For His Glory

I personally like rules. I like boundaries in all areas of my life. I like to know where I can stop mowing, for instance. I like that, in the US at least, my property boundaries not only tell me where I can freely roam, but they also tell others where they legally cannot.  I have personal boundaries, as do each of us and all of us. I’ve lost 70 pounds over time simply by imposing boundaries.  “I’ve reached my limit for carbs today” is a boundary I choose. Maybe someone who is an athlete doesn’t need those boundaries, but for my well-being, I need them because I’d really rather sit and write than spend time in the gym. I set rules for others, boundaries of expectations born out of relationship status. For example,  I don’t expect the young woman who bags my groceries to come to dinner without invitation and thank me for preparing the meal, but my daughter has always been taught to be thankful from a young age, and she has done that so well that I would be surprised if she didn’t thank me for dinner. It’s relationship.

So when I realized decades ago that God has rules, I was okay with that. I expected it and when I accepted Jesus as Savior, I also accepted Him as Lord.  “Lord” implies there will be rules and He will set them. And American religion has done well over time teaching us that these rules are in place to make us worthy of the love of God, to earn us the right to petition Him for our needs, and some day, if we follow them all (Well, except that one about gluttony, we religious folks think we get a free pass on that one) we will get our ticket to heaven stamped and go on in to meet the ones who have gone on before. Religion has us following rules for now in the hope that in our future we will be given the goal, that is, an eternity in heaven. Ironically, although heaven is not the final destination for believers, that seems to be the only place most of us think about.

Somewhere in all those rules for holy living…and let me be clear. God is Holy and told us to be holy…something gets left out in our finite Christian minds. Parenthood should prepare us for the relationship God paid to give us and longs to have with us. He is Father. Fatherhood implies that He is protector, provider, defender, teacher and Dad. As parents ourselves, we told our children not to ride their bikes in the section of road with a blind hill. That was a rule born out of a loving relationship. The rule was not put in place just so the child could obey the rule, thereby earning the reward that comes from obedience. No, that rule was put in place so we didn’t scrape our child’s dead body off the pavement when a Ford F150 came over the hill at 50 mph. (I’m not known for subtlety and most of the time bluntness serves me well.)

If you examine God’s rules, they all serve a purpose. Why not commit adultery? Because it’s self-focused, hurts others, destroys families and dishonors God’s call to be holy. Why not want what your neighbor has? Because it makes you dissatisfied and rots your soul. Envy is not a motivator. It is a soul destruction, a lie of the enemy, an open door to misery. “Where envy and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work”, the Bible tells us. And so it is with every rule God has. They are there for our good and were never intended to see if we could follow them all. We all need a Savior. And our Father provided one. His rules are there…for our continued success, learned during our ongoing relationship with Him. They provide no motivation for God to love us. They are there because He loves us.

And as a person who finds security in rules, a plan of action as a result of rules, and a sense of accomplishment for following rules…God gave one that I have long taken on with a full, well- intentioned heart to obey and an unbalanced view.

“Submit yourself to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” Submit.yourself.to.God. “Whatever you want, Lord, I will do it.” I said. The other day, He spoke to my spirit. He let me know that He sees my heart to obey. That He loves my heart to obey. And then I was stunned as He showed me that I eagerly submit to what He tells me to do and that’s good. But I sometimes do a lousy, lousy job of submitting to the love of God when it comes to ‘just be’. As in, ‘just be loved’.  As in “Be still and KNOW” Be still and know…that He is Protector. Defender. Provider. That He is Dad. That He comes to me with assurance for me that everything has been done that needs to be done. That He has already provided all penalty for the sin that separated us and now I don’t have to measure up (not that I could anyway). He wants me to enjoy being His kid. His beloved daughter that has to do absolutely nothing to earn His love. He doesn’t love me back. He loved me first.

He calls us to submit to Him as the Dad we run to so that He can fix our ‘boo boo” because by His stripes we are healed. Submit to Him as Lord because He holds all wisdom. Submit to Him as Daddy because we know He is happy to see us. “He rejoices over me with singing”.  He calls us to submit to Him in trust. “If you seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, all these things will be added unto you.” He calls us to submit to His goodness and live with Him in confidence. Confidence in His love for us.

