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Spirit-led Self-Control

Dear sisters,

We have recently adopted one-year-old, boy/girl twins from Ethiopia. The Lord gifted them to us on Thanksgiving Day and we brought them home to Okinawa just before Christmas. The next month we began the process of moving from Okinawa to Puerto Rico, our next duty station. This means that, while we are starting to create a new home for our babies, we’re also packing away the only home our biological daughter has ever known and saying goodbye to the friends who have supported us through many difficult periods in our lives. To say our marriage has been tested is too simple. To say the relationships with all of our kids have been strained at times is understated. And to say that our bodies have revolted against the stress is too modest. There are days when my husband and I say our kids hate us and other days when we don’t even like each other. Though these days have the hope of excitement and joy, often they also have a lining of darkness where we forget to tell ourselves the facts of our faith and instead live in the rawness of our explosive emotions. It is easier for me to sink into the darkness of my soul, than to control my thoughts and actions under the truth of the gospel. Lets face it, sometimes we long for the indulgence of a good pity party rather than capturing our thoughts with the help of the Spirit to give us hope through the dark times.

If you’re thinking, “I don’t even know what that would look like?” believe me, I understand. It’s a lot easier for me to tell you what it looks like when I don’t use self-control and selflessness that is fueled by the Spirit. I get overwhelmed with kids crying and whining and instead of taking a step back, breathing, and reminding myself of their age and stage, I scream back at them. Instead of hearing my husband out as he makes a simple suggestion, I cut him off and let my face fall while telling him why his suggestion won’t work. I dwell on what is wrong, bad, or difficult in my life instead of telling myself the character and promises of God that have been given to me in Christ.

But I’ve also been given hope through glimpses of Spirit-led self-control in dark times. What does that look like? It’s taking thoughts captive in dark times through self-control and selflessness. It’s way easier to spiral down into a “woe is me” attitude than to control my thoughts and captivate them with Christ. If I do take the time to have self-control, I can train my heart and soul to remember that God is sovereign and in control of all things. Sadly, it’s often easier for me to think that no one understands my situation than to remember that I have a Savior who understands all pains and hurts because He has been there too.

So in the dark and tumultuous times of flux, change, and unknown, I need to find my hope by controlling my thoughts and actions. To step away from emotional screams of the moment and remind myself of the truth of my good, sovereign, and kind God that works for my good. I can have patience because the Father has infinite patience with me. I can show kindness when its not deserved because Christ did that for me. I can give underserved grace because I have been given immeasurable grace in Christ. I have been adopted in Christ. I have the inheritance of heaven. I am forgiven as far as the east is from the west. All these truths are what I need to stop and choose to remember. This takes Spirit given self-control. Yes, it’s work. Yes, I fail at doing this myself. Oh Lord, help us to grow in this each day.

Your sister in Christ,
Colleen

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Hope in Failing

The Garden of Eden, (a.k.a.Paradise). No weeds. No decay, and none of those prickly sticker things. Can you imagine it? Can you picture Adam and Eve living in the garden in perfect harmony with each other and intimate communion with God? It must have been absolutely glorious. But it didn’t last, did it?

Genesis 3:1 says “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made.” He approached Eve with the question “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden in the garden’?” Eve knew the word of the Lord. She knew that He had commanded her and Adam not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And why should they have needed to? The Lord had abundantly provided for their needs in all the other trees and plants that he had created. But the serpent was perceptive. Already Eve had added to the command of the Lord. Her mind was ripe for deception. With great cunning, he got Eve to believe that God was holding out on her for seemingly no reason. So when Eve “saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.”

Do you think that if Eve had known that taking that bite would shatter their literally perfect life, she would have done it? Do you think that she would have knowingly brought suffering, death, and destruction into her life? Of course not! But Eve was naive. Eve was unsuspecting. How could she have possibly known about such a thing as deception?

Sadly, the true story is that even though she wanted for nothing her heart went after the one thing she was forbidden to have. As a result, she plunged her world, and ours, into sin and darkness.

Perhaps you, like me, have had your own “Eve” moment. Maybe God presented you with something good but you couldn’t receive it because you were too busy looking elsewhere for your satisfaction. Perhaps Satan even approached you and said, “God wants to give you this, but what you really need is this and I can give you what you really need.” The end result of believing the lies of Satan is absolutely devastating. He promises life but all you will get is death. I can tell you that, dear sister, because I have experienced it firsthand. I have been deceived by his craftiness only to find myself drowning in a sea of sorrow, guilt, and regret.

