever happen to us that we "can't handle."

The issue here is that what we think we can handle, and what God KNOWS we can handle, are often very different things. Last year, I (and many others) prayed for months for a man to be healed from Stage 4 cancer. He was only 42 years old when he died, leaving behind his wife and 3 young children. Did his wife think this was more than she could handle? YES. But her faith in God has enabled her to persevere through this dark time in her life. She and her children are learning that God is their source of strength and hope.

Dear friends, only God knows what we can handle. We may believe we could never cope with a given situation, only to find that when actually faced with it, God came in like a flood and we made it through. Sometimes dire situations are the only thing that awaken us to the fact that we need to depend on God for everything. Acts 17:28 says, "In Him we live and move and have our being." Yet we sometimes live our lives without giving God a second thought -- let alone making Him first in our lives.

Recently I was going through a dark, scary time in which I felt hopeless and powerless. In the middle of the night, God spoke Isaiah 41:10 to me: 

"So do not fear, for I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with My righteous right hand." 

I fell back to sleep in peace, knowing He would sustain me and see me through.

If you are going through something right now that is so overwhelming that you feel like you're drowning, know first of all that it's okay to feel desperate! Remember David in Psalm 22? He cried, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" Jesus later quoted that gut-wrenching sense of abandonment as He hung on the Cross.

Even when you can't sense God's presence and it feels like He's a million miles away, be assured that He is right there with you. Suffering is never pointless in His economy. Be still, and know that He is God.