You know what it looks like. It’s the way the three year old runs into your open arms with a smile on their face because you are their safety, you are the one who they know loves them. You see their joy as they look at you and see your joy for them. They don’t run toward you bearing a list of all the good things they’ve done since you saw them last. They run toward you to receive the love you have for them. They submit to you by running to you. Running into the relationship. Then they obey you out of that relationship.  Love breeds a willingness to please, and we act on that.

In God’s view, we are not the stranger bagging our groceries who doesn’t approach us without an invitation to dine. We are His beloved children for whom He has already provided the meal…even if some days we forget to thank Him.

Have you ever experienced that feeling of knowing someone was looking for you? Let’s face it, if someone is looking for us, they must want us for some reason.

Now if that’s the police, that’s probably not something we look forward to BUT if it’s that Publisher’s Clearing House guy, with roses and champagne, who only knocks on your door when your hair is perfect, your makeup is amazing, your teeth have just been whitened, well…you see the difference.

That example is a case of two extremes. Most of the time it’s just people looking for something far less extreme.  If you’re a mom and a wife, someone is looking for you because you know everything.  You know what’s for supper, what is the square root of 36, where the shoes are.  If you’re the boss, someone is looking for you because you are the problem solver.

Did you know the Bible tells us there are two who are looking for you, and each of them has their own motive? It’s another case of two extremes. Let’s look at that.

1 Peter 5:8 tells us to be sober and vigilant because we have an enemy roaming around looking for someone to devour. He is referred to “as a roaring lion”. That plants a picture in our minds of a hungry, powerful beast fully intending to consume us as his meal. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I look like a filet mignon, although there may be some evidence of bacon wrapped around my outside. But notice…the enemy is “as” a roaring lion. He is not actually a lion, but he’s typically loud like a roaring beast. Especially in our heads. He says the things that we are going through are big, and dangerous and we are powerless to do anything about it. We may as well surrender to him to be eaten because we are too weak to defeat him. Our minds are a breeding ground for mole hills who long to become mountains if left to their own devices.  So he’s looking for us to toy with us, torture us and ultimately consume us.

Ah, but there is another one roaming, looking for us. 2 Chronicles 16:9 says “For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him.”  Now how HUGE is that? God Himself has His eyes searching to show Himself strong on our behalf. Notice the different motivations of the two who search for us. We are important to one so that he can destroy us for himself and we are important to one so that He can show Himself strong on our behalf.  Our God says we may be weak, it may be dangerous, but He is powerful and therefore there is no need to surrender to the other. (Insert Rocky theme song here). Our God knows that His strength is made perfect in our weakness.

But…and isn’t there usually a but? that’s not the end to the verse in 2 Chronicles 16.  “Herein thou hast done foolishly: therefore from henceforth thou shalt have wars.” That verse ends with a judgment of war. Seems rather contradictory. (Change theme song) So we back up a bit to find out what happened to cause this decree and in doing that, we find ourselves at the door with the Publisher’s Clearing House guy while we’re in our coffee-stained jammies, knots in our hair and morning breath, only to discover they had the wrong address.

The earlier verses in that account are where the man of God came to the king who had messed up by trusting a king instead of trusting God. He reminded him that the time before that, by trusting God, the king had obtained victory over a much larger army that had come against them (roaring and seeking to devour) but this last time the king thought he’d handle it himself. Choices matter and most of us know they usually have long-range effects.  In my lifetime, at least, some of my foolish self-made decisions produced “wars” for decades. Self-promotion leads to self-protection, when all the time God was, and is, looking to show Himself strong on our behalf, to provide His wisdom and His protection.

Now that we know there are two looking for us, with two different motives, it comes down to our choice of which one to let find us. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to jump from behind that tree and into the eyes of the Lord, yelling.  “Boo! You found me.” He will keep me from being devoured. He is my Prize.

