Blog: Glimmers in the Fog by Kim Stiver

The 5 Lies of Social Media

3/6/2019

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The 5 Lies of Social Media Can Keep You from Living Out Your Faith Authentically

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If social media is like a road — useful for connecting us with others and offering interesting things to see along the way — then the deeply veiled lies lurking within it are like black ice. If you live in a cold climate then you probably caught my meaning immediately. If you don’t, then let me quickly explain. Black ice is formed when rain or melted snow flash freeze as the temperature drops. This invisible, dangerous glaze is virtually undetectable in low light or under cloudy skies, making it almost impossible to avoid slipping or skidding over it. Black ice is a leading culprit in cold weather accidents of all kinds, from falls to crashes. And the worst part is that you can’t see it coming. You’re just walking or driving along, and then boom! You’re down for the count or seriously sidetracked.

As I have been pondering God’s direction in my life for accessing and using social media, He kept bringing this concept of black ice to my mind. Like our everyday use of roadways, social media has become a universal, frequent communications conduit for most of the world’s population. In the United States alone, almost 80% of adults have created a social media profile. Since you aren’t likely to avoid the use of roads and banish yourself to a hermit’s life because of the risks associated with black ice, it’s also highly unlikely that you are going to spend your life avoiding social media. But similar to the hidden dangers of black ice, there are sneaky, pervasive lies woven throughout social media, changed and altered as needed by the master of deceit to target every person online regardless of age, gender, lifestyle, or spiritual conviction.

Perhaps the greatest danger of all is how savvy and smart we think we are, which only creates a false sense of security and makes us even more susceptible to any of these common lies. Like a skilled driver, we can all become overconfident, erroneously believing that we will not only see the black ice ahead of time, but that we will also be wise enough to avoid being duped and skidding off into dangerous territory. But the reality is that these chameleon-like lies are so versatile, so universally appealing, that Satan can tailor them to fit perfectly with any weakness we have, no matter how mature we are.

I’m sure there are more, but here are five lies that I have been encountering over and over as I’ve ramped up my own use of the social media freeway. Capable of cutting through the noise to reach us in the most surreptitious of manners, you may recognize some of these yourself, even in the most benign, encouraging, or seemingly “spiritual” aspects of social media. Of course, you’ll also notice that these lies have been around since the dawn of time. And Satan just gets better and better at using them with each passing generation and with each new technology or fad.

Lie #1: We deserve a certain level of success or achievement in order to have a strong identity.
Scriptural Truth: We are not entitled to any recognition and everything is a gift from God. The only identity we should seek to cultivate, approval we should hope to gain, or praise we should long for is that of Jesus. 1 Peter 5:6 says, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you.”
Oh, how this one snares even the most clever among us because it goes right to the emotion of our work ethic, desire for achievement, and pride of a job well done. Social media lures us into viewing our success — of any kind — in the light of others’ triumphs. Something as simple as seeing a friend’s apparently endless level of productivity and energy can make us feel less than adequate when it comes to our own perceived busyness. And this lie seeps across all forms of success and achievement, from the obvious ones like financial prosperity and career positions to the more subtle forms of recognition, like healthy relationships, thriving families, and volunteer leadership roles. Only God knows when we’re ready for a certain level of success or notoriety, if ever. So the only identity we need to focus on is whether we’re becoming more like Jesus or not. There is no comparison to anyone else.

Lie #2: We deserve to be rewarded and spoiled once in a while.
Scriptural Truth: The only rewards we should be motivated by are those encouraged by the Holy Spirit. Mark 8:35-36 says, “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”
Everything about our modern age seeks to convince us that we deserve to spoil ourselves in some way. Whether it’s rewarding ourselves for losing 20 pounds by indulging in a decadent greasy cheeseburger or telling ourselves we deserve an unbudgeted trip to the Mall because of a promotion at work, social media can tempt us to concoct, sometimes self-defeating excuses to make ourselves happy. We have trained ourselves to be reward-driven so that we might resemble all the happy people in the social media feeds. Yet, God is calling us to desire His kind of rewards, not the world’s. Our best life comes through forgoing our earthly desires and instead of longing for heaven-minded ones. When we do this, we are rewarded with the fruits of the spirit, which are far better to obtain than any temporary pleasure.

Lie #3: We deserve to be the center of attention… at least every now and then.
Scriptural Truth: We are not worthy to be the center of attention for anything we’ve done, for our talents, or just because we’ve endured a trial or hardship. Romans 12:3 says, “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.”
Being the center of attention is highly addictive. Even the most humble and well-meaning of people can fall in love with the idea or feeling of being adored by others. While it’s obvious how social media can feed our desire to be widely admired and valued, there’s a deeper deceit lying underneath the surface. Many of us would never overtly plaster social media with images of ourselves on a daily basis, yet we can ever-so-gradually get caught up in the lie that tells us we need to amass a huge legion of followers and a mountain of likes on our posts in order to make a positive difference for God. But our almighty Father won’t let a thing like social media stand in His way if it’s His will. Ever. God will never ask us to elevate ourselves above Him in order to achieve His plans for us. His accomplishments never require our works or our compromise. They simply require us to be a vessel.

Lie #4: We only have one life to live so we better take full advantage of it.
Scriptural Truth: We should be living each day knowing that the greatest portion of our existence will be in eternity. Matthew 6:21 reminds us, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Our time on earth is brief. So the age-old lie that we need to grab hold of all that we can while we’re able to do so is as energetic and appealing as it ever was. And social networks can feed our appetites for self indulgence if we let them. Every time we log on, we see friends with a new gadget, new fashion, traveling to cool places, or indulging in a lavish meal. While there’s likely nothing wrong with any of those things for a particular individual, when we are bombarded all at once by endless images of people doing countless enticing things, it can make occasional splurges seem like the everyday norm.

Lie #5: We need to be relevant at the sacrifice of holiness.
Scriptural Truth: Jesus never compromised God’s standards for the sake of reaching people or fitting in with the crowds that followed Him. Even among his own followers, Jesus never bowed to peer pressure or the need to feel accepted. John 6:65-66 says, “And He said, ‘This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.’ After this many of His disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.”
God’s truth has stood the test of time and cultural shifts without the help of humans. The Bible remains the most read book in the world for a reason — no matter what’s popular in society, people will always be inexplicably drawn to truth delivered with love. The reason many Christians are tempted to water down God’s truth when living out their lives online is because we’re afraid of offending someone in today’s politically correct culture. But there’s a time, a place, and a style for delivering truth — and it all needs to be orchestrated by the Holy Spirit’s leading. If we allow the Holy Spirit to fully and completely govern our social media usage and interactions, we will never need to worry about the outcome. Jesus wasn’t always well-received by every person, but He always accomplished God’s mission.

