Know and Be Known

Known

What makes you truly, deeply, purely joyful?  What makes you shout for joy? What makes you truly happy? What makes you shine, smile and laugh? What would your husbands, children and friends say makes you joyful? What do you love to talk about more than anything else in the world?

The Bible calls this “Glorying in” or “boasting in”. What do you glory in my friends? 

There are so many ways to answer these questions.  

Financial stability, wisdom, strength, applause from people, a day well lived in the life of the church, religious faithfulness.  

God has taught me so very much over the past few years that we have been in Togo.  Paul said in I Corinthians 15:3 that in his letter he was giving to them only what God had first given to Him, namely the truth of the gospel.  I want to share with you what God has given to me.  The truth that has changed my life.  

In Galatians 4 Paul speaks to the Galatians who had received the gift of salvation through grace. He reminds them of their freedom from the law and rebukes them for continuing to divert their energy to following the law rather than continuing in the gospel grace.  He reminds them that their salvation is found in the fact they were born again into the family of God.

Gal. 4:6-9 “Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son onto our hearts crying, “Abba! Father!” Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son {daughter}; and if a [daughter] than an heir through God.  8. However at that time when you did not know God you were slaves to those things which by nature are not  gods. BUT, now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things to which you desire to be enslaved all over again?”

This is an amazing teaching about our tendency to try to lean on our own wisdom and strength to gain favor with God and salvation.  But in the center of this amazing teaching is a phrase that jumped off the the page of my Bible when I read it.  My Spirit leapt within me. I wanted to shout for joy! I gloried in the light of this miraculous truth.  That Jesus made it possible for me to know God and be known by Him.  Let the immensity of this truth sink into your heart and soul.  Before Jesus came Yahweh God was to be greatly feared!  Only those specially chosen and set apart from the rest of the people, the priests and the prophets, could even consider coming into the presence of God.  The temple had the Holy of Holies where the presence of God dwelt and no man came to this place without great fear and trembling!  God was present with Israel, but for an individual He was far off.  He was a great and mighty being that could not be personally know except for a select few.  Now, through Jesus we can know God and be known by Him.  WOW!! You can know God, and He knows you. You can come near to Him.  He knows you!  HE knows….you.  This is reason to rejoice, to shine, to boast and to glory!  This is reason to laugh uncontrollable with deep and pure joy.  

What in this life on earth can be compared to this truth?  What else could I possibly want to glory in?  

Jeremiah 9:23 “This is what the Lord says, ‘Let not a man boast in his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast in his strength, let not a rich man boast in his riches. BUT, let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows me. That I am the Lord who exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on the earth. For I delight in these things” declares Yahweh”. 

Boast in this one thing alone, my friends, that you know and understand God!

To understand in these verses in Hebrew is the word Sakal.  It means to have comprehension, and insight. The Spirit of God gives us spirit eyes to see God, Yahweh.  Matthew 5:8 “Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God”. How is this possible? Happy and enviable is the one who has been born again by the Spirit of God.  You are made pure, clean, unstained and guiltless through the blood of the Lamb. You are are given freedom from the shackles and stains of sin and the eyes of your heart are made to see God. Your new creation eyes  can look upon Him and experience His beauty, perceive His comings and His going, discern His working in your heart and the hearts of those around you.  If you're born again - created new by the Spirit of God through faith and are walking by grace in line with righteousness, then you have the greatest  of privileges among men - to see God! You get to spend an eternity - from today until forever gazing and perceiving Yahweh; to consider and experience His presence, His glory. 

In Ephesians 3:18-19 Paul prays that we will, “comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and depth and to KNOW the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled up with all the fullness of God.”

To understand Yahweh God is to comprehend that He is love and to experience His love through Jesus by the Holy Spirit to the fullest measure every day.

In Psalm 119:99-100 David proclaims “ I have more insight that all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged because I have observed your precepts.” 

Many men understand much about God.  They glory in their wisdom.  But after a lifetime of communing with God and pondering His ways David was glorying that he knew God!  

