A Newer You in the New Year

A Newer You in the New Year

by | Jan 4, 2018 | Bible Study, Encouragement

Happy New Year, friends. If you’re anything like me, every last Christmas tree needle has been swept from the house, the gnarls of Christmas lights are tucked away in boxes, and you just found a stray ornament that didn’t make it into those boxes—one that will possibly sit on your dresser until next year, because you’re just not walking that thing down into your unfinished basement when it’s 6 degrees outside. Or maybe no one is like me. At any rate, here we sit at the top of a new year. A fresh slate prime for dreams and ambitions to be etched into its stone. Another chance to strive for what might not have been accomplished last year. A new beginning.

In the midst of the excitement and zeal for the months ahead, a stark reality exists—a change from one year to the next doesn’t mean we’ve changed. But you knew that. Whatever we hope will be different about ourselves in 2018 will only be so if we do something different than we did last year. If we make changes. Thus, the ever-popular New Year’s Resolution.

But I don’t want to talk to you about resolutions today. Rather, I want to talk about milk versus meat. I want to talk to you about being spiritual people instead of worldly people, or merely human people. This is actually really thrilling and may be our answer to not only a new year but also a newer us. Follow me for a moment into Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church—a letter particularly applicable to our day and culture.

Paul wrote that he was speaking to the church in words “taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual things to spiritual people.” (1 Cor 2:13.) As I sometimes struggle to understand the things I read in the Bible, or even the deeper Christian writings, my first thought when reading this passage this morning was, Lord, if the Spirit teaches spiritual things to spiritual people—and often I don’t hear you in the way I long to—am I not as spiritual as I need to be? Have I let the pleasures and comforts and selfish desires of this world overtake me?

 I know what you’re thinking— “Don’t be too hard on yourself or so legalistic, especially at the top of a happy New Year.” But it felt like a good and liberating question to ask the Lord. I continued reading…

“For my part, brothers and sisters, I was not able to speak to you as spiritual people but as people of the flesh, as babies in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, since you were not yet ready for it…because you are still worldly. For since there is envy and strife among you, are you not worldly and behaving like mere humans?” (1 Cor 3:1-4.)

Again, HAPPY NEW YEAR FRIENDS! Isn’t this encouraging?

The freeing truth is encouraging, yes: when we evaluate the selfishness and envying and strife we often foster in our relationships, we begin to see how these get in the way of hearing the voice of the Spirit in our lives. When we’re competitive or unkind, or worldly in our thinking and passions, it reveals a spiritual immaturity we want to grow out of in 2018, not simply for better behavior’s sake, but so we can grow into being spiritual people who understand spiritual things…so the Lord doesn’t have to hold back a feast for mere formula.

One of the crucial processes to growing into spiritual maturity is through studying the Bible. The reason this is true is because both the Old and New Testaments testify of our Savior and Redeemer Jesus Christ, the One whose grace forms us into His likeness so we can further grasp the way the Spirit would have us to live. The Bible reveals Jesus to us. So if we’re going to be different in 2018, we have to commit to studying His Word.

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The most spiritually transformative period of my life took place over a decade ago when I realized that so much of my depression, anxiety, unrest, general stuckness, and perpetual unhappiness had to do with having placed my hope and affections on the stuff and the people of this world—some of which was inherently really good. These people and things had become harmful because they had become all-consuming idols. The Lord, in His kindness, stripped me of these false gods that weren’t bringing me lasting joy anyhow, turning my attention and affections to Himself. My whole life changed. Not simply because of a new year but a whole new way to live.

If you’re looking for joy, hope, or healing in the New Year—if you’re desiring not just a new year but a newer you—studying the Bible reveals where we find that joy, hope, and healing. It tells us how to be spiritual people who understand the secret of spiritual knowledge. It’s all found in Jesus Christ, and no other god rivals Him.

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How will you be different in 2018? What steps will you take? What will you do differently? Whatever you do, make studying the Bible a top priority starting in January.

If any of my story resonates with you, you might consider beginning your year with No Other Gods: The Unrivaled Pursuit of Christ, a Bible study based on the passages of Scripture that have so changed my life. I recently re-wrote that study and added teaching videos to it. You can find the DVD leader kit and member book in my store.