Because these lies can lurk anywhere and sneak up on us at any time, using social media in any capacity needs to be filtered through the moment-by-moment guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Bible says not to grieve the Spirit, but every time we avoid His gentle nudging, we are doing just that. He might whisper to you, “That’s enough. Time to move on now,” when you’re looking at a friend’s vacation pictures and wondering why your spouse doesn’t take you to places like that. Instead, Paul calls us to put on the armor of God and wear it 24 hours a day, whether you are physically going somewhere or only traveling down the road of social influence. In Paul’s era, physical danger and persecution lurked around every corner, so the word picture he paints in Ephesians 6:10-18 of the tailor-made holy armor was especially reassuring. Today, it is highly unlikely any of us will encounter Roman dungeons or swords, but the realm of social media is no less a battlefield. The real enemy is unseen, but the wounds he wants to inflict can be life altering and gospel squelching. Satan’s number one goal is to make us less effective for God, so that means any of his well-rehearsed lies can be effective at discouraging us, distracting us, or diminishing our energy for the Gospel. But armed with God’s word and saturated with the Holy Spirit, we can march into the cultural arena with confidence knowing that no attempt to stop us can ever take away what matters most. When we seek to lose ourselves in Jesus, we find all that we need and abundantly more, no matter how many likes we get, what the latest hashtags promote, or the trendiest guru proclaims.
(Note: This was Part 2 of "Finding Spiritual Authenticity in the Selfie Age." You can read Part 1 here.)

Questions for Further Reflection

Read and spend some time meditating on the passage in Ephesians about the armor of God. Now go through each description of God’s armor and apply it to how you interact online, whether it be in social media, email, texting, watching entertainment videos, or surfing the web.
How is God calling you to alter your approach, opinion, or use of the internet and/or social media? If you don’t participate online at all, is that a decision you made or God directed you to make? Take some to pray about your involvement and seek His confirmation of your decision or His prodding to change it.
What are some ways God might be calling you to be more interactive and relationship-oriented through online communication methods? How can you carry the truth in love to others who are seeking answers online? What are some ways you can support those who are delivering the good news and love of Jesus to the online world?

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The 5 Lies of Social Media that Can Prevent You from Living Out Your Faith Online

The 5 Sinful Traps of Social Media and How You Can Avoid Them to Live Out Your Faith Online

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Winning the Battle Within

2/6/2019

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Winning the Battle Within Spiritual Faith God

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There is nothing I like more than — and despise at the same time as — falling asleep on the couch. While I do love that warm, soothing feeling of dozing off underneath my favorite fluffy throw while watching an episode of Friends on Netflix, I can hardly think of anything else so good that is simultaneously so burdensome. Why? Because finding the motivation after I wake up to move my lethargic body off the couch, march up the stairs, and get ready for bed feels as monumentally hard as asking me to climb Mount Washington in flip-flops.

Perhaps this is indicative of why I am not a napper. I’ve always wanted to be one of those people who could take a 20-minute cat nap and feel like a million dollars afterward, but instead I wake up feeling like a cat that got locked out of the house last night and got beat up by the neighborhood bully. So as much as I adore settling in for the night in my jammies on the couch, I’ve learned the hard way that when the battle of the eyelids sets in, I must resist with all my might and just go to bed whether or not what I’m watching or reading has concluded.

While the story of my couch battle is certainly one of life’s minor ironies, the spiritual battles within all of us are anything but minor and often stir up baffling contradictions of simultaneous love and hate. We often find ourselves startled when an internal battle swells up and threatens to take us back into old habits, sins, worry, or long-forgotten pain. That thing that we promised God and ourselves that we would never do again. That habit that comes back when we’re under stress, worry, or fatigue. That old wound that we find ourselves going back to revisit after many months of walking in freedom. No matter what the struggle is, we’ve learned the prescription for healing and victory in the past, but either we’re feeling too weak to execute on the remedy or we inexplicably give into willfulness or rebellion.

No matter our spiritual maturity or emotional intelligence level, we have ALL been there and we’ll all be there again. But at every point in our faith journey, we can find concrete encouragement and explicit instructions in God’s Word on how to overcome our battles and learn to love the Lord with all our hearts, minds, and souls. Out of all the fully human champions chronicled in the Bible, King David of the Old Testament and the apostle Paul in the New Testament were the best at confessing and verbalizing the spiritual battles waging within. Through the Psalms and most of Paul’s epistles, we find deeply relatable pleas for help and highly motivational tutorials for managing the war that wages between our fleshly desires and God’s best for us.

One of the many remedies God has directed me to use in effectively fighting internal battles is exercise. Like getting up from the couch after dozing off, some days it takes a seemingly gargantuan effort to make it happen. But yesterday I had an especially rare and alluring incentive — it was sunny and almost 60 degrees at my house. For those not familiar with Maine weather, trust me when I say that a temperature like that in early February makes a Mainer want to break out into the Hallelujah Chorus. And I just about did as I power walked the slushy, muddy roads in my neighborhood. On my turn back toward home, as I looked up at the sunshine filtering down through the tall evergreens, I suddenly realized how much the outcome of our battles is dependent on our perspective. Perspective isn’t just in our minds. It’s a battle plan for a victory already won.

Getting out for some exercise when I don’t want to do so, helps me develop the motivation and attitude I personally need to stay out of mental pitfalls. It also gives me the energy to finish my day strong. When I looked at the uncommon beauty and warmth spilling through the trees, I was reminded of the blessings and hope God gives me, versus whatever cold, uncomfortable, or dangerous roads I may be walking on at the time. As I snapped a quick picture of the scene above me, it was as though God whispered, “See what a difference it makes when you keep your thoughts focused up here, and not on the unfortunate conditions of the road you’re on?”

In Romans (chapters 7 and 8) 7:17-25 -- 8:1-2, Paul confesses about his own internal battles, reassuring us that even the greatest among us must continue to fight the good fight. Because The Message version of the Bible expresses it so profoundly, I’ve included Paul’s entire thoughts on the subject here. He says:

For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.

It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.

I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?

The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.

With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.

The specifics of what we struggle with may change many times throughout our lives, but God is never content to stop peeling away the contaminated layers of our soul as He continually refines His workmanship. Each day on our journey here is one day closer to our final battle, which is already won for us. As I left for my walk, I was wrestling with a strong mental distraction, but the Holy Spirit lifted my head and reminded me that a view of victory was only a perspective shift away. No matter what skirmishes we encounter along the way, Jesus promises triumph for us in the day-to-day struggles of the heart and mind.

1 Corinthians 10:13 tells us that no sin or trial can overtake us without God providing a way of escape or the ability to endure it. And 2 Timothy 1:7 assures us that He has given us a spirit of courage, power, love, and self-control.

Our job is to simply believe those two perspective-changing promises enough to act on them. Keep going as if they are true… because they are. Take the next step believing God will deliver the escape, contentment, hope, peace, mercy, grace, and strength you need as you need it, even though you can’t see it or feel it now. Yes, it’s easier said than done, but the real hard work has already been completed by our Savior. Our temporary battles here are all won because of the eternal victory Jesus has already secured. A valiant warrior holding to the vision of a sure outcome is far more likely to succeed than even the bravest hero with a bleak perspective. And in God’s eyes, we are all warriors, armed with His power and might. “If God is for us, who can be against us?” Paul asks in Romans 8:31 and goes on to say in verse 37, “In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.”

Some of the roads we’ll walk in this life will be slippery, unpleasant, and cold. We’ll be destined to walk some them over and over until we learn. But our loving Savior has promised that every step we take has the potential to bring us closer to Him. The choice of direction is ours, but the power to move forward is all His.

