Sometimes It Hurts; It's Supposed To

I don't want to be a Christian right now. I don't want to continue investing into people.

People are selfish, apathetic, hurtful.

I care a lot and I don't know why.

I tell myself I'm going to stop. I'm going to 'toughen up and not worry about what the people around me do with their lives.'

I don't want to care, I want to live my own life.

I want to walk away from it all, throw my hands up and say ' You know what God, no one else is trying even half as much, I quit.'

I want the Christian life to not involve community because community is messy. It requires relationships with humans and humans are complicated. It would be so much easier if I could just hang out with God from time to time and do my thing.

"So just stop. Stop caring. Do what makes you happy."

Cause that's in the Bible right.

Oh, and that's what Jesus did. He did what made Him happy and didn't care about the people in His life, especially the ones that were hard to love.

Oh wait a minute. That's me.

I'm hard to love.

I'm selfish.

He cares more than I will ever know, and so many times I just spit in His face by ignoring Him.

But He loves me anyway.

He is always there waiting.

No only waiting, but pursuing.

Not just pursuing, but passionately chasing me down. Just to say He cares.

That's true friendship.

Looking out for my best even when I don't want Him to.

Loving me even when I tell Him I don't want anything to do with Him.

That's what the world needs more of.

In a world of selfish, broken people, that's what will stick out.

That's something not of this world, something that forces people to look to Him.

That's the standard I will keep in sight until the day I finally get there.

When did reflecting Christ become something that is supposed to be easy?

When did cross-bearing become a simple thing?

When did laying down our lives, dying to ourselves...when did this become something that is possible without pain?

Before The Throne

Sometimes I think we forget what we claim to believe.

"Before the throne of God above

I have a strong, a perfect plea:
A great High Priest, whose name is Love,
Who ever lives and pleads for me.

My name is graven on his hands,
My name is written on his heart;
I know that while in heaven he stands
No tongue can bid me thence depart
No tongue can bid me thence depart.

When Satan tempts me to despair,
And tells me of the guilt within,
Upward I look, and see him there
Who made an end of all my sin.
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/s/shane_and_shane/before_the_throne_of_god_above.html ]
Because a sinless Savior died,
My sinful soul is counted free;
For God, the Just, is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me
To look on Him and pardon me

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Praise the One,
Risen Son of God!

Behold him there, the risen Lamb
My perfect, spotless righteousness,
The great unchangeable I am,
The King of glory and of grace!

One in himself, I cannot die
My soul is purchased by his blood
My life is hid with Christ on high,
With Christ, my Savior and my God
With Christ, my Savior and my God"

"When I Am Afraid, I Will Put My Trust In You." Psalm 56:3

The last week and a half have been among the longest. I have had some big decisions to make and I have been really torn in making them. Everything was so nicely packaged and planned out, it felt real nice, real manageable. I have had some uncomfortable, seemingly unnecessary circumstances thrown my way and it has really thrown me off. Little sleep, lots of tears, lots of prayers, lots of thinking. Several things that I have put my trust in have been slowly taken away. Several people that I tend to rely on when things get crazy have been unavailable for various reasons. It's scary when things are going on that are out of your control. You quickly realize how small you are and how large the world really is. You quickly realize how weak you are and how desperately you need God to be strong on your behalf.

I love this quote:

"Before He furnishes the abundant supply, we must first be made conscious of our emptiness. Before he gives strength, we must be made to feel our weakness. Slow, painfully slow, are we to learn this lesson; and slower still to own our nothingness and take the place of helplessness before the Mighty One." ~Arthur W. Pink

What a concept. There is such beauty in the picture of this incredibly powerful, sovereign God breaking me into 1,000 pieces. Beautiful because it is being done out of love. Love for me. This God that should break me into 1,000 pieces and leave me there because of my sin, instead breaks me out of love and for my good, because Christ took that judgemental breaking for me on the cross. God knows that there is one thing that will satisfy my wandering heart, that is Him, His presence, His peace. And because of His overwhelming love, He will stop at nothing to keep me focused on Him. He will take away anything and anyone that stands in between me and Him. And as much as it hurts me, He knows it is the only thing that will make me happy. The crazy thing is that I hurt right now because I am loved.

I am loved. So much so that He wont leave me like I am. He won't stop until I'm conformed to the most beautiful image one can find. Conformed to the image of His son. Focused on and delighting in Him and Him only.

Christlikeness. It's painful.

"You will not stroll into Christlikeness with your hands in your pockets, shoving the door open with a careless shoulder. This is no hobby for one's leisure moments, taken up at intervals when we have nothing much to do, and put down and forgotten when our life grows full and interesting... It takes all one's strength, and all one's heart, and all one's mind, and all one's soul, given freely and recklessly and without restraint." ~Arthur John Gossip

It's easy to pour all one's heart and strength into something when it is fun and exciting. It's really hard to give freely and recklessly when you have nothing left. It's really hard to pour all your heart into something when your heart hurts.

"Take up your cross daily and follow me."