Thirteen years ago I sat down to write a story. It was a story of the pain of molestation and the grace of God and His incredible love. It is a story born out of the awareness of how much God is for us. I made the decision to write a novel, to present the story in a fictional way, mostly because I am a private person and I knew the story needed to be told but I lacked the courage to be vulnerable. There was more to it than that. I had family members who knew what my childhood had been. They were supportive of me. Yet, the implied decision was that there was no good to come out of talking about it. So the novel would allow me to share my experience with other women and still remain personally detached from it.

I wrote the rough draft of a love story with struggles and a happy ending. I put it in a closet, where it remained for more than a decade. During those years, the Lord allowed me to be in relationship with several women younger than myself whose lives had been, and still were in some cases, chaotic. Beautiful daughters of God who had, for years, while sitting in worship services with the same abusive history I had, still been struggling with the effects of the trauma. We were forgiven, cleansed and a new life of freedom was waiting, but there were still the questions.   It is hard for little girls trapped in adult female bodies to see God as good, to see Him as protector, when those who were supposed to be our natural protectors had either abused us, abandoned us, rejected us, or molested us.

I understood this because I had lived three decades as an adult Christian wondering where God was and why He allowed those things to happen to me. I worked the works of religion in the hope that God would love me. I didn’t think He would abuse me, but I wasn’t sure He wouldn’t punish me, or fail to love me. The cleanness I had felt at my baptism had long since faded because I had messed up more than once since my initial salvation experience.

When I realized after talking to so many kingdom women that my story and my struggles weren’t unique to me, that seated every week in our walled worship houses are row upon row of women whose relationship with God are still being affected by the ugly of our pasts, I dug out the manuscript. I sent it out and got both rapid and slow rejections in the editorial world.  After a couple of health issues last year and turning  63, I considered that there is now more of my life behind me than there is ahead of me and I do not want to stand before a loving God failing to give Him glory for the heart healing He had paid such a price to give me. He healed me freely in Jesus and I can do no less than freely give this testimony to other women who the Father desires to walk in that same healing.

So I made the decision to publish my novel on Kindle. I self-published because bringing God glory is more important than profits. The point in the novel where my healing testimony is hidden happens when Bianca’s friend, knowing Bianca was intimately molested by her father, explains how God showed her where He was when Bianca was in that situation. I will post that section here. Before that, though, let me share this.

My details are only a little different. One morning in my kitchen, I was listening to a program about ‘the dark places in our heart’ and I began to cry and I heard myself say, “God, I want you to take me to those dark places and bring Your light. I’m scared to go there by myself.” As I put down the dish towel and went to pray, my feet felt like they were ensconced in concrete and in my mind, well, I wished I had not asked God to take me to the dark places. At the same time, my heart was crying to be free of the questions that sometimes made me wonder if I was good enough, or clean enough, or lovable enough for God to care for me or about me. What God showed me that morning changed my life and assured me of His love.

The snippet from Seeds of Strength, available on Kindle here,  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074L95G51, follows.

“Soon I would be a wife and I didn’t know if I was fit to be a Christian wife with my virtue gone before marriage. The thought of intimacy frightened me and I wasn’t sure I should marry Tim at all

…So I got angry and poured out my anger to God. ‘Why did you let that man be my father? Where were you when he was hurting me?’ And I remember that day so clearly. I was doubled over in agony with the memories of what had happened. The same fears I had when it happened consumed me. I was crying and I couldn’t stop. Exhaustion took over. I was drained. All I could do was lay across my bed. A picture came into my mind. In the picture I was back in the room where the horribleness of that time happened. But this time I felt no shame. I knew what was happening but I couldn’t see it. Then, in something I had never seen in all those times I had relived it in my mind as a child, I saw in the darkened corner of the room, a man. He was weeping. He was brokenhearted. I just knew. Then I knew it was the Lord. In that moment, it was as if the Lord Himself opened His heart to me and let me see that He wept over what an evil man did with the free will the Creator had given him. God was hurting for me, and in that time I knew God had been hurting with me at what my father had chosen to do.”