Questions for Reflection

In what ways do you think you need to shift your perspective about some of the difficulties you face? What can you begin doing with God's help to better prepare for victory in your life?
For every ache in our soul, there is a remedy in God's Word. Read Psalm 40 out loud while you think of the greatest battles you're facing right now. What do you sense God telling you about your struggles? What attributes of God described in this Psalm mean the most to you right now and why?
If today’s message encouraged you in some way, please pause and ask God what He would have you do based on what you just read. In addition to some action step or change on your part, ask Him who He’d like you to reach out today with this same message of hope. Whomever He lays on your heart, please don’t hesitate for one second to begin praying for them. You could also send them this blog post with a personal note encouraging them.

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The Most Soothing Word in the World

11/7/2018

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Most Soothing Word in the World God Bible Jesus

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Those of you who have been reading the Glimmers blog for a while know that I often write about my own spiritual wrestling matches with the ups and downs of life. I figure if I'm struggling with something, then there must be someone else who could benefit by hearing my stories. Most importantly, I pray people see a glimpse or hear a whisper from the One who is waiting to be discovered amidst the stuff of everyday life.

That’s the calling and driving passion He’s ignited in my heart and asked me to spend my time, energy and resources pursuing. And while this path is at times exciting, sometimes the effort, requirements, and complexities surrounding it spill over healthy boundaries, rushing in like a cresting river in my mind at the most inconvenient times … for instance, when I need to be sleeping. In fact, I struggle more with sleep now as a fledgling full-time writer than I ever did when working insane hours in a high-stress corporate career. And I’ve come to understand that’s because my calling doesn’t have any of the usual structure or familiar routines associated with a company environment.

No, it’s just me and God on a wild frontier, and I don’t know where He’s taking me. It’s the most incredible adventure and opportunity of my life, yet it is also the scariest. Since James 3:1 says, “We who teach will be judged more strictly,” I pray daily that what the Holy Spirit speaks will rise above the noise, assumptions, prejudices, and weaknesses of my mind. When the father of lies starts whispering to me and reignites the fears in my heart, I often wake up in the middle of the night ready to throw in the towel on this whole thing. After many nights of lying awake feeling panicky and completely inadequate — I am finally starting to understand something critical. Unlike a career, a God-calling only comes to fruition when it operates entirely under His hand and for His glory. I knew this intellectually, but I am just now coming to understand this truth on a heart level. And this new depth of understanding rose out of my struggle, not at a time when I was feeling confident, successful or satisfied.

When we go through trials in our relationships, our health, our jobs, or even something like the election results, our hearts, minds, and souls long to be soothed. For example, the other night when I was over-the-edge frustrated with trying to convert my new devotional eBook to a Kindle-ready format (don’t get me started on that one!), I sought out a soothing release in the wrong place — lots of chocolate and a saccharin Hallmark movie. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with chocolate in itself, but neither it, or the ridiculously unrealistic movie, did anything to help me sleep that night. It got my mind off my struggles for a while, but once the sugar therapy had worn off both mentally and physically, I still woke up with my brain running a million miles a minute. In the middle of the night, it’s funny how we all erroneously tend to think that the world’s problems depend on us and everything is all about us. That’s how Satan works his best lies on us. They are born and bred on a foundation of self-centeredness.

But instead of letting his nasty tricks twist me up this time, I turned to the only soothing word that doesn’t wear off. The second time I woke up in a mental spin class, I ran to THE Word, and the most miraculous thing happened — after a little session of saturating myself in it and yielding to its effect, I fell into a deep, much-needed sleep. When morning came, I bolted out of bed with thoughts about the multi-faceted and incredible power of the most soothing Word in the world.

Some of you might think of the Bible when I say, the “Word.” Others think I’m referencing Jesus… or the Holy Spirit… or God. Well, it’s all Him. And that’s what has me spellbound in a whole new way today. The Word in its all-encompassing, harmonious nature is alive, relevant, and fresh every day. John 1:1-5 so beautifully explains this mystery:
In the beginning the Word already existed.
The Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He existed in the beginning with God.
God created everything through Him,
and nothing was created except through Him.
The Word gave life to everything that was created,
and His life brought light to everyone.
The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness can never extinguish it.

Because Jesus is the Word, and Jesus is God, and God’s Spirit inhabits the Word, which is alive, dwelling in us, then the Word is life itself. And if we want that life, then we need to take all of it in. We can’t expect to be fully soothed, calmed, cheered, strengthened, satisfied, or healed when we only partake of a mere slice of it. God calls us to receive, experience, and nurture a relationship with all of Him. Life-boosting, deeply satisfying relationships don’t happen in pieces.

John was inspired to call this all-encompassing nature of God the Word because, according to John Piper, “He had come to see the words of Jesus as the truth of God and the person of Jesus as the truth of God in such a unified way that Jesus himself — in his coming, and working, and teaching, and dying and rising — was the final and decisive message of God.” God sent the message in the person of His only Son, who in turn, left His Spirit to dwell in us.

To thrive spiritually, mentally, and physically, God has provided the Word to impact every area of our lives. Like food and water, human beings were simply not designed to function without it. When you sin and fail, the Word is like an antibiotic salve, capable of treating the most infectious spiritual bacteria running rampant in your life. When you struggle or cry out in pain, it’s the soothing balm for your frazzled mind and wounded heart. When you long for something or seem to be waiting endlessly, the Word offers true satisfaction and endless patience. When you feel overwhelmed, hopeless or lost, it delivers hope, reassurance, and direction for every decision. Like a breath of fresh air in a toxic haze, the Word brings clarity to our lives.

While sitting at a community well with an outcast, Jesus said in John 4:10, “If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.” In every frustration, every need, every decision, the Word beckons us, saying to us over and over the same thing, “If you only knew the gift God has for you.” Lamentations 3:22-23 reminds us that this life is not to be lived without the covering, grace, and strength of God’s mercy. “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.”

Jeremiah 2:5 warns us that when we seek worthless idols, we will become worthless ourselves. That doesn’t mean God won’t help us or doesn’t love us, but it does mean that we will be rendered useless for His kingdom. So, whatever your world looks like today… whatever challenges you face… whatever hurt you feel… the well of the Word is waiting for you. The Holy Spirit is ready to help you draw from it, if you’re willing to use the bucket He offers and then fully digest its contents into your life. But holding the bucket isn’t possible until you drop the idols from your hands. The Word can only be embraced with open hands and a willing heart.
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The Subversive Power of Secrets

10/17/2018

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We cannot keep anything secret from God. This statement may seem as indisputably clear as lightning in a night sky, but as many of us have learned the hard way, it is anything but obvious in daily practice. With the exception of Jesus himself, many heroes of the faith — both Biblical and modern-day ones — have succumbed to the lie that no one will find out, care, or be hurt by our secret thoughts and deeds. So I’m not sure why any of the rest of us would ever think that we could keep secrets contained within some boundary of mere human design.

