Stop starving

"Your words were found, and I ate them, 

and Your words became to me a joy
and the delight of my heart,
for I am called by Your name,
O Lord, God of hosts."
Jeremiah 15:16

I wonder how it was meant to be, before we fell for the words of a lie and the thing You made was broken. I wonder what it was like, the words leaping from Your lips into the void, one by one, each sound birthing a miracle?

When your God is a God whose every word breathes life, you'd think we would learn to listen. 

You'd think we would do anything for those words, sacrifice anything, go anywhere, do whatever it takes to gorge ourselves on the life-giving love of a good and gracious and powerful Creator. 

Oh, what we were meant to be. 

What we would be if we ate Your words like we were starving, clung to the sound of Your voice like it was the only thing we need. If we believed that every single word is what we are made for.

We have fled into silence, and instead of returning we starve ourselves with noise. 

Our hearts are ringing from the clamor of the lie: You are not enough.  

Your words are the lifeline You give us to draw us through the void. We think that You are absent, that You hide, but You are always here if we stop to listen. And when we listen, You call us by name, which is Your name, for we are Yours. 

Your word is who You are. It is joy, it is delight, and it is enough. It makes me enough for this place. It gives shape to suffering. It satisfies. 

It is the only thing that satisfies. 

Teach us to listen. To still. To breathe in Your breath as if our lives depend on it, for they do. 

Psalm 63

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;my soul thirsts for you;my flesh faints for you,as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,beholding your power and glory.

Because your steadfast love is better than life,my lips will praise you.

So I will bless you as long as I live;in your name I will lift up my hands.

My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips,when I remember you upon my bed,and meditate on you in the watches of the night;for you have been my help,and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.

My soul clings to you;your right hand upholds me.

But those who seek to destroy my lifeshall go down into the depths of the earth;
they shall be given over to the power of the sword;they shall be a portion for jackals.

But the king shall rejoice in God;
all who swear by him shall exult,
for the mouths of liars will be stopped.

Worth the risk?

There are days when you walk alongside your friend, who is facing deep pain and unspeakably hard things, and you feel this powerless sorrow. You hear stories of profound spiritual warfare, stories straight from a movie script, and you are afraid. And the stories begin to reverberate through your little world, bouncing around and picking up speed and force, and the texts fly and the conversations become these fearful wonderings. Now what?

And you gather together with other friends and you start to put words to your

fears.

How could God let this happen? Where is He?

If this is what happens to people who draw near to God, then why do it? Why draw closer to God if it’s only going to hurt more?

You feel the enemy leering, grinning in the background.

Yes. What if you go all in for God and He makes you suffer too? And what if I am more powerful than you ever dreamed?

My friend who is suffering deeply, my friend knows Jesus like no one else I know. And I know what she would tell me.

It’s all worth it when you know Him.

Yes, when you draw in, when you really truly begin to seek God, you find Him. He fills you and you start to change the world around you. You become this light. And you do have an enemy who wants that light out. He’ll do anything to stop you.

The question is a valid one. Why draw near if the cost is so great?

Maybe it’s easier to just follow God a little bit. Maybe you don’t quite want to give Him everything, because after all, He’s not quite safe. Not quite predictable. And at the end of it all, maybe He’s not quite as good and loving as He says.

And maybe you do feel safe. Maybe you don’t feel pain. But you don’t feel joy, either. Not really. Now the enemy has you right where he wants you.

You haven’t risked everything, so you don’t know what it’s like when Jesus takes it all and gives you Himself in return. You believe these lies that you are OK because the truth, it just isn’t quite safe.

Or maybe you do risk it all. Maybe He takes it all and turns it to ash, right there at your feet, all your dreams decimated.

If this is what it means to follow You, I’ll stick with my dreams, thanks.

But what are you missing if you stick with your dreams? What if that perfect thing you hold to is only a shadow of the gift He longs to give? What if pain is the doorway to knowing Him for real, the only way to make us let go of our hold on the shadowlands?

When you start to get in His word and really take Him at His word, when you become desperate enough, you give it all up.

And then you see Jesus.

The one who thirsts for a cup of water is given a waterfall. The one who longs for a candle is given the sun.

The risk is worth it.

The truth is worth it.

