Deeds of the Heart

"....Now someone may argue, 'Some people have faith; others have good deeds.' But I say, 'How can you show me your faith if you don’t have good deeds? I will show you my faith by my good deeds.'...” James 2:14-26

We have gotten things so out of line in our Christian teachings. I grew up with the thought that I needed to be good for God to save me. Not that that is what I was told, but that is what I heard through my young hearts understanding. The hell and brimstone approach was not working for me. "Live good and you'll go to heaven. Be bad and you'll be punished, possibly right to hell." Then there is also the other approach, "You can do anything you like. God loves you and He doesn't care how you live." Is there a balance? Why does it seem that God loves "sinners" till they are saved, then He expects them to change and be perfect? Or the other, that He doesn't expect anything from us, but Jesus does it all and He doesn't care how we live now?

When I started to have a better understanding of God and His love, I started to respond differently to life. When scripture talks about your deeds, it isn't to earn anything.  I don't live differently to make God love me or to earn my salvation. I live differently to "thank Him." I live differently so others can see Him through my life.  Not that I live perfectly now, but everything I do, I try and put Him first in my actions. I try and be a good representative of Him.

I have no doubt that others have been offended by me, don't like me, think I do not do a good job in this or that. My initial reaction is usually not the appropriate reaction. I must take a moment and let Christ have His way with my heart. I'm judgmental and give up very easily on others. If I do not see a change of actions on their part, I give up on them and assume they'll never change. That is my first response. My hope is that others do not see my response, but that they see His response through me. I pray that He opens my heart and eyes to them, so that I can see Him working (no matter what they are doing). 

"It is a trap to presume that God wants to make us perfect specimens of what He can do- God's purpose to to make us one with Himself." Oswald Chambers, Christian Perfection

Do you see what I see? It's not about "them!" It's about me and my relationship with my God and how I respond to life. Do I allow Him to lead me and take control of my heart? Do I love Him when I am sick? Do I lean upon Him when I am well? 

"Oh God, help me to see you better today. Help me to respond with your love as I encounter your people. Help me to not judge with my eyes and let me have your heart. You are a good God and I am so thankful for Your jealous love for me. Help us Lord to live a life that responds to Your love for us with a thankful life response. Help us to live differently today. Help us to be a good representative for you in our work, in our home. Help us to love in truth, in Your truth. Thank You my Lord. In Jesus name, Amen."

Experiential Relevance

Do you ever ask the question, "Why do I believe what I believe?" And if we do ask ourselves this, then what is the answer we come up with? And is there any way to test this "belief"?

Ravi Zacharias gives us three tests for truth:

Logical Consistency- Are there any contradictions found in what we believe?

Empirical Adequacy- Does it have verifiable observations, practical experience/facts you can use in court?

Experiential Relevance- Does it work in real life?

These are the three truth tests, that I am not going to get into, but we all need to be familiar with. In our nights at LIVE we have been discussing these three applications. We cannot just come back with an answer of "your wrong, I'm right." We need to have communication skills when we visit about our faith and evidence to back it up with. We must be respectful of others and allow them to talk freely. But here I like to focus on Experiential Relevance. This is where we all have practical application, even if we do not realize it.

Last night we started our conversation with "suffering". On November 5 in Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, he discusses suffering. Now there are many different ways of suffering. I have suffered because of choices that I have made and I have suffered because of things that happened to me that were not part of my own fault at all. But they both fall under the title of "suffering." I have told my group for years now, "I wouldn't take any of it away." And I wouldn't! Now do not get me wrong. I do not like it when I am suffering. I wallow and I cry and beg God to take it away. But after the suffering is lifted I can see where my heart was led and for that reason alone I wouldn't change a thing. Every bit of my suffering has taken me back to God. This journey has been a life path for me to find my Lord. A journey that He has been in full knowledge from the beginning. Time for a story...

When I was a little girl, my family would camp at Lodgepole camp ground on the Taylor River in Gunnison Colorado. Right at the bend in the road stood an aspen tree that my father carved my initials JS. For years that tree stood. My husband also vacationed near Gunnison in a little mining town above Taylor reservoir called Tin Cup. My tree was his marker that "he was almost there" on his long drive from Oklahoma. When we met twenty years later the tree was removed because of some road construction. But we were both "there." Not that our journey was so that we would find each other, but that we would have a better understanding of God and His ways.