For many people, the idea of keeping secrets from God does sound ludicrous until they end up getting caught by one they didn’t even know they were keeping. Problems can hibernate under the surface of our lives when we erroneously believe that we are immune to certain temptations because of our maturity or previous track record of success. In other cases, the secret issue may have started out as a completely benign habit, indulgence, or conversation, but slowly crept into sinful territory over weeks, months, or years. Furthermore, a secret doesn’t have to be classified as “big” to create significant havoc when it is finally revealed. All too often, it’s the little things that slowly snowball over time, fed by the darkness we keep them in, that end up causing us the most trouble. Regardless of where they come from or why, no one at any level of maturity or belief is immune to harboring secrets in the heart.

One thing all believers can count on is that somehow, some way, and at some point, God will always unearth secrets from the hearts of the ones He loves. He paid too high of a price for us, has plans too great to fail, and loves us too much to let our secrets burrow down, deepen the roots of sin, and grow tentacles of destruction in our lives either now or in the distant future. Whether it’s the large-scale public exposure of a mega-church pastor involved in an affair or the seemingly small revelation that a boss has been taking all the credit for her staff’s hard work, God is not only aware of every little detail in our lives (Psalm 139:1-4), He promises without exception that He will work things out for our good and His glory (Romans 8:28). That means the truth will always come out… one way or another.

In my own life, I have always been amazed to discover how widespread or deeply connected the impact harboring a secret can be. Earlier this year, my pride lured me into keeping what most people would consider to be a relatively minor secret from my husband, but the Holy Spirit used the incident to teach me how important it is for nothing to come between me and my spouse. When God calls people to serve Him, He takes into account far more than the individual, especially if he or she is married. God’s plan for oneness in marriage means that when He gives direction to one spouse, He intends for the other to have a powerful role as well, even if it’s in the form of prayer support only.

Because it’s not only illustrative of my point, but also because it’s embarrassingly funny, I’ll tell you about the secret I attempted to keep. It all started with a knot in my shoulder while my husband was away traveling on business. Since he wasn’t around to work out the kinks in my muscles, I attempted to knead the knot myself with a massage ball … on the wall. By the time I was finished, the knot was better. The wall was not. I didn’t see the damage to the drywall at first, but later in the shadows of evening light, the divots became startlingly visible. As I stared at them in disbelief, I decided right then and there that I needed to fix them myself. I reasoned out that if my husband had done something to damage one of our walls, he wouldn’t have asked me what to do about it first. He would simply repair it. Therefore, I decided that I wouldn’t say anything when he got home, and if he didn’t notice it, then I would take care of the work myself the next time he was away. Key to this prideful decision on my part was that he had warned me before that it was better to use the massage ball on the floor and not the wall. My pride flared again.

When my husband arrived home that week he didn’t notice the wall damage and I smiled secretly to myself as I imagined being the self-reliant homeowner with mad drywall and paint skills. Determined to take care of my own messes, I began the project as soon as he took another trip. Going to the paint store, I had them mix the exact same color shown on my receipt from our last purchase. This was going to be a breeze, I thought. Oh, how wrong I was. After two rounds of divot repair and sanding, I finally began to paint. It was close. Super close. But not a perfect match. And again, the evening light revealed more than daylight, picking up on the slightly different textures of the patch job just below the fresh coat of paint. I went to bed panicked as the flaws in my logic slowly surfaced in the closing darkness. If I couldn’t make it better, I’d not only have to reveal my mistake, but also acknowledge that my repair skills are woefully lacking. Pride whispered to me again and kept me awake for hours.

The next day, I researched paint feathering and blending. I diluted and tested, diluted and tested again. Before long, my advanced feathering technique had left me with a repair zone more than three times the size of the original set of divots. It was better, but it wasn’t perfect. And I went to bed again with my pride singing a cold lullaby.

When he came home again, I held my breath. And once again, he didn’t notice. So I convinced myself that I’d done a great job, even if I could still see the evidence of my secret every evening as I settled into bed. My pride was telling me to forget about it and just move on. But now, the Holy Spirit was the One keeping me awake. Over the next several weeks, I wrestled with my secret. I worked out various conversational scenarios in my head in case he ever noticed my repair job. And finally, one Saturday morning as we talked about several potential home improvement projects, the Holy Spirit’s conviction became so loud in my heart, it was though He were literally yelling at me. “Tell him. Confess. Not later. Now. Now.” Thinking back on it, I absolutely laugh at myself now, but my heart was pounding that morning.

Finally, I obeyed and revealed my secret repair job to my husband. When I traced the outline of my brilliant feathering technique with my finger, he finally saw it and said with a smile, “When did you accomplish this?” To him, it was not a huge deal. Not nearly what I had made it out to be in my mind. To me, revealing my secret was like being able to breathe again. In the coming days, the Holy Spirit began to remind me of how incredibly important it was for there to be nothing between me and the one I share my life with, just as there is to be nothing between me and my Savior.

One of the most tangible ways God shows His love toward us is through the important people in our lives. The love shared between spouses, family members, friends, and our community of believers is a sacred love. It is the way we show the love of Jesus to each other and to a larger world that is desperately searching for authenticity, hope, and tangible evidence of a caring God. Secrets kill sacred love. They destroy God’s plan for sharing that love. They gnaw away at our peace and threaten to destroy our relationships. Secrets are never contained within just one person, no matter how effective we are at concealing them. They remain an obstacle between us and God, and their existence almost always comes between us and someone we are called to love.

Just look at the devastation that gossip can do to a group of friends, a ministry, a work team, or a neighborhood. Gossip is by its very definition a collection of secrets shared among an elite few. Juicy tidbits passed between friends may seem — and feel — harmless, but there’s probably not a person on earth who hasn’t felt the sting of a careless word or an intentional slam from someone they previously thought to be trustworthy.

God has a high standard regarding secrets. In the early church, there was a couple (Ananias and Sapphira) who volunteered to sell a piece of their property to help those in need. But when Ananias brought the proceeds to the church, God revealed to Peter that the couple had lied about the selling price and had kept some funds for themselves. Acts 5:1-11 records the incident and the tragic results of their secret. When Peter confronted Sapphira, he said, “How could the two of you even think of conspiring to test the Spirit of the Lord like this?” Clearly, he was as baffled as we are as to why they felt the need to lie to God about a contribution that was entirely voluntary. This story reveals the very nature of secrets — they usually arise to cover up something that doesn’t make sense or isn’t right in the first place. Luke 12:2-3 says, “But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known. Accordingly, whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in the inner rooms will be proclaimed upon the housetops.”

The human heart wasn’t designed to be a labyrinth of secrets. Rather, it was created to be a throne room for God Himself. As such, any secret we create will take up space that our Heavenly Father longs to fill up with His goodness, beauty, peace, truth, hope, and love. Psalm 51:6 says, “Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.” When we become followers of Jesus, the Holy Spirit begins the immediate work of transforming us into a vessel worthy of the King, and He will do anything it takes to make us ready to carry that Good News with everyone we encounter. So when the temptation to hold secrets comes our way, we should do as the Psalmist did, examining our motives in the light of God’s expectations. Psalm 51:10 says, “Create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me.” And when we surrender all our secrets to God, seeking His desires instead of ours, we are able to discover the power of Psalm 37:4 — it is not the desires of our hearts that make us truly happy, but rather God’s.
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To Seek is Human. To Find is Divine.

