Category Archives: God

Rules vs. Freedom

Posted on by under God, Scripture

From my 2009 Journal. Do we have any rules we need to abide by as believers? Moses’ Law says “Don’t murder.” Jesus says it’s what’s in your heart that’s important. Is “don’t hate” a rule? I suppose you could say that. Rules generally govern actions, and hatred is not an action (unless it’s acted upon). But if you take care of the attitude (hatred) in your heart, you’ll have no temptation to do the action (murder).

We usually judge a person’s actions, though I have to say I’m guilty of judging a person’s heart based on their actions. I wouldn’t know what’s in their heart if I didn’t see their action.

Romans 14 refers to religious activity: eating meat offered to idols and special observances of days. I have freedom, Paul says, to eat meat or not eat meat, to observe a day “unto the Lord” or not. It’s not the action that pleases God, but the attitude of the heart. Are you doing it out of obedience to your conscience or out of disobedience? Are you doing it with a grateful heart? If you do it but aren’t thankful, what good is it?

Bottom line: don’t judge someone else’s religious activities (assuming they are believers) and don’t put an obstacle or stumbling block in another person’s way. Verse 14 says food offered to idols in and of itself is not unclean. But if in your heart you believe it’s unclean, then to you it is. Don’t do it!

Guilt and Shame—a Visual

Posted on by under Choices, God, Inner Healing

GUILT is like treading on a sandy beach leaving visible footprints. SHAME tries to smooth sand over the prints, but as you walk away, you create more footprints.

GRACE is God sending His wind (the Holy Spirit) and blowing across the sand, erasing all the prints. And even if you fail again, the wind continues to blow.

But how much better to scramble up onto a rock where no footprints can imprint, and no guilt and shame exist.

“I’m on the Rock, hallelujah,

I’m on the Rock to stay,

For He lifted me from the miry clay—

I’m on the Rock to stay.”

On Hatred

Posted on by under Choices, Emotions, God, Inner Healing, Peace

Journal 2005

At my missionary boarding school, I was taught it was a sin to hate. Therefore, if we hated someone, we’d piously say, “Oh, I don’t hate her; I just strongly dislike her!” As if we didn’t say the words, we were not guilty of the deed.

This week the Spirit of God confronted my self-righteousness with a memory where I carried hatred in my heart. As I released that emotion, years of bondage slipped away, and I felt free. Nobody but Jesus knew that sin was there. And nobody but Jesus and the person who prayed with me for deliverance knows it’s gone. But will others sense a change in me? I don’t know. I feel the change, and I know that something is different.

The Word and the Spirit

Posted on by under God, Scripture

Journal 2005

Sometimes I learn more truth through other people’s processing than I do through my own. Yesterday, while praying with a client over the phone, God answered a question for her that answered a question for me: If we have the Holy Spirit, why do we need the Bible? And if we have the Bible, why do we need the Holy Spirit?

Now, I could have given her a plausible explanation that would have satisfied me. However, it made the most sense to her when she visualized a classroom. We need both the Teacher and the textbook. A student gets information from the text—facts, history, stories, and even poetry, but she has a relationship with the Teacher. The Teacher asks and answers questions about the text; He explains, expands, and embellishes it. And how does He know so much about the textbook? He’s the author!

Six Tributaries

Posted on by under Emotions, God

Journal 2005

Lynda Graybeal, administrator of Renovare (www.renovare.org) suggests we need a “balanced vision” of 6 streams or dimensions of the Christian life (Conversations, Vol 3:1, p. 52). Though I was reared in one particular stream, I have dipped my toes in each of these tributaries and found grace in each of them. All make up the body of Christ. All have partial truth. All can learn from the others.

Contemplative – The prayer-filled life

Holiness – The virtuous life

Charismatic – The Spirit-empowered life

Social Justice – The compassionate life

Evangelical – The Word-centered life

Incarnational – The sacramental life

Which stream refreshes you the most? Which one challenges you?

My Eyes

Posted on by under Choices, God, Scripture

My eyes are continually toward the Lord… (Ps. 25:15)

Sometimes I look at the back of Your head as You say, “Follow Me down this path.” Sometimes I look into Your eyes, and I see tender love and compassion. Sometimes I look sideways toward You—for companionship and fellowship. Other times I look up at You like an expectant child looking toward her father—waiting for the surprise, the delight, the gift, the promised reward. It’s hard to look toward You when I’ve disappointed You. My eyes are downcast then, so I won’t see Your disapproval or displeasure with what I’ve done or thought. I look around me, behind, above, below me—and You are there. No matter where I look, I am “toward you”—if only I open my eyes!

Keep my eyes on You, Lord.

