Barbara Rainey's Blog, page 22

Pestering God

Too often I’m in a hurry and end up using my driving time to talk to God.  Conversing with my Heavenly Father throughout the day, in or out of the car, is always good.  But my fast-paced life often leaves too little time to talk face to face.  It’s like my relationship with some of my friends. If we’re too busy we resort to texts and emails, not even phone calls, and I miss the joy and delight of their presence.  Reminds me of the post another friend, Janel, wrote called “I Wish I Could Face Time God.”

But one morning I finally made time. As I pulled my small stack of prayer cards out of the drawer I wondered if my repeated requests feel like pestering to God. I had a son who was a pest.  He knew just how to get to his brother to irritate him.

I don’t want to be a pest to God. But then I remembered He who is slow to anger is likely not easily irritated by one of His own who is praying sincerely yet imperfectly.

Which reminded me of the parable Jesus told His disciples in Luke 18 to show “that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.” I have lost heart many times, giving up on the prayer list concept for my inability to be consistent (too many interruptions by kids and life) and for my perception that God didn’t answer quickly enough. I don’t do failure well and this felt like failure to me. In the heart of my mommy years I began praying organically, spontaneously, before the term became vogue. Now that I’m an empty nester I have returned, when I can, to a more thorough bringing of multiple requests for many people before the throne.

Jesus went on, in Luke 18:1-8, to tell about a woman who “kept coming” to a judge and eventually won her case because she bothered him with her “continual coming.” In another similar parable (Luke 11:5-13) Jesus told about a man who came to his friend at midnight to borrow some bread. The friend refused because of the late hour but eventually granted the request because of his persistence.

God our Father is not bothered in the least by our persistent coming. I’m relieved because I remember the years when I bothered Him repeatedly, day after day and night after night, for my delightful, beautiful daughter who desired to be married. She was more at peace with what God had allowed than I was, which was good. So like the widow and the friend, I continued to come persistently with that request for her until God answered it. Jesus made it clear that my persistence is not pestering but in some incomprehensible way is actually pleasing to Him.

 

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Isn’t Christianity Against Diversity?

Note from Barbara: One of the best things about summer is the more relaxed schedule that allows for more of my favorite activity: reading great books!  And I love sharing titles with my friends, so this summer you will find lots of guest posts coming your way by authors of books I eagerly recommend reading for both enjoyment and growth.

Without the structure of school schedules, summer is also a good time for longer parent-child conversations at bedtime, around a campfire, on a long hike, or in the car driving to or from vacation or a visit to grandparents. Dennis and I have always believed one of our jobs as parents is to be intentional. Moms and dads must have goals, be on the offensive, and be prepared to deposit truth in the hearts of their children at every opportunity God gives. 

If you have teens or pre-teens, Rebecca McLaughlin’s book, 10 Questions Every Teen Should Ask (and Answer) About Christianity, will give you a map for conversations this summer. It discusses the biblical thinking every teenager must have to survive in an increasingly anti-Christian culture. Prepare yourself as a parent and then transfer that knowledge to your almost-adult children. The following excerpt comes from chapter two of Rebecca’s book; the other nine questions are listed at the end of this post. 

Thank you Rebecca for sharing these ideas with us and to Crossway for partnering with us to help us all become more like Jesus.

 

One of my favorite parts of the Bible is the beginning of John’s Gospel. It goes like this: 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:1–5) 

As the story goes on, we discover that this “Word” is Jesus. If what John says is true, it means that Jesus invented diversity. He made people from Europe and Africa and Asia and South America. He made you and he made me. He made black Americans and white Americans and Native Americans and Asian Americans. He made people whose parents have similar racial heritage (like me), and people whose parents have different racial heritage—like my beautiful friend Catherine, whose mother came from Ghana and whose father came from Korea. 

Jesus himself was a brown-skinned, Middle Eastern, Jewish man. But he delights to make people with all different kinds of skin color and eye color and hair type and body type. Jesus loves to be creative, so he makes people beautifully different. It’s helpful for all of us to remember this when we feel bad about how we look. 

When I first met my mother-in-law, she showed me photos of my husband when he was a baby. Between you and me, he looked pretty terrible. He had about fifteen chins and lots of funny features. But when I laughed at how he looked, his mother was not happy with me. That was her baby I was laughing at, and in her eyes, he was extremely cute! 

When God looks at you—however imperfect you might think you are or however different from others you feel—he sees his beautiful child, and he delights in you. What’s more, despite our physical differences, the very first book of the Bible tells us an amazing thing: God made all humans in his image and after his likeness (Genesis 1:26–27). 

What does this mean? 

We’re all made in God’s image 

As I write this, my son is one year old. People often tell me he looks just like my husband—except that he’s a baby with fat, smooth cheeks, and my husband is a grown man with a scruffy beard! The idea of a child looking like a parent is part of what the Bible means by us being made in God’s image. 

But there are two reasons we know this is not about how we look physically. First, until God became man in the person of Jesus, God did not have a physical body that we could look like! Second, because God made so many different people all equally in his image, we can’t say that God looks like one kind of person. My son might be the baby-faced image of his dad. But every human infant in the world—whatever his or her racial heritage—is made in the image of God. 

We learn more about what being in God’s image means when Jesus says that anyone who has seen him has seen the Father (John 14:9) and when Paul calls Jesus the “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). We know almost nothing about what Jesus looked like physically. We can guess from where Jesus came from and the culture he lived in that he had brown skin and a beard. (People have often painted pictures of Jesus with pale skin, like mine, but that’s not accurate.) 

We also have a little hint from a prophecy in the book of Isaiah that Jesus wasn’t especially good-looking (Isaiah 53:2). But while we don’t know much about Jesus’s body, we know a lot about his character: how he lived, how he thought, and what he said and did. All these things give us glimpses of what God is like and how we too might image him. 