This was Paul's point in Galatians 4:9. By the gracious act of God through Jesus we are made sons and daughters of God. We too have come to know God and be Known by Him.  It’s not in doing anything that gives us reason to boast. It is in being; being known by God.  

In Philippians 3:7-11Paul explains that anything in this life that isn't Jesus is a loss to him. He desired nothing more than to be found in Christ and be known by Him. Paul didn't want to be known for his wisdom, strength, impressive family, applauded for his works, religion or goodness.  All he wanted was Jesus.  Jesus was Paul’s prize and glory. Is He yours?

In Hosea 5:15 and Psalm 105:4 we are admonished to have one pursuit - to seek the face of God continually.  Psalm 34:15-16 “The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous and His ears are attentive to their cry.”  Oh, the beautiful eyes of God.  They are full of mercy, grace and love for the one who seeks Him with all their heart.  How I long to gaze into the eyes of the lover of my soul. I long for His gaze to be forever toward me. Psalm 102:1 In weariness and distress in this mortal life, David desired one thing that would equally comfort and save. He sought the face and gaze of Yahweh. 

Psalm 27:4 “One thing have I asked from the Lord, that will I seek; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. To behold the beauty of the Lord and to meditate in His temple.”

There is nowhere else I would rather be than enjoying the presence of my God; and I can because of Jesus. The Spirit has made me to be born again. I have gone from death to life.  My spirit is new and pure.  My guilt and shame are gone. So, I am free to enter into the Holy of Holies, the presence of Yahweh and behold His beauty. I am fully known by God and I know Him. 

Hebrews 10:19 says that through the blood of Jesus I come into the presence of God with confidence.

Psalm 100:2,4 I come before Him with joyful singing. Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him and bless His name. 

The contrast to this found in Matthew 7:21-23.  Many will try to come into His presence with all their wisdom, wealth, strength, personal goodness, their record of service and good works. And Jesus will say to them the scariest words any soul will ever hear. “I never knew you, depart from Me”.

Are you known by Jesus?

Do you know Jesus?

Or, are you content with your god of religious goodness rather than Jesus? Oh beloved, He loves you with a love incredibly full of grace. He doesn't want you to bring Him your filthy rags of righteousness in order to gain access to His presence.  He wants you to come into His presence and seek HIs face for the sake of knowing Him. He is the valuable prize far above any other. His gaze upon you will be your daily delight. It is in His loving you, and knowing you and you loving and knowing Him in return that you will find your joy and reason for boasting! 

One thing will I ask. One thing I desire - Jesus. My Redeemer. Yahweh. The lover of my soul.

Isaiah 58: 2 “Delight in the nearness of God” 

"Just" The Dangers of Minimizing

“Just”

Have you noticed how often Christians use the word “just”.  

“God, I just want to ask…”

“I just want to tell you …”

“I’m just tired of…”

“I’m just tired”

“I just did…because…”

“I’m OK, really, I’m just…”

Missionaries use the word just more than any group of people I personally have ever met.  Why?  I have a few ideas.

We are the great minimizers.  The current world of evangelical missions full of missionaries who have a deep love for the word, “just”. Why?  This is our strategy for coping with what makes up our life.  Let’s face it, our lives are filled with circumstances and events that drain us. Yet, we must press on, so we minimize.

We experience wonderful moments like when we are witness to a life that is transformed from death to life. This is glorious! It takes emotional, physical and spiritual energy to fully engage in the reality of what is really taking place. So, we minimize. “So and so got saved today, it was just such a blessing!” Hello!!? The angels are rejoicing. I can only imagine the thunderous noise of praise to the miracle God had such accomplished in raising a spirit from death to life. New birth of salvation is a glorious miracle that happens before our very eyes. If this isn’t the time for an “End-Zone Celebration”, I don’t know what is!  Yet we must press on to the next task, so we minimize. 