On November 7 of Oswald Chambers we read about The Undetected Sacredness of Circumstances. This is one of my hardest life lessons to learn from. Through all of my suffering, through all of my life experiences did God make me suffer? Did He wave His magic wand and wish bad for me? ...there is no such thing as chance. God by His providence brings you into circumstances that you can’t understand at all, but the Spirit of God understands. God brings you to places, among people, and into certain conditions to accomplish a definite purpose through the intercession of the Spirit in you.

God does not choose for me to hurt myself in my choices that I make.  But He does choose for me to always be able to see Him, often in hindsight, through the road that I have traveled and for me to see that He has always been there.  From the time that I was a little girl, God was with me.  I can see it in the tree that Jason and I were a part of.  Again, not so that I would find him, but that I would find Him.  It was through my suffering that I have discovered that I turned more toward God.  It was through my suffering that I found more relationship with the Christ and discovered that He relates to us through His suffering.  And the tie that bind's all of us together, is the travels through suffering that we all are a part of. 

This very small example is of experiential relevance in my own life. Can you see yours?  What is it in your life that you can point to Him and say, "But God..." Through the three tests of truth, if you still do not want faith, if you choose to not believe, no one can convince you. Often it is not about our will to believe that we struggle with.  Many times it is our will to disbelieve. When I begin to struggle and doubt, I turn to the three tests. My personal experience speaks loudest to my heart. But if I am determined to go my own way about something, I find that I can rely on unbelief to justify what I am doing. We all have faith in something. Even if we express it as, "I have no faith in anything. I don't even have faith in myself. Faith cannot be proven and I have no idea where I will end up." That statement is a statement of faith. You are putting your faith in the arena of agnosticism. This seems like a safe place, but in the end it leaves us with a feeling of unfulfillment. We are impotent in our life and have no meaning or mystery.  It is the mystery that keeps us looking.  It is the mystery of God that keeps us hungering for more.   It is the suffering of the cross that ties us all together and the majesty in mystery that keeps us hungering for more.

  

A Woman Called Mary

"As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, He came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to Him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what He said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:38-42)

I've grown up listening to teachings on the story of Martha and Mary.  They have all been the same; Mary was at Jesus feet being good while Martha was busy running around and getting the dinner ready.  Martha needed to slow down and see that she needed to be more attentive to Jesus and not so concerned about getting the things ready. This interpretation has never sat easy within my heart. The story of Martha and Mary needed more for me.  Several years ago I heard Beth Moore teach on this and my new world of understanding started to open. Lets give it a shot...

There is an interesting word choice here "Martha.... her sister called Mary." Most of us think of Jesus' mother Mary when we hear this name which means beloved. But I want to point out the wording in, why is she "called Mary"?  If she was called Mary, maybe this means that her name was really something different. Why was she called Mary? If you look up the root meaning of Mary we see that the name is derived from the Hebrew Miryam meaning Sea of bitterness, sea  of sorrow. Now this gives a new spin on things.

There have been years of my life where I felt the call of God to teach, to share my story for others, but what I have really been needing to do is to sit at Jesus feet for I was Mary.  In Oswald Chambers on October 10 we see that our relationship with God is always given, but our obedience is what allows us to hear Him.  These years of getting up early in order to spend time with my Christ have been years of sitting at His feet in order to heal my broken and bitter heart. Just now another piece has been healed so that I am slowly progressing to the faith of Martha as we see in John 11. Lazarus, Mary and Martha's brother, has been dead for four days.  When Martha hears of Jesus' arrival she runs to him and says, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” Her brother was dead, but even then she still believes. Mary did not have the same reaction.  

Jesus had to send for Mary and when she, (looked at Him through yet another disappointment... through yet another person letting her down... through her bitter and broken heart...) she said, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 

And "Jesus wept." Maybe he wept for their pain. He knows our pain. He know that with our limited vision and understanding that we hurt and suffer, but maybe he hurt more for Mary because she still had so little faith in Him. Maybe He cried more for a wound of distrust that has been placed on our hearts.  Maybe He is asking us to have patience with Him as He has with us.  Maybe, just maybe, we need to sit at His feet a little longer in order for our wounds to be healed so that we can see the miracles in front of us. Maybe, we give up on our God way too soon.

In Oswald on October 12 we see, "It is painful work to get in step with God and to keep pace with Him— it means getting your second wind spiritually. In learning to walk with God, there is always the difficulty of getting into His stride, but once we have done so, the only characteristic that exhibits itself is the very life of God Himself. The individual person is merged into a personal oneness with God, and God’s stride and His power alone are exhibited... He has different ways of doing things, and we have to be trained and disciplined in His ways... He has different ways of doing things, and we have to be trained and disciplined in His ways."