None of us image God perfectly—as Jesus did—because he is holy and we are all messed up with sin. But we are all made in God’s image. It doesn’t matter how young or old we are, if we do really well in school or if we have a learning disability, if we are able bodied or unable to walk or talk or see, if we’re male or female, if we’re black or white or Asian or Hispanic or Native American or a beautiful mix of different racial backgrounds. We’re all made in God’s image. 

So Jesus invented diversity, by creating people with all sorts of different bodies and minds, but he also invented equality, because we are all equally made in God’s image. When people look down on others because of their racial background or body type or mental ability, they’re going against God’s plan and they’re not listening to what the Bible says. 

 

Here are all the chapter titles from Rebecca’s book:

How Can I Live My Best Life Now?
Isn’t Christianity against Diversity?
Can Jesus Be True for You but Not for Me?Can’t We Just Be Good without God?How Can You Believe the Bible Is True?
Hasn’t Science Disproved Christianity?
Why Can’t We Just Agree That Love Is Love?
Who Cares If You’re a Boy or a Girl?
Does God Care When We Hurt?
How Can You Believe in Heaven and Hell?

This blog post was taken from 10 Questions Every Teen Should Ask (and Answer) about Christianity by Rebecca McLaughlin, ©2021. Used by permission of Crossway .

Rebecca McLaughlin holds a PhD in renaissance literature from Cambridge University and a theology degree from Oak Hill College in London. She is the cofounder of Vocable Communications and the author of Confronting Christianity, named Christianity Today‘s 2020 Beautiful Orthodoxy Book of the Year.

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How Does the Holy Spirit Help Me in My Everyday Life?

What should I make for dinner?

I don’t know if I can solve another conflict between my kids. It’s so endless … How I wish I could stop their sibling rivalry for good! It’s so frustrating …

Oh shoot … I forgot to throw the sheets in the dryer before I left to go to my workout. Oh well … I’ve got to remember to respond to that email and post on my Instagram feed when I get home, too …

Should I thaw chicken again for dinner?

Sound familiar? Internal dialogue crowds my mind most days as a woman, wife, and mother. I’m much more likely to think about these practical survival needs than I am to think about the Holy Spirit. He’s not going to tell me what to fix for dinner.

Or might He help me with seemingly mundane requests if I just ask?

The Holy Spirit is our Helper

When Jesus introduced the Spirit to His disciples He used the name “Helper.” Just as we have a name most people know us by, so the Holy Spirit is most often called Helper. In Greek, the word is paraclete, which means comforter, advocate, or counselor. It’s a name with layers of meaning.

On the night of the Last Supper, Jesus was with His disciples, His dearest friends on earth. In the familiar comfort of shared camaraderie, they gathered to enjoy the Passover meal. Bound together by this Jewish tradition and by their loyalty to their Master, they listened once again as He taught them. Though the 12 were unaware, Jesus knew these would be His last moments alone with them, so His final instructions were intensely focused.

Tenderly woven throughout those hours, from Judas’s departure to Jesus’ entrance into the Garden of Gethsemane, are beautiful words of comfort and hope, of deep love and concern for His soon-to-be-devastated friends. He knew paralyzing fear and bewilderment would be theirs by morning. By Passover’s dusk deep grief and lost hope would banish sleep as their minds replayed the nightmare of the Crucifixion.

Jesus knew we, too, would face days or seasons of fear, great loss, and confusion when we have no idea what our next step should be. His eternal words of comfort are for you and me, His disciples today.

He said to them just as He says to us, You will be okay because I will send you the Helper: “Let not your heart be troubled, believe in God; believe also in me” … … “he dwells with you and will be in you” … “I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you” (John 14:1, 17-18).

Jesus wanted His disciples, and us, to hear His heart of love: I will not abandon you. I will not leave you alone and without help. Like the many times I reassured my little ones, “Mommy will be back. I promise. I will not abandon you.” So Jesus does the same with us. The Helper will be with you forever.

The Helper has history

These were not new concepts for the men and women who followed Jesus. Even nominal Jews, Gentiles, and other nationalities knew the stories of Israel’s famous King David, who was helped by God. David, the author of most of the Psalms, cried out to God, “O Lord, be my helper!” (Psalm 30:10). He also reminded himself and his people, “God is my helper; The Lord is the upholder of my life” (Psalm 54:4) and, “The Lord is on my side as my helper” (Psalm 118:7).

Sprinkled from Genesis to Revelation are a plethora of verses describing the help of the Lord for His people. Here in this graphic is a list of some of the ways God helps us, His people.

Why don’t we go to Him more quickly?

The God who made us, who watched the sad fall of Adam and Eve, knows we need lots of help. The problem is we usually don’t go to Him unless we are desperate.

Why? Because we have too many ways we think we can help ourselves first.

When I was parenting full time, I eagerly read all the best books on discipline, birth order, how to raise boys, how to raise girls, growing creative kids, and more. When all this advice didn’t work as promised, I often asked friends, or my husband, who didn’t have answers either.

Looking back, my reasons for not asking the Spirit for advice were:

My impatience … I wanted answers now. My fear … I was afraid He wouldn’t reply at all, and I didn’t want the disappointment.My misunderstanding … I secretly believed He was too busy with more important crises in the world than to help me with my kids.My pride … I should be able to handle this, I reasoned.

My God was too small and my pride was too big.

Does that describe you too? Do you go online to look for help in parenting or marriage, or read a book, before asking the Holy Spirit for help?

Moms are especially guilty of the shoulds. We think, I should be able to figure this out … I should be able to handle my kids … I should be in a better place in my marriage by now … This shouldn’t freak me out! Believing we should be able is nothing but pride. It’s merely an attitude that says, “I don’t need God’s help for this. I’m depending on self. I can figure it out.”

But we can’t figure it out. We do need His help!

There is nothing wrong with seeking help from books, online content, or even godly mentors. But the Helper wants us to go to Him first. Ask Him for wisdom, ideas, and guidance to the right information.