When I realized that this had happened to me, and what I had done as a result, I was devastated. I had never experienced such raw emotions. Rage coursed through my veins. Sorrow and regret overcame me. Feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness nearly killed me. Thoughts such as “You idiot, Kayla. What is wrong with you?” plagued me. Yet, I am still here. I made it. I came out of it alive. Bruised, beaten, and bloodied, but alive. How? Where’s the hope after such utter desolation?

In Eve’s situation, we see that God dealt graciously with her. She kept her place as Adam’s wife and she still became the mother of all living things. God even promised that her Savior would come from her seed. Even amidst her brokenness, God blessed her.

This failure in my life was my “Damascus” moment. I, like Paul, was a Pharisee. I went to countless Bible studies, church every Sunday, and abstained from sex and alcohol. But my heart was a whitewashed sepulcher, laced with envy and discontent, and ruled by fear. It took brokenness for me to truly understand the gospel and my need of it, but the Lord has still dealt graciously with me. As severe as his mercy may seem right now, I am trying to have faith that he is working it all for my good and His glory. It’s hard walking in the uncertainty, but that is what faith is all about—being sure of what is hoped for and certain of what we do not see (Hebrews 11:1).

Recently, we remembered the death of Christ and celebrated his resurrection. This is where our hope must lie, dear sister. We must turn our eyes to the cross in faith, acknowledging that all of our sins—and our old selves—have been nailed to the cross with him. In his resurrection, Christ has conquered sin and death and they no longer have dominion over us. This doesn’t mean that we won’t ever stumble, but it does mean that we are no longer ruled by it. Take hope in that, my dear sister. His is the hope and the promise that will never disappoint.

Walking with you,

Kayla

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Hope From The Darkest Time in History

Dear sister,

Many dear friends of mine have been suffering from depression lately. Not just a time of feeling blue, but deep soul-rending pain that leaves them questioning their very existence. Weeping with them and praying for them is in sharp contrast to the new life of spring surrounding us—flowers blooming, leaves returning, sunshine beckoning.

Palm Sunday has just passed, the remembrance of the joyful day when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey (fulfilling the prophecy from Zechariah 9:9) and people lined up to greet Him with shouts of “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Matthew 21:9) Jesus said if they hadn’t, “the very stones would cry out.” (Luke 19:40) And Easter is next, the most hopeful event in all of history. He is risen. But between those Sundays of celebration, we have a very dark week.

On Maundy Thursday we remember the Last Supper Jesus had with His Apostles, where He washed their feet and instituted the Lord’s Supper. We know His heart must have been heavy as He warned them how Judas would betray Him and Peter would deny Him. And then He went to the garden of Gethsemane, where He asked His friends to watch with Him because “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death” (Matthew 26:38). He went a little farther on and fell on His face (Matthew 26:39) praying if it were possible to be delivered from what His Father had asked Him to do. He returned to His friends, who hadn’t even stayed awake while He was dealing with such torment, and then left them and prayed the same thing again… and then came back and found them sleeping again, and left and prayed the same thing again. The Son of God, who had chosen to come from the full glorious presence of His Father in heaven to live a sinless life for 33 years on sinful earth was about to face the full wrath of the Lord for all the sins of each of His people. What sorrow, what dread! He was under such emotional strain that He began to sweat blood (Luke 22:44). Traditionally at the end of the Maundy Thursday service church leaders strip the vestments from the front of the church and the congregation files out in silence, commemorating Judas’ betrayal and how the soldiers stripped Jesus once they’d captured Him.

As we pass into Good Friday we remember the torture He endured, His death by crucifixion, and His burial. While He hung on the cross, the whole land was dark for three hours in the middle of the day (Mark 15:33). Traditionally churches hold a Tenebrae service to commemorate this darkness, gradually lowering the lights until the sanctuary is dark, as it would have been outdoors while our Savior was dying. When Jesus died, “the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split.” (Matthew 27:51) The Messiah had just been crucified. He was dead, and His followers had to bury Him.

