Sacred Mundane: The Blog

A fun little article from goingtoseminary.com for anyone trying to balance everything at once…

I’m really excited to have another opportunity to speak at a Women’s Retreat, in about a month, this time for my beloved church where Jeff and I each attended for 5-7 years before and after we were married.   It’s been four years now that we’ve been gone and often I reminisce of our sweet days there.  It’ll be a treat and I’m so thankful for this opportunity. 

I don’t want to give away all that I’m talking about (just in case you might be there!), but something I have been chewing on lately, that’s related, is the idea of trusting God for something.  I hear this a lot, along with believing God for something.  I’m trusting God for and then name a thing that we’re basically just really wanting.  I’ve caught myself doing this a lot–right now I’m trusting God for a job, for a place to live, for money to cover the cost of our baby, etc.  And I think that is really fine, I mean those are the things that I’m concerned about and we’re supposed to lay our cares before the Lord and trust Him with those things.  But I think there might be a subtle difference between trusting God with something and trusting God for something.

For example, if I’m trusting God with our living and job situation, it means that I’m trusting that whatever the outcome, His grace is sufficient and His character demands my faith and trust.  If I’m trusting God for a job, a house, etc. then I’m placing my own expectations on what I think God should do. It’s like I’m subtly twisting God’s arm saying, “Ok God, here’s my faith, now do what I want you to do.”  I’m afraid that I do this way more often that I even realize.

In Scripture, I think we have a few examples that can give us clarity.  First, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego.  They were about to be thrown into the fiery furnace and they trust God with their heated circumstances: “Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from your hand, O king.  But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods.”  Basically, they’re saying, We’re not only trusting God for deliverance out of the fiery furnace, we trust God with our situation and He is God and can do whatever He pleases. 

Of course there are plenty of situations in Scripture where God speaks a promise and then His people believe Him for that thing.  Abraham believed God (sorta) for a son.  But even he faltered because again, when he started only focusing on believing God for something instead of trusting God with His circumstances, he started to build up expectations, which then led to the son of the flesh, Ishmael. 

Maybe some would say that my faith is faltering these days.  Perhaps. But I think it’s more that I’m finally starting to realize that believing God for something is really nothing more than making a wish list, then slapping a holy-sounding word like “belief” or “trust” on it to make my dreams come true.  The sad part is that I think this is the cause of so much of our disappointment with God.  I for one feel a little worn out, I feel like I’ve had one too many disappointments this year and I’m a little tired of it altogther. But I think it’s because of this, trusting God for something instead of trusting God with something.  I won’t lie, I still despearately want a job for us and a place to live and some semblance of normalcy.  But as best as I can, I’m setting my heart to not just trust God for the fulfillment of my own desires but to just trust God. Period. 

Here it is, me being brave.  Some of you know that for about 8 years I’ve wanted to write a book entitled The Sacredness of the Mundane about glorifying God in all of life.  The problem with such an idea is that I’ve been thinking about it for eight years.  To be fair, part of the process is allowing God to write the book in me before I pour the book out of me, but I feel like lately I’ve just been putting it off because it’s far easier to just punch out blog posts and keep things failure-free. 

Last night I was digging around on my computer and I actually found the intro of the book, that I’d written down in San Jose.  I added a paragraph or two and I’m posting it here, not because I think it’s awesome or that it’s the finished product, but to give you an idea of where I’m headed, and get any feedback, ideas, etc.  I’m still a little unsure about exactly what direction I’m going with it, but it will probably be around 10 chapters, each devoted to a different mundane aspect of life (work, home, family, finances, body) and how we can consecrate every detail to God to live for His glory.  So anyway, here’s the intro I found:

———–

I picked the shirt up off the floor for the fourteenth time that day and hung it back on the rack.  I wanted to cry.  What am I doing?  Just weeks earlier my life was filled.  Filled with prayer meetings, ministering to college women, Bible studies, fellowship gatherings, times of worship, retreats, and teaching of God’s Word.  In the course of a month, my husband and I, destined for the ministry adventure of a lifetime in sunny California, found ourselves out of ministry, out of work, living in a windowless cave in a foreign state, and in the midst of very foreign circumstances. 