Thankfully, God does for all of His children what He did with me. He patiently waits for us to realize our need. He knows that we will eventually see that we can’t rescue ourselves, can’t manage it all, can’t be the perfect mom, wife, or friend.

Recognizing I can’t is what the Spirit, our Helper, longs to hear.

Man’s help is more a one-size-fits-all, but God relates to us and helps us as individuals, each unique in His sight. God is intensely personal with us. He gives me what I need, which is different than what you may need.

In our culture, we often believe we are more advanced and much smarter than previous generations. The truth is our hearts and our self-will … the flesh … remain equally depraved and utterly unchanged.

We are still like the children of Israel who ran to other countries for help when threatened by an enemy instead of going to God, their maker and defender. As the prophet Isaiah lamented, “Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in chariots … but do not look to the Holy One of Israel or consult the Lord!” (Isaiah 31:1).

Jesus said it this way: “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all” (John 6:63). So why would we rely on ourselves or anyone else over the Holy Spirit, who has the answers and help for this life?

What do you need help with?

Have you noticed how much of the Old Testament is about battles and wars?  It seems so male focused; it’s not what I deal with as a woman.

But as a mom, many of my days felt like a battle. I had six children whose wills were often against mine.

Oh, how we need the Helper!

But the battle isn’t just with our children.  Your marriage is always in the enemy’s crosshairs. Every marriage Satan can destroy creates a tsunami of destruction with children, in extended families, and in our communities. The father of lies has deceived more than one generation into believing children are resilient and divorce is okay because personal happiness is the highest goal in life.

Oh, how we need the Helper!

Complicating both of these battle zones is the internal conflict we women face every day with enemies common to us all: comparison, jealousy, fear, insecurity, feeling unloved or unappreciated or unseen, anger or frustration, feeling inadequate or irrelevant. Add the name of your own place of defeat that drains your life away.

Oh, how we need the Helper.

Our emotions and thinking can be fed by the whispered lies of our enemy. Or our minds and hearts can be fed by our Helper who uses God’s Word to strengthen us, to shield us from enemy fire, to provide solutions to our many needs, to heal us, to remind us of His great love and His ever near presence. He will be your victory!

Psalm 103:14 tells us, “For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust.” Because of His great love, He is eager to be our help, every day in countless situations and circumstances if we will ask.

Invite Him into the mundane moments of your days. Talk to Him about everything, even what to cook for dinner, thanking Him for His every provision. As Philippians 4:6 says, “do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

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Friends & Family Fridays #7

Dear ones,

It always makes me happy to write to you at the end of each month! Hope you look forward to receiving these “just between us” letters.

This month’s letter includes a story about what God is teaching me, a few photos from July, a fun announcement to share, and a question for you to respond to.

The last four or more years of our lives have been extra challenging. Dennis and I have experienced several difficult relationships in our extended family … we’ve worked through a to-be-expected loss of identity as we retired from FamilyLife leadership … I’ve continued to experience health and sleep difficulties … my mom died … and we are still in a new season of struggle that began last spring. All of these trials, as James the brother of Jesus calls them, have collectively created stress in our marriage too. And that has surprised us, though it shouldn’t have.

Through all of this, what has become clear to me is the unmistakable divisiveness of the enemy of my soul.

I’m reading again, after 20 years, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. One scene midway into the book takes place in a throne room, grand and once glorious but now shrouded in darkness and the dust of time. King Theoden, slumped and bent on his throne, speaks little and bitterly as one ravaged by time. Seated below and in front of him on the dais is his advisor and spokesman. Wormtongue is his name.

As I read this name my attention was instantly heightened. C.S. Lewis wrote in his book, The Screwtape Letters, about an apprentice demon named Wormwood. Could there be a connection?

Wormtongue spoke with all proper respect, even with words that rang true, but there was something sly and suspect lying beneath his replies and advice to the king. Two pages later I underlined Tolkien’s words: “After that Wormtongue played dangerously, always seeking to delay you, to prevent your full strength being gathered. He was crafty, dulling men’s wariness or working on their fears as served the occasion.” Over time his advice had turned King Theoden into a feeble and helpless man.

I recognized Wormtongue’s tactics. I knew my enemy was dulling my wariness and working on my fears, too, in our season of aging and difficulty. Tolkien’s words also sounded much like the advice given in The Screwtape Letters to Wormwood by his teacher when he said:

“When two humans have lived together for many years it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unendurably irritating to the other. Work on that. Bring fully into the consciousness of your patient that particular lift of his mother’s eyebrows which he learned to dislike in the nursery, and let him think how much he dislikes it. And, of course, never let him suspect that he has tones and looks which similarly annoy her. As he cannot see or hear himself, this is easily managed.”

We expected our trials of the last few years and we weren’t totally surprised.

Initially.

What has been surprising is the seemingly unending duration and the snippiness that has slipped into our marriage very unexpectedly.

Wormtongue was a man who had surrendered to a powerful evil one who was wreaking havoc in his quest to rule all. Wormwood was a young demon learning to entice humans to surrender to the evil one, Satan. Both represent the two realms of spiritual battle—one in the heavenly places between angels and demons and the other on earth between Satan and God as each works to recruit followers.

It has never been clearer to me that there are only two choices in life. In every decision, in every relationship, in every difficulty, in every season of life, the question is always: Who will I follow? Who will I listen to and obey? Will we choose the evil way or the good and righteous way?

In the spirit of these books by such creative imaginative writers, I’ve decided that in the name of Jesus and for His glory I will resist the attacks of the enemy and refuse to focus on the little things that so easily distract from following Christ alone! If I were a character in the book I’d create a banner to wave or a flag to display that declared my allegiance to Jesus alone. Instead, I’ve had our neighbor build me a cross out of two old 4x4s which we plan to stand in the middle of a flower bed, defiantly declaring where our loyalty lies. Here is my cross ready for a weekend to plant it in its new home.

