A Sacrifice of Praise... Overtime!

    Have you ever noticed how many times we are instructed to praise in God's word? I mean really, why would God not just expect us to praise Him when we feel grateful and let us off the hook when life gets rough? I'm beginning to realize (yes, again... how many times must I learn the same lesson!?) that sometimes, giving praise because of the trial in my life brings a greater blessing. 

    Lately, I've had no trouble finding things to praise God for... a relaxing afternoon hosting a beloved missionary family, a peaceful evening playing board games with my kiddos, my husband's renewed health to return to work after an extended illness... the blessings have been flowing heavily around here! 

    So why, tonight, did I find myself grasping at straws to write in my gratitude journal? It wasn't that rough of a day. Pretty relaxing, really. My girls and I read aloud together, I made some yummy home-cooked meals, nothing broke down, and there wasn't even any teenager conflict like sometimes rears its ugly head! I'm blessed! So why couldn't I think of something to put into words?
  
    Because God wanted more from me today. He wanted a sacrifice of praise today. He wasn't going to let me off the hook with the typical blessings today. It was time for me to dig deeper into my soul and obey His order to give thanks in everything! So, here goes...

    Disclaimer: If you're a military spouse, or someone whose spouse truly works long hours, you have my respect! But for me, anything longer than an eight-hour shift sets me to counting the minutes for my husband's return. Today, my challenge was to thank God for overtime. It hasn't been too long since I was worried about whether my husband would ever be well enough to return to work full-time. God has restored his health completely! And just a few weeks before that, we were going over the budget with a fine-tooth comb, trying to figure out how to keep loose ends together until "overtime season" returned. So I'm grateful today. On this, a beautiful Saturday that passed peacefully without incident, I'm grateful that my husband spent nearly twelve hours at work. I'm grateful that he missed out on going to a mystery shop for dinner with me and four of the kids. I'm grateful that we had to play our nightly round of skip-bo without his competitive hand or his wry humor. I'm grateful that I snuggled down into a cold bed, shivering until my heating blanket warmed up, while he was finishing his last flight at work. And I'm especially grateful that my husband is a hard-worker who doesn't complain about the longer days!

    I'm not saying "thank you" because I feel like it, but because it is the right thing to do. Again, I know many of you suffer far worse than this, especially if your husband works out of town or out of the country. You have my undying respect and gratitude. But for me, this is what God asked of me today, to sacrifice by thanking Him for my husband's work schedule. 

    What are you grateful for today? Let me know in the comments below. I look forward to hearing from you!

Meditations on Standing Nearby

Meditations on Standing Nearby

John 19: 26-27 depicts a portion of the scene in which Christ hangs on the cross, prepared to pay the eternal price for my sin. We haven’t heard from the disciples, those twelve specially chosen young men who have shadowed his footsteps for the last three years, since Peter’s denial during the trial. Then suddenly, we realize that one of them is present. There is John, perhaps the youngest of the twelve, and clearly the one who considers himself to be the closest friend of Jesus. He is standing with his own mother and Jesus’ mother, for all we know silently observing the death of his dreams.

We can learn from John’s example. When he found himself at the end of the Mission to which he had dedicated the previous three years of his life, where did he go? When everyone in his public world saw the humiliation of the Man who had called him away from a lucrative family business and dragged him around the countryside, living like vagrants, one day chasing down their Leader who had gone alone to pray, and another day watching Him escape those who would put Him to death… where do we find John? He was ‘standing nearby’. He was still in the presence of the Saviour Who had seemingly failed him. John was physically in the same place he had been for the previous three years… near to His beloved Lord.

Sometimes, in our lives, too, we find ourselves at a loss for words. We stand silently to the side as the plans we have built for months or years crumble around us. Inwardly, we question… “But Lord, YOU built this! What good could come of its failure now?” Whether in the loss of a marriage, the rebellion of a child, the failure of some earthly leader, or any other death of a vision, loss hurts. Something in our core is torn apart when it seems that what we’ve done for our Saviour has been a waste.

But more than that, even when we do have the faith to remain physically present in the midst of a crisis, we may hesitate to move forward in our spiritual walks. When we come upon the scene in John 19, it is not a static picture. While John may have been standing still, it would seem it was more with the spirit of one waiting for further instructions. It implies, if you will, ‘waiting’ as a waitperson in a restaurant, or the more archaic term of a ‘lady-in-waiting.’ John was standing ready to receive whatever his Leader instructed next, even though his Leader appeared to others to have been stripped of His authority. When Jesus instructs John to treat Mary as his own mother, the Bible says it was so “from that hour”. Wow! Oh, to be so attentive in the face of earth-shattering trials in my own life!

