Am I Hearing You Right?

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While there are birds, birds to fly…

I heard that Mother Teresa said “I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.”

I’m no Mother Teresa, and I already know that God will give me things I can’t handle. I also know that he gives me things that He can handle if I learn to do only what He asks and let Him do the heavy lifting. (“Will You Be My Alligator” link here.) But sometimes I wonder…

I didn’t feel like driving to Alberta again yesterday when I have so much to do at home. But the Lover of my soul knew I needed a break, so I ended up going. I spent the time in the car talking to God, pouring out my feelings to Jesus, and sitting quietly with Holy Spirit. I have evidence of transformation in my life because I have much more peace than I used to when my list of concerns to pray about gets longer and longer. But still I wonder if I could have done things differently (or sooner), if I said something I ought not to have said (or failed to say), if I am following the right path or if I have missed some crucial heavenly download somewhere. Am I doing this right?

Change is messy, I know, but it looks like I may have to exchange my rubber boots for hip waders soon. I cried out, “Lord! I really need to hear your voice about now! Just talk to me! What should I do?!” (I may have raised my voice.)

I was listening to music on my phone as I drove. (Gotta love a car with a USB port.) Road conditions demanded my attention so I left it on shuffle. The songs played in random order. Most of the music on my phone is a peaceful worshipful style aimed at reducing stress in city traffic. My other more eclectic collections are on a road trip sticks or CDs.

A song came on just as I asked my question. I tell you the truth. I do not recall ever hearing this song before or downloading on my phone. It was in a large, but inexpensive collection of classic jazz tunes I bought a few months ago, but I had only listened to a few familiar favourite songs on it.

This is what I heard: Trust in Me.

I think I have a new favourite.

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“While there’s a moon, a moon up high…”

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All is Well

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All is well all is well
Angels and men rejoice
For tonight darkness fell
Into the dawn of love’s light.

(From All is Well by Wayne Kirkpatrick and Michael W. Smith)

 

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Overtures of Love

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Worship is our response to the overtures of love from the heart of the Father. Its central reality is found ‘in spirit and truth.’ It is kindled within us only when the Spirit of God touches our human spirit.

-Richard J. Foster

 

Strength

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I hear the Saviour say, “Your strength, indeed, is small. Child of weakness, watch. Pray. Find in me your all in all.”

 

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 

For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.

For when I am weak, then I am strong.

(2 Corinthians 12:9,10 ESV)

Jesus Paid It All. (lyrics by Elvina M. Hall, 1865)

 

 

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When You Walk Through a Storm

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I was terrified of the pain of childbirth. I suppose, in the way people in the medical field are aware of everything that could possibly go wrong with a “simple procedure” I also knew. I overheard the rehearsal of a horror story of labour and delivery since I was a young child. My mother did have a complicated birth experience and besides permanent physical consequences I think it left her with some PTSD. But listening to the story of my traumatic birth being told over and over also left me with a lot of fear of having children.

Fear magnifies pain. Fear teaches us to watch for the first signs of pain, like we are keeping an eye on the street for an expected, but unwelcome guest to arrive. Fear motivates us to prepare defensive tactics in our heads for attacks that may never occur. Fear teaches us to see pain as a monster that cannot be contained by any device at our disposal. The only thing we can do is evade it or outrun it – or try to.

Here’s the thing. I had never asked myself, “If the pain of childbirth is so overwhelming, why do women intentionally have a second or third or even more children?”

What I didn’t know about pain was that I could have a kind of peace in the middle of it. I was working. I was accomplishing something magnificent. When I had my second son there was no time for epidurals or any form of medication like the first time. All of a sudden it hit me that pain was not my master. I hated it, but I could defy it. I growled and pushed right into the center of it it knowing that joy was about to burst forth. Joy was set before me.

When I held my son in my arms I was filled with a golden euphoria of joy on the other side like I had never known before.

I hate to see anyone suffer. I am a sensitive mercy-motivated person. I feel other people’s pain. If someone near to me injures a leg, I limp. I would rather trade places than see one of my children or grandchildren in pain, and yet I will fail them if I don’t tell them that they are stronger than both physical and mental pain. Learning to push through opens a pathway to more richness of experience than we have known before.

