Inner Apartheid
Considering these Sacred Mundane thoughts today, from Richard Foster:
“Many of us live in a kind of inner apartheid. We segregate out a small corner of pious activities and then can make no spiritual sense out of the rest of our lives. We have become so accustomed to this way of living that we fail to see the contradiction in it. The scandal of Christianity in our day is the heresy of a 5 percent spirituality.” Foster, Prayer, 169
I pray today that the Holy Spirit floods your life so that no nook or cranny is untouched by His power and presence. May everything be affected by His love, grace, power, truth. Today I’m asking Him to show us any area we are keeping hidden from His light. Let’s heap all of life up onto the altar and watch as His fire makes our light shine.
{Thanks for reading.}
Complete Confidence: Yours in Him.
He’d told me not to look … but I just had to take a peek. How bad could it be?
He’d warned me before the story went live: “Babe, commenters are ruthless on those news sites. Don’t even go there; it’s just a firestorm of angry opinions.” So I didn’t go.
But then a week later I had to send someone the link, so I searched for the two KATU stories featuring our family. They popped up. My eyes widened: 81 comments? 45 comments? I scrolled down, just had to peek, how bad could it be?
Bad. But good.
Good for me. Eye-opening. I live in a pretty sheltered little world. Little stay-at-home mama, pastor’s wife, livin’ in West Linn of all places. A mean look is rare around here let alone a mean comment. But it was like God pulled back a little corner of the bandaid and let me see the hurting, wounded, festering part of the world where people sling sarcasm at each other like mud. Sling insults, tear-downs, angry words that come from somewhere deep down that’s terribly, terribly broken.
People are just so broken.
There were some great, thoughtful comments. People actually interacting with the content. But many are just angry hurting people who probably feel unheard, threatened by the world around them, thrashing through life because something hurts so bad they can’t stand it any more.
I finished reading and was, I’ll admit, a little shaken. Was my whole life, as one person had written, merely “incoherent Jesus babble”?
I opened my Bible, shook my head in amazement at God’s timing. I had forgotten about my morning’s scripture reading. Until then. I had written across the page, tucked into Numbers 23-24:
No weapon formed against you shall prosper.
That’s what had come to mind as I read of Balaam and Balak. Seeing that God had prospered Israel, given them His blessing, giving them the land, and defeated Og and the Amorites, the king of Moab was afraid.
So he called for Balaam the prophet.
Now, Balak didn’t want truth from Balaam, he didn’t want to actually inquire of the Lord at all. He just wanted Balak to “curse this people for me, since they are too mighty for me.”
He just wanted to preserve his life by cursing someone else’s.
But, as you know, every time Balaam tries to prophecy he is simply filled by the Lord with blessings for Israel. Check this out:
First oracle: “How can I curse who God has not cursed?” (Numb. 23:8)
::Israel is NOT cursed.
Second oracle: “I received a command to bless: He has blessed and I cannot revoke it! … for there is no enchantment against Jacob, no divination against Israel.” (Num. 23:20)
::Israel is not only not cursed, they are BLESSED and cannot be cursed!
Third oracle: “Blessed are those who bless you (Israel), and cursed are those who curse you.”(Num. 24:9)
::Israel is blessed and those who curse them will be themselves cursed instead.
Wow. Talk about turning that on its head. God makes it so clear here that the people He has blessed cannot be cursed. I looked back down at the note on my page:
No weapon formed against you shall prosper.
I scribbled out weap, wrote opini–
No opinion formed against you shall prosper.
Is that fitting with the context? I flipped back to Isaiah 54:17 and re-read it:
“No weapon that is formed against you will prosper; And every tongue that accuses you in judgment you will condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, And their vindication is from Me,” declares the LORD.
It is exactly the context. The New Living reads like this:
But in that coming day no weapon turned against you will succeed. You will silence every voice raised up to accuse you. These benefits are enjoyed by the servants of the LORD; their vindication will come from me. I, the LORD, have spoken!
I do not mean to say that no one can speak against you. Certainly some of what is spoken against us is true and should be taken to heart! But, as a child of God, living in the Kingdom, every accusing voice will be silenced by the one true God.
You may feel that every voice is against you. When you choose to live in the upside-down kingdom you may hear friends, relatives (and strangers) mocking you or criticizing.
There is only One who can bless.
There is only One who can curse.
The message of the cross is foolishness [“incoherent Jesus babble”] to those who are perishing (1 Cor. 1:18).
So we do well to pray that Jesus would
‘open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’ (Acts. 26:18)
I wonder if sometimes we get so distracted by a tiny scratch of our own that we forget that the world is bleeding to death?
It does hurt when our friends or family or strangers criticize our choices or mock our faith. But remember: It’s a scratch inflicting by someone who’s bleeding to death.
As we settle down secure in His blessing, convinced that no opinion formed against us shall prosper, we can respond in in complete confidence, offering grace:
“Bless those who persecute you.” (Romans 12:14)
{Thanks for reading.}
Week's end with thanks
- Trusting God for Change this weekend as we study the gospel of grace!