10/3/2018

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It can manifest itself in hundreds, if not thousands, of forms. It can change multiple times a day or persist throughout a lifetime. You might have a handful of them, a single overriding one, or many similar ones. But no matter which ones you have, every single one of them starts with the same potential — to glorify God, or grow out of control into sin, or linger somewhere in between.

What is it? The innate desire within us to seek. To hunt. To discover. To chase. From bargain hunters and storm chasers to avid collectors and adrenaline junkies, we are biologically wired and rewarded by the chemicals in our brains to seek out something or someone on a daily basis. It doesn’t matter if it’s a small, seemingly inconsequential quest, such as digging through a bargain bin of DVDs, or a life-long passionate pursuit to discover the cure for a disease, science confirms that almost every waking moment of our lives is dominated by a seeking-oriented task. And when we seek anything — truly anything — research has proven that our brains release at least one of four chemicals in the seeking process, whether it takes 30 seconds or thirty days to be fulfilled.

Every time we seek something, our brains release dopamine once we attain it. Dopamine is what makes us feel good when we get a reward that meets our needs. If you need the weather report, a tiny amount of dopamine is released once you tap the app on your smartphone and find your forecast. Wow, so doesn’t this explain our smartphone addictions? Since it feels good to search and be rewarded, we often feel subconsciously driven to search on our smartphones for that next hit of dopamine.

The bigger and longer the search, the greater the dopamine reward when it concludes. If you’ve been seeking the love of your life for 20 years, a huge amount of dopamine is released once you think you’ve found him or her. And here’s the bummer about this chemical and why it drives us so crazy: if we cannot get what we seek, the brain will drive us to pursue it until we do. So, depending on how much you’ve longed for something, you may or may not be able to give up the quest easily or without significant frustration. Again, this explains we get so inexplicably mad when our smartphones fail to produce what we’re searching for.

The other chemicals that may be released, depending on the type of quest, level of risk involved, and value of the reward, are just as much double-edged swords. Just like dopamine, these chemicals motivate us to repeat the behavior in order to feel good. Serotonin gives you a validating feeling when you receive admiration and respect from others. So if the acquisition of whatever you’re seeking is recognized by people you care about, you’ll feel even more gratified. Oxytocin is released when we do something that makes us feel like we belong to a group or experience safety in numbers. Lastly, adrenaline is the rush we feel during a quest that provides a significant thrill.

Without these chemicals, we wouldn’t be biologically motivated to do anything. Our brains are designed to stimulate these chemicals to spur us into action and get our needs met— from basic survival to advanced intellectual passions. In the process, we learn new skills, achieve something, and hopefully perform with excellence, which in turn makes us feel good enough to try even harder next time. Psalm 139:14 reassures us that no matter what our biology, we were designed for — and capable of — glorifying God when we submit to His leadership of our lives. "I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well."

So if God designed our biology, then we can believe He has a plan for using it for His glory. But before we look at the spiritual prescription for keeping our desire to seek under His control, let’s look at the reasons why it can go awry or out of control in the first place. John 8:31-32 says, "So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, ‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free’.” The more we get to know Jesus and dwell on the truth found only in Him through the Word, the more our eyes will be opened to the reality of our motivations, desires, and hearts. If we want to tame our desire to seek, then we must view it through the lens of truth, shaped by Jesus.

Seeking is so innate, so natural, that we usually don’t think about it, until a specific quest latches on to our hearts and minds in an unhealthy way and starts causing problems in our jobs, financial health, relationships, daily productivity, etc. Research has identified the primary psychological reasons driving our desire to seek, hunt, and pursue beyond a healthy level. Here are eight of the most common ones:

To feel like a winner. Pursuing just about anything or anyone can make us feel like we deserve bragging rights.
To distract us or procrastinate in order to avoid something we should be doing.
To entertain ourselves, fight boredom, or produce a sense of escape.
To fill a childhood vacuum or obtain something we felt deprived of for a long time.
To experience a sense of magic, destiny, fate. Some people get caught up in a quest until it becomes a mystical experience. Take for example this quote from a bargain hunter interviewed for a NY Times article about the thrill of the hunt. "When there’s something I’ve been eyeing and I see it go on sale, it’s like God just sort of put it there for me… You feel like it’s destiny."
To feel superior to someone else or to receive accolades at the culmination of the quest.
To help tolerate or forget uncomfortable feelings, such as stress, worry, fear, etc.
To fill a need for control as a substitute for something we can’t master.

The bodies God has given us don’t function well in a vacuum; they were originally created to work in harmony with our souls. That means our bodies work best in partnership with the Holy Spirit. (I Corinthians 6:19) God’s solution for controlling our hard-wired urges is for us to stay within the spiritual guardrails of our brain's biological pathways. We’re all guilty of driving right through some of those guardrails at one time or another. Sometimes we don’t even realize that guardrails are necessary in certain areas of our lives. We erroneously believe that we are immune to small or simple urges. Sometimes we think we are too mature to abuse, stumble over, or become obsessive with a quest. Finally, there are times when we need to humble ourselves and learn to rebuild or strengthen the guardrails to keep us out of trouble in the future.

One of the Holy Spirit’s key functions is to define, build up, and communicate about the guardrails needed in each of our lives. When He’s allowed to have carte blanche reign in your life, the Holy Spirit beautifully engineers guardrails made just for you, tailored to your own unique brain wiring, experiences, and calling. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, biology, talents, skills, life experiences, mistakes, weaknesses, all come together under God’s intricately designed plan for His glory. But, we have to do our part to participate in this constant construction project in our lives, and that is to surrender and obey continually out of love. While these steps aren’t exhaustive by any means, here are six ways to strengthen and honor your spiritual guardrails.

Examine your deep-seated beliefs for any lies you may have fallen for regarding your feelings, needs, coping mechanisms, habits, pride, or any other deceptions that feed inappropriate or overblown quests for something or someone.
Acknowledge and commit to the hard work for as long as it takes to stop seeking when you shouldn’t.
Filter every quest through the Word. If there’s anything in scriptures that causes you to pause about something you’ve been seeking, then stop until the Holy Spirit directs you.
Pray about every desire to seek and how you choose to use your time. When a quest for something is starting to go outside of the guardrails, time is often the first red flag before other indicators like money and relationships. Every minute we are breathing is a gift of God, and although we can’t possibly commit to never wasting a moment, we can strive to keep the vast majority of it within God’s guardrails. Of course, don’t forget that God intends us to enjoy life and build in restful margins with the time He gives us.
Get in the habit of realigning your attitude and perspectives with God’s versus the world’s. One of the strongest drivers of our need to seek beyond the guardrails is a lack of contentment. See this blog post for more about finding contentment.
Listen and obey. The best way to clearly see the guardrails and strengthen them is to obey when the Spirit says, “You’re getting too close to the edge right now. Back up.” When we listen and obey, the Holy Spirit strengthens our desire to seek Him first.