One of the passages of scripture that continues to free me from the fear of unpleasant circumstances, from the dentist’s needles to opening my heart to weep with those who grieve deeply, is this one:

The Lord is ever present with us. Don’t be anxious about things; instead, pray. Pray about everything. He longs to hear your requests, so talk to God about your needs and be thankful for what has come. And know that the peace of God (a peace that is beyond any and all of our human understanding) will stand watch over your hearts and minds in Jesus, the Anointed One. (Philippians 4:5b-7 The Voice)

The peace of God is, like God, wholy other, supernatural, beyond expected human experience. His peace is not dependent on living a life free of discomfort. His peace is beyond human understanding – which means we can give up the need to try to understand it.

When you realize that you live in his love as his much-adored child you don’t need to cry out and demand that every negative situation be immediately relieved. When you hear the voice of your Lord say, “I will never leave you,” you can choose to walk deliberately into the storm before you.

Jesus says, “I’ve got this. Trust me,” and somehow, even though it is not logical, you do.

Whether the storm is a chance for him to demonstrate divine healing or deliverance through a miracle or to first prove to you that you are more capable of relying on his strength than you thought, remembering and thanking him for grace that has brought you safe thus far will continue to bring you through to the gold on the other side.

Even my mother chose to have another baby.

My fourth grade teacher, who taught me the beauty of songs of lament, sang this one for me. I have never forgotten how it touched my heart.

Walk on with hope in your heart and you’ll never walk alone.

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Everyday It’s a Getting Closer

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Discouragement has been trying to sneak into my heart lately. I bar the doors and it makes faces at me through the windows. I shut the curtains and it sticks out its tongue on the news reports. I flip through Netflix and see it dressed up as reason or compassion or as humour – in black of course. I shut the TV off and discouragement pops up on my phone. Even in-person conversations take a sudden tilt toward you-think-that’s-bad.

Here’s the thing. You can’t escape discouragement when you’ve allowed it to have a camping spot in your head.

We had a problem with mice in the house once. While we were on vacation they got into the pantry. Screaming may have been involved when I opened the doors. I set traps, cleaned up and stored everything in plastic bins after that, but they would still show up. (More screaming.) We called for help.

The exterminator searched all around and found we had a spilled bag of grass seed in the garden shed near the back door.

“There’s your problem,” he said. “They eat in your garden restaurant then come into the house to keep warm. They only need an opening as big as their nose to squeeze through. Get rid of what they are feeding on and they will go away.”

It was one of those moments when I heard God speaking with the accent of a pest control expert.

Get rid of what they are feeding on and they will go away.

I said this to someone else yesterday and heard God’s voice in my own.

Get rid of what discouragement is feeding on and it will go away.

What’s it feeding on? Words that don’t include His perspective. I call them Helena Handbasket speeches. Sometimes I listen to them and sometimes I make them myself.

“But the situation looks dire, Lord.”

“Come up here and see the big picture,” He says.

“How? I mean really. HOW?”

This morning I woke from a dream about  friends who were were shutting down a coffee shop kind of place. Business was too slow. A handicapped person came in looking for someone to talk to, then a shy older woman, then a child who offered to share her candy with the lady. All the while the shop was being readied for closure with chairs stacked on tables being pushed against the wall.

They made one more pot of free coffee for the people who had wandered in. While they set a couple of chairs back at a table more people showed up. They needed more tables and opened another section. More and more people were suddenly there. The thing they all seemed to have in common was loneliness and feeling like they didn’t belong anywhere and were out of place in time. Some even wore clothes from earlier decades.

The child sharing her candy had only meant to give it to one person, but it was passed around in a bowl and like the fish and barley loaves the disciples saw multiply as they passed baskets around, the candy in the dollar store crystal dish never ran out.

I woke up with a song in my head that I never paid much attention to before. I didn’t know more words than I needed to google it. A Buddy Holly song? Seriously?

 

“Why this one, Lord?”

“You asked for my perspective.”

These Helena Handbasket voices that make dire predictions? Well yes, there is a right and left perspective, neither of which can offer solutions, but there is also an up and down axis. And that is a game changer.

At one point in the dream a man who had been a addict ran out into the street from the now busy cafe and said, “People say change is not possible. I tell you it is! I am free and more people are being set free every day!”

