Lori Stanley Roeleveld's Blog, page 64

My Prayers are Pathetic

I think about them -

the school girls kidnapped by Boko Haram.

Months have passed since they were taken.

In those months, I’ve had good days and bad

but on my worst days, I’m still free,

on my worst days, I’m not suffering physical assault, separation from loved ones, or forced marriage,

on my worst days, my body is still mine, my daughter is here, with me, healthy, whole, free.

There have been times in the months since they were stolen,

that I’ve felt distant from God,

but I have access at any moment to my Bible, worship music, hymns, devotional supports, other believers, quiet space, nature, and all manner of vehicles to regain my spiritual connection.

What would I do if it was all stripped away? How would I survive if I was separated from every doorway by which I access my relationship with God except Jesus? These girls know the answer. They know that even if it is all taken from us, He is there. Because, nothing can separate us from Jesus. Nothing.

I believe that any of these young women who love Jesus have open access to Him, still. Where ever they are, in whatever condition – cut off from the world, sold into marriages, locked into hidden rooms, buried beneath burkas, forced into a faith they don’t own – He is there.

He promises He will never leave nor forsake us. He is with each of them. He knows where they are. He knows who they are. They have all they need – in Him.

And He won’t let me forget them.

He whispers to me during my prayer times, in the midst of worship, throughout my day – pray for my captive daughters, pray for your sisters in bondage, remember those who suffer for my name.

And I do.

I intercede – a word that sounds like more of an action than it feels like. It feels weak, pathetic, useless – the act of speaking or thinking words to God and expecting them to have some effect. When others scoff or mock my prayers – I understand.

Because in a world of men with guns, men who can steal young women and sell them into slavery, men who play politics with human flesh and who place no value in innocence or sweetness or girls with dreams – in this world, a middle-aged woman on her knees whispering to God feels like a ridiculous thing

and yet

and yet, He tells me it is not. And I believe Him over any other voice. And I hear Him whisper – pray for my captive daughters, pray for your sisters in bondage, remember those who suffer for my name.

So, I do.

For why am I free if not to exercise this freedom in service to others? Is my freedom to serve my own desires? No. When one part of the body hurts, we all suffer. When I face Him with my freedom, He’ll ask me – did you use your freedom to serve your sisters who endured slavery? And I want to be able to say – yes. I heard your voice. I trusted your Word.

Through my love for Him, I am able to love them that I never met. Through my love for Him, I am able to ignore the scoffers and speak the words, words that feel like air, words that feel like puffs of breath, words that rise

rise

rise on the updrafts of faith created at His ascension where He receives these pale, fragile, puffs of wordy faith – my prayers – and He infuses them with power transforming them into bolts of light against the darkness of this world.

In His hands, my prayers are assault rifles against the real enemy.

In His hands, my prayers are smart bombs directing deliverance, relief, comfort, restoration, healing, and hope where He knows they are needed.

In His hands, my prayers form a light shield against the power of darkness.

My words are nothing. Gasps. Pathetic utterances. Useless on their own. But they do not remain with me – they go to Him and He is their transformation.

So let them mock.

Let them scoff.

Let them laugh.

I don’t care about them.

I care about the schoolgirls – the ones we know about and those who didn’t make the headlines. Jesus knows every name. He knows their locations. He hears the beating of their hearts against the cage of their lives. He is with them.

But He knows even more because He knows the names of the men who captured them. He knew them as boys before the darkness claimed them. He hears their hearts beat,too.

And He is greater than I am because His love extends beyond those schoolgirls to those soldiers, too. And when I pray for the lost, He takes those prayers, wraps them in His power, and hurls them at those soldiers to break them free from their captor, the one they are too blind to see.

My pathetic prayers in His hands can cut through chains and bars unseen by human eyes.

I think about them, the school girls kidnapped by Boko Haram, and the thought of them frees me from my small life, making me bold to enter the greater story. As I pray for their release, He uses them to release me from myself.

Do you think about them, too?

Perhaps you hear His voice whisper as well – does it sound like this? Pray for my captive daughters, pray for your sisters in bondage, remember those who suffer for my name, intercede for the lost, the captives enslaved to darkness, pray for them all.

When Your Loved One is Missing in Action

I wait for you, loved one. I will wait as long as I’m able.

Each Sunday morn from my place at worship, I eye the door and hold out hope until the very last strain of the prelude, until the amen of the invocation, through the announcements, and even into the first song.

I watch the door willing you to appear.

Like the children in the theater clap their hands and believe to revive Tinkerbell,

I raise my hands and ask God to renew my faith that you will return to Him,

to us.

