In order to make this journey–you have to make it without baggage. You can’t carry loads of bags with weight on you in order to be free and Jesus gives you an invitation to come unto him. Now you have to come to him–you will not get rest from anybody else. If you go to anybody else you’re going to find more work.
– T.D. Jakes
When I was a wee little girl I sat on my Daddy’s shoulders as he ran and my mother screamed. He had been a competitive sprinter and he didn’t hold back. I thought sitting up there was the greatest feeling in the world.
Today I believe he knows freedom from an old man’s body and the chains of dementia and is again running as free as the wind.
His health was declining. He was becoming more child-like and he spent a lot of his time staring out the window, longing to see Jesus face to face and be reunited with Leah, the love of his life. But he told me he was afraid of pain and the process of transitioning beyond this physical place. Yesterday morning I was listening to a new recording by Josh Groban of the song “Bring Him Home” and turned it into a prayer that God would take my Daddy home, without pain, in his sleep.
My heavenly Father heard and answered, just the way he did when I prayed for Him to take Mom home. In the afternoon I got a call that when my sister-in-law went to check on him at noon she found he had passed away in his sleep. He had a recording of “How Great Thou Art” made at an anniversary party for him and Mom playing on repeat in the background.
God is good, full of mercy and very, very kind. Precious in His eyes is the death of one of His own.
I will miss him, and the conversations that never happened, but in the light of eternity, it will only be a short time before I see him again.
My Dad was a writer and a story-teller. A month ago I snapped photos of him telling one of his many tales of a Saskatchewan boyhood.
Many people will remember him for his writing and story-telling in schools and theaters and old folks homes.
I will remember being carried on his shoulders, sitting higher and moving faster than anybody else in the crowd because my Daddy was the fastest, handsomest, greatest Daddy in the world.
Did any of you parents ever hear your child wake from sleep with some panic fear and shriek the mother’s name through the darkness? Was not that a more powerful appeal than all words? And, depend upon it, that the soul which cries aloud on God, “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” though it have “no language but a cry,” will never call in vain.
– Alexander MacLaren
My friend’s handsome young son is dead.
In a moment of hopeless despair he took his own life.
All I can do is cry out.
I have no more words than that.
Spiritual identity means we are not what we do or what people say about us.
And we are not what we have.
We are the beloved daughters and sons of God.
-Henri Nouwen
O my God, shine Your light and truth
to help me see clearly,
To lead me to Your holy mountain,
to Your home.
Then I will go to God’s altar with nothing to hide.
I will go to God, my rapture;
I will sing praises to You and play my strings,
unloading my cares, unleashing my joys, to You, God, my God.
O my soul, why are you so overwrought?
Why are you so disturbed?
Why can’t I just hope in God? Despite all my emotions, I will hope in God again.
I will believe and praise the One
who saves me and is my life,
My Savior and my God.
(Psalm 43:3-5 The Voice)
Aaargh. I just did it too.
No, I didn’t get drunk. I chose to pursue my own drug of choice, but it’s the same thing really.
A person I had befriended sent me a prayer request: “Pray that I won’t get drunk tonight.”
“Do you have alcohol in the house?” I asked.
“No.”
“What would you have to do to get drunk?”
“Well, I’d have to go get some beer.”
“So you have to choose to get dressed, get your car keys, drive down to the liquor store, buy a case…”
“Well, actually I’d have to go cash a cheque first…”
“Okay. Then you have to bring it home, open the can…”
“I prefer bottled….”
“Open the bottle, guzzle it down, open another bottle…”
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
“Do you realize how many decisions that involves and how many times you are offered the option of choosing differently this time? You could choose to stay home, choose to not pick up your car keys, choose to turn right toward the movie theatre instead of left to the liquor store…”
“Yeah. I know, but I need you to pray that I choose not to get drunk. My boss is such a jerk.”
“Is there a gun to your head? Is anyone forcing booze down your throat? Because otherwise I can’t pray that. I can’t pray that God will veto your free will, because he already gave it to you – for free – and I can’t take it back on his behalf. I don’t have that kind of power. I will pray that you will be aware of every point where you are faced with a decision and you will realize you are not a helpless victim, but someone who is learning he is no longer a slave to sin. You do not have to make the choice to go down the same old road again. Grace is more than a get out of jail free card. Grace is also the power to be set free from the law of sin and death. Grace is realizing you are free and when you trust in Christ the thing that feels like a gun to your head doesn’t have any bullets anymore. It’s a lie.”
I know there are many dynamics to addiction and cravings make it feel like there is a loaded gun to our heads. Sometimes the ruts to our habitual choices are so deep we’ve got to really hit the gas hard to turn and go down a different road. I get it. But we do have choices.