I believe today we need reminders of who our enemy is and what his favorite tactics are. Another book I’ve read this summer is on this topic by a brilliant theologian, Dwight Pentecost, and the title is, Your Adversary the Devil. Three words associated with this being tell us a lot about his character: deceiver, destroyer, and divider. Jesus called him the father of lies and that he was a murderer from the beginning (John 8:44).

I highly recommend this book to you. And it’s a very easy read too.

Changing subjects, I’m particularly pleased to announce I’ve enrolled in Dallas Theological Seminary and am registered for six hours of classes this fall! During the height of some difficult days in late May and early June I decided one way I could push back against the enemy of my soul was to fill out my application. Waiting for more time in my life, waiting for a less stressful time, waiting for any reason other than a pause given by God was giving the enemy an advantage. In defiance of the strife he was stirring I got busy taking steps toward this goal.

I’m hoping to write snippets of what I’m learning to share with you this fall. I think it will be fun and, I hope, challenging to you to keep learning and growing. And I hope what I learn will encourage your faith as I know it will mine.

Now my question for you is this: What topics would you like me to write on in the blog?

What questions would like answered?

Do you have questions about your faith, about marriage or parenting?

Do you wonder about your teens, relating to adult kids, or do you have questions about in-laws; both the kids your children marry and their parents?

Because we don’t have products to focus on anymore I want to be more consistent in posting and answering Dear Barbara questions. And because we don’t have products for sale we are more than ever dependent on generous donors to keep Ever Thine Home going. It’s truly a new beginning for me and Ever Thine Home in many ways.

The easiest way to reply with your question would be to use the comment button below. I hope to hear how I can help meet your needs in the near future.

My desire is and always has been to encourage, help, and mentor the next generation, and even some of you in my generation, to surrender over and over to Jesus. To follow Him no matter what, and to be as faithful as Habakkuk who wrote, “Yet will I rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation” (Habakkuk 3:18).

Welcome August and the next step toward fall.

With love for all of you,

Ever His,

Barbara

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How Does the Holy Spirit Speak Personally to Me?

Keeping my two grandsons recently, ages 4 and 2 1/2, has reminded me of the perpetual dilemma I faced with my own children: Who started the fight and how can I possibly know the whole truth?

You’ve been there too, haven’t you?

Was it an accident that the younger one hit the older one? Is the older one telling the truth?

I caught the older one in a lie already this week. He’s clearly past the age of three, when all of my six first demonstrated the ability to fabricate lies. I don’t fully trust his story, nor should I. But neither is the younger grandchild all innocence.

Much like my grandsons who knew they’d been caught, once there was a woman who came face to face with Jesus. The woman at the well, described in John 4, wasn’t expecting Him that day. Startled by His physical presence in her women-only space, she became uncomfortable when He spoke to her.

When Jesus began asking questions, this unnamed woman replied with questions of her own to deflect His focus. She asked, “Why?” Then, “How do you know?” Then she delivered a partial truth. Lastly, she changed the subject with flattery before she finally recognized the truth: this man was the Messiah.

Her self-protective strategies remind me of my two preschool grandsons who ask “Why?” a hundred times a day. They don’t ask because they desire truth but because they want their way; they want control. Like the woman at the well, they told me only part of what happened between them. Then the older one finished with a sweet, melt-your-heart voice, “I’ll obey next time, Mimi.”

I recognize this woman’s still-like-a-child nervousness, her telling only partial truth, and her flattery, because it is still in me, too.

Jesus’ presence makes us uneasy because He is perfect and knows all truth. We cannot hide our sin from Him. But hearing the truth from Him does not condemn us. Instead, like this woman, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”

After Jesus declared the gift of the Helper who would soon come to be with and in His disciples, He added more clarity, more understanding, by naming Him the Spirit of truth three times. (See John 14:17, 15:26, 16:13.)

The Helper will also be your teacher, Jesus explained. Just as He Himself was Teacher to His disciples and His many followers who had come to depend on His presence, leading, teaching, direction, and correction. Jesus reassured them He would still lead them, but by “the Spirit of truth.”

Jesus’ disciples and followers had come to know His voice, His heart, and the integrity and purity of His every action. He spoke to them verbally and non-verbally. The Spirit also speaks to us verbally using words primarily from God’s written story, the Bible, but also words of truth about Him.

Here are three ways the Holy Spirit speaks:

1. The Holy Spirit speaks by illumining God’s Word. The Spirit is the One who illumines our minds to see truth. Like turning on a light in a dark room, so the Spirit of truth enlightens our understanding. Without His active work in our minds to “open our eyes” we would not see, which is why unbelievers scoff at any reading of the Bible.

Years ago I made a discovery that was life-hanging, a “light bulb moment” as we used to say, about the illuminating work of the Spirit. While doing a Bible study for a class I was taking, I found this verse in the Old Testament: “Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 5:12-14). I’d heard this commandment, one of the ten, but on this day the Spirit gave me eyes to see.

I was a tired mom with a bunch of little kids. Every Sunday we made it to church … barely clothed, but always smiling as if we had everything perfectly together! Going to church. Check. Learning about a holy God. Check. Got the first part of the verse right. But the part about a day of rest? Not so much for me as wife and mom. After listening to the words of the verse more, I realized our weekly church attendance was more a historical habit than one of obedience to Scripture.

Dennis and I both grew up attending church every week, so neither of us questioned the practice. Now I wanted to know more. I studied all the verses about the Sabbath and learned several things:

It’s healthy to question why we do and what we do in light of God’s Word. When we follow a pattern without understanding why, it can lead to legalism.I heard God’s heart for me as a woman and a mom. I think He planned the Sabbath for women more than men! I mean that! The old saying, “A woman’s work is never done,” is proof that we need a Sabbath day once a week.Most important, I experienced the Holy Spirit’s personal leading of me, His child. I asked Him how we could practice the Sabbath as a family beyond the Sunday morning hour. He gave me several ideas that helped me, as a mom, actually have a day of rest.

