Joy Comes

 

This bright morning, I thought of a sweet illustration of my role in my grandchildren’s lives. Before sunrise, I prayed for my grandkids and I heard a noise at the window next to me.  I turned my desk lamp to shine through the window so anything that shouldn’t be on my deck would perhaps be scared away by the light.  This had the unanticipated effect of lighting up the five oldest grandkids’ gingerbread houses.  When I went back to bed I left the light shining on those little houses, symbolic of them being covered by the light of my prayers.  But this morning the light is flowing through the shaded windows with such brilliance that the little desk lamp’s contribution is not only unnecessary, but unnoticed.  I switched the lamp off and thought about how sometimes we are called to cover our loved ones in prayer for a season but that God’s brilliant light will break through and we can take our rest.  Which is exactly what I’m doing today in the wake of our youngest grandchild’s open heart surgery and the labors of intercession and service that accompanied his ordeal.  

Thank You Lord, that though weeping may endure for a night, joy comes as surely as day follows night (Psalm 30:5).  Thank You for breaking through our darkness with Your light.  Thank You for sending Jesus to us, God present with us, Immanuel.  And thank You that our baby grandson is going to be ok.  

Reassurance Regarding Our Baby Grandson

 Our baby grandson will soon undergo a 4 to 6 hour surgery to correct his Tetralogy of Fallot, a congenital heart defect.  Fear for him has been my constant companion, and I've had to fight a daily battle of prayer to break through to the peace the Lord has for us when we cast our anxieties upon Him.  This morning these thoughts came; funny I'd forgotten my own birth story.  I wonder how many other miracles God has done that I am no longer taking into account?  

I record God's guidance to me conversationally, boldfacing His words to discriminate them from my own.  Here is the boldfaced print from my journal this morning: 

My will cannot be corrupted by the errors or sins of human beings.  

 

It is My will for your grandson to live, thrive, and to fulfill the purposes I have for him.  

 

Consider your own beginnings, Child.  A transverse presentation cannot be delivered vaginally.  But you were.  

 

Children with paralyzed arms at birth do not necessarily regain the use of their arms.  But you did.  

 

Some daughters of women who used the anti-miscarriage drug DES died of cancer in their early teens.  Still more developed cervical cancer. 

 

You didn’t.  

 

Your grandson has a good prognosis, not because of the action or inaction of any human being, but because of the Lord.  

 

Release him into My care now and rest.  

 

I am with him, and you.  

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I recorded my birth story in detail on my 69th birthday.  It can be found here: 25,185 Days and Counting

God Keeps His Promises

I loved teaching school.  The highlight of my days had always been teaching kids to read, but toward the end of my career I received training that allowed me to do a better and more expedient job. I had grown into my calling and I knew I was, at long last, making a real difference in the lives of children. But then budget cuts took the individualized program that had allowed me to be more effective than ever before at helping struggling readers, and while I wasn't fired, I was demoted to the status of test giver.  I dislike achievement tests, and to spend my days administering stressful tests rather than providing real help to kids broke my heart.  My mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and I knew the Lord was leading me to a different calling.  

I struggled with this decision.  It took two years for me to accept that teaching was no longer the job God had for me.  During that time He gave me several promises that didn't seem likely to be fulfilled.  I saw a flower garden in my mind's eye and a drawing on a desk calendar by Mary Engelbreit resonated with me. The picture depicted a little lady wielding a garden spade and wearing a hat. I've always loved flowers but never had a green thumb and besides, I was sure I would never wear that hat.  Little did I know that in just a few years, an eye condition would require me to take precautions against bright sunlight, including a wide-brimmed hat!

God used that desk calendar once again when a photo of a young woman with blonde, curly hair holding a little yellow-haired baby touched my heart.  "There will be grandchildren," the Lord promised.  Being a grandmother was not yet on my radar  because my curly-headed daughter was still in college at the time and not yet married.  But still, grandchildren.  The thought brought a smile.  To hold and love a baby again!  

I finally took early retirement, and in a leave-taking that felt anticlimactic after 25 years of service, I walked out of my classroom for the last time. I entered immediately into fulltime caregiving for my Alzheimer's mom.  Including the time I provided part-time care for her before my retirement, I was her primary caregiver for nearly 16 years.  She died in 2020.  