May this bless you. You can read the book free with Kindle Unlimited. If you know a woman who struggles with the questions of where was God and why did He let “this” happen, please share with her. If you are that woman, please…let’s talk.

God loves us. He loves us so much that He gave us a choice, free will, as to what actions we take and choices we make. God does not love what evil people do with their free will. He will heal us from the torment of what we endured. Jesus came to heal our broken hearts and He longs to set us free.

My daughter, while she lived on campus for the past two years, developed a real liking for granola bars. It’s logical. As she ran to her first class of the morning because her alarm wasn’t loud enough and her shower had to be shortened, granola bars were breakfast.  As she had an hour in between classes, granola bars could be lunch if there was no time to visit the food court. (Pizza, however, was always reserved for supper and late nights…)

So when she came home at the end of the semester, with a very small bank balance and a large streak of independence, and not having a rapid success in finding a job, she determined, without me knowing it, not to ask me for things she wanted that she could not get for herself. She was content with having whatever was here. She was learning to be content, as the Apostle Paul was, with what she had at the moment. Until one day, a few weeks ago, she approached me with this…

“Mom, I haven’t asked you for anything special because I know I’m not working, but if you don’t mind, would you buy a box of chocolate chip granola bars?” Then she explained to me why they would be necessary. She doesn’t eat at regular times, she doesn’t want to ask me to fix something she wants but I don’t care for, etc.

And my heart broke. If you’re a mom, yours would have too. Because:

1. She had hesitated to ask me for something I had the willingness and the power to provide for her.
2. She assumed based on the fact that she had nothing to give me in return that she shouldn’t ask.
3. She was so determined to be independent that she wouldn’t ask for my help.

She said, “if you don’t mind” thereby feeling like her asking was imposing on me.

Of course, the next time I went out I bought two of the largest boxes of chocolate chip granola bars I could find and now I weekly replenish them.

Tonight as I was praying, that incident came back to my mind. There’s a reason. There was, in that seemingly minor incident, a correlation between my daughter’s thought processes and ours as Christians sometimes. The Bible says that God is “Father”. He is our Father. His heart is invested even more in us than ours is in our own child, for we were given the power to become the children of God when we were reborn into His family.

And sometimes we hesitate to ask Him for something He has the power and willingness to give us. And we assume because we think we have nothing to give Him, OR have failed to measure up to what we think we should be doing for Him (our working), or…we are so determined to be independent that we won’t ask, that we deprive God, our Father, of His right and his pleasure in giving us what He wants us to have and what we would enjoy.

Now that my daughter understands that (just because she has grown more mature and the world and I do have expectations) her needs are still important to me, that I am still her mother and still take pleasure in giving her what she asks for, that I am willing to do/give/be the same loving parent she has always known.  She no longer fails to make eye contact when she wants a granola bar. She no longer feels shame that she asked,  and she doesn’t hesitate to go to the shelf and take what I have provided with joy. I get pleasure in the giving. It is just a granola bar. I understand that.

Yet it’s more than a granola bar. So much more. It is an invitation to examine our hearts toward the Father. Do we hesitate to ask? Do we wonder ‘if He will mind’ because we know our performance is less than stellar and our works less than profitable?

We shouldn’t. He defined and demonstrates parenthood, Fatherhood, in the loving hearts and pleasure in the giving that He put in us toward our own children.

Whether it’s a car repair, or a granola bar, or healing in our bodies, or our own broken hearts…God is Provider. He is pleased to give. He has the power to do it all. He sings over us. He rejoices in us. We were made for His pleasure.

Whatever it is, ASK. His love for us is as vast as the heavens from the earth.  Don’t break His heart…ASK. If He is your God, He is your Father. Ask.

Tattoos are a walking history.  I have never gotten one but I’ve lived long enough I’ve seen a bunch!

Back “in the day” before they became elaborate artwork, tattoos I saw were pretty simple. A single object or a name. The object surely represented something that was important to the person having it, I figure, or why would someone plan, pay for, and sit through the process? They were usually placed on the upper arm and mostly on men.