I knew this was all from God and not my own imagination because the Holy Spirit gives assurance, a peace, because God is “not a God of confusion but of peace” (1 Corinthians 14:33). He assures us we are doing the right thing or He disturbs us when we are not. His presence affirms the truth within us.

2. The Holy Spirit speaks by teaching all things. I have learned to ask God for all kinds of things that years ago I would have felt were too unimportant to bring to the King of the universe:

When I’ve lost something, I ask the one who knows all things where I’ve left the item. Usually He helps me find it quickly. But not always. I lost a favorite book nearly a year ago and though I’ve asked Him where it is, I haven’t yet found it. He knows its location even though I don’t yet.When I’ve slept terribly at night and have many things to do the next day, I ask Him for strength. Psalm 28:7 says, “The LORD is my strength and my shield; in Him my heart trusts, and I am helped.” I don’t feel instant supernatural physical strength, but He gives me enough to do what is before me. Importantly, His strength isn’t just physical but He also supplies His strength to help me choose what is pleasing to Him on days when I’d rather do what feels best for my tired body. He knows all truth about what my mind and body are experiencing, and I choose to trust Him that He is sufficient.I ask Him to help me focus when I’m distracted because He knows the truth of my heart and my circumstances.When I don’t know what my husband or child is really saying, I ask Him to give me understanding because He knows the truth about their hearts.When someone asks for advice, I try to send a quick prayer for His words to be mine when I reply. He knows what she is really asking.In my work with Ever Thine Home, I am constantly asking the Spirit of God, who was present and involved in Creation, to give me ideas and inspiration, His creative thinking, His new ways of saying eternal truth, His artistic touch on every new product. He knows all truth because He is the Spirit of truth.

3. The Holy Spirit speaks by reminding me of Jesus’ words. In John 14:26, Jesus says that the Spirit of truth will “bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” The disciples had come to believe Jesus was the Messiah, but they didn’t yet understand what was ahead on Good Friday. When someone you love dies, one of your greatest longings is to hear that person’s voice again. Mixed in with grief is the fear that we will forget all that we remember and love.

Jesus knew His disciples would fall into deep grief, become numb in their pain, and begin to forget His words. So He told them in advance that the Helper, the Spirit of truth, would bring to their remembrance all that He taught them.

In order to lose something, you have to possess it first. To remember something, you have to hear and experience it first. The Holy Spirit doesn’t put the words of Jesus into our heads that we have never possessed or heard, though He certainly could. His assignment, as stated by Jesus, is to bring to our remembrance what we have heard, which makes knowing the words of Jesus, the words of the entire Bible, essential.

I once wrote a blog post about hearing God clearly answer a question I asked about aging. His reply to me was simply, “Lay up for yourself treasures in heaven,” from Matthew 6:20. The words weren’t audible, but I heard them as clearly as if they had been. He pulled that phrase and shone His light on it from the memory bank of all I have read.

The Holy Spirit also uses hymns and song lyrics that are theologically accurate to remind me of His truth. Many mornings I wake up hearing the lyrics, “I need Thee, Oh, I need Thee, every hour I need Thee.” My Friend, my Teacher, is reminding me of the truth, As the Word says in Philippians 4:19, “And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”

In response, I can declare, “Thank you Lord that you will give me all I need today.”

One morning I woke up hearing the melody, “Jesus loves me, this I know.” I was surprised because I hadn’t heard those words in a long time, and I wondered why the Spirit had given me that reminder.

As my day unfolded, I found myself in a conversation with friends. Instead of feeling comfortable with these people I had known for many years, I felt alienated as the talk increasingly became a discussion about topics I couldn’t engage in. As I sat in silence, feeling out of place and insignificant amidst the happy chatter, I remembered Jesus loves me. He reminded me, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in My love” (John 15:9).

What an incomprehensible gift the Holy Spirit is to us! He is our Friend, the very best Friend one could have. He is our Helper who comes to our assistance in countless ways. And He is our Teacher who illumines our minds and hearts, speaking truth about Jesus, about ourselves, and about His world!

Ask Him what He wants you to remember and to do. Then thank Him abundantly for every way He works on your behalf.

 

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Forgiveness to Cover All Wounds

Note from Barbara: Today’s post is from an author new to me but perhaps not to you as she writes regularly for The Gospel Coalition and desiringGod.org. I read her new book, Glimmers of Grace , in one weekend. Her stories of patients and those who wait and pray with them spoke to me on many levels. I’ve been a patient more times than I’d like and I’ve waited for those I love to recover. Not all have. As a critical care doctor Katie Butler has seen so much more suffering than most of us ever will. And for that alone we can be grateful for her. But she’s given more by writing about the ways she’s seen the hand of God at work in these dark difficult moments and days of our lives. I highly recommend her book to all of you. I know you will enjoy this post from her; a taste of the stories she tells and the glimpses of our very present God she’s seen. 

 

For months she’d sat daily at her teenage daughter’s bedside in the ICU, and grieved as illness swept over her little girl in waves. Hour after hour, she fought against the tide. When the girl’s skin sallowed to mustard color, she massaged her hands with jasmine-scented lotion. As delirium fogged her daughter’s mind, she papered the walls with photographs of amusement parks, prom nights, and Christmases with grandparents. When the girl shivered with fever, her mother wrapped her arms around her, enfolding her in the same warmth she’d known during her first moments on earth. 

Then, after so many long months, an infection we couldn’t treat took hold. The girl’s blood pressure plummeted, and her oxygen levels soon followed. I found her mother crumpled in a chair, her head in her hands, tears dampening her hair. Although she’d seen her daughter’s stability falter so many times before, maternal instinct told her this time was different. 

I put a hand on her shoulder, and felt her tremble. “She’s not going to make it, is she?” she said, her face still hidden in her hair. 