We experience hard moments like when a patient comes to the hospital on death’s doorstep because they delayed coming for treatment because they didn’t have enough money. Now it’s too late.  They’re too far gone. We do our best to speak the gospel to them and leave the results to God for their soul. But, for their body, their time on earth is near its end.  Death is the final enemy. Yes, death is an enemy. It’s real. It had it’s birth in sin, and it feeds on sin, and it will not be quenched of its hunger until Jesus makes all things new.  The reality of death and it’s finality is a reality, but it’s hard.  So, we minimize.  We go through the day, then head home and spend a normal evening with the family. “How was your day honey?”  As an attempt to put the eternal weight of the day behind us we sigh and simply say, “It was just a really hard day…” What else can we do? 

Relationships on the mission field are filled with exhausting exchanges.  The stakes are high out here for everyone. We’ve all worked really hard to get here and we’re all working really hard to succeed in this thing called missionary life. And the fact is that most missionaries make it to the field because they have strong convictions combined with strong personalities. Then we enter life with a people group that have a culture that is different from ourselves.  Culture is a strong force that is hard to understand and extremely difficult to navigate and even more difficult to change.  These are the relationships that fill our days, and it wears on the individual emotionally, physically and spiritually.  Yet, we must press on. So, what do we do? We minimize. “I just need to be patient and pray and give it time.” 

  No person lives life outside the pressure of expectation. As missionaries we struggle to meet the expectations of so many people.  In our fish bowl lifestyle we are being watched by the people in the US…family, friends, churches, pastors, our sending organization, non-believers, nominal believers, believers in different denominations. We are being watched by the people on the field where we serve…churches, new believers, co-workers, employees, chiefs of our towns, shop workers in the market place.  There are constantly hundreds of people watching us and we don’t want to let them down. We want to put on a good performance because we know that we are a reflection of our King, and we don’t want to tarnish His name. But our deepest heart’s desire is not to perform at all, but to simply be.  We want to be in His presence, see and be seen by our Abba. A life can be lived with an audience of One. But the pressure to live for the greater audience is astounding and exhausting. So we minimize. “I just don’t have that much time for meditating on God’s word and in His presence. I just have these other things I have to do.” And we press on.

Yes we are the great minimizers. The shame of it all is that it keeps us from fully experiencing God.  We are minimizing the joy to which we are entitled as part of our inheritance as children of God. We are minimizing the sorrow of sin and the weight of it’s pain for which Jesus died.  We are minimizing the resurrection power that overcomes sin and death and offers victory and righteousness to us in every moment! So for every time we minimize the truth of the hard and the ugly of life, we minimize the truth of  the glorious victory of Jesus. How can we live in victory if we have yet to acknowledge the reality of the battle?

No, we need not be experts in the melodrama. But we need to live in truth and let the Spirit of God expand our capacity to fully experience God and His work. 

What are the consequences of minimizing? 

First, when the wonderful is minimized, the glory is minimized.  Paul tells us in Ephesians that we are called and redeemed for the the praise of His glory! When we do not fully see and engage in the wonderful works of God,  we minimize our expressions of praise to His glory.  This is to our shame.  It is also a shame because I believe nothing does the Christian’s heart more good than to turn towards our God in praise.

Second, when we minimize the hard, the glory is minimized.  Just as a star shines brightest with the night sky is the darkest, the miracle of new birth and victorious Christian living shine the brightest in the face of a world that is filled with sin and death. Dare to look squarely at your own sin and deal with it ruthlessly, applying the truths of the gospel unto salvation. Let the resurrection power of Jesus radiate from your life as you live in full view of the reality of depravity and the eternal gift of salvation that raised us from the dead and brought us to abundant and eternal life, to the praise of His glory!

When we cease to minimize we cease to look at at life with a gaze that is unclear.  We begin to see circumstances, events and relationships with clarity. Truth becomes our guide. We see life as it truly is and then through the wisdom of the Spirit of God and His Word we can navigate our steps far more effectively because we are engaged in reality rather than an illusion. 

So stop minimizing and embrace truth. It takes courage. Joshue 1:9 “Be strong and courageous, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

What is Consuming me?