It took Moses forty years of living and learning in the desert, alone with God, before he was ready to lead God's people for another forty years through their own desert experience.  In this world we have times of hurt and times that seem like our Christ is silent. But we must never give up on Him, for this is when He weeps.  We keep moving forward and looking to Him. When others see you, do they see Mary? Do they see a wounded, bitter, rebellious broken heart? Are we giving ourselves time to heal or are we giving up on Christ? Do we trust Him? Martha is in a place of health and trust... I want to be Martha, but I want to see others as Christ saw the one called Mary. I want to be patient with them and allow Him to work on their hearts while they heal in their desert of wounds.

Insensitivity to Pain

Have you ever wanted this life to be painless? I have. I have wanted to go through life with no pain at all. Life hurts and that makes things hard, but I've heard of something that makes life harder, CIPA, congenital insensitivity to pain. It is a rare genetic disorder that prevents a person from feeling any amount of severe pain. They can feel warmth, but not severe heat; cold, but not severe cold. They can feel a pin prick, but not a knife spear. As I have read about this genetic disorder, I can be more grateful for the blessings of pain in my life. I am also more aware of how I have tried to shut my receptors off so that I did not hurt nearly as bad. We seem to all do this to some accord. We do not want to see life for how it truly is, so we hide behind something. Anything.

"Don’t you remember how you used to just exist? Corpses, dead in life,buried by transgressions,  wandering the course of this perverse world. You were the offspring of the prince of the power of air—oh, how he owned you, just as he still controls those living in disobedience. I’m not talking about the outsiders alone; we were all guilty of falling headlong for the persuasive passions of this world; we all have had our fill of indulging the flesh and mind, obeying impulses to follow perverse thoughts motivated by dark powers. As a result, our natural inclinations led us to be children of wrath, just like the rest of humankind.
But God, with the unfathomable richness of His love and mercy focused on us, united us with the Anointed One and infused our lifeless souls with life..." (Ephesians 2:1-4).

It seems as though I have walked through life wanting to avoid any pain, but do we ever really stop and think that maybe there is a gift in pain.  Ashlyn is a young girl who feels no pain.  Her family is in constant awareness that Ashlyn is in an ever present danger.  Her mother's constant prayer for her daughter is that she will be able to feel pain.  As a child, children with CIPA are self mutilators. They chew off their tongue, break bones without knowing it, put their hands in fire without feeling the effects.  This list of self mutilation continues until the children grow older and are taught to see the effects.  They do not know that jumping off of a roof can hurt/kill them and often, especially for boys, it is too late when they find out.  Life is very complicated without the guidance of pain.

Our youth and young adults are getting bombarded with the lies that "pain is bad." They are being taught to shut down some of their receptors that they are born with and live a life of self-mutilation. "Go and have sex with whomever you choose," they are told. "You need to experiment and see what is out there.... drink, smoke, who cares? As long as your not hurting anyone else it is fine." We are no longer teaching them to empathize, have sympathy for others, or to look at what they are doing to their hearts. We are teaching them to "do it again", until there is no feeling left. This is a glorious life of meaning, but it is not without tears.  It is hard to set aside those instant impulses of desire and look at what is truly best for us.  However, there is another side.  

Some of us live in the lie of self condemnation.  We take everything to the extreme of self judgement and feel the burden of imperfection. We feel responsible for every little infraction that occurs around us and walk around with gloom on our shoulders.  We have allowed fear to keep us from experiencing life.  We look at the "Ashlyn's" around us and secretly want a piece of their life.  They seem to have daringly gone out and experienced life.  We focus on their stories and want their adventures without pain. Painless seems good until we discover what it has taken for them to get to where they are. It is in looking closely that we can see, that seemingly protected heart is only a fragment left of a heart that has been plundered and ripped until their is only a callous left of its broken piece.  Neither extreme is a life lived, but "corpses, dead in life, buried by transgressions, wandering the course of this perverse world." Jesus did not come so that the bad would be good, but so that the dead shall live.  