My throat tightened. “I’m so sorry.” I squeezed her shoulder, and knelt beside her. I hated the failure of my hands to cure, and the inability of my words to comfort. 

Finally, she raised her head, and her reddened eyes met mine. “I keep begging God to take out my heart, to keep it from breaking,” she said. “But I don’t even know if he’s listening anymore. My family says this happened to her because I stopped going to church. They say God’s punishing me.” Her voice cracked, and tears flowed anew. “What if this is all my fault?”

When the guilt overwhelms

Although her anguish was uniquely her own, this dear mother’s question is one that haunts so many of us who’ve walked with the sick. If you’ve interfaced with the hospital in any way, chances are high that you, too, have known deep remorse, and have wrestled with guilt. The problem of our sin nature snaps into sharp relief in the hospital, where grief and tragedy abound, yet where few converse in a language of atonement. We witness evil, cower from our failings, and search the halls for forgiveness, but find only white coats, monitors, and more questions in the dark. We study our hands, scrub them, and can’t scour away our errors. 

Perhaps you’re a loved one caring for the dying. As you cradle a mottled hand, do you worry about decisions you’ve made? Do memories break through the sterility of the room, and trouble you with words you should have said? Words you shouldn’t have said? 

If you’re a provider in the hospital, guilt likely constricts your heart like a vice. The threat of inadvertently hurting people stalks your thoughts. When you lose a patient, you consider your inadequate books, your hands that couldn’t deliver—and you despair. 

Lord, have mercy. How can we weather such storms? How can we surface from such floods of guilt? 

A gracious God, and merciful

And yet, even as we despair, and even as our guilt swallows us into darkness, our loving God remains faithful, and forgives us through his grace.

God is holy. He is just, perfect, and will not abide evil (Psalm 5:4). Yet God is also merciful. Jonah, the worst prophet in the Bible, who ran from God, knew him to be “a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Jonah 4:2). And God poured out his mercy upon Jonah in abundance. He churned up a storm to thwart Jonah’s retreat, but didn’t permit the ship to break up or those aboard to perish (Jonah 1:4). He quieted the storm when Jonah plunged into the deep (Jonah 1:15).  He appointed a fish to rescue Jonah, and restore him to dry land (Jonah 1:17). He lavished Jonah with mercy, even as the prophet rebelled, fled, and raged. 

So, too, does the Lord pour out mercy upon us. When we profess faith in his Son and confess our sins, “he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Through Christ, he removes our transgressions from us as far as the east diverges from the west (Psalm 103:12). 

When we flounder in our sin, whether amid storms of our own making or those imposed upon us, according to his mercy, God delivers us to dry land, and guides us back into his loving embrace.  

You brought up my life from the pit 

When memories of mistakes you’ve made, people you’ve hurt, and lives you’ve damaged with words, scalpel, or syringe storm you with guilt, remember Jonah flailing in the sea. In his mercy, God appointed Jonah to save the Ninevites, and a fish to save Jonah. So also, he appointed his one and only Son, whom he loved, to reside in the belly of the earth for three days, to redeem us from our sins and to gather us into his glorious presence forever. 

When your loved one’s eyes close before you’ve said all you must, and remorse throbs within you, remember how God held back the raging waves from Jonah’s boat. 

Above all, when the blemishes upon your hands will not scrape away and you languish beneath the weight of your sins, remember the sign of Jonah: “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. . . . And behold, something greater than Jonah is here” (Matthew 12:40-41). 

Sin plunges us into a pit from which we cannot escape. Guilt swallows us whole. But God does not abandon us in those depths. In Christ, “he has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13-14). 

Ours is a gracious God, and merciful. And in Christ, we are forgiven.

 

Kathryn Butler (MD, Columbia University) trained in surgery and critical care at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where she then joined the faculty. She left clinical practice in 2016 to homeschool her children, and now writes regularly for desiringGod.org and The Gospel Coalition on topics such as faith, medicine, and shepherding kids in the gospel. She is also the author of Glimmers of Grace.

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My Favorite Summer Treats

The lyrics, “These are a few of my favorite things” sunk deep roots into my memory when I first heard Maria sing the catchy song in “The Sound of Music.” While I love “raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens” there are other treats that make summer’s heat more bearable and delicious. Like:

Le Pops on Kavanaugh 

and

bushels of peaches,

BLT sandwiches

and

Sweet corn’s gold goodness

If any of you are traveling by car on interstate 40 this summer through Little Rock it would be worth the time to stop for the best frozen treats in the South at Le Pops. 

Le Pops makes the yummiest popsicles … actually that’s a misnomer for these iced lollies are nothing like the kid version from the grocery store. Our favorite, salted caramel dipped in dark chocolate, is lined up with colorful choices like Blueberry Lemonade, Coffee with Coconut Milk, Mint Chocolate, and a dozen more with new flavors offered daily. Laura and I always go when she’s in town from Memphis!

(Dennis and Laura’s fave: Salted Caramel Pop dipped in Dark Chocolate Rolled in praline almonds!)

July in Arkansas is the beginning of peach season. Annually for years I loaded our van with my kids, bottles of water and baby wipes to clean hands of itchy peach fuzz and off we drove for a morning of peach picking at many of our state’s “pick your own” locations. We always came home with bags and bags of the deliciousness and ate them with every meal for weeks, with plenty more to give away to friends. I love peaches so much I’ve painted them several times.

Summer would not be complete at our house without a few juicy BLTs. The Natural State is home to famous Bradley Pink tomatoes and a huge selection of other varieties at farmer markets all across the state … if you don’t grow your own which half the population probably does!

Finally from my sappy little rhyme are only-found-in-the-summertime ears and ears of sweet corn, peaches and cream being our favorite brand. Dennis is so funny. Every time we get really good fresh ears of corn he says over and over how it’s his favorite. But he says the same thing about fresh locally-grown tomatoes, peaches, strawberries, and blueberries in the spring and more. He likes his food!