Jesus understands our desire to continuously seek because He fully experienced being a human just like us. So that means His brain released the same chemicals ours does. He got a dopamine rush when Joseph told him that He did a good job carving a piece of wood. He was flooded with serotonin and oxytocin when He hung out with the disciples and gave the sermon on the mount. He felt the adrenaline when He stood up and spoke in the synagogue for the first time. Sometimes I think we forget that Jesus was fully human and fully God at the same time. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that He said in Matthew 6:33, “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

Jesus was wired to seek, the same way we are, so He knows how to lead us away from temptation and into glorifying the Father the way He did. 1 Corinthians 10:13 gives us this assurance: "No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation, He will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” We don’t have to be mastered by our biological need to seek. Instead, we can learn to master it by being willing to see — and seize — God’s escape hatch for genuine fulfillment.
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How to Fill Every Longing in your Heart

8/1/2018

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Birthdays. I often wonder if Jesus celebrated his. Did the disciples ever attempt to throw Him a surprise party or did they realize early on that any attempt to sneak up on Jesus would fail? If they did try it, did Jesus pretend to be surprised to make them feel appreciated or would He have considered that the same as lying? One thing is for sure, I believe Jesus exuded good humor and happiness in His time here on earth. And I have a sneaking suspicion that He loved to laugh. After all, He’s the only perfect human to ever exist, and He embodied all the joy of His Heavenly Father. So if the disciples did throw Him a birthday celebration, I bet He was the life of the party… quite literally.

This past weekend, I celebrated my own turning of another year, and I couldn’t help but ponder what God thinks of our traditions. Most people celebrate birthdays with gifts. A good meal is universally required. And many people make a wish (or 5, or 10, or more!) when they blow out the candles on their cake. And although I can’t specifically recall a single birthday wish from my last 46 years, I am certain that all of them have been minuscule, miscalculated or misdirected longings compared to the immense pleasure and satisfaction that God truly offers.

C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite authors, said in his sermon The Weight of Glory, "Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us… like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

One of Satan’s sneakiest ploys is to corrupt the joy of a Christian’s heart by making him or her think that following Christ should be primarily defined and visibly marked by self-sacrifice and deprivation of our deepest of longings. Yes, self-sacrifice is clearly required in the Christian life, but God never asked us to make it the aim of our relationship with Him. No, He makes it clear that the ultimate goal of our relationship with Him should be delighting in Him. When we find ourselves in the rut of duty and self-denial as the end game — a way of just checking off the spiritual to-do list — we are in dangerous territory. Sure, we may be helping others and doing good things, but if the primary outcome isn’t an overflow of pure pleasure and spirit-driven exhilaration, then we could be missing out on the greatest happiness known to man and falling prey to Satan’s greatest deception.

I grew up in a culture that emphasized the disciplines of faith more than the joy of a relationship with God. As a result, I spent many wasted years honing my skills in Biblical study, prayer, self-sacrifice for others, and scripture memorization. Now, of course, all of these things are very important and valuable, but my upbringing led me down a dangerous path of duty to God versus desiring God. Thankfully, the Holy Spirit led me to discover John Piper’s writings on Christian hedonism and the refreshing reminder that the disciplines of my faith should flow out of me like living water because I love God and others, not because duty dictates my service. Since I was one of those kids that always followed the rules (yes, I was a nerd), it had never clicked in my brain that God wanted me to focus all of my being on delighting in Him and letting the disciplines naturally follow in time with His empowerment, not mine.

Even more astounding, as I determined in my heart to not do anything — not a single “duty,” like reading devotions or volunteering — unless the Holy Spirit created a desire in my heart to do so out of pure love for God, I found that the longings in my life began to radically change over time. It didn’t happen overnight, but I was willing to turn off the voices in my head from my upbringing, and instead take God at His Word. At first it was downright strange to stop doing certain spiritual habits — almost like going to bed without brushing my teeth (just the thought makes my skin crawl!). But I knew in my heart that I had just been following a routine and going through the motions to check things off my list like prayer and quiet time. And then, little by little, as I asked God daily to teach me how to delight in Him, to replace the desires of my heart with His, and to empower me to love Him above all else, He was faithful to create within me a longing like I had never known to spend time with Him. No longer did I have to set a calendar reminder to read the Word. Just like physical hunger, the Holy Spirit was literally changing my nature to crave time with God.

This is the essence of Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 11:28-30 when He said, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” The oxen analogy is so brilliant because He’s telling us that while it does take effort to live our lives for Him, when we are surrendered to the Spirit, as illustrated by a farmer driving his team in the fields, the work brings with it a deep satisfaction we would never find on our own. When we go out to plow the fields of life by ourselves without being tethered to a team driven by the Shepherd, everything will seem harder. Through our hard work, our longings may be temporarily satiated, but the deepest desires of our hearts will never go away. We will always crave something more, something bigger, something different. This is why it is fruitless to do good just for good’s sake. One of the most difficult concepts for people in Western culture to grasp is that we were created to be happy, contented, joyful and satisfied. It is not only okay to desire to feel that way, but it is commanded and encouraged by God. “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” (Psalm 37:4)

Most of us, however, have a hard time separating the concept of pleasure as a goal from the twisted and contaminated version associated with sinful behaviors and selfish desires. And because it’s counter-cultural to the way most of us were raised, it’s too uncomfortable or difficult to ponder what it might mean to live our lives pursuing the pleasure of God. Even worse, we don’t really believe in our deepest places that the enjoyment of God can hold a candle to the pleasures of indulgence, wealth, fame, or any other worldly or physical pursuits. That’s because all of the pleasures we typically experience reward us in a way that makes us feel better in some way fairly quickly — if not instantaneously. The pleasures of God, however, take much more time to cultivate and our lack of belief, patience and endurance often get in the way before we ever see them come to fruition.

John Piper put it this way: “Christian joy is a good feeling in the soul, produced by the Holy Spirit, as He causes us to see the beauty of Christ in the Word and in the world.” He goes on to explain that delighting in God, which produces real joy and pleasure, is indeed an emotional response we cannot control as the Holy Spirit makes us into a new creation over time. It is true that faith is not a feeling, but the pleasure that comes from our faith is. We cannot fabricate this emotion, nor can we force it — it is supernatural. And it is amazing. It’s worth whatever it takes to experience it. And that’s the beautiful truth of our partnership with God: we commit our hearts to love Him above all else, and He does all the work to make us truly happy about that decision.

If you’re curious to study more about finding pleasure in pursuing God, check out John Piper’s six-part video series on Philippians entitled: Jesus and the Journey to Joy.
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When Things Go Bump In The Night

5/9/2018

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Nighttime is a wondrous and mysterious thing to me... I was never one of those kids who imagined monsters under the bed, but I can remember thinking that ghosts lurked at my great grandmother’s house. I’ll never forget the night that I forced my mother to come pick me up because I had convinced myself there was a ghost sleeping in one of the guest bedrooms. I think I was about five years old. Apparently, my crying fit was enough to mess up everyone’s plans that night and generate one of those “when you were a kid” stories that our parents tell when we’re older to embarrass us in front of friends or love interests.

As we grow up and leave behind the ghost stories and fairy tales, we often fool ourselves into believing that we are immune to being afraid of things that go bump in the night. And then we find ourselves in the middle of a rough night’s sleep (or no sleep at all), and suddenly everything seems magnified in the dark stillness. It can feel like we’ve checked our ability to reason at the bedroom door and all the problems of the day seem worse. In our tired minds, a little issue with a co-worker becomes the thing we might get fired over. A simple headache becomes a brain tumor. An unspoken word by a spouse becomes a novel-length saga in our minds, complete with a blow-by-blow dialogue.