I often wondered, and sometimes asked, if the name of the person on someone’s arm was still in that place of importance in their heart that they were at the time he got the tattoo.  Other than the “mom”, the answer was usually no. Sometimes there were some pretty funny stories that often included booze before the “tat act”.  Many were stories of getting close to being “shipped out” and they wanted to take their girl with them. There were no happy endings for the name on the muscle. But they had made peace with that and mostly gave no thought to that permanent mark on their arm until someone asked them about it.

I’ve never been important enough to anyone that they permanently put my name on their body so they wouldn’t forget me. I’ve never been the object of love so deep that in a passionate declaration of undying devotion, someone sat and endured pain to show me how important I was to them. Or so I thought…

“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast
    and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget,
    I will not forget you!
¹⁶ See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;
    your walls are ever before me.”

God, who in Isaiah 49, was offering comfort to His people after they said He had forsaken them, told them HE had tattooed them on the palm of His hand. He who never forgets wanted to give them a visual of how important they were to Him, to tell them they were impossible to forget.

He has tattooed me. The One who created me, Who knows every thought I have, every mistake I’ve made and every mess-up I’ve been, has my name continually before Him. He does not regret it, no matter my past. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son…” and the next verse says that Jesus did not come to condemn, but to save.

That hand of God that carries my name, sent Jesus to become my sin so I have become His righteousness, qualified to stand both adoring and adored, before Him. Permanently.

The last couple of weeks I’ve been consumed with the thought “God cares about that.”

As I’ve made that statement, I’ve had people ask me “What’s ‘that’?” As I consider the statement more, I realize that  Christians and pre-Christians and even those who never become followers of Christ, all have “that”.  If we are human, there’s going to be at least one “that”.

The Bible says “Casting all your cares on Him, for He cares for you.” As He cares for us, He cares about our “that”. As God, He knows what “that” is before we tell Him. It is a true saying that He knows the root cause of our “that” and He holds the solution. And He cares about it, and is powerful enough to fix it.

So what is “that”? It is anything that we walk through, think about, and struggle with. No matter our level of relationship with our God, we are faced with things that, if left to grow in our own situation will become a hindrance to our faith. Life comes.

For Peter, who walked with Jesus every day, who walked on the water with Him, Peter’s “that” was the shame of denying he knew Jesus.

For the more than 5,000 people who had sat faithfully under the hearing of Jesus’ words for three days and had no food for the trip home with their children, their “that” was they were in a situation in which they could not help themselves.

For the widow to whom God sent the prophet, her “that” was that she didn’t even know the God of the preacher and was so destitute she was picking up sticks to prepare her last meal. In her hopelessness, she was planning to have one more meal and then die of starvation. She had no expectation of a rescue for herself or her son. She was experiencing the potential of watching her son die, the knowledge that no help was forthcoming.

In our American culture, we are faced with challenges. Our children or we may be addiction. Our debt may be bigger than our ability to pay. Our loss of a loved one may leave us lonely, or hopeless. Our future may seem bleak. Our expectation of good may be gone.

God cares about “that”. All of “that”. He will help if you give it to Him. Cast all your care on Him…because He cares for you.

John the Baptist isn’t known for his praying. Yet he prayed. He prayed for many years before he went to the Jordon river.  The Bible tells us John’s purpose. He was to prepare the hearts for the people to receive Jesus, the Messiah, the Savior of the world.  History tells us John was set apart and prepared for his purpose. How do we know that included prayer? Simple, really. John knew and understood God’s plan for his life. John knew his purpose. That couldn’t happen without prayer. The boldness it took for John to speak out, stand in the river wrapped in wet, smelly camel hair, the way he stood against the religious leaders and took on a king, all indicate John the Baptist had an active, ongoing communication with God. John prayed and went. I’d venture to say John prayed as he went. (I’d think to live on a diet of honey and bugs would take divine intervention as well!)

Today, we Christians go in our prayer closets and we pray for God to save people. We pray for God to prepare their hearts to receive Jesus. And we should, we must do that. Our prayers are laying the groundwork. As I was praying that very thing the other day, a question came into my mind. “Prepare their hearts for what?  What will they hear? How can they receive? Where are the ones who will go? When will people pray and go?”