I’m sure you have your seasonal favorites too and we’d love to hear.

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Heart Identity Matters

Opening an old journal I read some words I had written many years before:

“I really wanted to go to the meetings this morning, but here I am in our apartment being a mother. Mothering doesn’t stop. Children’s needs don’t stop. Sick kids can’t be delegated. So once again I’m isolated and he, my husband, is not.”

My words sprawled over the pages, laced with emotion, with loss as a result of my children’s needs.

Even as I reread them—my children all parents themselves now—I could feel the constant on-call responsibility, smell the diaper pail, remember the stress from drinks spilled, kid squabbles, childish messes. Our six, between the ages of six months and ten years old the summer I wrote those words, sent me to the brink of exhaustion … daily.

But there in the journal, I also found a prayer I wrote that same day. My heart was pleading, meet me here God, care for me as I care for my children.

“Father, I pray you will teach me more about my identity and my call as a mom. Teach me too the value of that call because so much of my work is inside these walls—unseen and immeasurable.”

Watching eyes

On New Year’s Day this year I read Jesus’ words about our Father who sees in secret. His words, “beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them” (Matthew 6:1) shouted at me that day. I needed that reminder. That centering, grounding me to what matters.

The scrolling urge of social screams: Be seen. Be photogenic. Be appreciated.

Instead, the Spirit my Friend whispers, “Your Father who sees in secret will repay you.”

That unsettling, chaotic day decades ago sent me to His throne to ask and beg for Him to confirm purpose for me in my days void of accolades or  measurable value or even seemingly simple household accomplishments.

I needed to hear Him say, “ You matter! Even though no one else sees what you do.”

I did not hear an audible voice giving me the affirmation I longed for, but the knowledge that I was giving my children the love and security and stability that no one else could give was enough to keep me going.

Instant connections

Texts have been plentiful in the last two months as my youngest is adjusting to first-time motherhood. This morning her newborn spit up all over her shirt and it ran down her chest into her bra. Children will never know or appreciate the sacrifice and love of a mother until they become one. More than once Laura has said, “I don’t know how you did this six times.”

Repeatedly I’ve texted her: “I remember … I understand … You are doing a great job.”

To all of you moms who are losing sleep, staying home with sick kids, giving the best years of your life to your children and wondering if you will ever have time to yourself again hear me say,

YOU MATTER!

Believe God sees and is taking account of your labors of love. Believe my word of encouragement and belief that your investment in your kids, even though you are unseen and have no great following, is more important that likes.

“And your Father who sees in secret will repay you!”

Count on it. It’s a promise from the One who cannot lie.

 

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Ten Words to Live By

Note from Barbara: This summer I’m going to be sharing some books with you that will feed your own soul, help you invest spiritually in your kids or benefit your marriage in some way. The change of pace in the summer is a good time to make reading a priority.

The first of these recommendations is Bible teacher Jen Wilkin’s newest book, Ten Words to Live By, a fresh look at the centrality and eternality of the Ten Commandments. These words spoken by God to Moses are reflected throughout the Bible in the writings of Paul, Peter, and the other authors of the 66 books. Understanding God’s heart and desire behind His Words reveals His love for us His children and motivates us to want to please Him more. 

The post below is an excerpt from her book, a taste to better understand these ten essentials for the Christian life. — Barbara

 

“Rules enable relationship.” The Ten Words graciously position us to live at peace with God and others. The Great Commandment, the one which Jesus says sums up all 611 of the general and specific laws of the Old Testament, bears this out:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27).

The Great Commandment is the underlying principle for all right living. 

Not surprisingly, the Ten Words follow the same pattern of Godward lawfulness first, and manward lawfulness second. The Ten Words are encouraging words, meant to give us hope—hope that we will live rightly oriented to God and others, hope that we will grow in holiness. They are not given to discourage but to delight. They are no less than words of life.”

A closer look at the first commandment

The first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me,” is spoken in the language of a sovereign to a servant. There can be no dual allegiances when it comes to serving Yahweh. By commanding a singular allegiance, God does not merely assert that he is superior to other gods. Nor, in the plagues, does he merely demonstrate that he is stronger than other gods. He declares that they do not exist. They are nothing more than the vain imaginings of a darkened mind. The first word is more than a prohibition against worshiping lesser gods; it is an invitation into reality. “I am the Lord, and there is no other, / besides me there is no God” (Isaiah 45:5). 

Why should Israel worship no other gods before God? Because there are no other gods. 

Maybe that seems obvious. God has just routed his people’s greatest enemy and put their nonexistent gods to shame. But the truth that there is only one God to be worshiped must settle deep into the bones of the people of Israel, for God has brought his children victoriously out of polytheistic Egypt for the purpose of leading them victoriously into polytheistic Canaan. 

After four hundred years in Egypt, polytheism would be more familiar to Israel than the monotheism the first word expresses. It would feel more natural than the singular worship God commands, as sin in comparison to righteousness so often does. The land just across the Jordan beckons with the comfortable familiarity of many-god worship. The likelihood that Israel would return to the familiar is high. 

The call to monotheism would not be a new idea to Israel at the foot of Sinai. The creation account of Genesis 1 contains the implicit command to worship only God. Like the ten plagues, the six days of creation are purposely worded to topple any notion of worshiping sun, moon, stars, earth, sea, sky, plants, animals, or humans. All of the heavens and earth are shown to be derivative, dependent upon, and in service to the God without origin who effortlessly speaks them into existence. 

But God’s people forget that pretty quickly. As early as chapter 35 of Genesis, we encounter a cautionary tale of divided worship among the children of God. It seems that between his exile in Paddan Aram and his return to Bethel, Jacob and his family had picked up a few household idol stowaways in their saddlebags. Though God has not explicitly commanded it, Jacob knows the idols must go: 

So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, “Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you, and purify yourselves and change your clothes. Then come, let us go up to Bethel, where I will build an altar to God, who answered me in the day of my distress and who has been with me wherever I have gone” (Genesis 35:2-3, NIV). 