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Opening Our Eyes To See The Harvest

Opening Our Eyes To See The Harvest

by | Oct 19, 2015 | Bible Study, Encouragement, Missions

“Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.” John 4:35

Jesus spoke these words to His disciples on the heels of a significant encounter He’d had with a woman from Samaria. He’d met her at a well while the disciples were off buying food. When they returned they were surprised to find Jesus talking with a woman, not to mention a Samaritan one with whom the Jews had few encounters. While the disciples had been busy running errands, Jesus had revealed Himself to this woman as the Messiah who had come to redeem both Jews and Gentiles alike. This included her, a promiscuous woman who’d all her life tried to slake her thirst at the wells of husbands and boyfriends and live-ins. She’d finally been found by the One who could satisfy the longings of her heart and who wouldn’t leave her thirsty, or leave her at all. So she dropped her water jar and bolted back to town to tell everyone she knew that the long awaited One, who miraculously knew every detail of her life, had come to town.

The Harvest Is All Around Us

The disciples missed all this, not because they were out doing anything deviant, but because they didn’t know what they were supposed to be looking for. Privately they were wondering why in the world Jesus was talking to a Samaritan woman, and publicly they were concerned He’d skipped lunch. But in a sense Jesus was eating because He explained that His food is to do the work of His Father. What was that work? At the moment it was tending to a woman who was desperately unfulfilled at the end of a long chain of men. The disciples were standing in the midst of a harvest, whose stalks were brushing up against their shoulders, yet they couldn’t discern it. I’m afraid this is me more often than I realize.

The Harvest is Now

Jesus’s choice of a harvest imagery is interesting here because all of us go in and out of sowing and reaping seasons, each demanding a different outlook. When you’re sowing, you’re working and waiting; when you’re reaping, you’re working and gathering what you’ve been waiting for. There’s an urgency to harvest time. The season is swift and you don’t want to miss it. I think the disciples might have mistakenly thought they were in a sowing season, waiting for Jesus to take over, perhaps, as a political or socio-economic powerhouse. In John 4:35 He turned this notion on its head. He was showing the disciples that what He’d really come to do was set captives free, mend broken hearts, wash the stains of sin clean by laying down His life. And the time was now.

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Open Your Eyes

Every time my sister Katie visits me in Nashville she spots a celebrity. Every. Single. Time. On her last visit she sent me this text me from a boutique. “Just saw Sheryl Crow, and I haven’t even turned my famous eyes on yet.” When Jesus told His disciples, open your eyes, I think He was saying, turn on your spiritual eyes. Turn on your hurting-people eyes. Be looking in the right places: The Harvest Field. This is simply the people we encounter in our neighborhoods and workplaces, elementary schools and coffee shops, family gatherings and mission trips. People who need an encounter with the same Jesus who changed this woman’s life while she was going about her daily business.

The time is still now. The harvest is ripe and hearts are ready.

We need only turn our harvest eyes on.

 

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Morning Meditation: Encourage While It’s Called Today

Morning Meditation: Encourage While It’s Called Today

by | Oct 12, 2015 | Bible Study, Encouragement

“But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today,’ so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.” Hebrews 3:13

Yesterday I was rushing to get out of the house for an afternoon walk with a friend; I am a professional rusher of a human. (Is it a concern that I frantically walk to get to my walking?) I find that God is also quite adept at slowing me down. As sure as we turned the corner, sweet Miss Corrine, eighty-two years young—and I do mean she’s youthful—pulled into her driveway, rolled down her window and fingered us over. This was not going to be fast.

She had just lost a friend who she’d known since she was six years old—the history on my street is thick. We listened to Miss Corrine empty her weariness as the primary caretaker for the family these past three months. She was plain exhausted, not having slept from watching the horrors of death and being present for the family. After several minutes of conversing with this gem of a woman and neighbor, we told her we’d check on her later this week and sprung across the street. Because we were walking, you know.

And then the reprimand. The place of our failure. The question:

“Now aren’t you two even going to give me a hug?” She said this from the other side of the street with her palms open.

We’re pathetic, I thought. We’re the worst, my friend mumbled. We trotted back across the street and Miss Corrine stuck her wise old head straight against my friend’s chest, her white hair lace wigs all wrapped up in my friend’s arms. I prayed over her, and then she reminded us of Romans 12:1 about offering our lives as living sacrifices, which is what she’d been doing. It was a sweetness we almost missed: Exchanging words of encouragement while it was still called “Today”.

