Outside Looking In

This morning, I took my two-year-old granddaughter, Bella, to church with me.  The nursery was not yet open when we arrived, so she pretty much made the rounds of the church lobby exploring.  Behind a set of glass French doors in the lobby is an area of the children's church where two children were playing with a remote control toy.  One side of the doors was locked in place, while the other side was open to the room where the children were. Bella stood with her face pressed to the glass of the locked side of the doors, watching the kids play.  She wandered back and forth in the lobby several times, always returning to that latched door to gaze through the glass to see what they were doing.  All the while, just one step to the side would have centered her in the door frame of the open door where she could have just walked on through to have a closer look or a turn to play. 

Well, I immediately knew that there was a lesson in that observation for my Sunday blog, but I didn't know just how timely it was until I heard the sermon for this particular Sunday morning.  Pastor Scott was preaching about demonstrating the love of God through serving and how we are to be doers of the Word and not just hearers. He stressed that we need to find our work and our purpose in the kingdom of God and to get involved in what God is doing instead of just sitting each Sunday morning in a chair, soaking up the music and the sermon and returning to "life as usual".

Just as Bella only needed to shift her perspective a little to the side to get the full experience of what she was watching, many people need to take one step to move from being an onlooker to a participant.  God has so many blessings for us that are tied to our obedience.  True love for God demands that we share our gifts and talents with others for their good.  There really can be no true fulfillment in our lives until we are helping others reach toward what God has for them.  All of us together, encouraging, loving, and serving each other, makes each of us spiritually strong, mature, healthy and productive.

That step may already be apparent to you.  You may know exactly what God is calling you to do, but you've let the enemy tell you that you aren't worthy, that those church people really don't want you, that you'd be a hopeless failure at anything you attempt to do for God.  It's time to start saying about yourself what God says about you.  Read his Word and start declaring to the enemy what is really true about who you are.

Maybe you have no clue about where you can begin to serve.  You'll need to pray, of course, and begin to think about the natural talents and abilities you have and how God could redeem those things for his purposes. Talk to leaders or Christian friends who will encourage you and ask good questions to help you find that place.

Whether you already know or have no idea, ask what needs to be done.  Start by serving in the small things because actually there are no small things.  What you do may not be seen or recognized, but all the little details that people see to in the kingdom come together to make one harmonious whole that leads people to Jesus - some for the first time, some just going a little deeper- but all of it is necessary and your faithfulness in doing it is rewarded by God. 

Quit looking through the glass of a locked door.  That lock wasn't meant for you and it can't keep you out if you just take that one step into your destiny in God.

Detox!

Scrolling down my Facebook newsfeed the other day, I saw an article which quite startled me.  It described a special steam treatment to cleanse and detoxify your scalp and hair!  Do you mean to tell me that I've been walking around all my life with a toxic scalp? Horrors!

That reminded me how much I see on social media about "cleanses".  People do master cleanses, juice cleanses, vegan cleanses - all in an effort to rid their bodies of impurities. The world is trying to purify what can be seen, while what cannot be seen is filthy. 

Why are we so concerned about removing all the toxins from our bodies and not at all engaged in blocking all the negative messages we are taking into our mind, soul, and spirit?

My pastor preached this morning about how we need to watch who we allow to speak into our lives.  There are people who will give you permission to back off from the things of God - to stop trusting and following Him.  They will insist that you don't have to do "all that" to be right with God.  Then there are the media messages which tell you that the Bible is outdated, that Christianity is mean-spirited and not inclusive, that a real, approachable God is a myth that weak-minded people rely on to get by in life.

If you allow all those messages to bombard your mind, instead of filling it with God's word, your thinking will be toxic, which is much more dangerous to your heart than the environmental poisons of the world. 

Just as you can't avoid all the toxins in the world affecting your body, you can't totally block all the contamination that comes to your ears from the enemy through media, friends, family or acquaintances. By the same token though, you wouldn't deliberately ingest a poison into your body and you shouldn't willingly listen to the voices that attempt to halt your journey to what God has promised.

The Bible is full of warnings about listening to fools and encouragements to listen to wise counsel.  God knows that what we hear helps form who we are and what we do in Him. 

Romans 10:17 says, "So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God."  Let's let that pure voice be the only one that influences us.

It's Time to Feed Yourself!