We are all in the need of a Savior. We have a tendency to focus our attention to the "bad" and try to make them "good."  Is this fair?  I see "good" people walking around all of the time as dead corpses because they have no joy, but rules in this life. They have been afraid of others, and what they think. Neither extreme is good.  We need to be able to look at life and make good decisions for ourselves that bring good consequences, but we need to be able to have the right heart in this. I have changed my desires, because I have fallen in love with my life, because I have fallen in love with my Lord.  It is not because of pain, it has its place, but it is not the reason.  It took me years to start feeling again. That came out of obedience, before I could feel.  The reason I live the way I do is because through others I felt the true love of Christ.  Now it is my turn.  I live as I do because He loved me first and in turn I am to live my life in love with others and in the truth that sets us all free.

"He did this for a reason: so that for all eternity we will stand as a living testimony to the incredible riches of His grace and kindness that He freely gives to us by uniting us with Jesus the Anointed." Ephesians 2:7

Known by Love

I heard a new teaching for me.  RVL talks about how we are the temple. I used to think that we, individually, were the temple of God. But lets take another look. What if it is we, plural? "Upon this rock I will build my church." Matthew 16:18. Christ is the most important rock, the corner stone, and we are to be standing stones built together in unity to represent Him here, now. How are they to know us? How are people supposed to recognize us?  Is it because we do not live like others and go out getting drunk and having sex with everyone. Yes, but there is more.  It goes deeper.

One of the things that all of us have recognized about the "churches" is that none of them seem to get along.  There are different doctrines and beliefs within each individual church and they all seem to be claiming that they have the right way. It is within this separation that Christ is found guilty and the rest of the world is turned off by our own bile within our own mouths.  Do I agree with each church and their doctrines?  Do you agree with each person in your life? Of coarse we don't, but how do we handle those disagreements? It is only through respect and love that the essence of love can be seen.  

If we are the stones that are being built while we walk out our daily lives, we stumble and roll down hills that refine our sharp edges and break off some of our sharp corners. It is out in our daily life where we learn about love and learn what hate makes us feel like.  We love, suffer, and cry within our relationships with others. Each swipe with the chisel is carving us into the perfect stone designed specifically for each one of us. Then, what we are supposed to do is come together in worship of the same God who loves us perfectly. As we come together, we form the temple of the Most High God. It is not just about me.  I alone am not the temple, but I together with you, we form the temple. I am a stone, just one part of the entire body of the temple. You are one part that offers another color of the mosaic glass that glows as the Son beams in though and enriches the texture of His artwork. Each is vital to the whole.  Some seem to go unseen while others are right out in front. However, each is touching the world individually.  Each is indispensable in showing Christ to others.

Romans 12:9-21 helps us see how to love others.  This does not mean that we let others run all over us and treat us poorly.  Oswald Chambers   "Jesus did not commit Himself to man... for He knew what was in man." As we relate and join with others in this life, we do not give ourselves to them.  We give ourselves to Christ.  We love and join with Him in loving the world as He loved the world, but we do not give ourselves over to the world.  We give ourselves over to Him who loves us authentically and without blunder. That is where we feel true love. Then we can go and show His love to those we are in relationship with/good or bad. This gives us perfect love and helps us guard our hearts so that we are not devastated through life's wounds. We do not have to take their struggles and place their wounds within our own hearts. We do not have to react with how they treat us.  We can remain calm and at peace no matter the storm they are in. With His calmness upon our own hearts He can become known by our love. We are the stones that together build His temple, the church. Are we displaying His love while the world watches us? Not only will others know Christ within us by our love, but we will be known by Him through our love. It may just be that we each just need a few etiquette lessons ;) 

Following the Shepherd

We've been going to Hartman Rocks for our Tuesday nights with LIVE. It is a great location to sit and visit about our travels with God through the desert. Last night began with each of us naturally splitting off either going off on a rock climbing adventure, staying at the cars to change a diaper, or sitting next to the fire ring (as was my first choice). As we sat together listening to what was going on as the others did their things we noticed that the sound is amplified as they were speaking. We couldn't see where they were, but we could hear their voices. As the night came toward the time to get back together and start our nightly lesson everyone gathered in Buddha's Belly, a place surrounded by high cliffs. As we sat a faith lesson by Ray Vander Laan stood out to me.

In the deserts of Israel the Bedouin people find their homes and a place for their flocks. At night several different shepherds gather their flocks together in places like Buddha's Belly to be held and protected. As the night is falling upon them each shepherd speaks softly to her sheep as she leads them into the holding area for the night. She will guide them into the sheep fold along other flocks to spend the night held safely together by the high cliffs. It is in the morning that something awesome happens. Each shepherd goes out some distance and starts calling to her own sheep. They recognize their shepherd's voice and respond to her voice only. They do not just walk blindly out into the day, but are guided by a very familiar voice into their green pastures for the day.