It’s possible that you may have to suffer more than you can imagine. But it’s possible that life could become deeper, richer, more meaningful than you ever knew it could. It’s possible you have no idea what True Love is until you see it in your deepest pain.

And just maybe you and your sisters huddle together around your Bibles whispering your broken prayers. And then those whispers become louder and louder, they become a weeping and a lamenting, a praising and a claiming of all the things you know.

You offer up your hearts and you take up these flaming swords and you start to strap on this armor. You begin to feel strong. You meet again and you become bold. You become warriors. Promises begin to fly like arrows.

Something happens when you are struck by truth. You are pierced. And in your wounds you find either healing or destruction.

I think of my friend shining brighter than ever before. I think of the prayers she has ignited, the hearts that have been gripped by her story. I think of all the crazy messy beauty of her life and how the God she loves is blazing out of all those cracks, flooding over the rim of her soul and spilling out to touch us all.  I think of my sister-warriors and the drawing together of our hearts and prayers. I think of victory, and I think of the depths of his love that is the truth He longs for us to know, and I see how we are coming to know it, bit by bit.

He is worth it.

Stop running from death

“Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the 

devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives” (Hebrews 2:14-15).

It is not the fact of death that enslaves us. It is the fear of death. 

I am slave to the fear of the loss that death brings. Death of my dreams. Death of my possessions. Death of my loved ones. Death of my body. Losing these things means losing myself. It means pain and emptiness. It means suffering. 

But Jesus came and lost it all too, walked into that death and through that death and now death is the way to life, it is the pathway to the freedom he meant for us to have. If my life is hidden in Christ, and Christ sits above death and rules over death forever, then death can hold no fear for me. 

Yet I still fear it and run from it. Maybe if I would just enter into death, then I’d find the life I am looking for. Maybe if I really believed that I am set free from the fear of death, then I would be free. 

“For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So then death is working in us, but life in you” (2 Cor. 4:6-12).

In order to have his life, I must also carry his death. The word “carry” means “to carry round, to bear about everywhere.” The word “manifested” means “to make visible or known what has been invisible or unknown . . . to make actual and visible  . . . . to be plainly recognized.”

We who live are always delivered to death. But in Christ death is not the end; it is the beginning. The beginning of his life in us. When I carry around his dying, when I bear the death everywhere, I also bear the life. And the more I am given up to the death, the more his life is visible, real, and recognized.

And during this time of Lent, we choose to die. As Julie Canlis says, we have as much to learn from emptiness as we do from fullness. There are things in my life that need to die in the desert. I come to a truer understanding of grace when I am in the desert. “Lent is a desert you impose upon yourself to make room for God.”*

We are supremely distracted. And God is calling us to leave the shadowlands and find life. Death is the way through the shadowlands. Death is not a destination. It is a way. It is not a terminus but a trail, a place we travel through, MUST travel through, to get to life. And I cannot offer life to others until I have died, and the dying is myself, and the resurrection is myself in him.

*Julie Canlis, The Lent Project, http://ccca.biola.edu/lent/#

What really matters this Lent

Maybe we are too overwhelmed with life. Or too comfortable. Or too distracted. Or too lazy.

Or maybe we’re too mad. Too full of despair. Too hopeless and afraid.

Maybe we don’t seek God because we don’t need him enough. Or maybe we need him too much, and it doesn’t seem like he is there or even really cares.

Where is God when evil men cut off the heads of his followers and shout their message of hate? Where is God when disease ravages a continent already poor and desperate? Where is he when babies die and marriages fall apart and bodies fail and people everywhere just suffer?

Where are you, God?

We need you, God.

I confess I do not understand. I feel angry sometimes—a lot—and scared and desperate.

But maybe not desperate enough.

Maybe it’s easier to ignore the questions and pain, to just duck down with my kids and my stuff and be comfortable. Or maybe I just want to stay mad. Either way, I avoid God. I don’t talk to him at all, or I hurl accusations like the fears that assault me.

But what if we just grabbed hold and clung on for dear life?

 Like Jacob wrestling all night with a God he didn’t understand. 

Like Daniel on his face, mourning for his nation and crying out to God for three full weeks. 

Like David crouching in caves, lifting words instead of weapons, sometimes in praise, but just as often in bewildered questioning.

They took hold of God and begged for answers. And God didn’t run from such confrontation. He came. He always comes. We’re the ones running away.

