Silence and mourning

This year I have been really struck by the idea that on Friday night Jesus' disciples, his friends, his family watched him die.  They didn't know what was happening, they didn't know that their Lord was coming back. Unlike modern Christians Saturday wasn't a day of waiting. It was a day of silence, a day of grief and of mourning. 

For many modern Christians Saturday is the day of preparation. A day of preparation for a celebration. We spend the day grocery shopping, coloring eggs and preparing a banquet. 

But Jesus' followers, his friends spent Saturday in hiding. They spent Saturday in mourning. They did not know. They were not able to say that tonight we mourn and tomorrow we rejoice.

We get the privilege and honor to know that on Sunday we rejoice. On Sunday we proclaim the good news. They got the privilege and honor of knowing Jesus in the flesh. 

Today I will mourn.

Tomorrow I will celebrate, but today I grieve.  

"Your will be done"

I have had two major life verses in my life, that I have repeated to myself over and over again when times were rough.
The first one was Jeremiah 29:11. As I drove by myself from Iowa to LA in the spring of 2009 through hills of Utah in an extreme downpour this verse came to mind.
"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
I breathed easier knowing that God had a plan, that should my car die, should I die, in this barren land with 100 miles to the next gas station, that it would be a part of God's plan. That should I live, it would be a part of God's plan. God had a future for me.

This was my verse until winter 2013, when I met someone who had the same life verse. When I was in a relationship that would change my life. When I experienced my first panic attack, as I heard that verse coming out of his mouth, and knew God was clearly speaking to me.
My prayer had changed that fall. That relationship had caused me to change. The words of my lips and pray of my heart had changed to a simple phrase, "Your will be done."
Yes I had a future and yes, God still had a plan for me, but what I needed to remind myself of was that God's will needed to be done. It wasn't about me, but about God.

Today as I reflected on this, I began to think more and more about the Lord's Prayer. About how Jesus instructed us to pray.
It starts out so simple.
Our Father - Ours not just Jesus', not just mine, not just yours, but OURS. We may not agree on predestination or the end of the world, but none of that matters. We have the same God, we share the same Father. We are a community of believers. Often we forget that.
who art in heaven - God is reigning over us, He is where we want to be.
hallowed be your name - God is are holy, God is worthy to be praised.
your kingdom come - Your kingdom God, not mine, not Joe's, but Yours.
your will be done - God what You want, what You will, what You desire. Not me, not my wants, not my wills, not my desires.
on earth - On earth, in this place. God's will be done here and now, where we walk and live.
as it is in heaven - let this place on earth be a mirror of heaven.
Give us today - Today, not tomorrow, not next week, or next month or when we graduate or get married but today.
our daily bread - God will not let us starve. He will deliver the manna from heaven. He will feed us. Daily.
and forgive us our trespasses - We will screw up. We are human and we fail, but God will forgive us.
as we forgive those who have sinned against us -  we need to forgive. Holding that grudge, holding that hurt, does nothing but hurt us. If God can forgive us, we need to extend that forgiveness onto others.
And lead us not into temptation - I am prone to screw up. It is only with God that I don't fail. If God is leading us, if our eyes are on God, we will be safer from temptation.
but deliver us from evil - God can rescue us. God DOES rescue us. He is the only thing that saves.

Matthew 6:9- 13, how simple, how beautiful. How often we just repeat the words from memory, without pausing to think about what they really mean.

Because you will never read this

You will never know that I first realized I loved you on Christmas Eve. 

You will never know how my heart broke in that realization. 

How my heart still breaks in knowing that the man I loved was never meant to be mine.

Love is powerful and strong and leaves a mark.

Love is dangerous and beautiful and hopeful. 

My love for you left a scar. Christ's love for me has made me whole. 

Get out

I heard something recently that really broke my heart.
A man who was a leader in a church(not the church building I currently attend), it was found out that he was having an affair. Not just a one time indiscretion but he was in a relationship with someone who was not his wife. When his wife confronted him about it he admited to the affair, he told his wife that he wanted to seperate, that he wanted a divorce, that he loved this other woman.
Obviously my heart broke for the wife.
But that is not the part that really broke my heart.
Obviously since he was a leader in the church, church leadership was going to get involved. They would ask him to step down from leadership, which I feel is appropriate, but I also was informed that they were going to ask him to leave the church, and my heart broke for him. My heart broke for him. He is a wounded individual, he is a hurt man, he is a sick man. He obviously needs the healing and love of Christ.
But my heart also broke because of the way this other church is responding to sinners. To say no you have to leave, instead of we are going to stand here with you though this and love you through it. And obviously there is the thought that this is the church the wife goes to and wanting to protect her. And that I understand, 100%. He caused her harm and we should want to protect this woman in the church. I feel like we should do everything we can to protect the victim. But when it comes to an act of sin, and granted he has not asked for repentance, he is not repenting of his behavior in any shape or form but I feel that that does not give us as a church justification to say you cant come here any more. My heart breaks for this man who is obviously troubled and stuck in sin and the devil has a hold of him. And instead of our response being hey I am going to fight for you and instead of fighting for him and saying no this isn't appropraite behavior, you can't do this, I am going to stick with you through it, we are kicking him out until he changes his behavior.
One of the things I have heard from my own church recently that makes me love my church so much, is the phrase, Belong, Believe, Behave. First we get to a place where we feel like we belong and out of that belonging can come a belief in Christ and out of the belief, comes a change a behavior. So its not that we have to do good in order to be saved, and its not that we have to do whats right in order to be saved, and in order to feel like we belong. First we have to feel like we belong and we have to feel safe, and out of that comes a sense of belief and a sense of trust in Jesus Christ and out of the trust in Jesus and relationship with Him comes a change in behavior.
So my heart breaks for this man who is stuck in sin, my heart breaks for this man who is being kicked out of the church.
My heart breaks for his wife who is heartbroken at this betrayal.
And my heart breaks for the church.
I pray that he can be loved, I pray that he can be known. I pray that there is someone out there who will say I am going to fight for you brother. I am going to walk with you through this. And I will be here, til the day that you believe and I will be here til the day that you repent, and til the day that your behavior changes. I will make you feel belonged, I will make you feel loved despite of and because of your sin.
Just the way Jesus loves us because of and in despite of our sin.