That shirt I was picking up again was most likely a bright pink Only Nine size 3X boat-neck shirt, the kind that slips off the hanger every two minutes at my new place of employment, Nordstrom Rack.  The jarring difference between life in full-time ministry and life in full-time Bay Area Retail was disconcerting, to say the least.  Now, instead of exhorting college women to store up treasures in heaven, I was half-heartedly advising middle-aged women on which shade of navy complimented their skin-tone.  There were days in which, after hours of picking up that same wide-necked and impossibly slippery shirt up off the floor for the fourteenth time, I thought, “I know that this is all going to burn someday, but I’d actually like to be the one to do it.”

My passion, during our years serving in full-time ministry, was to exhort women that there is sacredness in the mundane.  The Apostle Paul said that “whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God,”¹ and I was convinced that it doesn’t get much more basic and mundane than eating and drinking.  Therefore, it seems logical to deduce that if Paul told us to eat and drink for the glory of God, then it must be possible for us to do all things to the glory of God.  If anything matters, everything matters.  This is the sacrament of life.  I was passionate about instilling into college women that all of life is sacred and meant to be lived out to the fullest for the glory of God.  I talked about this, taught about this, and prayed about this-and knew that God intended me to eventually write to you about this. 

When our life turned upside down in California, it seemed that my husband and I had been “shelved.”  My biggest fear, always, had been that somehow I would mess things up or miss God’s will or get in the way, and be therefore deemed unworthy of God’s use, set upon the shelf of has-been ministers, whose pride or ignorance kept them from being useful to God.  We had followed God to California out of obedience.  I knew that.  We didn’t want to move there in the first place, but sensed through months of prayer and fasting, that we were to leave our house, parents, family, friends, and successful ministry, and start from scratch in a spiritually cold and desolate city in the heart of Silicon Valley.  This made the catapult out of ministry and into the “real world” that much harder, because I somehow feared that I had “messed up” in some way, or become too puffed up with pride, or too hindering to God’s work, and He had therefore sentenced me to a lifetime of plus-sized fashions at Nordstrom Rack. 

However, God in His graciousness cleared my clouded vision, and reminded me of His love.  This passion He had instilled in me for his glory, for the sacredness of the mundane, needed to be tested, tried, and proved through the reality of life, the rains of adversity, and the worldly pressures of Silicon Valley.  What better way to ignite my heart for his glory than to send it through the very valley of the mundane, and to demonstrate, and share with you, like the cheering witnesses of Hebrews 11 that “It can be done, it can be done, this life of faith and godliness can be run.” 

Four years later, I found myself in another set of mundane circumstances that challenged my perspective even more.  Now, instead of working full-time, Jeff and I were living with my parents in order for Jeff to finish seminary, and I was home full-time chasing an 18-month old with another on the way.  I no longer even had the joy of keeping my own home, of expressing myself through the creative outlet of my house-even if all that meant was cleaning and cooking.  My identity was once more stripped away.  Now I was in someone else’s home, changing endless poopy diapers, managing morning sickness and migraines, and wondering how on earth this was for the glory of God.  At least in the work environment I was interacting with people.  Now I was just saying “no-no” for the five-hundredth time and cleaning my parents’ kitchen. 

This one had my stymied. How? How can this be fulfilling, exhilarating work for the Kingdom of God?  My ministry, my home, my friends, my transportation (we only had one car), my freedom, my identity was gone, or so it felt.  How can this painfully mundane life be filled with sacred meaning?  And once again, God began to meet me.  The road was rough, and at times very dark, but He birthed life through a thousand little deaths. 

So now, I challenge you.  If God’s Word commands it, God’s Spirit enables it.  Do you long for the adventure of living a life consumed with passion for the glory of God?  Do you desire divine encounters at the grocery store or in your classes? Do you yearn for something more invigorating than another poopy diaper?  Dare to live every moment for God’s glory and see Him in all that you do.  You will never be the same, and the incorruptible beauty that will radiate forth from your life will reflect His beauty and attract people to the True and Living God who alone can save their souls.  This is the secret that will turn your life from a dreary and habitually discouraging cycle of tediousness, to a joyful and exhilarating pursuit of the glory of God.  This is the sacredness of the mundane.