Whether the question you face is , “Where was God on 9/11?” or “Did your God allow the Newtown school shooting?” or even “My pastor failed our church, so how can God be true?” the answer is the same.  When I am in a personal crisis of faith, or have opportunity to speak into someone else during a crisis, I am challenged from John’s life to continue on with what I do know to be true. Yes. My God is still good. My God is still all-powerful, and He still loves me. I may not be able to tell you how, when it seems all I’ve believed in and worked toward is dying with Him on the cross, but I know what I’m supposed to do next.

Tomorrow, I’ll wake up and spend some quiet time with my Saviour, no matter how I feel.

I’ll care for my family and teach them to know and love God, too.

I’ll honor, obey, and submit to what I know until I receive further instruction. Because what I know of God hasn’t changed.  A crisis in my world need not become a crisis in my faith.

1.         Stand. “Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord…” (II Chronicles 20:17)
2.         Stand Nearby. “The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart.” (Psalm 34:18)
3.         Obey. “Doing the will of God from the heart…” (Ephesians 6:6b)

What do you see from this passage? Do you think John’s faith was misplaced? Leave a comment below about how you deal with personal crises. How do you “keep the faith” when the world around you is crumbling? I’d love to hear from you!

By the way, if this post would be a blessing to someone you know, please pass it along. God is glorified when we share what He has done in our lives with others!

*Loosely based on a devotion found in The Beloved Disciple by Beth Moore

How (NOT) to encourage your exercising friend…

We all know her... She’s the friend who joins the exercise craze-du-jour, and tells all of her exercise-averse friends it’s the best thing going, only to burn out a few weeks later. Or maybe she’s the girl who avoids breaking a sweat with every fiber of her being. She hears a new diagnosis from her doctor, and is off to the gym to reverse the effects of the last three decades she’s spent in the McDonald’s drive-through. Or maybe she has a chronic illness, and you’ve been praying with her to find relief, and gently nudging her toward lifestyle changes that may help.  

One day (maybe around the season of New Year’s resolutions), she calls to tell you she’s started a home workout regimen or joined an exercise class. Perhaps she’s even registered to run her first 5K or Half-Marathon! 

“Good for her,” you think! “I can’t wait to see her make these changes, and experience lasting results!” Or maybe, like the snarky female hiding within a few of us, you think to yourself “Yeah, right… you mean just like the ‘long-term’ change you made last January, and abandoned before Valentine’s Day?!” Outwardly, you encourage, and promise to follow up with her. You plan to keep her accountable, knowing from experience that such encouragement is key to her stick-to-it-iveness. After all, you’re the friend everyone knows spends an hour at the gym every morning, just because it energizes you! (I’ve never understood that. Ten minutes in the gym puts me in the mood for a long winter’s nap!)

Two days later, you make a bee-line to her after church to ask how it’s going. In her eagerness, she regales you with the nitty-gritty details of how hard she worked out, and how much better she’s already feeling. She’s about to experience several potential pitfalls in her new-found life. Beware! Here are a few of the things she may face in the first few weeks:

1)    She gets so excited about being able to stick with something that she over-does it initially. She ends up with more soreness than she had anticipated, and uses that as an excuse to skip the next class or training day to recover. Uh-oh…

2)   She gets so excited, and tells her praying friends how much the exercise is helping her pain issues! Two weeks later, she realizes that the exercise that strengthens her ____ is causing damage to her ____ (fill in the blanks… it’s different for every person). Her doctor instructs her to stop this program, but doesn’t make strong suggestions about a different regimen. She quits… again… and is discouraged by her body’s unwillingness to change. (Her friends, most of whom do not face chronic health issues, will see this as another flash-in-the-pan ending in failure. She’s even less likely to reach out for help with her next hare-brained scheme!)

3)   She sticks with her new plan faithfully for three weeks, seeing results in her emotions (I can do this!) and her health (I feel better!). But then she, or her child, or her husband, or the entire household, comes down with a cold, or flu, or some other malady that hangs on for weeks. By the time they’ve kicked it, she’s lost the courage, or the motivation, to rejoin her exercise class or training group, and is kicking herself for wasting the initial outlay of money.

How can you help? 

[I have a family member who suffers with chronic auto-immune diseases. I also have a family member with chronic joint pain and degeneration (Thanks for the genes, Mom!). And I have bounced back and forth between my eagerness to be healthy and my apathy toward anything which requires sweat. These days, I find myself, too, dealing with a diagnosis that promises to completely change my perspective of an active lifestyle. Over the years, I have tried, and found temporary success with, Curves, WiiFit, several less regimented at-home programs, and most recently, a local gym with child-care options. Last summer, after six months of 2-3 gym workouts per week, the pain in my hips had gotten bad enough to require a visit to an orthopedic specialist. He determined that the exercise had brought to light a new and much more serious problem: dysplasia in both hips which had resulted in degeneration and arthritis. Unless something changes, he expects me to have bi-lateral hip replacements in the next ten years. YIKES! I don't expect that I'll have any more time for that in my mid-40s than I do now, in my 30s. And I'll have even less time, the way the grand-kids are coming, so I have to make more changes… and it's time to make them “smarter.”]