Cross-bearing is not supposed to be easy.

Yet, we are called to pursue His steps freely and recklessly and without restraint. We are called to pour our heart, soul, mind and strength into cross-bearing...into dying...into becoming Christ-like.

"Learn to trust His heart when you cannot trace His hand. He has your best in mind and regardless of how you may feel now, at the end of the day Christ-likeness is what you really want."

I trust His heart more than my heart, more than my feelings, more than my circumstances.

Psalm 56:3-4 "When I am afraid, I will put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid."

I Want To Know God.

"Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls."
(1 Peter 1:8-9 ESV)

So I've been reading this book by this really smart man named J. I. Packer. This is something I came upon:

"How many of us would say that in the light of the knowledge of God which we have come to enjoy, past disappointments and present heartbreaks, as the world counts heartbreaks, don't matter. For the plain fact is that to most of us they do matter. We live with them as our "cross" (or so we call them). Constantly we find ourselves slipping into bitterness and apathy and gloom as we reflect on them, which we frequently do. The attitude we show to the world is a sort of dried-up stoicism, miles removed from the 'joy unspeakable and full of glory'. 'Poor souls,' our friends say of us, 'how they've suffered.' And that is just what we feel about ourselves!" ~J.I. Packer

I want to know God in this manner, in this way. In a way that is so real, so close, so deep, that it changes EVERYTHING. I know God, don't get me wrong. But I want to know him like this. In a way that produces continual 'joy unspeakable'. I think a lot of us accept the truth of the gospel and maybe we even study a little bit and develop a pretty good foundation of God and who we are in Christ. But we stop there for some reason. And although it seems like we know all this stuff, we've barely scratched the surface of KNOWING our God. We know a lot about Him, but how deeply do we KNOW HIM?

"But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish..." Phillipians 3:7-8

"When Paul says he counts the things he lost rubbish, or dung, he means not merely that he does not think of them as having any value, but also that he does not live with them constantly in his mind: what normal person spends his time nostalgically dreaming of manure? Yet this, in effect, is what many of us do. It shows how little we have in the way of true knowledge of God."

I want to KNOW Him in such a way that all these pointless things fade away. These things- the ones that hurt so much, that are so tiring, that are so hard to understand....they are rubbish, they mean nothing in comparison to KNOWING Him.

I want that. I want it not just in a theological, philosophical, abstract sort of way. I want it in the everyday, in a practical, hands on, lived out sort of way.

Determined.

Today

Today I feel like I'm failing at everything. Today my heart hurts a lot. Today I feel like I'm 6 inches away from letting everyone down. That scares me a lot. That's a lie I refuse to give into.

I believe it's part of the process of our sanctification to daily, hourly, (sometimes even minute-ly) reject that which is false and cling to that which is true. There is this tension inside the mind of every believer that we constantly have to stay on top of or else we'll lose our footing.

I am a very strong individual. My mind is so strong, 90% of the time I don't struggle to cling to the truth and I don't struggle to reject what's false. But when I do, it's rough, it's real, it's hard, it's draining. Today is one of those days.

Days like today I wish God would take human form once again and just sit down and have coffee with me for a few minutes. I wish I could audibly hear some verbal affirmation. I wish I could have a physical pat on the back. I wish I could just talk and know that I'm being heard. I wish I could look into His eyes as He speaks and be given full confidence that I am not crazy. I am hearing what I'm hearing. This is real.

Faith is not easy. Neither is trusting. Both are part of the battle.

We're in a battle. Daily. It's not meant to be easy.

I'm encouraged by the fact that even on days where there is so much struggle, I am still not alone. I'm encouraged that even when I am so tired, I have a continual source of unwavering strength to tap into. I'm encouraged that my ability to not fail was never in my hands to begin with.

Bad days happen. Struggle happens. Real life, real hurt, happens.

We can't give up. We can't slow down. And we can't give in to the lies that get thrown at us.

Cling to truth. Unchanging truth. Keep fighting.

Is Your Whole Heart His?

So there is this situation that I have been praying about over the last few months. And I will spare you all the details because they really don’t matter, I just wanted to share the principle with you. It’s been a tough decision; I’ve really been torn about what God would have me do. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my future and where I’m being led and how God has been preparing me and working in my life over the last couple years.

It’s almost funny in a way now to look back because as I’ve been praying about this one situation over the last several months, I never really felt led to a yes or a no answer about any of it. But as I’ve been praying about it the last several months this idea of ‘pursue Christ with all you have’ has started to really stick out to me. I would pray and be sharing all these things with God, questions and thoughts and just all this stuff, trying to figure out the best way to handle the situation, and its like God was saying ‘Rebecca, stop. Do I have your heart? Fully and completely? Are you following after me with all you have?’ And my response was ‘yeah God, pursue Christ-like-ness with all I have, got it. But could you just answer this dilemma over here first. It’ll only take a second. Then I can get right back to that pursuing Christ stuff.’