We wait together, He and I.

It’s hard for me, sometimes, to believe He loves you as much as I love you.

How is that possible?

For, I love you with the fire of a thousand suns,

with the force of a waterfall channeled through a metal straw and released on the other side,

with the endurance of an aboriginal runner on perpetual walkabout,

with the determination of a toddler resisting bedtime,

with the fierce power of a hound protecting the master who feeds him.

I love you with the steady rain of tears shed in sorrow over your wandering,

with sleepless nights pleading heaven on your behalf,

with fists beating against God’s chest making demands I have no right in my own name to make

but trusting the name by which I pray, mustering every boldness to bid Him bring you home.

My words are tinder on His altar as I call down fire to light your way,

the breath of my prayers encouraging the flames higher and higher as I rend my skin from my flesh as a visible sign to the heavenly host that I mean to have you with us for eternity.

Why do you tarry?

Where do you wander, my loved one?

The enemy has your ears and eyes but God infiltrates the backroom of your heart and I know you hear the whisper of truth even though your lesser spirit dances to the backbeat of the music of the age.

Come home. He speaks to you. Come home, where I am waiting, where you are welcome, where loved ones wait, watching the door, saving your place, making their very lives a light in the window to guide you home.

I inhale sorrow upon waking,

Ingest my longing for breakfast,

labor with wanting your safe return throughout my day,

sup with the taunts of the enemy that you are lost, that all my longing will go unanswered, all my prayers unheard,

but I raise the shield of faith against these arrows as evening falls and I allow the setting sun to retire my doubts as well.

As the moon and stars testify to the greatness of the One who called them into being, I let them speak to me of His faithfulness and ask Him to make me like them, reflecting His glory.

As I lay me down to sleep, your face is there, my loved one. Can you hear my heartbeat like a tribal drum summoning your return?

Clutching the hope of your deliverance, slicing my hands along the barbed wire fence that separates me from the false peace of giving up on you;

I refuse to release these shards of hope because the One who bled for me held out hope for us all with bleeding nail-pierced hands. My blood mingles with His at the crossroads where we parted ways, you and I, making fresh marks so you can find the narrow way if only you will open your eyes to see.

Follow it home, loved one, follow it home.

I wait for you, my loved one. I wait for your return.

Know that whatever you endure, there is someone with eyes on the door of the sanctuary, saving your place, aching to welcome you back to the fold – and I wait beside Him watching the door for a glimpse of your face as you enter His sanctuary and find yourself finally home.

I will wait for you as long as I am able but even if I fall, know that He waits for you, still.

Loved One Missing in Action http://t.co/qCojsuAGyi

— Lori Roeleveld (@lorisroeleveld) November 2, 2014

Who’s Whispering in Your Ear?

Forest Gump’s mother had it right. Stupid is as stupid does. But sometimes we act stupidly because we listen to stupid advice.

A team of professionals surrounded the single father.

Everyone sat in his living room trying to understand why he continued to make unfortunate decisions for his son despite their best counsel.

Finally, I asked, “Is there someone else you turn to for parenting advice? Someone who isn’t in the room? Someone suggesting alternatives solutions?”

“Well,” he hesitated, “it isn’t a support group per se . . .” He glanced out the window.

Then, it dawned on me, “Is it the guys at the corner bar?”

He threw up his hands. “Okay, yeah. We help each other, you know. Those guys make a lot of sense sometimes!” He looked at our frustrated faced. “But now, I can see that perchance, the counsel they have to offer is ill-advised.”

Months later, I sat in another living room with a woman from a local church. A single mom with cognitive challenges, she explained how she managed her life with help from a team of friends and family.

“My dad tells me what to do with my bills and my money. If anyone tries to sell me anything, I have to talk to him first. My cousin Jeannie knows how to get the boys to do their homework and what to tell them when they ask me hard questions. She also knows the school calendar so they can’t trick me again into thinking it’s a day off when it isn’t. The old lady next door checks my refrigerator and tells me what food is too old to eat and which medicine to take when we’re sick. My Aunt Fern is ‘the enforcer.’”

“Enforcer?” I asked.

She looked sheepish. “Sometimes I’m not good at knowing if people are bad or good. Aunt Fern is the one I call when I think I got it wrong.”

There are many who think this mom isn’t very bright but she’s smart enough to surround herself with good advisers. One morning I arrived to learn that Aunt Fern had been around to practice her skills. The boys greeted me saying, “Our neighbor’s boyfriend got drunk and banged on our door last night. Mom let him sleep in our living room but then he wouldn’t leave. It’s okay now though ‘cuz she called Aunt Fern. That guy won’t be back.”