It must have been hard to cling to what Jesus had told them, that He would be raised on the third day (Matthew 16:21). He was dead. They’d seen Him breathe His last, touched His body, prepared Him for burial, and laid Him to rest. They went away to mourn together as the Sabbath approached.

But we know the rest of the story! On the third day the tomb was empty. He has risen, He is alive! Death no longer has dominion over Him (Romans 6:9). Later “He parted from them and was carried up into heaven” (Luke 24:51) and “After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Hebrews 1:3). Not only is Jesus alive, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:4-6). This is unfathomable mercy, grace upon grace.

Theologian Dr. R.C. Sproul and composer Jeff Lippencott collaborated to write a number of hymns in a project now known as Glory to the Holy One. One of the songs is No More the Grave, about Christ’s victory over death. Listen to it sung at Saint Andrew’s Chapel during the debut concert and rejoice with the refrain:

No more the grave can yield its sting,
No more is death our foe.
Our souls can now with gladness sing,
Now gone all curse and woe!

I pray as you travel through this week that you “may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:18-19)

Serving the risen Lord Jesus Christ with you,

Sarah

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Tell Me The Old, Old Story

My dear sister,

Don’t you love a good story…especially a story in which things begin rocky but the favorite characters end up living happily ever after? When I was a little girl my mama had the habit of reading voraciously to us, her four children. The stories were spell-binding. Saggy Baggy Elephant. Robin Hood. A Tale of Two Cities. Little Pilgrim’s Progress. Lorna Doone. Our little minds were transported to other places, other times–and we were enthralled.

Did you know, my sister, that I grew up on the mission field? I have my share of snake and tarantula and leper colony tales. It was there that our mama read to us and lived for us another story, this one timeless. It was the story of Jesus, the God who came to our planet as a baby to live on earth as the God-Man–to live the perfect life I could never live. It was the story of me and my sin, my dark alienation from God with no hope for life and death and resurrection to eternal life; the story of the true and just God who loved me so much that He, in the person of His Son, chose to reconcile me to Himself by being punished for my sin in His death on a rough and splintered cross, receiving His Father’s wrath upon Himself, in my place, so that I would not be required to bear my own deserved punishment. It was a good story, a scary story, an unforgettable one, but of this particular story I wearied as I grew up. I had believed the story, prayed “the prayer”, and could argue the merits of it with the best of them–all the while being dead to God, deceived by the desperate wickedness of my own heart (Jeremiah 17:9). I became interested in things which were opposed to the story. If I concentrated on the story, I would have difficulty doing the things my heart hankered after and therefore suppressed it in my mind. At first, I loved the fun of pursuing what I wanted, but it wore thin with time and my heart and my conscience grew weary with rationalizations and justifications and dissonance.

Through a series of events, of agonies and frustrations, broken relationships and a broken heart, guilt and misery, my heart remembered that story I learned as a child but had purposely forgotten. My sin had risen above my head. My guilt was so heavy it left me exhausted. I was tired of running from the Jesus of my childhood memory, the story of the One who could break the bonds of that heavy, chained burden upon my back and send it hurtling down the hill at Golgotha–as He had done for Little Christian in my childhood version of The Pilgrims’s Progress, as He did for Abraham and David and Peter and Paul.

I was lying in my bed one night, spent from the struggle, when thoughts of Christ were planted in my head, thoughts of that bloody death, thoughts of a sinless God dying in my place, all my rebellion and disobedience, despair and hopelessness imputed to His sinless dying self. My darkness was suddenly made light in the recesses of my mind. The meaning of the phrase, “the finished work of Christ on the cross”, finally made perfect sense as our great and mighty God regenerated my heart and mind and made me His child, taking all my sin upon Himself, declaring me clothed in Christ’s righteousness in His sight. My sin debt to God was fully and finally paid by Christ and His Father’s wrath was satisfied. Amazing grace that had once “taught my heart to fear” (as that crusty and vile slave trader of old, redeemed by our Christ, wrote), also “my fears relieved”. The story of my youth came full circle, God granted me faith in Him, and I was made new. I am not so arrogant as to compare myself to the great Apostle Paul, but it was my Damascus moment, my Saul to Paul renaming, the old passing away and all becoming new.