The Lord Is Not My Shepherd

Posted on by under God, Peace, Scripture

Journal 2005

David thought in word pictures based on his experiences, so Psalm 23 made sense to him. But it’s hard to put myself in his sandals, for I’m not a sheep-tender. I love the imagery, and I know it’s scriptural, but the concept of “The Lord is my shepherd” doesn’t touch my soul.

I am a tree-lover. Inside the fence of our African compound, my missionary dad planted a variety of tropical fruit trees for food and a thousand neem trees for firewood. Just outside our property, a stately kuka (baobab) tree called my name, and further into the bush grew other exotic fruit for tasting and flowering trees for climbing. As a child, I made it my mission to try them all. 

And so, I write my own poem.
The Lord is my Living Baobab Tree.

He wraps His massive branches around my slender frame.

I hide myself in the crook of His arm.

He is my place of peace and solitude and a gathering place for social encounters.

I view the world differently from Your height.

I soar in Your high branches and rock comfortably on your lower ones.

I might itch when I touch your pods, but the inside fruit tingles sweet-sour on my tongue.

You reveal Your secrets as I spend time in You.

You spread Your cool leaves above me and shelter me from sun and rain.

You invite me to climb, but I can never attain the topmost branches.

You are too lofty for me.

I want to dwell in Your branches forever.

I run to you when I feel pain or pleasure.

I run barefoot to Your roots and climb into Your lap, content.

You restore my soul.

Is God more than a shepherd or a tree? Of course. But the symbolism focuses on the senses. Can I taste God?  (“Oh taste and see that the Lord is good.”) Can I hear His rustling branches in the Spirit’s wind? Can I smell Him in the dampness of the roots of the earth? Or the odor of rain as it cleanses the dusty leaves? Can I touch Him? When I touch the unlovely, the poor, the prisoner, the orphan child, I touch the face of God. I can’t see Him with physical eyes, but I can see His handiwork, and I get to know the heart of the artist. I see His creativity, His passion, His bigness, His attention to detail, His order, His comfortableness with chaos. I sense His emotion in the fury of the hurricane as well as the gentle caress of whispered breeze on my cheek.

A 2022 Update. One day, while trying to still my heart on a hiking trail bench, the Lord said to me, “Be a tree.” I want to be an oak tree—stable and strong, where many can come and rest in my branches. Some of my leaves become diseased when outside forces ruin their beauty, but it’s okay for the bad parts to fall off so new growth can replace them. I want to feed the squirrels and provide shade for the tired and weary. And I want my branches to whisper, “Jesus loves you. God is here. Come and find peace.” He’s the invisible sap, the life inside me, flowing from root to healthy branch.

The Lord was David’s shepherd, but He’s my tree, and I want to be like Him.

“One that would have the fruit must climb the tree.”
1980. Revisiting what was left of my old, beloved baobab.

Lovingkindness

Posted on by under Choices, Emotions, God

Journal 2005

The word lovingkindness intrigues me. “Loving” I understand. “Kindness” is obvious. But why the two together? Aren’t they mutual? If you’re loving, you’ll be kind; if you’re kind, you’ll be loving. How can you have one without the other? How is lovingkindness different from the definition of loving or kindness? I turned to Webster for help.

Loving: affectionate

Kindness: friendly, generous, warm-hearted, sympathy, understanding, humane, considerate, forbearing, tolerant, generous, good-hearted, tender, considerate

Lovingkindness: tender and benevolent affections

How do I wrap my mind and understanding around this attribute when I read of God’s judgment, fury, and anger toward the rebellious? How do I become the object or recipient of His affection? Can I really earn it? We’re taught: “No, it’s all one-sided. We love Him because He first loved us.” Without His initiation, we would not respond to Him.

But my part is necessary too. It’s not just one-sided. It’s not that I earn His love, but that I respond to His. I don’t turn away from, but toward, His love. He has offered me relationship. And when I embrace it and accept it, He responds back in relationship—and lovingkindness.

When someone spurns God’s love, He is patient, kind, and tender. He continues to woo and invite. But at some point (God knows the heart and the intents), He must exact consequences or punishment or judgment. That is His right.

If someone spurns the love I offer, I can leave him or her in God’s hands and turn away. But when someone spurns God’s love, knowing the consequences thereof, they have no one to blame but their own choices.

I can experience all of God’s lovingkindness or benevolence. It’s there for my heart. But I have to do my part and turn toward the warmth and light, not away from it.

A Journey into Victorious Praying

Posted on by under God, Prayer

I learned to pray as a toddler at my father’s knee. Twice daily, our family read the Bible together and took turns praying—my parents in King James English, which I attempted to emulate. I remember the first time I returned home from college and tentatively prayed at family devotions, dropping the “thees” and “thous” of my childhood. I wondered if my parents would approve of my casual intimacy with the Creator.