Encourage Daily and Today

When the author of Hebrews says to encourage daily while it’s still Today, he’s talking about two different things. The daily piece means exactly what we might think: every day we need to speak words that lift the people around us, point out their strengths, pass out the cold water of cheer and comfort that keeps them running toward Christ. We need to do this daily, sometime while we’re in between sunrises. I want to be more this way, to offer the hug and prayer before someone has to chide it out of me.

But what about the “Today” part?

We’re to encourage because we won’t live in “Today” forever, and that doesn’t only mean in the 24 hours we’re currently breathing in. Today is this era of grace in which we’re living where people still have the opportunity to call on the Name of the Lord. We’re alive in a period of history when we can repent of our sin and receive the forgiveness and grace that is found in Jesus. This is on offer now, Today. So we encourage others with a peaceful sense of urgency—while we still can—pointing one another to the heart of Jesus.

Encourage For Soft Hearts

The author of Hebrews gives us an interesting reason for our dispensing encouragement often: so sin’s deceitfulness doesn’t harden our hearts. In some ways I find it surprising that out of all the combatants for sin’s deceitfulness, encouragement is the big remedy. Yet I also find it experientially true. When I reflect on the times in my life when the pleasures of sin felt so perfectly right and fulfilling, it was that good word from a friend or mentor or parent who said, remember God’s good promises, remember who He’s created you to be, remember He rewards obedience, remember God’s ways are always the best ways… I suppose in many respects it has been this encouragement that has kept my heart from callousing, since the encouragement is what often catapulted me to obedience, in turn protecting me from sin having its hardening way. [clickToTweet tweet=”Encouraging each other is more powerful than we often understand it to be. ” quote=”Encouraging each other is more powerful than we often understand it to be. “]

As we were leaving for our walk, Miss Corinne gave us a charge: “Don’t you ever forget us old people. We have a lot of wisdom, you know. And when you pass us by, don’t forget to smile or wave or talk to us. Let us know you see us.”

Indeed, we will, Miss Corrine. While it is still called “Today”.

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Morning Meditation: Three Truths Jesus Taught About Bearing Fruit

Morning Meditation: Three Truths Jesus Taught About Bearing Fruit

by | Oct 5, 2015 | Encouragement, Morning Meditation

“Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:4-5

I grew up in a pastor’s home. This meant many things, not the least of which was a certain familiarity with spiritual vocabulary. For instance, the use of the phrase “fruit bearing” was a normal part of language for me. I remember giving my high school basketball coach a card at the end of our season thanking her for a very fruitful year. This was so weird. What high school junior calls a basketball season fruitful? Well, me. Totally me. Because bearing fruit is a concept I was raised on, and this carried over into my basketball seasons, apparently. The word fruitful might not have gotten any more mainstream since my high school days, but it’s a word I pray will define my life.

When Jesus talks about bearing fruit, I believe He’s talking about the impact our lives are meant to have. 

This past weekend I was in Michigan speaking at a retreat when I happened upon this apple tree. (Please appreciate my climbing skills). One side of the tree’s branches draped over a lake, bombing gorgeous apples into the water. The ones dangling over land and within reach had vanished to other visitors. In my zeal to not leave the state of Michigan without picking one fresh apple I deftly shimmied up a branch. (This was actually not at all how this went, but just imagine me light and agile.) This prompted a reflection on John 15, and three things I learned about bearing fruit.

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1. Remain in the Vine

One of the things that strikes me about a fruit tree is its ability to stand so quiet, without strain or mayhem, while getting things done. I mean, how does a branch produce fruit without the swirl? Do you know what I mean by the swirl? It’s the striving and chaos and energy I often leave in my wake when trying to make things happen, sometimes even for God. In this passage Jesus presents us with an entirely different way.

The word “remain” (abide or dwell) in the Greek means: “not to depart; to continue, to be present; to be held, kept, continually; to continue to be, not to perish, to last, endure” (Vines). The idea is that this is a very restful place to be. If we as the branches remain in Him as the Vine, we draw energy and marrow to produce the fruit He longs to bring about in our lives. It’s all about our attachment and connectedness to Him. This doesn’t mean our lives will be void of activity or the expending of energy, simply that we’re able to draw everything we need to bring forth meaningful fruit that will last. As restfully as a tree beside still waters, because have you ever seen an apple tree freaking out?

