Name it and ditch it (again!)
“Name it and ditch it” has become of my most taught and re-taught truths. It’s convicting but oh, so freeing. Enjoy … And name it and ditch it (again)!
I’m brushing my teeth when I hear her scream from the other room. I close my eyes and wait, since a scream from Heidi could mean any range of things–from just a silly look from brother to a bloodied busted lip. I wait. Her feet patter into the bathroom.
“Bruh-bruh bit me!” Uh oh. Brother knows the line and knows how to toe it. He’ll open his mouth and get near Heidi, taunting her without touching her, just to get a rise. He follows immediately, protesting.
“No I didn’t! I didn’t bite her!” I can see the wet mark on her shirt. I look him in the eye.
“I didn’t bite her … I just … I sawed her …” He pauses and adds, “…with my teeth.”
I display valiant self-control by not laughing out loud.
“You sawed her with your teeth?”
He smiles. “Yeah!”
Needless to say, the same disciplinary measures that apply to biting are applied to “sawing with teeth.”
Call it what you want. It’s still a bite. Amen?
Oh but don’t we do that? Don’t we dance around our sin and use fancy language to skirt real confession?
- “I’m just not really feeling appreciated enough by others.” Pride.
- “I’m just having a hard time because they have so much and I don’t.” Envy.
- “I’m just struggling with getting frustrated all the time with my kids.” Anger.
Don’t get me wrong. I hate admitting sin as much as you do (probably more, unfortunately), but more than that I just hate sin. I hate that it binds us, steals from us, keeps us living at arm’s length from God and from each other.
But we can’t be freed from sin until we confess it. And so often we’re so scared of calling it what it is, amen?
We’re staring at our toes before God and each other, shifting from one foot to the other, saying that we just “sawed them with our teeth.”
Don’t we avoid the biblical words because they just sound so bad? “Bite” sounds so bad, almost as bad as “jealousy” or “fits of wrath.” But the works of the flesh do have names, God’s spelled it out for us. Why?
So we can name it and ditch it.
We’ve all hear the “name it and claim it” movement. Let’s start a better one: Name it and ditch it.
I recently had a refreshingly honest conversation where we did just that.
Named it, ditched it, and prayed it’d never come back.
Isn’t it freeing? Why because Scripture says,
“When we confess our sin He is faithful and just to forgive our sin and cleanse us of all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)
But if the confession isn’t real neither is the cleansing! We don’t find true freedom until we call it what it is. Scripture also says,
“Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.” (James 5:16 NLT)
Don’t we want to be healed? Cleansed? Given great power to see wonderful results? We might find more power when we quit dancing around the sin and start ditching it instead. Amen?
Whew! I didn’t mean for this to be such a hard-hitting post … just know, girlfriends, I write this first and foremost to myself. I’ve used fancy words to dance around a lot of sin …
But I’d really rather name it and ditch it instead.
You too?
{Question: What sin have you “renamed” in your life? Greed? Gluttony? Pride? I hate those words as much as you, but so appreciate your honesty and desire to know Him more. Thanks, friends, for reading, and growing alongside me. Bless you!}
When you're weary…
Let us not become weary in doing good,for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. Galatians 6
I have five posts halfway written. But last night, as I stared at this screen and at the empty queue of posts ready to be published, I couldn’t force myself to finish any of them.
That’s the funny thing about writing. You just can’t force it to happen. I can grit my teeth and scrub the toilet, or make dinner, or fold laundry. But I can’t grit my teeth and make words–at least not real ones–come out on this page. They wind up being hollow, or worse, fake.
I’ve promised you no fakey fake around here, so here we are. This past Sunday Jeff preached the verses above, as we looked at being servants, helping one another and seeking to do good to one another, especially our brothers and sisters in Christ.
But the first five words of this passage have been echoing through my mind all week: Let us not become weary…
Why does Paul need to write that exhortation?
Because we get weary.
Jeff talked about the three stages of “doing good.”
1. Excitement (this doing good thing is fun!)
2. Weariness (all the fun has worn off why am I still doing this????)
3. Harvest (real fruit is born, we reap the benefits)
There was definitely the initial “excitement” phase with planting a church. Just like there’s an excitement phase with getting married, having a baby, starting some new ministry. But as sure as death and taxes, we are sure to grow weary along the road when it just seems there are so many diapers to change, and so many jobs to do, and so many little people looking up to us, and so many problems, and so many emails, and just so many things that lean hard into us.
It’s not that we’re doing anything wrong; we’re actually doing good.
It just gets wearying sometimes.
This was our topic of discussion yesterday, a few of us “do gooder” gals sitting in a circle, stealing a rare moment of hot-tea and conversation.
Apparently I’m not the only one who feels this way.
You too?
So what’s the remedy? Not the once-and-for-all remedy, but the for-today remedy. Where do we go for the anti-weary pill? Not the coffeepot. Not the fridge. Not facebook.
We must go to the gospel.
…Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
Jesus got weary. Real weary. He was able to endure–and save our souls–because He looked ahead to future joy.
We must do the same.
When I look at Shawna and life makes no sense and it seems everyone is sick and dying and tragedy is striking all around — we must look ahead to future joy and know there is a time when God will make all things new, wipe every tear from our eyes, and right every wrong.
When election results discourage us — we must look again to our unshakable Kingdom and our unchanging King and ask Him to do IN us what we want to see done in our country.
When our day’s work feels endless and there’s no fruit to be seen and no change on the horizon and we feel like we live on a treadmill— we must know that we are training for some glorious good.
Anything less than the glorious gospel of grace will not give us the strength to overcome the weary-days of life. And the gospel boils down to one word:
Love.
Love is that antidote for weariness in doing good.
Love is what held Christ to the cross and love is us what holds our hands to the plow and what wipes the tears and noses and counters and bottoms and keeps us smiling when we have to ask them three-hundred-and-fifty-three times to pick up those dirty socks off the floor. *smile*
Let us not grow weary.
{Oh friends, I pray you would not grow weary in doing good, but be filled with the LOVE of Christ and hold on, reaping a bountiful harvest in time. Do not give up, girlfriend! Praying for you today; thanks for reading.}
5 ways to (sucessfully!) establish new traditions
My parents maintain that they’ve only had one fight in their 42 years of marriage.
When Mom changed the family diet without warning.
“We’re now eating fruit every morning for breakfast!” She announced cheerfully. I don’t remember it (thankfully), but apparently Dad about blew his top. You see, the man loves his sausage and eggs, his oatmeal, his hashbrowns. The man don’t want no fruit for breakfast if you hear what I’m saying.
She quickly learned that changing the family’s traditions needs to happen slowly.
I often hear this question:
“How do you make your family follow along with your new giving priorities?”
That is, when you are newly burdened with a desire to give to poor, to live simply, to avoid the cultural tradition of crazy-Christmas debt-accumulation and you want to change your holiday-habits, how on earth do you do so without disappointing everyone else? What do you tell your kids? What about grandparents? Do you forbid them to buy your kids toys? What about Christmas morning? The question pertains to one particular day, but the principle can be applied to every day:
How do we establish new gospel-centered traditions?
I’m certainly not the expert, but here are a few thoughts:
- Go slow. Guaranteed, if you all of a sudden declare that there will be no more gift-giving or holiday shopping ever happening again, you will have World War III in your home. No bueno. Consider making small steps over the next five years. You’ll have much better results. (That same can be said with establishing new eating habits, as my mom learned!)
- Make it fun. Over the past few years, my family has done more and more giving through Gospel for Asia. We buy pigs, goats, rabbits, Bibles, clean water. But we keep it fun. One year I gave my brother a rubber chicken and a stuffed bunny rabbit from the dollar store (symbolizing the gift we’d given in his name). Another year I gave hard-boiled eggs to everyone (again, chickens). Last year my brother gave Jeff an old Bible (sent Bibles to unreached people) and gave me a bottle of water (he drilled a well in my name). There’s all sorts of creative ways to celebrate and keep it fun without heaping up more and more junk that we really don’t need. Get creative!
- Let others be free. Personally, I feel that I am only responsible for the people under my roof. I’m not going to tell my parents, Jeff’s parents, or our aunts and uncles what they can and cannot do with their money. Plus, for heavens sake let grandparents be grandparents.Wild horses couldn’t keep Jeff’s and my parents from spoiling their grandkids. So we let them. We personally do not buy our children gifts. We do for their birthdays but not for Christmas. However, it’s wonderful that their grandparents do! We’re free and so are they. (And I appreciate their amazing generosity!)
- Never say, “We can’t afford.” Sometimes it’s easy to pull a cop-out and tell people or our children that we can’t afford certain things. But this communicates that we’re victims, which just isn’t true. Some people in our world are victims of absolute poverty. We are not.By saying, “We choose not to buy those gifts this year so that we can bless some people in need,” we communicate an important truth. We believe that poverty-stricken people matter. We are choosing them.
- Keep it real. Showing our children pictures of other children in need is so helpful in teaching them compassion. Daily look at pictures of children in need. When doing the Operation Christmas Child boxes, look at children in the age-group and talk about who might receive the box. Help them see how real need is, and their hearts will be quicker to follow your new giving-traditions.
Week's end with thanks
- Our little Picassos at the children’s museum.
- That I didn’t have to go. 🙂
- Daddy day.
- A house! For us! (Details to come!)
- A great week. Just a great week.
- Falling in love with my man all over again. (You really should do this gift! It’s an amazing exercise!)
- Praying circles.
- Kimmee. Precious, precious, precious friend.
- Generosity.
- God’s constant provision.
- A feast of firsts–pumpkin pie, beef stew, biscuits, fall salad. Yum!
- Looking forward to Thursday and celebrating with family.
- Sleep.
- Fire burning.
- Full week, full weekend … off to RENEW, that’s all for now…