We are told in Scripture to not look back, we should forget the things behind and look forward and press toward the goal of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3: 13-14). But Paul also tells us to look back and remember (I Corinthians 10). We are asked to remember the stories of what took place in the wilderness when Israel of old lived in rebellion, grumbling and ungrateful–and God killed many of them. Paul tells us it is a warning and we do well to look back and remember and not repeat. Israel was also commanded to make memorials for remembrance of God’s faithfulness to them, a looking back and recalling and thanking, as well as for teaching the next generation. When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we look back and remember and look forward in anticipation. When we confess our sins in repentance, we look back at the cross, but not to wallow in our sins. We look back in remembrance for warning, for rejoicing, for gratitude. We look forward in hope when all things will be made right at His coming.

Have you heard and read a hundred times that we are to look back and recall the gospel story, to preach it to ourselves daily? Take the advice from the sages in our lives. Look back. Tell yourself the story in the morning, at noon, at night. Remember from where you came. Remember where you are going. Christ has died. Christ is risen. Your sin is gone. Our Father reigns and in His power and control He is the Always Good. He is coming again. Preaching this to ourselves rearranges our perspective on our present and gives cause for rejoicing and tranquility of heart, not for grumbling or panic or anger.

So, dear sister, remember the story, dwell on it, live it. When He comes, if we belong to Christ, we will be like Him for we shall see Him face-to-face, as He is, finally unfettered by our sin–trials and sorrows gone, living eternally in unbroken praise and thanksgiving.

Now, believe it and go tell it.

MARANATHA! Even so come Lord Jesus!

Because of Christ,
I am your sister,

Cherry

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The Threads of Our Lives and Attitudes of Our Hearts

Dear Sister,

Disappointment. Deep disappointment. Wallowing in the pit of dismay. That is where the news of the day has found us. We did not lose anything tangible, just a dream. The object of years of hard work has proved elusive yet again and likely forever. Now where? Now what? Lord, we feel like we are standing in front of a locked door (locked on the opposite side), in a dark space. Deflated, depressed. Even amongst great blessing.

As we struggle with these feelings of discontent, I search the lives of individuals in the Bible and I find Rachel struggled as well. She was beautiful, wealthy, the recipient of amazing love; but she had not achieved the epitome of a blessed woman of her time. She had not birthed a son. All was hollow to her without that achievement. She even risked the ire of the man who loved her, the man she was dependent on for everything on earth. Eventually, she had her sons—along with robust sides of conniving and resultant rampant jealousy in her family.

I’m not saying Rachel was wrong in desiring children, but the pursuit of her dream was relentless and her priority above all else. I contrast her battle with that of Hannah’s in I Samuel 1. Where Rachel schemed, Hannah prayed. While Rachel pushed her agenda and forced her way, Hannah waited and kept praying. Both women achieved the object of their pursuit, but Hannah is lifted up as an example of humility and longsuffering and she had the blessings of the Lord and her husband. Rachel’s victories finally tasted as dust in her mouth, for in the birthing room, “It came about as her soul was departing (for she died), that she named him Ben-oni; but his father called him Benjamin.” Gen. 35:18. (Ben-oni: “the son of my sorrow”) Rachel realized her goal, but only in death and with great heartache.

Ironically, another Benjaminite learned what his ancestor did not. In writing to the Corinthians, Paul reports that he prayed and wrestled with God three different times that his “thorn in the flesh” might be taken away. God’s reply was not what we would have expected for His faithful servant and great miracle worker, “And He has said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.’ Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.” II Cor. 12:9. He did not just accept defeat, but boasted in it, because that thorn was the receptacle through which God’s grace and power would flow.

We keep asking to be shown His way forward, but resort to gnashing our teeth when our way is thwarted, instead of turning to seek His guidance. We continue to regret the demolition of dreams, instead of rejoicing over the broken seeds from which God is using to grow beautiful fruit.

Throughout history, God’s will was accomplished—Rachel played her part in having children that were included in the 12 tribes of Israel; and Hannah gave birth to Samuel, the great judge of Israel. God’s plan is always fulfilled, He weaves with the threads of our lives—whether we are obstinate or not. We may be woven beneath his tapestry for long periods, but we are still used.   We cannot always choose how or where we are woven, but we can offer Him the brightness of our colors, the attitude of our hearts.

So, excuse me while I go play ‘Wonder Woman’ with the kids (complete with flying cape). We are rejoicing over our squashed dream—for God is using it to shower us with His grace and to show us His power. Amen!

Running with you,

Rebecca