Category: Devotionally Speaking

“The sum of Your word is truth, and every one of your righteous ordinances is everlasting.” ~ Psalm 119:160

I’m an advocate for words. I will admit (and my husband will confirm) that I can sometimes get a little obsessive about it. Words and how they are used matter to me. They represent thoughts, emotions, and promises. I’m the woman who will spend more than an hour in the greeting card aisle because the words printed on the card that I choose must represent my true feelings. I flat out refuse to buy an e-reader of any kind as I prefer the tangibility of a book in my hands, where I can see and touch the author’s words on paper that I can smell. I can’t even bring myself to use abbreviations in text messages, I feel compelled to spell it all out and give each word the respect that it deserves.

I think I tend to approach words with reverence because they are the avenue to communicating truth. Recently I was involved in a conversation where one person said to another, “You are not a man of your word.” What a biting statement it was. For a few weeks now I’ve been thinking about that statement and what it would have felt like to have those words aimed at me. And then I realized that whether or not those words are ever spoken to me directly, I know that they are sometimes true in my own life. I have not always been a person of my word. I often use words out loud to disguise what is happening in my heart – to defend and deflect. I fall short of being consistent with truth in my words more often that I’d like to admit.

This is why I need a savior. Specifically I need God to be my Savior. His words are true because His Word is truth, and it is the same yesterday, today, and forever. I don’t ever have to wonder if He is being real with me or what His motives are. I am learning that if I want to be a person of my word I need to be a person in His Word. The more that I seek His faithful, unchanging presence the more pure my own motives become. God’s words matter most of all and I pray that I always have the ears to hear them.

“…So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them; Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.” ~ Genesis 1:27, 31

It started with the fall. Growing up, most conversations that I remember about God and my relationship to Him began with how great He was and I was not. I vividly recall the tension in my back, sitting in Sunday service, waiting for the pastor to pound his fist and proclaim what was wrong with the rest of us. We were sinners – unworthy and destined to dwell in our unworthiness. My story began with my fall, I was defined by my deficit. I believed I was filthy. Unlovable. And somewhere way above the clouds, far removed from me, was a disappointed, finger-wagging Father who breathed a heavy sigh every time He looked my way.

It’s not that I wasn’t aware of Christ’s love. We read the words and sang the songs. I memorized the 23rd Psalm like everyone else. But in my mind His love for me was parental and disciplinary, almost obligatory. Someone had to be there to keep my hand out of the spiritual cookie jar. God protected me from myself because He had to.

My breakthrough moment came last year during the first week of our Rooted group study.  I was nervous walking in, unsure that I was ready to tell the story of my broken self to strangers. But this time instead of starting with the fall we began at the true beginning – creation.  I discovered that my story does not begin with my failure, it originates from God’s love and intention to create me in His image. My story starts with His desire to have a relationship with me. I’m not the pesky kid that God HAS to wrangle, I’m the precious child He LONGS to hold. Yes I have fallen, I fail Him daily, but I am not defined by my failures. I am truly known.

How much more effective would we be in sharing God’s love if we all stood in the confidence that our stories begin there?  I am challenged to keep this perspective in my daily interactions. It’s easy to focus on where others have failed us.  Instead I choose to approach others mindful that the beginnings of their stories are the same as my own.

“…and provide for those who grieve in Zion – to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of despair.” ~ Isaiah 61:3

My middle name is Joy. As a child I remember asking my mom how she decided on my name and telling her in my smart-alecky ten-year-old tone of voice, “You must have known that I would be a happy child.”

It’s interesting to think about those words that I spoke to my mother, especially now that I am a mother too. She didn’t “know” that I would be happy.  None of us “knows” what lies in store for our lives or the lives of our children. I also realize that I misspoke when I used the words “joy” and “happy” so interchangeably.  They are not the same. Happiness is a feeling, vulnerable to situations and circumstances. Joy, on the other hand, is a state of the soul, a purposed gift from God.

On the day that I was rushed to the hospital in pre-term labor and learned that my baby would not survive, I was certainly not happy. When I held my daughter’s tiny body on my chest and realized that we would not be taking her home, none of the emotions that I felt was anything close to happiness. And yet amidst the chaos, confusion, and heartbreak of that day, Elena’s life brought me joy. As I was being wheeled back from the recovery room and heard her name being spoken I knew that her life and her purpose were real and had been gifted to me by our Creator. While everything around me that day looked and felt like ashes, what followed in the months and years ahead revealed the oil of joy. At times it had seemed impossible to find but it was there.

That is the power and the grace of my God. He allows for us in our humanity to wonder and fear, to feel the anger, to cry the tears, to wish things were different, and through it all He weaves the thread of joy into a garment of praise. Those are the times we come to know Him in a deeper way and we learn to surrender more fully.

“…to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” ~ Ephesians 3:18-19

I’ve been feeling overwhelmed.  Like most others have felt at one time or another (or more often than that), I’ve been consistently feeling stretched in every direction, doing too many things to be doing any of them well.  I don’t like that feeling.  Just as I was going into the weekend when I had planned to “catch up on everything,” I got sick.  I woke up knowing that I wasn’t going to be able to muster the strength to do much more than sleep. That’s when the questions began to swirl and the anxiety set in.  Who will teach my class?  How will I meet the tax deadline for my clients?  Who is going to do all of the things?

That day turned out much as I expected.  I slept a lot and did little else but feel like I was falling further and further behind.  The next morning I woke up with the words of the Lord in my head. I know they were His words because they were so opposite to my natural way of thinking and there was a peace within me as I heard the words over and over.  “I can do nothing without You. I have nothing without You. I am nothing without You.”  Those words repeated as I lay in bed and I closed my eyes in an effort to hang onto them. I wanted to stop time and stay in that moment of peace, fully aware that nothing I do, nothing I have, nothing I am is mine without my Heavenly Father.

I am notoriously bad at surrendering to Him, but in that moment I was overwhelmed in a whole different way.  Not with obligations and worry, but instead with love and the knowledge that my Jesus lived and died and lives eternally to set me free of the earthly bonds that I typically surrender to.  He wants that peace for me even more than I want it for myself.  That’s the overwhelming love of Christ.

“But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved.” ~Ephesians 2:4-5

I thought it was dead. When our very kind next door neighbor first brought over this beautiful orchid plant to welcome us to the neighborhood it was bursting with color and height.  I wanted to be diligent in caring for it so I sought out a couple of tips that seemed simple enough for even the most gardening-challenged. The orchid bloomed for weeks and then stopped.

Soon the leaves looked tired and weak. In my mind the plant was dead so I began to treat it that way.  I stopped caring for it figuring it was a waste of my time.  It certainly wasn’t the first time I’d killed a plant so there was no surprise there. The day came that I tired of looking at this sad little pot of dead leaves so I picked it up and headed for the backyard to throw it away. On the way I passed through the kitchen and looked up at the little window spot above the sink. The sun was shining beautifully and that little ledge looked bare. I placed the orchid plant there thinking to myself that it couldn’t get any more dead than it was so it was worth a shot.  A couple of weeks later I was taken aback to see life where I least expected to.  One tiny new leaf was making its way, breaking through the space where all the death had previously been.

And this is grace.  When all we can see is death in our lives and our relationships, when it feels like we have given all that we have with no growth to show for it, Jesus sees life. Because Jesus IS life.  He raises the dead, not just in our favorite Bible stories, but in our daily lives as well.  Nothing is ever beyond His reach, especially the hearts of His beloved children.  He will never treat us as if we are dead, His time is never wasted on us.  Instead He bled and died and returned to life purposefully to be our source and strength.