After starting yet another program designed specifically for my health-crisis-du-jour, I am again trusting God for results, and for long-term success. Here are a few of my thoughts on what YOU can do when you have a friend in a similar situation:

DO:

• Call or visit frequently, especially in the first few weeks, encouraging her to be faithful to her plan.
• Ask about obstacles she may have discovered since the initial commitment was made. Is her child-care working out? Does the schedule need tweaked to help her be more faithful? Is there some other need she may not have thought of, which could derail her progress in the future?
• Offer to join her one day – do her workout video with her at home, or get a guest pass at her gym for a day, if she would enjoy your company.

DON’T:

• Forget to encourage her after the first week has passed. It might be appropriate to ask less frequently, but you know from experience how much easier it will be if she can establish this as a true “habit” in her life!
• Insist on joining her if she’s not comfortable. She may very well be self-conscious about her starting point. The last thing she’ll want is to be face to face with the Workout Maven as she makes her own paltry attempts.
• Start second guessing her when she faces obstacles. If she has always faced chronic pain issues, she may be surprised by how little immediate progress she makes. If she faces severe pain with a chosen workout, encourage her to explore other options until she finds the right fit. Invite her to try something you've found success with. Broaden her horizons!
• Assume that she’ll stick with it forever once she starts to see progress. There is a reason she burns out in the first 6 weeks time and again – it may be health, pain, family issues, time management, or a simple lack of character. She needs your continued encouragement and will thank you for it, in the long run (pun intended)!
• Mock what passes as exercise in her book. If she’s been sedentary, or worse yet, in pain, for months or years, the level of activity that makes her sweat, or causes her soreness, will be very different from what you expect. Encourage her to stick with what she’s doing, and be very cautious about encouraging her to move it up a notch. Better that she be faithful over time with less activity than that she go over-board and quit altogether!

So tell me what you've discovered on your journey to health. I'm sure I've missed a few... What do YOU wish someone would... or wouldn't... say when you try something new for your health?

Literary Review:

Postcards from Fred by Brad Whittington

Welcome to 2014! One of the things I feel God calling me to do more of this year has to do with this blog. God has given me a platform, at least with a few people, and I desire to use it to glorify Him in a greater way this year. Feel free to keep me accountable on that! :-) I would also appreciate you sharing any of these posts with your own friends if you find a blessing here.

This morning, I had the privilege of finishing my first book of the new year! Although I had chosen it as a light-hearted Christian fiction read, I soon found it to be anything but frivolous. With all the wit and reality-based humor of numerous situations that clearly mirrored my own daily life as a mom of boys, the author quickly gives his premise. He writes from the perspective of a teen-aged boy who, in retrospect, wonders whether he was foolish to commit, during a revival the previous summer, to ask "What would Jesus do?" in every situation. Having grown up as a preacher's kid, he had irreverently considered himself immune to the common malady of flash-in-the-pan revival decisions. But somehow, God had brought him to this decision, and now he was determined to pay the price, regardless of the misery it brought him personally. Nice, huh?!

As the narrator begins to pursue dating, he is stymied by The Question. It seems that every Christian he asks inserts his or her own philosophy into the answer. Each of them tells him that Jesus would do something relating to one of their own pet peeves. And none of them offers a suitable answer to his newest application, "What would Jesus do... on a date?" So, instead of marching onto the dating scene with confidence, he struggles with stops and starts in his pursuit of a fellow PK from a neighboring town. She has no such compunctions about seeking Jesus in every interaction, and has been raised in a much more separated (i.e. strict) pastor's home.

The story is peppered, both with hilarious interactions with a local deacon, who is too "spiritual" for the Biblical messages preached by the narrator's father, and also with the typical school bully issues. Between his difficulties in flying under the deacon's radar, escaping the romantic pursuits of the bully's sister, and delivering the paper to various idiosyncratic neighbors, the narrator had me in stitches and reading aloud several sections to anyone close enough to enjoy them with me.

Without giving away the entire story, I can tell you that the author's treatment of this question is unique and meaningful. It challenged my thinking as a follower of Christ in a way that it has not been challenged for too long. The book's final chapters left me convicted about things I can change in my daily life to be more like Christ, and challenged me, too, to re-visit the question, "What would Jesus do?" 

I would encourage you to find this book at your local library, or support the author by purchasing it here. Personally, I'm looking forward to finding more from the Fred series, and perhaps some of Mr. Whittington's other novels, and enjoying them soon!

What books have blessed your spiritual life recently? Share in the comments so we can all benefit!