We may no longer imagine monsters under the bed or in the closet, but a lack of sleep is one of the surest ways to create monsters in our minds and pain in our bodies. Whether it’s racing thoughts of an endless to-do list, a fixation on a particular worry, or a nagging pain, once we find ourselves awake at that odd hour, we all know how hard it can be to drift back off into the sweet ignorance of blissful sleep. No matter how much our society changes, how many technologies we invent, or number of drugs we develop, nighttime will always have a way of mysteriously magnifying problems in the human mind. But why is that? Why does everything seem worse at night (if you’re not sleeping)?

Is nighttime our enemy? No, but the enemy loves the dark. So having recently endured a bout of insomnia myself, I researched not only the reasons why everything seems worse at night — it’s one of the most common questions asked on Google -- but also what God calls us to do with those sleepless nights. As with every other problem humans face, not surprisingly, the Bible has a prescription for our nighttime woes, and it’s as current and relevant today as it was thousands of years ago.

Nighttime can make us feel helpless and vulnerable, but God gives us a Spirit of power, love and a sound mind. First, you can’t make yourself go to sleep. And the harder you try or the more you think about it, the worse it will get. Second, because you feel abnormal for not sleeping, you naturally wonder what else is wrong with you. Even more frustrating, is the inability to take action on anything in the middle of the night. At 3 in the morning, you just don’t have the same options that you have at 3 in the afternoon. It’s not like you can call your best friend and discuss the issue. You could wake up your spouse, but why bring them into the same mess you’re in? And if you get up and start doing things, you’ll probably worry about waking up the whole house. But 2 Timothy 1:7 makes it clear that we can press onward with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit’s power, love, and a sound mind (or self control in some versions). Prayer and meditation during sleeplessness empower us, destroying the Enemy’s attempt to make you feel helpless, weak and vulnerable. Resting in the truth that God will provide for you the next day, no matter how little sleep you get, can ease your striving, reduce your anxiety, and help you release control over the situation (which is something you don’t have anyway). If you’re looking for verses about sleep to meditate on in the night, here’s a list of 21 scriptures to ponder.

Nighttime can make us feel isolated and insignificant, but that’s exactly when we can feel closest to Jesus. When you can’t sleep and it seems like everyone else is able to, it’s easy to slip into a place of feeling alone, abnormal and disconnected. And there’s just something about the darkness and quiet of night that seems to whisper vastness to us. This is primetime for the Enemy to tell you that you are insignificant to God and that He isn’t going to rescue you. It gets even worse if you’ve been praying and still don’t have any relief. Sometimes He provides miraculous relief and other times God allows us to go through a testing in order to have us press into Him all the more. The more we learn to depend on Him, the more He will make Himself known to us. Psalm 34:18 says the Lord is close to the brokenhearted. James 4:8 says to draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Hebrews 4:16 says, “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” In my last round of insomnia, God reassured me that He was allowing it to happen in order to teach me to surrender yet another layer of control to His loving sovereignty. So although relief wasn’t immediate, His presence was vivid and His instruction became clearer and clearer. God was providing me with personal, intimate insight into control issues I didn’t even know were hiding inside of me. With this kind of personal attention from the King of the Universe, how could I not feel valued, significant and loved? He knew me before I was born (Psalm 139), and He tells me to fear not because He will strengthen me, help me and uphold me (Isaiah 41:10).

Nighttime without sleep can shine a spotlight on the things that are bothering us the most, but Jesus wants us to focus on Him and lay all our burdens down. During the day we have plenty to distract us from any deep-seated or latent concerns going on in our lives. In fact, our over-scheduled days and the noise of social media and TV can completely numb our hearts and minds, keeping us from addressing things in our hearts that desperately need attention. So while our jobs, school, social outings, entertainment, etc., can occupy our time and focus during the waking hours for an extended period of time, eventually we all come face to face with our unaddressed problems in the middle of the night. Sometimes God uses the distraction-free solitude of night to make us aware of the things we’re not surrendering to Him, unconfessed sin, unhealthy habits, or any other issue that is keeping us from becoming all that He wants us to be or the abundant life He offers. When we’re hanging onto something tightly, the nighttime has a unique way of revealing the pain of that grip. Jesus said in Matthew 11:28-30 that He wants to carry our burdens. I love The Message version of that passage: “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

Nighttime triggers our biological drive for self-preservation, but God wants us to trust Him that the timing of our lives is in His wise and loving hands. As sleep evades us, anything that prevents us from finding peace in the night is more pronounced, including physical pain. So everything we feel seems to be serious and appears to require more analysis. This is a nightmare for anyone with hypochondriacal tendencies, but almost everyone has entertained a wild thought or two in the middle of the night. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, so our Creator knows that we can’t help but be concerned about our health. However, He wants us to believe in Him enough to completely rest in the fact that He alone should determine the length of our days. He also wants us to spend the primary aim of our days glorifying Him and loving others well (Matthew 22:36-40). We can’t fulfill either of those commands if we are walking around consumed with worries about ourselves all the time.

This gets to the heart of perhaps the most difficult issue of sovereignty that any human faces. We can exercise, eat right, and take fantastic care of our bodies, but we cannot control the timing of illnesses, injuries, and eventually death. I certainly haven’t found the secret to complete peace with this, but God has reminded me repeatedly that I will find the greatest peace and joy in my daily life, when I don’t dwell on that which I cannot control. This is the great mystery of faith: when we choose to trust God with our lives, He will always help us live more abundantly. When we dwell on that which we can’t control, we will always find misery. Max Lucado says in his book Anxious For Nothing, “We want certainty, but the only certainty is the lack thereof. That’s why the most stressed out people are control freaks. They fail at the quest they most pursue. We can’t take control because it’s not ours to take. Peace is within reach, not for a lack of problems, but because of the presence of a sovereign Lord.” He goes on to remind us about Isaiah who was afraid after King Uzziah died. Isaiah’s problems didn’t go away, but God’s divine power and presence swelled within him to sustain and strengthen him in miraculous ways. God made Isaiah to be a vessel that displays His divine glory through the fractured lines of human weakness. He does the same for us, and that’s what we put our hope in. Not that the problems go away. Not that we can regain a sense of control over our future. Our hope must rest squarely on the deeply stirring knowledge and unwavering belief that God is sovereign and that no matter what comes our way, He will be with us, He will be glorified, and He will somehow use it for good. Trusting in His sovereignty helps us respond to problems not with fear, but with the resolute confidence that helps us exclaim, “I can’t wait to see what He’s going to do with this.” 2 Timothy 4:18 says, “And I know the Lord will continue to rescue me from every trip, trap, snare, and pitfall of evil and carry me safely to His heavenly kingdom. May He be glorified throughout eternity. Amen.” If Paul could say that with such confidence in prison, then we can certainly say it in the comfort of our warm, snuggly beds with our favorite pillow. So next time the night comes without any sleep, take heart that you can still find true rest in the One who never slumbers, never leaves you, and never fails. He is the only constant in a world completely out of your control, and you have the privilege of holding His hand 24 hours a day.
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The Perfect Storm Is No Match For The Perfect God

5/2/2018

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Battles of the heart and mind remind me of a seashore. When the storms come and the waves crash on the beach, layer upon layer of sand is swept out to sea, eroding the soft covering to expose jagged rocks. After the storm subsides, the beach is littered with reminders of the trial. Like monuments to each blow we took in the battle, little pieces of jagged rocks and shells stick out of the newly exposed sands waiting to bruise or cut our feet. Though we can see the storm rolling away out to sea, we sit there shaken and feeling incredibly raw... vulnerable... and wondering how long it will be before another trial comes. In our flesh, we can wallow, sink down into the sand among all the reminders of the pain, and miss the fact that the sun is breaking through the clouds on the horizon. Rest is coming. Healing is coming. But we are still mesmerized by the reminders of pain on the beach scattered around us.