Every. Day.

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Because You Are Good

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The older kids had already run out the door to catch the school bus. She was in her jammies, her hair matted in a wad of fine blonde fuzz at the back of her head and a greying blankie hanging like a loose toga over her shoulder. Her voice, crackling with the residue of sleep was hard to hear.

“What would you like, honey?” her Mommy asked, as she added raisins to my little granddaughter’s oatmeal.

“Can you put on worship?” she asked again, a little louder this time.

“Sure. I can do that. Which one?”

“Kids worship, please.”

Mommy started a video on the computer on the kitchen desk.

“She asks for music every morning,” she told me. “This is the way she likes to start her day.”

The song played and my little three-year old granddaughter grinned at me.

Your goodness never stops
Your mercy follows me
Your kindness fills my life
Your love amazes me

I sing because You are good
And I dance because You are good
And I shout because You are good
You are good to me!*

Yes, my beautiful young one. You continue to teach me. This is how to start the day.

 

*From Bethel Music Kids/ Come Alive

I Waited and Waited for God

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I waited

and waited

and waited some more;

patiently,
knowing that God would come through for me.

Then, at last, he bent down and listened to my cry.
He stooped down to lift me out of danger,
from the desolate pit I was in,
out of the muddy waters I had fallen into.

Now he’s lifted me up into a firm, secure place,
and steadied me while I walk along his ascending path.

A new song for a new day rises up in me
every time I think about how he breaks through for me!
Ecstatic praise pours out of my mouth until
everyone hears how God has set me free.
Many will see his miracles; they’ll stand in awe of God,
and fall in love with him!

(Psalm 40:1-3 The Passion Translation)

 

 

It was no one’s fault. Doctors get sick, equipment breaks, the critical displaces the urgent. It just happened to take a long time between symptoms showing up and getting the results of a biopsy. Months actually. The first time I was told I might have cancer I was sick with worry and too distracted to concentrate on work a lot of the time. This time I was more patient. I’ve had the experience of seeing the Lord come through for me. We went for walks together and talked about something else.

Today I finally got the report. Benign.

I still need healing for an underlying problem that, although I have tried and tried, I can’t fix myself. So even though it has been the source a lot of rejection in my life, I continue to come to God, just as I am. My only plea is that Jesus’ blood was shed for me.

He’s good with that.

Cease Striving

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I kept hearing this song in my sleep the night before last. It came after a dream in which I saw a pack of big black dogs running up behind me. I was frightened by them, but I then I realized they were army-trained rescue dogs.

Those animals which scared me, and caused others in the dream to prepare to defend themselves against the pack, were not against us; they were for us. They were the dogs of war and had been released on our behalf. They were on our side. I was told not to distract them, to be still, stand back and let them get to work. Then the song began to play over and over.

When I awoke and looked at the lyrics of the old hymn I realized “Be Still My Soul” repeats the sentiments found in Psalm 46. “Be still and know that I am God” can also be translated as “Cease striving and know that I am God.” Those words are found embedded in a psalm that is about fear in the midst of war and tumult in the earth.

Be Still, My Soul

Be still, my soul; the Lord is on thy side;
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In every change He faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul; thy best, thy heavenly Friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Be still, my soul; thy God doth undertake
To guide the future as He has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence, let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul; the waves and winds still know
His voice who ruled them while He dwelt below.

(Author: Catharine Amalia Dorothea von Schlegel, 1752,
Translated by: Jane Borthwick, 1855)

 

Psalm 46

God is our refuge and strength,
A very present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change
And though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea;

Though its waters roar and foam,
Though the mountains quake at its swelling pride. Selah.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
The holy dwelling places of the Most High.

God is in the midst of her, she will not be moved;
God will help her when morning dawns.

The nations made an uproar, the kingdoms tottered;
He raised His voice, the earth melted.

The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our stronghold. Selah.

Come, behold the works of the Lord,
Who has wrought desolations in the earth.

He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth;
He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two;
He burns the chariots with fire.

“Cease striving and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our stronghold. Selah.

(NASB)

God’s answers to our pleas for help don’t always look like what we expect. You can pray and ask God to do something, but you can’t tell him how to do it. An intercessor is called to stand in the gap without standing in the way.