With the advent of phone photos and my penchant for capturing moments of joy, I have abundant records of what happened next.  This morning as I walked in my flower garden, wearing my hat and snapping photos, I mused on the fact that a good portion of the zinnias in our overgrown garden have come up volunteer from just a couple of rows planted the first year after my retirement.  Without tending or planning, hundreds of the bright flowers have grown up across the grassy expanse of our neglected garden this summer.  I thought of Isaiah 49:21:  Then you will say in your heart, 'Who bore me these? I was bereaved and barren; I was exiled and rejected. Who brought these up? And a little further on in Isaiah 49:23: Then you will know that I am the Lord; those who hope in me will not be disappointed.  

I don't want to imply that my life now consists of a happy ever after in which I loll about in my flower garden with nary a care.  Happy ever after joy waits for us in Heaven, and although the Lord allows us  foretastes of that future joy, we can't have it to keep just yet. Even now our family is in the midst of navigating a number of stresses, but we are doing it together and with faith in the Lord's promises and provision.  

But I trust in your unfailing love;

    my heart rejoices in your salvation.

I will sing the Lord’s praise,

    for he has been good to me.

Psalm 13:5-6

Higher Truth

I've become concerned with increasing numbers of reels seen on Instagram and Facebook that identify and condemn narcissistic behavior. I'm pretty sure that we are all narcissists to one degree or another. And as Christians, we must be cautious of making life decisions based only on human reasoning and logic.  

The facts of any situation can be delineated but our best efforts will yield only partial and often conflicting versions of the truth. There is higher truth in God's perspective, truth we sometimes have to take on faith rather than from what we can see.  

If the person labeled a narcissist has accepted Christ as Savior, the transformative power of the Holy Spirit is at work in that person's successive approximations toward an appearance of Godliness.The self-focused Christian's tendency to do the right things for the wrong reasons can, by the power of the Holy Spirit, end up to be wholly right. It's ok to respond to them as though their motivations were pure because, by God's grace, they are becoming pure! Never look at a human being created in the image of God and proclaim that because human logic shows they cannot change that they are disposable, rejectable, or leave-able. Never look at a situation or a person apart from the vast potential of the transforming power of the Holy Spirit.    

There's nothing logical about God's love. Human wisdom or AI will miss the higher truth of God's love and our love for one another through Him. Sometimes we feel foolish for continuing to love someone who does not deserve it based on their behaviors toward us.  But the illogic of the love that sent Christ to the Cross is at work in us.  It is not wrong to love those who don't deserve it.  This is the way God has loved each of us. 

Let's not sequester someone God has given us to love with labels created by human beings.  Human-formed categories can never contain the enormity of God's transforming power in the lives of those who are on the path to loving God as God has loved them.  

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Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

1 Peter 4:8

*Necessary disclaimer, I do NOT advocate staying in an abusive situation. I'm not addressing physical or verbal abuse in this post, but the universal frustrations we as flawed human beings experience as a result of living with other flawed human beings.  

A Caution for Christians Regarding AI

 I have been appreciating Google's AI summaries of my search results.  I type in a question such as this: "Can I take Tylenol with Zyrtec?"  

Very quickly the answer appears, "There are no known interactions between Tylenol and Zyrtec."

Handy.  And useful for quick affirmation of something to which I was already pretty sure I knew the answer.  

However, just yesterday I was bringing my need for physical stamina to the Lord, and I remembered that when Nehemiah was rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem, that he prayed, "Now strengthen my hands." I couldn't remember the Scripture reference and did a Google search.  Here is the AI summary: 

"Nehemiah prayed for strength to continue his work despite opposition. Nehemiah sought God’s help to persevere: “Now therefore, O God, strengthen my hands" (Numbers 6:9). 

Nice enough, right? I stared at the AI answer a moment and prayed, "Lord what are You wanting me to see here?"  

Here is the summary I then wrote, custom-tailored by the Lord for me for the specific needs I was facing, via the direction of the Holy Spirit: 

"False accusations had been brought against Nehemiah.  His enemies hoped to get him wrapped up in self-defense and upset in his emotions about the judgments that human beings were bringing against him.  Nehemiah recognized his enemies’ purpose was to stop him from working on the wall by draining his strength through emotional upset, and prayed for God to strengthen his hands."

AI could not know (or care) that I had been suppressing fear of what other people think of me to the degree my strength was being misspent and my time wasted in self-defense.  This was a spiritual battle in that it took place entirely in my mind and emotions; no human being had actually expressed judgment of me.  I was responding to the enemy's whispers "If you don't do this, then they will think badly of you."  

I'm being purposely vague about my own circumstances, but I hope you catch my point: don't depend exclusively on AI; use your God-given mind to reach your own conclusions based on the Holy Spirit's guidance from within.  As Christians we need to be led from the inside out, and not from the outside in.  Worldly influences, no matter how reasonably stated or initially helpful, must not be used as a replacement for the Holy Spirit.  