What is consuming me?  

  If my desire is to be consumed by God’s Glory - it must begin with the beginning moments of my day - quiet with my God - worshipping Him. If any thing steals His glory in the quiet moments I cannot move forward with this thing. It becomes a consumer of my affections, and of His glory rather than directing my affections toward God and a conduit of His glory.

Life does not consist of an end.  Life is a process. I cannot accept a process that does not bring Him glory in my quiet moments with a hope that the end will bring Him glory, making the emptiness of the process worth the sacrifice. 

Ephesians 1:5-14 clarifies that through God’s will, He chose us so that we would live to bring praise to His glory.

Is His glory being praised in my quiet moments, spilling into each day, culminating in the end?  The true end of something is determines by the process - not the process by the end. If He isn’t glorified in the process we should not assume that He will be glorified in the results.

Is the process consuming my thoughts, energy, affections, time, prayers and relationships? If yes, then it has become and idol and must be demolished. 

Boundary: A limit of subject or sphere of activity.

Boundaries keep us inside where we are supposed to be and safe.  This means that on the other side of a boundary there is danger.  There are boundaries in our physical and spiritual lives. The natural inclination is to put boundaries on our spiritual life and lift the boundaries on our physical life. This is not a godly or spiritual disposition.  It is not spiritual to be lazy about work boundaries and call it sacrificial ministry. There is danger here.  The work will suffocate the spiritual walk - not feed it. It will suffocate the health if the individual as well as the family.  This does not honor God.  Jesus did not make Himself accessible to all people all the time. In fact He often left a place when it seemed He was in the middle of His work.

However, for as loose as we often are with our physical boundaries, why are we so tight with our spiritual boundaries? We have endless said and unsaid rules, limits and time constraints on corporate and personal worship and prayer.  Is it not through prayer and worship that the power of God is accessed? If Yaweh God is approachable through worship and His power let loose through prayer, then we must learn to throw off the constraints of our liturgical methods! We must have the courage and fortitude to set firm boundaries on our physical life so that our spiritual life, the life of Jesus in us, is free to fully live!

John 10:10 "The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy; I came so that you may have life, and have it abundantly"

Nevertheless...

In the course of my life there have been plenty of trials that have exercised and stretched my faith. But none of them were like those we experienced in the past four years on the missions field.

James 1:2-4

 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds,  because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.  Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.

There are truths in these verses that God has really been putting to the test in my life.

God brings trials into our lives because God is good!  Do you believe that?  Do you believe that God loves you enough to hand craft trials made just for you because He loves you?

 He wants your faith in Him to grow. He loves you enough to bring circumstances that will chisel away at the selfish desires, 

grind to shreds the lies that have been deceiving you, and mold and shape you into the Glory reflecting person He created you to be!

  He brings trials so that (1.) your confidence in His promises will be rock solid. (2.) So that you will get to the point where no matter what really hard thing happens which you don’t understand, you look up through tear stained eyes and whisper with blessed assurance, “God, I trust you.”  

I heard a sermon at some point during our time in Togo called “Living in the Land of Nevertheless”  I don’t remember who gave the sermon but I will never forget hearing it and the relief that it brought.  I had been fighting the trials.  I did not want to submit to the hand that was bringing the painful blows to my world. But the idea of living in the land of nevertheless was ground breaking for me.  It refers to that awesome moment in the garden of Gethsemene when Jesus was on his face before the Father. 

Matt. 26:39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.” Jesus was expressing to God the truth of what He felt and wanted.  He had a will and just like any sane person His will was to not experience the pain that was before Him!  He knew the agony that was before Him.  He knew just what was coming and He did not want to go there! It was as if He was looking down a path that had an escape route. God was saying go this way and Jesus was looking at the escape route. It was a point of decision. And history was made when Jesus whispered, “Nevertheless”. “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done.”  He surrendered. He surrendered His will and in doing so He surrendered safety, comforts, happiness, laughter, relationships, care-free living...He surrendered His blood. And from that moment He was living in the land of nevertheless.  He was saying in essence, “God here is what my flesh wants, but I am choosing to go your way, so lets go. And that moment of submission led to the greatest victory in history!  