That’s because it’s monumentally hard to move on from a battle. The wounds are easily reopened until they have time enough to heal. Eventually, there may be scars left as reminders of the pain. Even these can remain tender, causing us to wince when we encounter any circumstance that offers us even the slightest reminder of what we endured. So we tend to pull away, and not walk in those places for fear of hurt again. We fixate on what it was like, recalling the suffering, but more magnified than before. The more we relive the pain and the blow-by-blows, we think we can see the past more clearly. No one can convince us otherwise as we go back in time repeatedly, hoping to gain some new level of understanding or uncover a new reason to find fault. Yet, science proves that belief to be very wrong. Things in the past can never be seen or experienced again as they actually were. Memories are never as accurate as we think they are. Good times get sweeter and sweeter, enticing us to believe that nothing will ever be that good again. And the bad times get worse and worse, making us feel that the injustice and pain were more meaningful and powerful than they really were. Memories are mile markers of important learning experiences, but God never intended them to be relived. But that doesn’t keep us from trying over and over, thus causing us to miss out on living in the moment and the blessings God has for us. Sometimes we remain in the past because we’ve assumed the identity of a “survivor," and we don’t know how to leave that behind for the next phase of our growth. We're afraid of losing the hard-earned identity we formed while fighting through the trial, and we’re scared to death to move on because it might mean new trials or hardships. We think that if we hang on to the remnants of the current trial, it will shield us from going through another one. Other times we remain in the past dwelling on “the way things used to be,” as if God is not capable or doesn’t want to bring us new joys and dreams ever again.

Paul, the apostle, knew — perhaps more than anyone else other than Jesus — what it was like to be in battles, trials, mental anguish, and even prison. But, despite being able to clearly wear the survivor t-shirt and having many battle scars, he kept running forward to the next phase of his ministry. (Hebrews 12:1-2) And while Paul endured hardships most of us can’t fathom, we face our own version of prisons and battles, which often show up in the form of a difficult relationship, health crisis, crippling anxiety, financial hardships, a dead-end job, and unmet expectations of all kinds. Some of our prison experiences are excruciating as if we have been put in solitary confinement and told that torture will be coming any day. Other prison times are more like a prolonged stay at a bad roadside motel that we can never leave. Sure, we’re not in a crisis, but nothing is comfortable and we never feel like anything is cleaned up or safe. And if we’re not careful, some of our excruciating experiences morph into the long-term bad motel stays, where we think we’ve “moved out” of the crises. Instead, we’ve only moved into a new, slightly more comfortable, but incredibly more dangerous location. The more we linger on that middle ground — trapped somewhere between the crisis and a completely restored soul — the more it feels like home, until eventually we don’t realize that we are riddled with bitterness, hopelessness and frustration.

While there are times when God allows us to be in a place of extreme suffering, the Word makes it clear that our Savior is never content to leave us in the middle-wasteland once the storm subsides. So why then do we want to stay there? Why do we feel like we can never check out of the bad motel? Why is it that when the time of healing and rest comes, we want to stay in the false, unhealthy comfort zone, rather than moving forward into the restorative grace of God’s green pastures?

When Paul was in prison, he served God with joy and great expectation in the midst of it. He was able to say with unwavering faith, “Ok, God, I can’t wait to see what you’re going to do with this!” Then when he was set free, Paul would go straight back to living an abundant life (Acts 16:40). He didn’t linger just outside the prison walls and look back at his former place of confinement wondering if he’d be back there again. He never camped out on the roadside on the way back. He didn’t spend his evenings wallowing in the time he’d lost, fearing that it would happen again. Most of all, he didn’t feel guilty that he had been set free from the chains. He gladly accepted the freedom of the moment and purposed in his heart to move into the next phase for God’s glory.

All too often we come out of a battle or a time of imprisonment feeling shaken and blindsided. Instead of receiving the healing, we get mired in the fear that more trials are coming our way or we drown in guilt for being set free. Satan whispers to us that we are not worthy to be set free and that we deserved that trial. Or he tells us that we should feel so bad about the difficulties of others, that we shouldn't enjoy the periods of rest God gives us. And then there’s the shame we often feel when the trial is over. Whether the storm we endured was a consequence of our own sin or someone else’s, Satan wants us to feel ashamed of what we’ve been through. He wants us to keep it to ourselves, bottled up inside until it festers and threatens to consume all our hope and joy. But Paul’s example challenges us not to be ashamed (Philippians 1:20), but to go forward in the full courage of Christ. He pushes us not to be quitters that stall, sit down, or pout on the road back to healing. Instead, he encourages us to follow Jesus through the hard work required to surrender, forgive, forget, and then step out on faith by trusting Him to take us to a better place. Simply put, Paul tells us we must fight for joy again. In Philippians 4:4, he emphatically commands us to pursue joy. “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice.” It is very clear from Paul’s tone that he understands that being joyful and receiving the gifts of the spirit, which include joy and peace (Galatians 5:22), is not easy, nor do they come naturally to us in the face of trials. Joy must be practiced constantly, by pushing ourselves to rejoice and delight in God. By praising Him and thanking Him when we don’t feel like it, we train ourselves in the holy discipline of joy, opening the door for the Holy Spirit to flood us more and more with God’s grace and power. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:13)

Blessings come from every battle. Every prison experience. But only if we allow them to. God will not force his mercies and grace upon us. The question is, will we let our pride trap us in the vast wasteland between the crisis and the healing? Will we let fear tell us what to do, rather than taking up the mantle of victory to move forward? Our culture teaches us that independence and self-reliance are valued above all things. But God teaches us that only by learning to become more dependent on Him — to become living vessels for Him with no ambition for ourselves — will we find the way to true happiness. Every trial is another opportunity to slay our pride and reveal our authentic selves to those who need to see the power of Christ at work in our lives. If we always keep up appearances, the Holy Spirit will never appear to be at work in us to a world that desperately needs to see that Christians are not a bunch of hypocrites or fakes. One of the most beautiful scenes imaginable is that of a person who has known great suffering, getting the opportunity to use that experience to better comfort and support someone else going through the same thing. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1:3-4: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” Only the perfect God can take the perfect storms of our lives and turn them into His perfect plan. And when we share these stories of brokenness turned into triumph, we offer our true selves as sacrifices to God, so that others may find hope and healing on their journeys out of the wastelands into wholeness.

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