- Dear Nana who’s lovin’ on my babes.
- The Justice Conference.
- That Jeff gets some blessed time to be filled.
- Kids running laps around the house, running themselves exhausted.
- Two happy faces, hands waving from the window.
- First time not crying when I left them! 🙂
- Clarification and kindness.
- A great team.
- Looking ahead.
- Focusing here.
- Trusting God for each step.
- Teaching kids to trust.
- Heidi plopped on the couch, eyes glued to Priscilla Shirer on the TV.
- Both kids enraptured as Priscilla went through the “Who God Is” list from Scripture. Tears in my eyes. God is amazing!
- People watching.
- Unexpected family night.
- How God works all things together.
- Ellie.
- Angela Davis’ kindness.
- Zondervan’s no but feeling so encouraged!
- Ch. 3 & 4 complete!
- People who pray.
- Tea.
- Coconut milk.
- That I don’t have a baby with me on the airplane. 😉
- That I can count on Him to be faithful.
- That next week, Lord willing, I’ll be somewhere sunny and warm. 🙂
- That He orders our steps.
- Planting primroses in the front yard with the kids.
- Hands in the dirt.
- Everything coming up! Green shoots everywhere.
- Sunny days.
- Kids riding bikes at the park.
- Their crazy imaginations.
- Being a shark.
- Falling asleep in her bed.
- Building the Lego Tantive IV with Dutch.
- Devouring corn muffins.
- Nutella on graham crackers.
- His Word that feeds me every day.
- That He forgives …. again and again and again.
- Amazing grace, how sweet.
Happy Weekend! Thanks for reading.
#51 Get Help {52 Bites}
Today I’m flying down to Southern Oregon to speak at a retreat, entrusting the sweet babes to Jeff and his mom. No better time than today to celebrate help!
~
All of us have choices about what we will do. Whether it’s raising four kids or working full-time or growing your own food or writing a book or regularly serving in your church, we all have things we do and we all have the responsibility to manage the homes, habits, and hearts that God has entrusted to us. And sometimes, in order to do this well, we need to get help.
We talked about this about a month ago when we asked the question, “How do you do it all?” Two quick thoughts from that and then let’s talk about getting help.
1. Maintain constant conversation with God.
This has been the huge lesson for me the past few months. My friend and discipler, Elisa, always reminds me that she gives God her schedule. Every day. No principles can ever replace the Person of the Holy Spirit who is able to direct our very steps throughout the day. All our well-intentioned time-management solutions will fall short if we haven’t simply asked God what His will is for our day.
2. Be just as purposeful about what you don’t do as what you do.
I think this was the big lesson of our discussion a few months ago. We talked about what we don’t do and how we can relax about it. Again, back to #1 — we need to seek God daily to ask Him which things we need to let go.
3. Get help.
Now onto today’s topic. This portion of Tsh’s book is straight from her excellent post here. Meagan Francis also has a great post on the same topic.
For me, help comes in the form of family and friends. Jeff is great about making Fridays Daddy Day so I can write. He’s also just a really low-maintenance guy, so just the fact that he’ll eat anything I make helps me a lot. My parents also help, now that my mom is back on her feet. They’re aiming to come on Mondays so I can write then as well. Huge blessing.
And then, of course, where would I be without friends? Most often it is my friend Danielle who can take the kids for an hour, bring me soup when I’m sick, grab that 10 lb. bag of carrots from Costco. I truly think that simply living in community is the greatest source of help.
Here’s my point: Chances are there is someone in your life who wants to help. Be it a grandparent, friend, sister, aunt, spouse, usually there is someone who would be happy to step up if there were a clear way that he or she could serve.
When Heidi was born things were nuts. Dutch was just 2, I was in seminary full time, Jeff was in seminary, our house sold 6 days after she was born, and we had nowhere to move. I made a big list entitled: “Ways people can help.” So whenever someone called or stopped by and asked that question, I always had an answer. (And yes, people I’d just met scrubbed my toilets and packed all the dishes in my kitchen!)
So, do you need help? If so, where will you go to find it? First, pray (then pray some more) and then:
1. Make a list of people who might like to help.
2. Make a list of ways people could help.
3. Ask.
Then, receive the help graciously.
And now my application: I’d actually love to ask for some help from you.
1. If you enjoy writing, love Jesus, and have a blog, I’d love for you to guest post. If you’re interested I can send you more information and guidelines, just contact me here.
2. We’ve had some technical issues with this site, so we’re in the process of redoing a number of things. One of these is the subscribers. If you’d like to receive posts slipped into your feedreader or email each day, please click the icon above-right to do so. (Email is the one that looks like an envelope.) If you have already done that in the past, could you please re-subscribe so that we can have everyone together in one place? Thank you for your help!
{Also, would you help by your gracious prayers for me this weekend? Thank you Jeff, M&D, Nana for all your generous help! And thank you, all, for your grace and kindness, and for reading.}