Daniel was visited by an angel who revealed to him a world we cannot imagine. The angel couldn’t even get to Daniel for 21 days because the battle was so intense. Forces we cannot see are raging and fighting over us. US. God’s beloved children.

A war storms around us while we play on our smartphones. Our fellow believers are being slaughtered while we flip through channels.  People in our own communities are captives to fear, need, and loneliness. And we too are full of anger and fear, and maybe we want to change, maybe we want to do something, but don’t know what to do.

I don’t know what to do. How to fix this mess. How I fit. How it even matters that I care.

But I’m convinced he’s here, and he will hear. We can’t see him because we aren’t really looking.

It’s time to fall on our faces before God. It’s time to take all this anger and all these questions and give them to him, grab hold of him and ask him to come. It’s time to stop waiting for answers and start looking for answers. Being the answers.

He won’t run from our questions. He won’t shy away from our pleas for him to come. He won’t ignore our crying out. But it starts here. With us. It begins with us moving toward him, pouring out our need for him, repenting, mourning, and asking for him to come.

Do we know what it means to truly seek him? Do we really want him to come? Are we ready for what that means, for what he will ask us to do? Because we are his hands and feet. We are his voice. Do we really want to be the answer to the questions?

How to die, part 2

"If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there my servant will be also" (John 12:26).

He has just raised the dead. Raised the dead. He let Lazarus lie in the tomb for four days just to remove all doubt of the miracle's authenticity. Now He has ridden into the city surrounded by adoring followers. His name is everywhere. His disciples spend their days controlling the crowds trying to get to Jesus.

It must be fun, riding that wave of fame and popularity. To be able to say, "Yep, I'm one of His chosen." "Yes, I was there when He raised Lazarus. In fact, I have seen almost all of His miracles."

These disciples have followed Him for three years, and if anything, they have learned He is unpredictable. But He is good. And now He is at the height of power. He is changing all the rules in their world. He's going to save them. He's the answer they have been waiting for. They swear they will follow Him anywhere.

We have the luxury of hindsight. We know that only a few days later, Jesus walks right into death, and almost all of His followers flee in terror.

He shattered their expectations. They did not understand a love that willingly gave itself up to suffering. They could not see beyond the now. They didn't know that sometimes He doesn't meet our expectations because He's going to exceed them in ways we cannot imagine.

He was part of a story so much bigger than their little world. And so were they.

It's easy to follow glamour. It's simple to attach ourselves to success and fame. But Jesus wants servants, not fans, and servants follow into death.

"Where I am, there my servant will be also."

Where is He?

In heaven, yes. And He's promised we will be there with Him. But obviously we are not there yet.

He is here, too. And if we follow, we will be where He is.

Where is He?

With the poor.
With the brokenhearted.
With the captives.
With the mourners.
With the desolate.
With the dying. (Isaiah 61)

If you know the story, you know that most of the disciples came back. They did follow. Right into death. Right into a lost and dying world. Into need. Into sorrow. Into anger and rejection and fear. These few men carried the candle of His hope, and it spread across the whole world.

We're all dying. It's how we die that matters.

We can walk into this death with our candles of hope, following where He is. Or we can cling to a life we are sure to lose. The question is, when we lose our life, what will be left?

It all depends on who we follow.

How to die, part 1

"Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life" (John 12:24-25).

The thing is, we're all dying.

We started dying the minute we were born. Ironic. We come into this world taking these gasping breaths, clinging to this slender branch, instinctively wanting to live.

But we're born into a dying world, and we've no choice but to be part of it. Even as we grow and live, we know we're doomed. We've been given passage on a sinking ship.

It seems like we spend most of our life denying death, running from it, fortifying ourselves against it, warding it off at all costs. Makes sense. We were created to live, after all. And death is suffering, and suffering is pain.

But in spite of all our efforts, pain is just the way things are. It's not the way things were supposed to be. But there it is. The God who loves us, He had to allow for the possibility of pain if we were to choose to love Him back. And so we made a wreck of things, rent this gaping hole in our existence through which death comes grinning.

Each day we die little deaths that only remind us of what is coming. 

Or maybe the little deaths are the hardest to bear. We don't mind dying in the end (knowing where we are going), but we want the passage there to be smooth and comfortable. We can't stand the losses and the hurts and the goodbyes and the hopes shattered. We long for certainty and safety. 