Ahhh, the enforcer. Got it.

During a local campaign debate last night, I heard a candidate say something smart. When asked why the voters should trust him, he replied, “I don’t have all the answers but I surround myself with intelligent people with records for integrity. Everyone in elected office has advisers and they rely on them. When you consider a political candidate, look at the people on his team. We’re only as good as the people whispering in our ears.”

The ancient kings of Israel often rose

“In the seventh year of Jehu, Jehoash began to reign, and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Zibiah of Beersheba. And Jehoash did what was right in the eyes of the Lord all his days, because Jehoiada the priest instructed him.” 2 Kings 12:1-2

or fell

“Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Athaliah, the granddaughter of Omri. He also walked in the ways of the house of Ahab, for his mother was his counselor in doing wickedly. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, as the house of Ahab had done. For after the death of his father they were his counselors, to his undoing.” 2 Chronicles 22: 2-4

according to the counsel of their advisers.

Who whispers in your ear? To whom do you go for counsel? Where do you get your advice? Have you surrounded yourself with wise friends? What is their frame of reference when offering you counsel?

It matters.

You can be surrounded by the smartest fools and run an easy road to ruin or listen to only the simple truth and walk the narrow way. It’s harder and the whispers aren’t nearly as flattering but when the chronicles of your life are written, you want to be on the right side of history.

Who’s whispering in your ear? http://t.co/9LZuDvfE37 #politics2014

— Lori Roeleveld (@lorisroeleveld) October 31, 2014

Is Your Dream in Season?

If you’re like most of the Christians I know, you have a Kindle full of books about simplifying and decluttering your life but you haven’t made time yet to read them.

I get that.

Modern believers are just as susceptible to the pressures of “NOW” as our unbelieving neighbors. We’re out of touch with the notion that life, like New England, has its seasons. In order to embrace summer, we must bid adieu to spring and to relish the autumn, we must release the summer sun. To say “yes” to something, we need to say “no” to others but this action, somehow, requires a supreme output of faith.

Writing has always been my dream but an equally strong dream has been to build a family, one honoring to God. When my youngest child was six, I was presented with a frightening opportunity. While attending a Christian conference in Boston, I met the man who would, eventually, become my agent. Les Stobbe was teaching a workshop about writing for the secular media and he was using some of my work as examples.

I was a stay-at-home, home school mom and committed to it but my writing dream hovered around me. I wrote letters to the editor and personal essays, which were printed in various local papers. Les had seen these and when we met, explained to me the amount of work and dedication it would take to use this gift for the Lord and pursue a writing career.

There are plenty of women I know who are capable of balancing a career and family life but I prayerfully decided I wasn’t one of them. I know my tendency is to pursue a passion full-force when I take it on. For me, during that season, with two young children and a traveling husband, home life had to be my primary focus. I asked God to hold the writing dream for me as I remained faithful to His current call on my life.

I homeschooled my children through their high school graduations. I didn’t ignore writing or hide my gift under a bushel but I channeled it into local opportunities – writing plays for church, eulogies and wedding speeches for friends, teaching writing to home school students, writing Bible studies for women and teens, and studying the craft as my children pursued their studies. I published articles in national magazines. Two of my Christmas plays were published. I had one chapter in an e-book on homeschooling. All the time, if someone asked what I did in life, my answer was, “I’m a homeschool mom.”

As my children entered adolescence, I ventured out to my first writing conferences. Finally, 2011, I submitted my first novel to a contest at the Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference. The conference was in May. On Tuesday, my daughter Hannah, my youngest, called to announce to me a surprise. That day, she’d completed her final assignment for her senior year weeks ahead of schedule and so, had officially commenced her high school education. It was a powerful moment as I realized I had suddenly been retired from my full-time job.

The next night, at the awards banquet, I was among the other surprised guests to learn my manuscript had won first place! No one else in the room knew that for me, it was God’s way of affirming that He does, in fact, hold on to dreams and award them in due season.

My life didn’t change overnight. It took another three years to earn a book contract and it wasn’t for the manuscript that won the contest that night.  I have to work a full-time day job to keep food on the table but when someone asks me now what I do with my life, I answer, “I’m a Christian writer.”

I tell you this story for two reasons.

First, because my book is due to release in December and I hope you’ll consider reading it. If it speaks to you, I hope you’ll recommend it to others. It’s the result of seasons of praying, waiting, working, and dreaming and it’s the message I believe God invested years shaping my soul to tell.

