Blog: Glimmers in the Fog by Kim Stiver

How to Fill Every Longing in your Heart

8/1/2018

LISTEN NOW to this post instead of reading! >>>
Listening / reading time: 8 minutes, 43 seconds
Click the button to the right. If it doesn't play, click here.

Hover over image to share on Pinterest

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.
****
If you like this blog post, why not invite others to read it and subscribe to my weekly emails? You will be encouraging them and you will be helping me share the love of Christ with others. It’s a win-win!

0 Comments

When Things Go Bump In The Night

5/9/2018

0 Comments

Hover over the image to share on Pinterest.

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.
***
If you like this blog post, please share it with others and consider signing up for my weekly email list. Signing up is quick, confidential, and it helps me build credibility with potential publishers. So if you sign up, you might just help me get published one day! You rock!

0 Comments

The Perfect Storm Is No Match For The Perfect God

5/2/2018

0 Comments

Hover over image to save to Pinterest.

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.

0 Comments

Forward>>

Glimmers in the Fog

How to Fill Every Longing in your Heart

When Things Go Bump In The Night

The Perfect Storm Is No Match For The Perfect God

Search the Blog Archive

Categories

Archives

About Glimmers in the Fog

get glimmers in your inbox!