The presence of idols among Jacob’s family points to the operation of a “both-and” mentality: yes, we will serve Yahweh, but also, just in case, we will offer devotion to these other gods, as well. 

Dual allegiance. Can you relate? 

This mentality hides in the baggage of believers today just as it did in Jacob’s family three thousand years ago. It’s an age-old expression of what James 1:8 refers to as double-mindedness. Double-mindedness occurs not because we replace God with an idol, but because we add an idol to our monotheon so that it becomes a polytheon. The repeated refrain on idolatry throughout Israel’s history will not be that she ceases worship of God entirely, but that she ceases worship of God alone. 

An expansive obedience 

The children of Yahweh today are not so different from the children of Yahweh then. Like Israel, we affirm that there are no other gods verbally and intellectually, but not practically. 

Practically, we live as polytheists. Our idolatry is a “both-and” arrangement: I need God and I need a spouse. I need God and I need a smaller waist size. I need God and I need good health. I need God and I need a well-padded bank account. 

In our minds, we rationalize that the “both-and” still offers God some form or degree of worship, so everything must be okay. Yet, according to Genesis and Exodus, to cease to worship God alone is to corrupt any worship still offered to him. 

In Matthew 6:24, Jesus teaches us that “no one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” We may think dual allegiance is desirable, but Jesus assures us it is not even possible. We are created for single-minded allegiance. We are designed for it. We are made in the image of one God, to bear the image of one God. We cannot conform to both the image of God and the image of an idol. 

We are not designed to be polytheists, nor can we sustain the weight of a many-God lie in our minds. When we cling to God- and-______, we become “unstable in all [our] ways” (James 1:8). 

It often takes a crisis to point out our folly. There is nothing like a financial crisis to teach us our worship of money and comfort in addition to God. There is nothing like a wayward child or a divorce to teach us our worship of having a perfect family in addition to God. There is nothing like the aging process to teach us our worship of health and beauty in addition to God. 

It is at just such a crisis point that we find Jacob ready to expel the household idols. Penitent, he has just come face-to-face with his own failures. His daughter had been violated, and his sons had responded with terrible vengeance when he himself failed to seek justice. Jacob is a man broken of his self-reliance and soured on his own cunning. He is a man familiar with crisis. He is a man at last learning to pledge allegiance to God alone. 

Whatever instability may be needed to bring us to repentance, the final solution to our practice of polytheism is found in Jacob’s story: “So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods they had and the rings in their ears, and Jacob buried them under the oak at Shechem” (Genesis 35:4, NIV). 

Jacob could have destroyed the idols in any way. He might have burned them, thrown them in a lake, or hacked them to bits. Instead, he buries them under a landmark tree known as a place of idol worship. Determined to put the past behind him and live in the truth that God is his only hope, Jacob symbolically holds a funeral for the idols in the very place they were typically worshiped. With pointed irony, the place for idol worship symbolically becomes a burial ground for it. 

Do not miss the moral of the story: to rid ourselves of our idols, we must put them to death. 

 

 *Bill T. Arnold, Encountering the Book of Genesis (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2004), 137.

Content taken from Ten Words to Live By by Jen Wilkin, ©2021. Used by permission of Crossway.

 

Jen Wilkin is a Bible teacher from Dallas, Texas. As an advocate for biblical literacy, she has organized and led studies for women in home, church, and parachurch contexts and authored multiple books, including the best seller Women of the Word. You can find her at JenWilkin.net.

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Set Free to Free Others: The Bob Fu Story

He was born in China to a woman who was a street beggar in 1968. Extreme poverty and extreme injustice, not a safe home and stable parents, helped shape the childhood of Bob Fu and his sister. Despite overwhelming obstacles, Bob graduated from high school with hope of a better life as one of the millions of Chinese students who gathered in Tiananmen Square in June 1989 to peacefully protest against the Communist government by asking for more freedom and democracy.

When the shooting began Bob was absent, having left the city to be with his girlfriend—who later became his wife—because she was suddenly hospitalized from illness. Though his life was spared in the Tiananmen massacre that June, he was subjected to hours and hours of interrogations and interviews, some instigated by friends who betrayed him for their own favors with the government. Bob was disillusioned, disappointed, and full of hatred for many. In those days any flickering hope was lost.

Then Bob Fu read the biography of a Chinese pastor and soon after acquired his own copy of the Bible. Reading it voraciously he discovered, “If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation.” Immediately he received Christ and was born again.

Watching the wondrous hand of Providence at work in the stories of others has grown my faith since my college days when, as a new follower of Jesus, I read the miraculous stories about a man called Brother Andrew. Seeing Him guide, protect, rescue, supply, and provide for others helps me realize He must be doing that for me, too …  only it’s not as easy to see in my own life from my up-close vantage point. Nothing is better than a first-hand account of an encounter with Jesus to remind me that He is at work and He knows what He is doing.

Bob says, “In China there is a saying that if you want to be a faithful follower of Jesus Christ … the first theological course you need to take is prison theology.” Like many Chinese believers, Bob and his wife spent time in prison for their faith. “After I was forbidden to share the gospel in prison, I started to sing every day, and everybody would sing, ‘Give thanks to the Lord.’ Then I was forbidden to sing so I started humming and others followed.”*

I love hearing this story of boldness. I always wonder if I would have the courage to do the same, but I trust God will give me what I need should I face what Bob and his wife faced.

Today Bob leads an organization called China Aid, formed in 2002 in the United States, whose goal is to help the persecuted church in China.

I love learning about God’s people all over the world who are working in thousands of ways to be the hands and feet of Jesus. They will probably never make headline news, but their names are written in the Lamb’s book of life, the only words that matter.

 

If you want to learn more about Bob Fu, read God’s Double Agent , published by Baker Books.

 

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