So we patch and paste and cover and mend, only to end up tearing bigger holes in this flimsy fabric of life.

But what if we die to live? What if we stop denying death and instead step boldly into it? 

We were made to live. But the life that is waiting for us lies through this passage of death. After all, we are all dying already. It's how we die that matters.

How we die determines how we live, not the other way around. 

And so Jesus comes to show us how these little deaths are seeds falling into the earth, smothered in black darkness for a time. But seeds that die in Him, these seeds live again. They grow up strong. Fruit-laden. Full of life. 

It seems absurd to think of a seed clinging to the branch past its time, trying its hardest to keep on living. And what if it does succeed? A seed that never dies must ultimately lead a withered, lonely life. 

We spend a lot of time being afraid of death. Maybe it's time to look death in the face, to determine how we are going to die. Maybe those little deaths--that really aren't so little after all--maybe they are seeds lying in the darkness of a long winter. 

But maybe spring is waiting. And maybe this death is about to sprout up into glorious life. 

He is there in the darkness. And when we are in Him, we never die alone. 

Be Still

 Feet Series, Part 5

The miraculous thing is that He suffers with us.

This God who loved us and wanted us to choose to love Him back, His heart broke as we chose to know evil instead. And the world fell and disease crept in to pull us away. And God did the only thing His Father’s heart could do. He waded into the muck.

He is here. Amazingly, He is with us. Maybe I should stop looking at my feet and start looking at His face.

"Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).

While evil ravages and the world rages, He calls us to be still.

In the stillness I can hear His truth:

“The Lord your God in your midst,
The Mighty One, will save;
He will rejoice over you with gladness,
He will quiet you with His love,
He will rejoice over you with singing” (Zephaniah 3:17).

The Mighty One. WILL save. Will REJOICE over me!

Will quiet me.

This God I shake my fist at yearns over me. Loves me. Delights in who I am.

And when I look beyond my broken feet I see Him.

He has cried with me and mourned with me. He has suffered my sufferings.

But if I let Him, he redeems.

Only God can make a work of beauty from my pain.

I am still learning what this means. I must choose to learn it again and again. I don’t always understand or want to understand. But looking back, I can say I know Him in a new way now. I know Him as I never would have without suffering. I know Him as the God who walks with me into the darkness and holds me tight, the God who woos me always back to Him.

The God who stays.

And broken feet, they may seem a little thing in the scope of the world’s suffering. I know this. But my broken feet are teaching me to be still. To see Him in all of it.

Yearning for us.

Waiting to redeem.

And beneath my feet blessings abound. I choose to see where my feet get to go. And there I see God. As a reminder, I now photograph my feet in the midst of my blessings. An altar of sorts.

To remember where I’ve been.

I know the pain and frustration will persist. I pray that these will drive me to His grace, over and over. And I pray that in the end, my God will say of my feet:

“How beautiful upon the mountains
Are the feet of her who brings good news,
Who proclaims peace,
Who brings glad tidings of good things,
Who proclaims salvation,
Who says to Zion,
Your God reigns!” (Isaiah 52:7)

Wade In

Easter Sunday

Feet Series, Part 4

Sometimes things are not what they seem.

Sometimes the things that plague us, the arrows that wound and bewilder and grieve, sometimes these are the deaths that lead to life.

There is One whose feet knew a better way.

Who looked down on the sobbing, suffering, sorrow of this wreck of humanity, stitched Himself to human feet and waded in.

His feet walked into all the dark places. They wore the dust and grime and weariness of each aching day. They were weighed by the impossible burdens of our brokenness. And the day His feet felt most the fatigue of His calling, that day He washed the feet of His friends.

And then His feet were broken, driven through by hate and hung with all the hopeless misery of all the ages.

His crushed feet held Him up for each agonized breath, until they could bear no more.

And these wretched feet, they are the most beautiful of all.

There are places my feet will never go. Because His already went for me.  

These are the feet at which I long to fall. To wash with my tears. To touch the scars and remember how they walked the pathways of hell so I wouldn’t have to.

And then, remembering that, maybe my feet will be beautiful too—the beautiful, broken feet that bear His name. The feet that are stitched to His grace. The feet that wade in.