My husband and I went out to dinner this evening with our son, his wife, and our two-year-old granddaughter, Bella.  Throughout this busy Sunday, she hadn't eaten very much at breakfast or lunch, which sometimes happens when other things have her attention.  However, when her macaroni and cheese arrived at the table, she made up for lost time!  She wielded that adult-sized fork like a pro, only occasionally dropping a piece of macaroni onto her shirt. She polished off the entire serving plus a good-sized helping of fried apples.

Because her self-feeding skills have improved so much, the rest of us were able to enjoy our meals without having to stop and spoon-feed her.  In fact, if we had tried to feed her, she would have said, "I do it!" She likes to demonstrate her growing skills and her independence in the things that she can handle.

My pastor was preaching this morning using the example of the children of Israel.  God delivered them from Egyptian slavery and His plan was to lead them to a land of "milk and honey", but taking that land meant that they had to fight for it under His leading and with His help.  The sermon continued to explain how we can't just sit back passively and expect God to just deliver His promises to us, but that we have a responsibility to pick up the sword of the Spirit and fight to attain the promise of God.

Ephesians 6:14-17 talks about putting on the whole armor of God.  The only people who have historically needed armor are those who are soldiers - those who fight.  These verses tell us:  "Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace, above all,taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God......"

What I have learned is that you can't take up the sword of the Spirit if you don't know the Word and you won't know the Word unless you pick up the Word and you won't pick up the Word if you don't make it a priority in your life.  Even if you go to church every Sunday of your life, the little bit of God's Word that you hear through your pastor is not enough to sustain you.  Even little Bella understands that she has the ability, the right, and the joy of feeding herself.  How much more do we need to learn to feed on the scriptures for ourselves in addition to what we hear at church?

"But Jan, I just don't understand the Bible when I try to read it.  It just seems so confusing."  Newsflash! - I don't understand everything in the Bible either, but that doesn't mean that I can understand nothing.  There are all sorts of resources and people who will help you learn the Word - online resources, videos, Bible study books, small groups at your church, mentors and many versions of the Bible that aid in breaking down scripture to help your understanding. Besides, we have the best teacher of the Word - the Holy Spirit - if we will listen to His voice and ask for His help.

My husband and I have recently discovered an online Bible study that we have embarked on together.  It goes back to the very basics of doctrine, but it's helping us to strengthen the knowledge and foundations of why we believe what we believe.

Wherever you are in your relationship with God, you need His Word.  I encourage you to find the tools you need to feed yourself.  You can't fight with a weapon you don't hold.

It's All Past

A few weeks ago, I saw a Facebook post quoting some song lyrics that said, "I am redeemed, I'm not who I used to be".  As I thought about that, I realized that most of the time when we think about someone being redeemed, we think about a person's past in terms of who they were before they met Jesus, but really, our past is any moment before the one we are in right now.

I don't know about you, but I am far from perfect and I make mistakes every day.  There are areas of my life where I disappoint myself.  I have goals and expectations for myself that I have not yet reached.  Yet, in other ways, I have come so far from the person I used to be that I barely recognize the woman in the mirror sometimes.

Many times people say that "Jesus died for our sins - past, present, and future".  That's true, yet some people take that truth as a license to sin instead of a motivation to live free and holy in thanksgiving to a God who would do so much to have us in a relationship with Himself. When you think about your past only as the time in your life before you prayed a prayer of salvation, you forget that what happens in the here and now is also soon to be part of a past which Jesus died to redeem.

Philippians 2:13 says it this way in the New Living Translation: "Dear friends, you always followed my instruction when I was with you.  And now that I am away, it is even more important.  Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear".  In those times when we do fail, we have this promise from 1 John 1:9.  "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

Here's what I know.  I will celebrate my 60th birthday this week.  That's a lot of past. There' s a big chunk of time when I was rebelling against God and running as far and as fast as I could from the calling that I knew was on my life.  There are stories of that time that I could tell you that would "curl your hair", but all that is past.  But there are countless other stories of little things that most people wouldn't even consider to be wrong that I know are failures for me and still, God has forgiven those things and put them in my past - even those that may have happened just today.  The only direction we can ever walk is into our future.  I am so thankful that God holds past, present, and future in His hands and that He has plans for me that I cannot even imagine and grace for me as I grow into those plans and purposes.  Every day is a day of redemption for all of us if we continue to pursue God through all the circumstances of our lives.