Not enough

I know most of my jealousy issues stem from a lack of self confidence. A feeling that I am not good enough that I am not worth it. Often times I pray for God to provide me a spouse, a partner that will help me feel confident and secure and loved and then my feelings of jealousy will be cured, will be healed.

 I pray for an outside source to make an inside lacking go away.  I don't pray for healing or strength. I don't pray for confidence and boldness. I do the same thing I have done my whole life. I pray for a husband. I pray to find my hope and security in a man. I don't seek security and comfort in the man who has already shown me how much I am worth. The one who gave his life for me even before I was born. The one who loves me no matter if I love him or not.

I know that no man is perfect and should I ever getting married, my husband will fail. There will be times when he talks to a pretty coworker and because he hasn't complimented my looks that day I will jump the conclusion that he doesn't love me any more and wants to be with her instead.  

I also know and "fully" trust and pray that God will give my husband an understanding heart.  I pray that God will heal me of these issues, and make me a strong woman, who will know that my husband chose me for life and even though I didn't get a compliment that day and that he is talking to a pretty woman because he is a nice human being, that he will come home with me and kiss me goodnight and hold my hand and pray for God to keep our marriage strong. 

God will never provide me with less than I need or more than I can handle. 

What are you waiting for?

I read a blog recently that talked about purity rings and waiting till your married. In it the girl talks about how she took off her purity ring not because she was going to go out and have sex but because of the symbolism behind it. Her life wasnt about waiting and that is something that I think we as a culture dont stress enough.
Our lives shouldnt be about waiting. We already have everything. Why should I wait till I find a husband or  wait till I have a kid? Why can't I live my life right now to the fullest? Why has society decided that I am less because I'm single?
I am no less important or valued by my Creator because I do not have a husband or children. Maybe in some ways I am more valued because I can commit to every Sunday morning hanging with middle schoolers and taking them on mission trips and showing them how awesome a Jesus centered life can be.

This is something I need to be reminded of daily, how much God loves me in the here and now. His love for me does not wait for me to get married or wait for me to have children. His love is here and now and powerful and wonderful.

This is one of the things I hope my middle schoolers (specifically the girls) learn. God did not put us on this earth to sit and wait. God put us here to do and live and love. I want them to see and hear through my actions and words that my life is about God's plan and God's love and living an amazing Jesus centered life. Lucky for me I am not an early Jew. I do not have to wait for the coming Messiah. And luckily He loves me.

My true love has already come, He saved my soul and loves me unconditionally.  And He is pretty much perfect. Now if only I could get him to do the dishes.

Good Enough

I walked into church this morning not feeling good enough.

Feeling like there was no way the man sitting a few rows in front of me would ever be interested in me.

That I wasn't:
tall enough
skinny enough
blonde enough
stylish enough

I lacked any self confidence that would make up for some of my physical lackings.

As I sat in church and felt bad about myself my pastor started speaking about Col 2:13-23.
Usually I pay attention and take detailed notes as if I am in a class and will someday have a test over everything I have learned. But today I spaced out. I let the lack of sleep and coffee and self worth take over.
I laughed at Pastor Mark's comedy not because I thought it was funny but because I felt I had to.
And then he said, "Therefore do not let anyone judge you." and I started paying attention.
He talked about legalism and the measuring stick we use to see how we are doing.
He talked about how we do things for the benefit of others, not for the benefit of God.
Then, THEN he talked about how we should use the measuring stick to measure against God's perfection. And how that leads not to trying harder to fix it ourselves but to a deeper dependence on God.

He summed it up by saying that we don't have to live up to the human standard.

And I smiled. A big dorky inside joke smile.

God knows me, He KNOWS me. He knows what I need to hear and when I need to hear it. He knows that if He tries and tells me something early or later, that it will go in one ear and out the other.

He knows that if I would have walked out of service feeling the way I walked in, that the rest of the day would have been lost. I would have pouted in the corner at our leaders meeting, and backed out of leading this year. I would have come home and bawled about my brother and sisil selling their house and moving in less than a month. I would have drunk myself silly that my parents left shortly after I showed up.

But none of that happened. Because someone who loves me more than I can imagine made sure that I heard the exact words that I needed to hear at the exact moment I needed to hear it.

I am beyond blessed.