2. Embrace The Pruning

Earlier in the chapter Jesus points out that God the Father is the One who prunes our lives so we will be even more fruitful (vs 2). The problem for me, historically, has been quite simple: I don’t always enjoy the pruning process, turns out. Maybe you’re in one of those places where God is refining your character by cutting out a massive tumor of greed or pride. The disease of bitterness is being scraped back. Perhaps that particular false god you were really quite attached to just got lopped off, plummeting to the ground in a most unpleasant way. As I’ve learned a bit about gardening over the years, pruning spares the nourishment of the vine for the branches that are most viable. If God is paring back an area that is presently painful, it is only for the bearing of more fruit—A life of greater impact for His glory (vs 8). So let God do His work and have His way in your life. Don’t resist the hard good He is doing.

3. Expect A Harvest

When Jesus says that if we remain in Him we will bear fruit, this is a promise. Part of the beauty of a fruit tree is that its prolific bounty is an annual and rather predictable offering. No one on the camp grounds seemed all that taken with the fact that this tree had fruit hanging from its branches. In October, the Michigan apple is to be expected. You can count on it. Essential pieces of our existence—like apple cider, apple pie and cider donuts—depend on this reliable reality. How much more can we rely on the spiritual premise that remaining in Jesus means bearing fruit that will last?  In other words, as we abide in Christ we can confidently expect the fruit He will bring about.

May we abide in Him so our activity is peaceful and not full of strife. When the Gardener sharpens his shears, may we let Him have His loving way with us. And as we dwell in the Vine, let us expect the certainty of bearing fruit. Fruit that will last.

Fruit more sure than the autumn apple.

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The Power To Believe You Are Loved

The Power To Believe You Are Loved

by | Sep 28, 2015 | Encouragement, Missions, Morning Meditation

Morning Meditation, September 28, 2015

“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge…” Ephesians 3:18-19

This passage of Scripture is not new to me, and perhaps not to you either. It’s one of the “hit” verses of the bible—to know how wide, long, high and deep is the love of Christ. Who doesn’t want to know this kind of love? And yet we often find God’s love for us incredibly difficult to grasp. We just know ourselves too well. We go to bed swatting away critical thoughts, fear consumes us, we’ve given in to our wayward lusts, or maybe it’s the shame of something from our past that seems to be the metal shield off of which God’s love for us will forever ricochet. It’s just so hard to believe sometimes that He really loves us. And even if we believe it in our heads—like we believe our mothers think we’re pretty, because they sort of have to—we don’t know how to coax it into our souls.

Given this common struggle I was intrigued when I noticed a word in this passage I’d never seen before. It’s the word power—as in, the power to grasp the love of Jesus. The Greek word is exischyō and is used only one time in the New Testament. Once. Right here. And it means, “to be eminently able, to have full strength, entirely competent.” In other words Paul is praying that we would have the power, the ability, the strength to grasp God’s overwhelming love because he knew it wouldn’t always come easy.

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Photo courtesy of www.juleeduwe.com photography

 

Paul prayed for the strength to grasp God’s love

Paul prayed that the church at Colossae would be able to grasp God’s love. This tells me that God’s love is so beyond us that we will need His help to receive it on meaningful levels, to truly understand it and believe it in our bones. This inspires me to pray for those who can’t seem to receive the tender love of our Savior, even if they intellectually believe it. It inspires me to pray for myself, that the Lord would give me the capability to more fully grasp how wide, long, high and deep is the love of God. Though God’s love is a gift He lavishes upon us, being able to comprehend that love requires a certain strength, and Paul reveals that he prays for that strength. I believe we should, too.

God’s love is best understood within the community of believers

Notice Paul writes about being rooted in love together with all the saints. Believers in Jesus who isolate themselves from the body of Christ will have difficulty grasping Christ’s love for them, because part of comprehending His love is experiencing it within the community of Christ. I have a friend who’s been going through a hard season with health issues, her husband lost his job, and she and her new baby were recently in a car accident. She told me how our home church has reached out to her in such overwhelming ways that she’s receiving the wider dimensions of God’s love for her in places she’s had difficulty accepting it before. It’s taken the body of Christ to help her experience God’s love for her more fully.