"My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me." John 10:27.

It is referenced all over the bible that the "Lord is my shepherd" and we are His sheep. If this is true it means that we are to know His voice and follow Him when He calls. We are to trust that He will protect us when the fear of darkness covers over us. We are to trust Him with today's green pastures.

There is a difference between sheep and goats as you watch them following their shepherd. Sheep usually stay very close to their shepherd, following her voice and footsteps, but goats tend to venture out further assuming they know of better grass. How often do I find myself in this exact situation, thinking that I may have a better way and find a little more sustenance if I go a little further up the mountainside to my own green pastures. We do this. It does not mean that we have stopped following our shepherd. We can still hear His voice, for in the desert sound travels far. Often we have gone just far enough that we have lost Him in our vision and this is when we seem to be wandering aimlessly. Haven't you ever done this! I have. Through all of the trials and heartache I have been through, I was always within ear shot of my Shepherd, but I was so far away from the flock that it appeared I was completely separated from everything that had life. It was within my heart cry that I could still hear the shepherd calling out to me. I wanted Him, but had to learn to actually follow His voice.

What part of the flock do we find ourselves in today? Each and every day He is calling out to us. He wants us to listen to His voice. It is in study and a continual self examination that we can look at ourselves and see where we are in the flock. From a distance it can become so easy to get other voices confused and start to follow the wrong voice all the while thinking that we are following the right one. This is why we must stay plugged in. It's not that I am afraid of ever going back and living as I once did, but now the stakes are even greater. I often find myself in the lead with many others following me. I must be sure that the voice I hear is pointing them in the right direction as well. But really we are all leading someone if we really think about it. Each of us within our own lives have someone watching us. We may not be able to tell when we are getting off track, but they may be able to. This is when they are to come in and gently lead us back. The question we must be willing to ask ourselves is: Are we willing to listen?

God Paraphernalia

Stonehenge, have you ever seen it and wondered why it is there?  Why are these stones left here in this place?  What were people doing and why were they doing it?  
Places like Stonehenge leave us questioning why?  
Any time anything happened where there was a great deliverance for God's people they too arranged stones as a remembrance, so that when their children saw the stones they would ask, "Why?" But, so often we are a people who want to forget.  We do not want to remember "when".  We think that in forgetting, we are freed. I must disagree.  It is in the remembrance that we find freedom and where we can see how wonderful God really is. 

"And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple," 1 Peter 2:5.

When you venture out into the wilderness and see a small circle of rocks, you do not ask the question "why?" You already know that you are seeing a fire pit assembled by people before you.  When  we see people wearing "Jesus" t-shirts, have a fish bumper sticker, or a number of other "God paraphernalia" we do not ask "why?" We assume they believe in God/go to church somewhere.  But what are we called to do?  Are we called to wear symbols or have it written on our shirts that we love Jesus, or are we to live as Christ, the cornerstone?  Maybe we choose the easy symbols so that we do not have to get personal.  We choose the symbols so that we can have an identity without having to build relationships, so that we can proclaim with an advertisement rather than our lives.  We may do this to set ourselves apart. Then we do not have to get personal and share with others our life, or get into theirs.

In 2 Peter 1, there are eight traits that are brought up; faith, virtue, knowledge, discipline, endurance, godliness, affection, and love. I think that we need these traits so that we do not become overwhelmed and cynical giving up on others and ourselves.  Not as a reference on judging, but as a guide to love and building of relationships. A guide so that we can remember "when" within our own lives.  

Short and simple: Are we wearing "God paraphernalia", or are we living stones?  Are we being asked, or do people just assume? Are we setting ourselves apart so that we are really just trying to connect with the "churched", or are we building relationships in the middle of life and in that building of life are we being asked "why?" How are we walking out this journey of life?

Some may assume that I enjoy talking about my past, but really what I enjoy is talking about my past so that I can share with them where I am now and let them see my Christ.  It is my stone that shows others God.  It is my stone that helps me remember "when" so that I can love others in their now.  It does not matter if you have come from the desert, or have lived a pure and morally upright life all along. What matters is that people are seeing God in us and are asking "why?"  Am I different because Christ is my Cornerstone and I resemble Him? Am I loving others, or driving them away while trying to set myself apart before relationships can be formed?

It is not bad to have the "God paraphernalia", but why do we have it?  Why is the question of the day....