So, as I pressed on in our first term on the mission field, I decided to live in the land of nevertheless. Fully aware of what my flesh wanted,  I made the decision to continue down the path of pain. The path where God was.  For me that path was to continue life and ministry in Togo.

  God has allowed trials during our time in Togo.  And they came at me on so many different levels.  They came at me physically, emotionally, spiritually, psychologically.  And, they hit me on so many different fronts. It was like an all out ambush!  We walked onto the front lines of a spiritual battle when we stepped off that airplane in Lomé, Togo. We walked into the Satan’s line of fire, and we got hit.

There are two areas that stand out to me as being the most difficult and I hope the most faith stretching. The first hit me 3 days after we arrived in Togo.  I began to have a headache.  I have experienced headaches since I was a teenager, but these were different. They lasted anywhere from 3 to 10 days and the intensity of the pain was debilitating. I spent days in bed each month in the dark, with as little noise as possible with excruciating pain and no way to find relief.  We tried all kind of medicines and all dosages and nothing touched it! I remember laying in bed in the middle of one of my headaches and just praying that God would take the pain away, but then whispering in my heart to the Lord, “You are God, and I’m not” They were words of submission. I was living in the land of “Nevertheless”.  It has only been in the past year that we have discovered that the headaches are migraines, and we have begun to find medications to help relieve the pain.

The second trial that has  been particularly difficult has been the isolation of my life in Togo. When I left my life in the US for life in Togo I left behind family, friends, home, culture, language, car, and independence. All these were a support system that I knew how to operate in. I gave them all up and replaced them for a home on a compound in Togo. With the responsibility to homeschool our 2 kids, the lack of a car or a place to go even if I did have a car,  and Eric working at the hospital countless hours around the clock each week, I felt as though I were drowning in my own feelings of isolation.    My faith was being stretched as I began to learn to turn to Jesus and let Him meet my needs. Let Him be my all in all. Let Him be enough.  

But this is where the stretching came. Because on the one hand I was experiencing the “hard”.  The “God I don’t think I can take this any longer” stuff of life was pulling me so hard, it hurt.  But on the other hand was peace. Peace that came from the One who had also walked a road of pain and isolation before me.  I was exactly where God wanted me to be.  I was in the land of “Nevertheless”

Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Living in the Land of Nevertheless means making decisions to follow Jesus example to submit to the leading of the Father, accept the pain that may come, but experiencing the peace that surpasses human understanding. It means experiencing God as He stretches our faith and leads us in victorious living!

Where is your “Nevertheless” path leading you? How does God want to stretch your faith? Will you choose the path that leads to less pain, and happiness and comfort? Or, will you submit, and make the decision to follow the faith-stretching path of Nevertheless and watch for the handiwork of God and experience His peace like never before. 

I may have to wait for heaven to be able to see all that God accomplished in and through us over those four years.  But I have faith, absolute, rock solid faith that what He was and is doing is good. 

A Worthy Passion

A Worthy Passion

These last eight years have brought me through more circumstances, changes, trials, joys, struggles, emotions, confusions and despairs than I even could have imagined.  I have come through it, changed. I am not who I was when our trek to Togo began eight years ago. This has left me wondering, who am I ? Why am I here? What am I supposed to do? Why?  Confusion.

I suppose confusion isn’t such a bad thing.  It causes us to search. The good news is that for the Spirit in-dwelt Christian, we are are not alone in this search.  We have the Spirit leading us, through Jesus, to God, and in the end we will understand. How I long to understand. How often have I prayed in these past years, “God help me to see from your perspective.” God I want to see how you see.  