We focus so much on these ‘little’ decisions. We run around like crazy trying to handle 100 different situations thinking that if we can just get things settled and handled then we will finally have time to devote to God. We will finally have time to sit down and pray like we should. We will finally have time to study the Word and answer the questions we have about theology. We will finally have time to find a ministry that we can get involved in. We will finally have time to get lunch with that person God has laid on our hearts. We will finally have time and attention and strength to pursue a relationship with Christ like we know we need to.

It doesn’t work that way.

We can’t ‘handle’ all this other stuff and reach a point where everything is quiet, peaceful and under control so we can then focus on Christ. Who do we think we are? That’s the whole purpose of the cross-we can’t handle life on our own. We can in no way handle all these things that need handling. Never. Not going to happen. We won’t get there. In contrast, Jesus says ‘take up your cross and follow me.’ He gives lots of other commandments as well, but if you think about it, they all fall under ‘take up your cross and follow me.’ If we are seeking to follow him, to be transformed into His likeness (from the inside out, not the outside in) and if that is our focus- our whole focus, our total focus, our passionate focus….everything else will come together.

I think a lot of times God doesn’t care which decision we make as far as the little details of life. I don’t think the issue is ‘can I do this?’ ‘is this okay God?’. The issue is ‘are you pursuing Christ?’- a life spent following after Him and being conformed into His image? The question isn’t ‘God I want to glorify you, what should I do with my life?’ The question is- Does He have your heart? Your whole heart? Is He your most prized treasure? Are you complete in Him? Is His grace really sufficient for you? And is your life showing it? Are you living it?

If the answer to these is yes, then no matter what decisions you make concerning the little things, you will be glorifying Him and thereby fulfilling your purpose and His plan for your life.

For me the answer has been a total and complete YES…in principle. But principle isn’t enough. We can say we love God, we can truly love God. We can be passionate about our relationship with Christ and yet we can find our selves still not living it out and putting it into practice. For me, in this instance, God wasn’t just asking if He had my whole heart, He knew He did, He was asking me to prove it. “Are you really satisfied completely and totally in Christ? Then set this aside.” Tough? Yes. But the joy and peace that comes in being able to say ‘ok, lets do this’ and then doing it, and then finding that you are in fact completely and totally satisfied in Christ…no words can take on that description.

The cool thing I’m learning is that when you are totally consumed with seeking Christ’s glory, when that is your focus, you will find this unexplainable joy. And peace. Peace so deep and so strong and so eternal. And these decisions, these situations, they all pale in comparison to the glory of Christ. The fact that my simple, futile, messed up life can be used to point people towards the glory of the Savior of the world and encourage others to do the same…blows my mind. I don’t get it. There is no part of me that is good, no part of me worthy or capable of being used for this task. But when I am offered up for His purpose, to be used for His glory, He does just that. Incredible. Not saying decisions wont be tough, not saying we wont have to do things that make us hurt. We do. We will hurt. It will be hard. But the beauty of it is that we are still happy. Although it hurts and its hard, we are more happy enduring that process then if we were to never go through it. We are more happy setting our wants aside when God asks us to, then if we continue pursuing them. It’s not the fake happy that we put on so often, it’s not the fleeting happiness that comes and goes with different earthly pleasures, it’s a happiness that doesn’t come from this world, because its not based on something from this world, and because of that nothing in this world can take it from us.

Whatever you’re struggling to get a handle on, whatever situation you’re struggling to overcome and deal with, whatever decisions you’re struggling to make…Stop. Ask yourself ‘Is my heart His?’ ‘Am I pursuing Christ with everything I have?’ ‘Am I satisfied in Him?’

And if the answer is no, don’t freak out and start a list of things you have to get to working on. No. Just ask Him to make it so. Tell Him you don’t know how to give Him your heart fully but you want to. You don’t know what exactly is standing in the way of pursuing Him with all you have but you want Him to remove it. You aren’t completely satisfied in Him but you want to be. He is faithful, friends, He is so faithful.

Is your whole heart His?

Dear Heart of Mine

Dear heart of mine, why do you run
From the God who loves you, who sent His Son
Cold, relentless, apathy,
Sin so tasty, that leads astray.
These worthless things that we pursue,
That leave us broken, hurt and bruised
‘The heart is deceitfully wicked’, Yes,
We think we’re “ok”; “We’re doing our best.”

Purge us Spirit, Make us whole
Cleanse us from these sins we know
All too well, for His name’s sake
Push us Lord, until we break
Sanctify us more and more
Shake us up, down to the core
Help us stir these stubborn hearts
Else our affections again depart
Jesus! Savior! Lord and King!
“Lead us to the cross,” we sing
On Sunday as we pay our dues,
But do we really have a clue?
Do we really care to try?
Pick up our cross, lay down our lives?
Do we really understand,
The mindset of the Son of Man?

Take our lives and kill our flesh,
Strip us till there’s nothing left,
But Christ, Oh, Christ! and Christ alone,
May this cold heart be like His own.

Ignite us with Your eternal flame,
A burning passion for Your name,
In all the earth, We must push on
For every nation, tribe and tongue!