A note of caution:  Stepping up to the challenge of living every moment for the glory of God causes a shift in the heavenly places and Satan to stand up and take notice.  Our adversary will not kick a dead horse nor afflict those who sit on the sidelines.  Consider Job.  Count the Cost².  If you are willing, step forward and be counted.  The glorious reward is worth any hardship, and our glorious LORD is worthy of our life.  Therefore, “be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.  Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brother hood in the world.  But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory in Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you.  To Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.”³ 

Today is a Slump Day.  I woke up way late, frantically manuevered getting myself and Dutch ready (Jeff leaves at 6:45am to get stuff ready at church), hurrying him along nursing, and finally making to church, pulling him out of the car to discover he was loaded with a poopy diaper.  Church annoyed me.  I know that’s really bad to say, but there are times when overly happy-happy-joy-joy people can just bug the heck out of you when you’re down in the dumps, especially when you’re really trying to seek God and be obedient and the nice neat “obey=happy” equation doesn’t seem to be panning out so well.  At any rate, we survived, and I arrive back at home, had my first cheesy bean burrito of the day, and tried half-heartedly to clean the kitchen while Dutch played with cars.

By the time Jeff got home around 1:15 I’d stuffed depressing thoughts and feelings–about how something in our life has got to change or I am going to collapse–all morning and thought I was fine then to my horror as we sat down to talk about our mornings, I burst into uncontrollable tears. What a wreck.  He did all the right things–held me, assured me my feelings were legitimate, then left me to my pounding headache and tired eyes, resting on the couch.  At 2:30 I decided something must change when my mom, Mrs. Compassion and Tender Mercy herself, said, “So why are you in a bad mood?”  I am proud to say I didn’t fall on the floor and start crying, but I realized that perhaps my down-sad-depressed-sourness is more frequent then I care to admit.

So, when I get to this point, I usually start racking my brain for a way to pull out of it. Obviously I pray, and I read through Philippians, but for me I need something concrete to get myself back on track.  Usually I turn to a book.  I sat on the couch upstairs and stared at the bookshelf, waiting for some magic title to light up that read, “How to be happy” or something like that.  What I did notice was a book that I’ve always meant to read but never happened to pull it off the shelf.  A simple book called “Teaching to Change Lives” by Howard Hendricks.  I wasn’t much in the mood to think about teaching, I just wanted to not feel so sad, but I’d just finished the last of the 10 novels I recently borrowed from the library (morning sickness gives me an excuse to read fiction), and so hey, what the heck. I opened it up.

Now obviously, it is no secret, my goal is to change lives. If you haven’t figured it out yet, that is why this blog is here.  I don’t just love to see my name on the computer screen, and though it’s therapeutic for me to write, the bigger picture is that my lifelong goal is to use writing to change lives.  That’s why I write. So, ok I thought, this might be good.

Chapter 1:  “The effective teacher always teaches from the overflow of a full life. The Law of the Teacher, simply stated, is this: If you stop growing today, you stop teaching tomorrow.  Neither personality nor methodology can subsitute for this principle. You cannot communicate out of a vacuum. You cannot impart what you do not possess. If you don’t know it–truly know it–you can’t give it.  This law embraces the philosophy that I, as a teacher, am primarily a learner; a student among students…I must keep growing and changing.”

I think I kind of subconsciously knew this, but to hear it articulated so clearly made everything come into focus.  This process I am in, the painful growing process, is necessary if I want to truly communicate any truth about life and faith and growth and pain.  The reason I love love love seminary so much is that I grow!  I change and stretch and hurt and it forces me to learn which enables me to share and teach and impart.  But it goes far beyond seminary, because some of the greatest lessons are those I learn in the times like this morning, when I crumble into Jeff’s arms because I want to move out so bad it twists my guts all in knots.

So I will continue to grow.  I will grow because I want to teach.  I will grow and learn and be a student of life because I pray that somehow by the grace of God He will let me use whatever communication means possible to teach and change lives, in whatever sphere I am, whether private or public.  Oh that we will continue to learn and grow! God please help me to continue to stretch, even when it feels like I will snap in half it hurts so bad.  My bones ache with the growing pangs…but there is life happening, I can feel it.