Over the years I’ve read numerous books on prayer, including one that examined every prayer in the Bible. One book stood out to me more than all the others, however, because it came from the humble heart of someone who did more than study prayer. He practiced it. Here are some of my favorite quotes from A Journey into Victorious Praying, by Bill Thrasher. I highly recommend you get your own copy and begin your journey into the mysteries of the relationship with the Divine.

No one ever just decides to be a prayer warrior. God does something in a life that makes the person sense this need of God (p. 29).

I think this is true. My deepest prayers came at a time of my deepest need.

If you will take your temptations and turn them into conversations with God, you will learn to talk to God from your heart. . . . Temptations are an appeal to meet righteous needs in an unrighteous way to meet the longing your temptation has stirred (p. 30).

Again, this rings true to my experience. I could write a book on this one!

Martin Luther said, “Prayer is not a performance but climbing up to the heart of God” (p. 43).

For years, prayer for me was merely a checklist of spiritual disciplines. Relationship sheds the “shoulds.”

True spiritual fervency and compassion is a work of the Holy Spirit. We cannot work this up on our own strength (p. 44).

I tried my own strength. It didn’t work. I was told I should have compassion for the lost, and so, feeling guilty, I tried to drum up some feelings. Instead, God gave me compassion for those who hurt.

True prayer starts with God and the prayer burden He places on our hearts (p. 52). We aren’t called to pray for every request with the same intensity. God will not give any of us every prayer burden (p. 54).

Whew! My soul relaxes with these thoughts. Though I often pray for our leaders in government, for example, they are not a burden on my heart. Give me the name of an MK who’s hurting, however, and immediately my lips move in supplication.

I ask the Lord to bring to mind what He wants me to pray for. Sometimes when I ask, nothing comes to mind. Maybe He’s just calling me to silence (p. 55).

Once more, the “shoulds” in my head dissolve. I like contemplative silence.

Ask God to deliver you from anything that is hindering you from praying your heart to God.

It was only after relinquishing my tight self-control, my unforgiving heart, my anger, and my bitterness that I found true peace, resting in God’s presence. He always feels near now instead of far away.

Thrasher suggests that God is capable of taking my feeble prayer and interpreting my desires and deep longings and motivations.

Sometimes coming up with the right words feels like a chore. Sometimes I pray with pictures, sometimes without words at all. He knows my heart.

When we pray a specific prayer and God does not grant it, “could it be that it is because God is desiring to grant you an even deeper longing and desire of your heart?” (p. 60).

Ex:  Augustine, a leader in the early church, lived a sensual lifestyle in his early years. When he planned to go to Rome, his mother prayed, “O Lord, do not let him go to Rome because he will only get into further debauchery.” God did let him go to Rome. But it was there that he was converted. “The Spirit of God pled the deeper desire of the mother for his spiritual well-being, and God answered her heart.”

This story has stayed with me, reminding me that God is bigger than my feeble attempts at prayer.

You don’t “spend” time with God. You “invest” it. Time alone with Him can be one of the greatest time savers of your life (p. 114).

How true. Going to God first with a concern and working through my angst before speaking to someone has saved me hours of mop-up after a wrong response.

Prayer is not attempting to get our will done in heaven but His will done on earth (p.171).

I would love to hear about your experiences in your journey to victorious praying.

On the Edge of a Cliff

Posted on by under Choices, Emotions, God, Inner Healing, Peace, Prayer

Journal 2005

Going for an Oral Interpretation major in college, I once performed a reading with a powerful visual about standing atop a cliff, desperately trying to stop people from going over the edge (presumably to hell). The point was to urge believers to evangelize. I even know one missionary who went overseas because of this visual. But all I ever felt was guilt, helplessness, and powerlessness.

As I sit with my emotions, I notice there are danger signs at the edge of the cliff. In fact, there are warning signs before the danger signs. I’m praying desperately for people to open their eyes and take notice, and if I take my eyes off the scene, I’ll miss someone. Still I feel helpless. I have to DO something. If I sit down to rest, I’ll get stampeded! Where do responsibility and trust intersect?

Jesus says, “Back away from the edge of the cliff, find a bench, sit there and wait. Offer cold drinks and sandwiches to the weary travelers. Invite; don’t panic. Invite them to rest with me and talk. Tell them about the cliff and encourage them to share the news with the other travelers on their path. And if while I’m talking to one, and another passes by, I can just wave and smile. And if I need to sleep for a while, I can ask Jesus (or an angel) to tap me on the shoulder when I need to wake up and pay attention. Whew! That feels better.