Here’s the thing. It’s easy for me to talk about not getting drunk because it is not a temptation for me. I hate the taste of alcohol. Don’t bother giving me a fine bottle of wine. I actually prefer grape juice – and I can’t get beer past my nose. I like to be in control of all my faculties, thank you very much. But I realize I did the same thing as my friend yesterday. I sent a message to some friends – intercessors – asking them to pray that I would respond with grace and love to people I feel acted…well, let’s just say they acted without grace and love.
My habitual response would be to seek sympathy, justification for my hurt feelings, and maybe even hope the people I asked to pray would take up my cause and fight for me. Then I would go eat a chocolate bar or something to stifle the feeling of anger, because I really hate feeling angry. Nice Christian girls don’t feel angry, right?
I was asking them to pray that God would veto my own will, and he tends not to do that. Instead he offers us two fruit trees so that we have the opportunity to choose the righteous one. Given that grace gives us the freedom to choose love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, choosing resentment and lack of self-control is pretty stupid.
I wish I could just pray that I would make the right choice and it would happen, like magic. But this life of freedom is all about choosing relationship with Christ over being a slave to rules. So today I choose to turn right toward him this time, to forgive and offer grace to those who have seemed to be a little short of it. It may require a little donation as well, because we overcome evil with good. Freely we have received, freely we give, because God is not on a budget and there is more love and grace where that came from.
Not until we have become humble and teachable, standing in awe of God’s holiness and sovereignty, acknowledging our own littleness, distrusting our own thoughts, and willing to have our minds turned upside down, can divine wisdom become ours.
-J.I. Packer
As a singing teacher I sometimes noticed that students who found change most difficult were those who had received notoriety too soon. They clung to style or technique that had earned them trophies in the past. It’s one of the reasons why child prodigies often have difficulty finding their way in the adult world. It’s hard to let go of success.
Spiritual growth requires a teachable attitude – also known as meekness. There is a line from an old hymn playing in my head this morning:
“I will cling to the old rugged cross ’til my trophies at last I lay down,
I will cling to the old rugged cross, and exchange it someday for a crown.”
Sometimes trophies can become heavy burdens as we journey on this path. Sometimes we need to lay them down so we can move on.
I love ideas. I love to think about ideas. I love to read about ideas and discuss ideas.
Someone asked me once, “Why do you have to ask so many questions? Why can’t you just have faith?”
She was not a thinker. She was a doer, the kind that hates sitting still. Sometimes when I saw her running in circles to meet commitments I would be tempted to ask, “What were you thinking?”
So here we were, one of us stuck in theory without experience and the other in practice without aforethought, both lobbing civil little incendiaries over the fence when we perchanced to have tea. We could have been good friends, but we weren’t because we failed to bless each other for our differing strengths and we both became rather defensive. Alas. She passed away before I realized my error.
Lately I am realizing that a lot of the annoyances that crop up in my life are actually sent by the One who is motivating me to work out the things he has been teaching me. An obvious example of this occurs when people pray for patience. We make jokes about it. What follows is often an opportunity to work out the patience He already placed in them.
I love watching kids do this so naturally. My youngest grandsons have watched very few superhero movies. They have only to sit on the couch in front of Netflix long enough to grasp the premise and they are leaping from the furniture putting theory into practice. The next viewing is merely for the purpose of refining identity. Theirs is a world of potential, rapidly becoming reality.
Can I admit I also loathe exercise that goes nowhere? I would a thousand times rather hike in the woods, or turn dirt in a garden than ride a stationary bike that doesn’t progress an inch after 23 minutes of sweaty effort (the length of time it takes to watch a renovation show with the commercials fast-forwarded). I joined a gym and forced myself to go religiously. One day I woke up and realized I didn’t have to go that day because I had double pneumonia. I rejoiced. When having pneumonia seems like a much more pleasant prospect than grinding through a circle of exercise devices you know you really hate it and need to find a better way to work out.
Some of us need more prodding to get off the couch than little kids with towels tied around their necks and this week, although I protested loudly, the prodding made me put some things I have been thinking about into practice. I recognize the necessity of these circumstances and that the exercise is actually taking me somewhere. I may be getting to the point where I can consider it a joy when confronted by various trials. Maybe. There is a time to hear, and a time to do. It’s time to do.
Have done, then, with impurity and every other evil which touches the lives of others, and humbly accept the message that God has sown in your hearts, and which can save your souls. Don’t I beg you, only hear the message, but put it into practice; otherwise you are merely deluding yourselves. The man who simply hears and does nothing about it is like a man catching the reflection of his own face in a mirror. He sees himself, it is true, but he goes on with whatever he was doing without the slightest recollection of what sort of person he saw in the mirror. But the man who looks into the perfect mirror of God’s law, the law of liberty (or freedom), and makes a habit of so doing, is not the man who sees and forgets. He puts that law into practice and he wins true happiness. (James 1:21-25 Phillips)
You will never find Jesus so precious as when the world is one vast howling wilderness. Then he is like a rose blooming in the midst of the desolation, a rock rising above the storm.
– Robert Murray McCheyne
Charis: Subject to Change 