Experiencing Togo through fleshly eyes is awful. I hate staring poverty in the face, full-on. Gazing at deformity, homelessness, hunger, disease, and worst of all hopelessness.   When I look through eyes of flesh all this creates is despair, questions...searching.  When I began the trek to Togo I was full of hope that somehow God could use me.  I was full of passion to work for the souls of Togo. I was filled with ideas, exited emotion, confidence.  But now, I feel as though all these are gone. And worst of all, I feel no passion. 

What is worth being passionate about? No ministry, no service, no amount of work and energy will ever be able to alleviate the pain in the lives of the people around me. I cannot spend my life living passionately for a ministry purpose because every ministry effort falls short. It will disappoint my hopes.  It will thwart my expectation. It will wreak havoc on my emotions, leaving me raw. And at the end of the day when I am a mess on the inside from experiencing the messiness of ministry there is still a million lifetimes worth of ministry to do in order accomplish what the flesh eye tells me needs to be done. Failure. 

So why bother? When any work I try to be part of will fail me and I will fail it. Why bother?  What can I live and work for that will not fail me? What can I live and work for that will succeed even though I fall woefully short of what it takes to succeed. To what end can I give myself fully every day knowing that what I have to give is enough. What is worthy of giving myself to? 

This is where searching and confusion has brought me. 

There is one answer. One thing that says that I am enough and the end product is glorious. One thing that is worthy of being my life’s work.

This is the Glory of God.  

Oh God, fill every part of me with a passion for nothing but your glory!  Help me to see the world from your perspective. Help me to see how all things can give you glory when they are redeemed! Every messy ministry, disease, hungry belly, death, deformity, homeless family, and hopeless situation. Only this can fill every ugly, sin stained life and still be perfect and worth living for. Only this can be my passion and never disappoint.

The Glory of God!

A Matter of Trust

Trust: firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.

Proverbs 3:5-6 ‘Trust in the Lord with all you heart. Do not lean on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths.”

This has been my life verse since I was a little girl.  I even painted it around the ceiling border of my bedroom when I was growing up.  It seemed simple back then. “Trust God and He will show what to do and where to go”  I believe with all my heart that I did trust Him and He did direct my paths.  He brought me Eric, my wonderful husband for whom I am daily thankful and with whom I am daily deeply in love!  He led us to Togo. Though it was a long and winding path, I know that God was in the lead.  I know I am where God wants me, yet the question of trust continues to swirl through my heart and mind.  

In the Old Testament God repeatedly told the Israelites to remember what He had done for them, so that they would trust Him in their future.  He was telling them to look at the the good things He had done for them in relation to their future.  He wanted them to trust Him.

But why is it that what God does is good? It is because He is good.  So, although He was saying look at the good that I have done, really that which God does is just an evidence of who He is.  Trusting God for what He does is just a place to start trusting Him for who He is.  

I think that this is where God has me now.  I am in transition between trusting God for what He does and trusting Him for who He is.  What is the difference? The difference is huge! It means that I get to a place that my trust in God is based on the truth that He is good and is completely independent of what He does. To be able to trust God in this deep way is crucial to living a life that is independent of my own understanding.  It is crucial to living life in view of eternity.

The crisis of trust comes when life hands you circumstances that from any human reasoning are not good.  A most extreme example would be the Christian who is persecuted for their faith and eventually martyred.  This is not something we would usually point to in order to prove that God is trustworthy or good, yet He is. He does not change. 

I am not writing because I have figured out this mystery of trusting God with all my heart.  I am writing because I am on a journey, and I suspect I am not the only one.  What do I do with the dissatisfactions of life, my fears of the world in which I live and the inability to change my circumstances.  What do I do with these very real struggles in light of the truth Jesus spoke when He said He came to give us abundant life.  Right now the only things that seem to be abounding are disease, pestilence, death, suffering and chaos! 

Draw me deeper LORD!  Get me to a place where I see you clearly, without life getting in the way.  Clear out the circumstances, the struggles, the emotions, the fears, the disappointments, the pain, and let me see you.  “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God” Matt 5:8.  Oh God, rid me of all this extra stuff in my heart so that I can see you for who you are.  I want to know you, I want to trust you.