AI is a convenient tool.  But don't depend on it exclusively even when you are doing a Bible search.  Recognize the difference between right-sounding summaries from AI and the right-indeed guidance of the Holy Spirit from within.  

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For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.

Romans 8:14 

Clarification: When I say we are to be led from the inside out I certainly am not encouraging people to follow their own hearts (aka, emotions). Our own ideas of what is good will quickly lead us down a garden path that ends in despair. I refer to the fact that God has placed the Holy Spirit in our hearts: "And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee" (2 Corinthians 1:21-23 ESV).  

Death to Life

 We have such trouble when unexpected circumstances interrupt our lives and make us feel forced  to do things we hadn't planned to do.  It is very hard for us to be instant in season and out of season (2 Timothy 4:2), because we need to feel a sense of control over the unfolding of our own lives.  We feel unwarranted shock and are prone to struggles with bitterness when our circumstances don't work out in the way we thought they would.  

Here's a quote from 100 Days to Freedom: Finding Rest in the Love of God: "We can't keep anything for ourselves, not even our own physical bodies, which are destined to die. But when we release all to God, His power is unleashed so that the mystery of resurrection--life from what has been crucified--brings new life and new hope.  'For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his' (Romans 6:5)."  

The comfort that is given us as Christians is that when our physical bodies die, we will be instantly in the presence of Christ, and that we will have what we need and it will be better than we ever thought it would be.  This comfort also applies to the call to "die to self" while we are still on Earth. When we surrender our schedules, our time, and the way we thought things would be to the Lord, we are instantly closer to Christ and we will have what we need, and it will be better than we ever thought it would be.  We begin to receive the blessings of dying in Christ while we are still in the land of the living.  

Revelation 12:11 tells us how Michael and his angels defeated the enemy:  "And they overcame him by the Blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives unto the death" KJV 

In other words, as they testified to the victory of Jesus Christ at the Cross and didn't let the possibility of death keep them from entering into the battle, Satan was vanquished.  

Our small, earthly, lives can mirror the magnificence of mighty angelic beings as we surrender our lives to Christ in service and in love.  

We can learn three things from Revelation 12:11:   

1.  The authority of the Name of Jesus. 

2.  Our testimony via Scripture promises, praise, and avoiding negative thoughts and words is powerful.  

3.  Dying to self through surrender of our plans, time, and service to the Lord leads to resurrection of new life that will be better than anything we could have planned for ourselves, even prior to our physical deaths and Heaven.  

This isn't a list of things to do, it's instruction for the state of our minds which flows from the state of our hearts.  Trust in Jesus, speak that trust, and believe that He is in everything that we find ourselves having to do, even and especially the things that weren't our idea and that we would rather not do.

Obedience

This morning I sought the Lord regarding my continued frustration in efforts to eat right and lose weight. I felt ashamed and that I had failed once again to demonstrate my love for Christ via the obedience path.  I've learned to continue to seek the Lord even when I've failed to obey Him as I should, but I came with hesitation, clutching the fig leaf of my own failure in an effort to hide the vulnerability of my sin. 

As I prayed, these thoughts came: 

You have great trouble trusting in the Lord rather than in your own efforts to renew yourself.  Don’t give up trying, but do give up the unreasonable despair you feel when you fail.  Your obedience is not the price God requires for loving Him.  Your obedience—and this is a “wrong” sounding truth to which a performance-based Christian would object—is not required at all.  It is only when the requirements are lifted that obedience becomes possible for weak human flesh.  Satan works hard to link the quality of your obedience to the quantity of your blessings so as to keep you under the law rather than under grace.  God's grace is not partial, nor does it depend upon you beyond your willingness to accept what He offers; God's grace flows wholly from the shed blood of Christ.  Obedience is not an “up front” cost of loving Jesus.  Obedience is a result of entering in to Christ’s love, not an admission price.  

It isn't that obedience is unimportant, but that it is not a requirement for entering into Christ's love.  It is in abiding in His great love that we are enabled to obey. When we reverse this process and make obedience the required outward sign that proves we belong to Christ, we become vulnerable to despair.  We must daily realign our focus from the self-judgment of examining our own performance to the enormous grace given us in God's love through Jesus.  

When Christ's blood placed us under grace rather than under the law, our focus was freed to be placed upon His love rather than upon our the quality of our own obedience.  

Everything always begins with His love.  

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But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:8