God’s love surpasses our finite knowledge

I see another insight into why I sometimes have a hard time internalizing God’s love for me, really letting it seep into my being. This passage tells us that God’s love surpasses knowledge. And isn’t it typically our knowledge that stands in the way of us believing in God’s love? It’s the knowledge of the hurt in this world, the loss of a loved one who God could have healed, the guilt we can’t believe can be washed away. It’s all this knowledge of our circumstances that sometimes makes His love hard to grasp. Yet at this precise place, the love of Christ surpasses our limited, finite understanding the way a winning runner flies past the competition. Our knowledge, intellect, reasoning, understanding will never, not ever, be able to beat out His love. His love will always surpass what we know.

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The Amazon River in Manaus

My friend Kari recently returned from a trip to the Amazon. When I asked her what her most profound moment was she explained how the Amazon is simply the most vast thing she’s ever witnessed. “I’ve never seen a more magnificent river than the Amazon”, she said. “Overlooking the river reminded me that the love of God is wider, longer, higher, and deeper still.”

And still He gives us the power to grasp it.  

 

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A Birthday and Three Gifts of God’s Faithfulness

A Birthday and Three Gifts of God’s Faithfulness

by | Sep 21, 2015 | Encouragement, Morning Meditation

Morning Meditation, September 21, 2015

 “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” Lamentations 3:22-23

I turn a year older this week. What is it about birthdays, especially the adulthood ones that make you reflect on God’s faithfulness? Cherish it, actually. Realize you wouldn’t be here without it. Last night I sat on a friend’s porch over dinner with two of my closest, longest-time friends. We were working on putting the final pieces together for Justice and Mercy International’s Benefit Gala (an organization I partner with in the Amazon), and it suddenly hit me—that we’re the adults in the room. We plan stuff. People occasionally want our opinion. I don’t know exactly how or when I got old enough for this to happen.

The marker of another year causes me to look back on the path from whence I’ve come, aware that all my choices for obedience don’t add up to having gotten me to where God has brought me. In other words, grace fueled any obedience I can claim and made up for everything else. All of us have glimpsed around the room of our lives—be it a job we never dreamed would be ours, a child so unique we couldn’t have imagined him or her up, the ministry calling so beyond us—and realized we just couldn’t haven woven all this together, not to mention redeeming the bad stuff for good. When it comes down to it, there’s really just one word to describe God’s hand on our lives: Faithfulness.

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The prophet Jeremiah points to three facets of God’s faithfulness:

We Are Not Consumed

We have not been snuffed out by our guilt and shame and selfishness. I admit the idea of, awesome, I haven’t been consumed today is not the first grace I think of when I consider God’s love. Still, Jeremiah’s words are both sobering and relieving. My sin could have taken me out a few different times—or as my friend likes to say in Old Testament terms, I could have gotten smote. So just the reality that I am writing these words, and you dear sister are reading them, says we do this because we have not been consumed. Because we are alive. Because of His great love for us.

His Compassions Never Fail

There’s just no telling who or where I’d be right now, or what my community would look like, if the Lord’s compassions were to have failed me at any point. They would have had only fail for a moment, at the wrong time, for things to look so very different. You may feel the same. I think in my younger years I presumed upon the Lord’s compassions, as if they were there for me like oxygen—paradoxically too plentiful to be seen as a treasure. But now I realize God’s never failing compassions are why I have anything at all. As I become more aware of the fragility of life, I am keener to the reality of His mercies. The fact that Almighty God bows His head toward us with compassions is deeply meaningful, but the fact that these compassions never fail is what keeps us alive.

His Mercies Are New Every Morning

It’s the daily dose of His morning mercies piled up from thousands of daily servings that have, one by one, carried me to today. Carried us all here. If the Lord had dolled out His mercies in one lump sum I may have used them all up, clean gone. If there were a limit to His tenderness, I may have outrun it. But every morning brings a fresh batch out of the oven. They are new. They are here today. They will rise on the wings of the dawn tomorrow.

So this week I will turn another year older. I’m looking forward to being with family and friends and perhaps strawberry cake. And I will breathe deeply these surroundings because I have not been consumed, because God’s compassions are present and they do not fail, and because His mercies will be new that morning, and every morning for as many days as God gives me.

Great is His faithfulness.

 

 

 

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