John’s prayers alone would not have achieved God’s purpose for his life. God used a human to speak out about Jesus. He still works the same way. People were prepared because John went. John spoke. John’s message? “There comes one after me…”

Are we, beneficiaries of the Christ who John proclaimed, willing to go speak? John’s life would have been easier, quieter, less violent…had John only prayed. But would people have received Jesus if there had been only a silent, praying John? Thankfully, we don’t have to speculate on that. John went. Jesus was known.

Our message is both the same as John’s and different. Our message is Jesus. We are the ones who can and must say, “There came One before me…”

If Jesus is to be known in our culture, we have to pray and go. We have to pray as we go. We have to stand against tradition, take on the religious strongholds, and present Jesus. He is worthy to be proclaimed. The world still needs a Savior. The same One whom John proclaimed still saves.

Arise, shine;
For your light has come!
And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you.
 For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth,
And deep darkness the people;
But the Lord will arise over you,
And His glory will be seen upon you.

The deep darkness Isaiah spoke about is rampant. Our light has come. Arise. And the Lord will arise. And His glory will be seen. When we go.

Having been a restaurant server more then four decades ago, I find that tipping hasn’t changed much, and sadly, neither has the attitude about tipping a server, even among those of us who call ourselves Christians.

Ask any server and they will tell you that Sunday is the worst day for tipping.  “Church people”, they say, “hold the table longer, are more demanding, and tip the least of any group.” May I just say, “I’m sorry, Jesus. We are lousy representatives of Your character and love in this area.”

As spring is in full bloom and summer follows, and more people are lingering socially and travelling, I want to talk about this simple, inexpensive way to show love and grace.

First, the basics. If you are not inclined or cannot afford an extra 20-25% added to your sit down restaurant tab, choose a drive-up window or a restaurant that pays its employees an hourly rate more than $2.15 an hour.  McDonald’s comes to mind, although I have not received compensation for mentioning them.

From another perspective, if your tab is $50 and you can’t tip a minimum of $10, chances are you would have used wisdom to save the $50 and eat at home.

For those mean-spirited, stingy (aka religious) folk who say, “I only give 10% to God. Why should I give a server more than that?”, that’s another entire topic. All giving, whether to God, or a server, is personally determined, usually beforehand, because giving is a matter of the heart…but for the purpose of this discussion, let’s be clear.

God has no money.

God does not need money because God has no needs. When you give money in an offering, you are worshiping God out of your relationship and trust in Him because He has promised that if you will be obedient and open-hearted, you will be amply rewarded. God said He loves a cheerful giver. God said that if we give to the poor, we are lending to the Lord and HE will repay. In our culture, giving to God means giving to organizations who help others,  and to people who need help.  The money you share doesn’t go to Heaven and get rained out over people’s homes. The money you give is used here. The heart with which you give, in obedience and compassion…that’s what is tabulated in heaven. So if your heart is only giving to God what is required, you will reap the result of your heart. The wallet isn’t the issue.  The heart is the issue. And I discovered a long time ago, when the heart is willing to give more but the wallet says “There’s no more”, God will assure the wallet rises to meet the desire of the heart. Why?

Because although God has no need, He is often called on to meet the needs of others. For instance, although God has no electric bill or hungry children whose shoes are too small, your server may well be going to Him for help in those situations. God’s faithfulness to others is limited only by our faithfulness to Him, whether in our congregational offerings or our tipping.

Please, Christians, when you go out to eat, show His grace and His love and His promise for provision…to your server. Represent Jesus well. Be kind, reasonable, cheerful…with your attitude and your gratuity.  People who don’t know Him can see His character and heart toward them…or not…by the way Christians behave.

How should we react with a tip when we receive less than best service? Mercy says “Give anyway” because there hasn’t been a single time in our own lives when we’ve given enough “best service” to earn the grace that Jesus shows to us every single moment of our days. Let’s not expect more perfection than we are capable of producing.

“Give and it shall be given to you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over…”