Second, I tell this story because I know all of you face choices about how to spend your days and often you must delay one dream in order to tend to another. In this age of people who insist we should have it all “NOW,” that can be faith-stretching at best, disheartening and soul-crushing at its worst.

As a young girl, I took to heart the words of the Psalmist when he wrote: “Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Psalm 37:3-4 (ESV) My desires were to build a home that honored God and to serve Him with my writing. It didn’t all come at once and it doesn’t all look the way I dreamed or imagined but my heart is aligned with His and so I wait out the seasons. (My family is faulted and broken in its own ways just like everyone else’s. Staying home wasn’t about achieving perfection but about being the mom I felt called to be. My writing career is just as imperfect but, again, my goal isn’t perfection but the pursuit of God in the midst of working out my dreams.)

What about you? What dreams are present in your now? What dreams do you prayerfully sense must wait for another day? Can you trust Him through the changing seasons of your life? Are you willing to say no to one dream in order to fully embrace another?

The world says a dream deferred is a dream denied. Dreams should never be shoved in closets or buried for dead but dreams can be placed in the hands of a loving God who can keep them alive until their season.

Sometimes we can do it all but, most often, we must make hard choices. Whatever you do, make the wise choice to delight yourself in the Lord, to trust Him, to do good, and to befriend faithfulness. For the believer, those choices are always in season.

 

Is Your Dream in Season? http://t.co/bmJWulJuPN

— Lori Roeleveld (@lorisroeleveld) October 27, 2014

Are You Weird in the Best Way?

We all want the best for our children.

I’m comfortable with that statement because who would argue otherwise?

Let me just ripple the waters of common thinking, however, by suggesting that our modern idea of what is “best” has been polluted by the world.

My mother often expresses regret that my parents couldn’t afford to send me to private school when in first grade I tested at an advanced level. The choices made for me back then did, in fact, cause me deep and lasting pain. I spent six years being educated separately from the rest of my classmates. They set me apart as terminally different, freakishly strange, and more trouble than I was worth. My personality bears an impression from that time like the dent on a car hood after impact with a deer.

From the world’s perspective, this was not the best for me (and the educators did, indeed, make some bonehead decisions) but God has the last word on my life, no one else. He was there with me in those days. Teachers would lose their patience as I sped through my assignments with four hours left in the school day. Their daily fallback plan? “Lori, just go to the library, research something, and write about it.” That’s right. I spent hours and hours from first through sixth grade digesting information that interested me and writing about it.

Plus, they didn’t care if I read my Bible, even in public school. Anything to keep me occupied. So, I did. Over and over. And because I was a social leper, I spent hours alone studying the Bible, analyzing hymns, and talking with God. I became weird in the best way. Being invisible made me a listener, a see-er, a knower of human beings. The skills I developed watching people from the “outside” contribute to my ability to help families now in my day job.

See what I mean? If we could write our children’s stories, we would write them without conflict. However, the author of salvation knows that from conflict and suffering He can produce godly character and a soul that bears much fruit.

Modern American believers haven’t quite grasped that we may need to suffer more than just disapproval or unpopularity in order to live our faith. Chinese Christians know that making public their faith may doom their family to poverty. In this life, they lose all hope of providing “the best” for their children. They are barred from careers they are gifted, skilled, and trained to do. Brilliant minds, hungry for stimulation, are assigned work as shopkeepers or janitors because of Jesus Christ.

As I prayed with other Christian writers last weekend at a retreat, in my spirit’s eye, I saw Christian writers locked in North Korean labor camps or forbidden to write in oppressive China or beaten and tortured in the Mid-East. I wept knowing that while I nurse selfish dreams for my writing, these writers must trust Jesus that they will write one day in glory.

Their stories remain untold, locked behind prison bars as these fellow Kingdom writers waste away wanting for bread, light, or human kindness. While we were bemoaning the state of modern publishing, these writers scratch words onto prison walls hoping the next inhabitant will be encouraged in Christ when they are dead and gone.

These brothers and sisters live this verse I am only beginning to understand: “Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.” 2 Peter 4:19

In the news today, I read that “After an unfortunate decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, John Kallam Jr. – a magistrate in Rockingham County, North Carolina – is resigning, because his new obligation to perform marriages for homosexual couples “would desecrate a holy Institution established by God Himself” and violates his deeply held religious convictions.” Here is an American believer who gets it. We must be prepared to stand by our convictions even when it costs us “our best life now.”

Of course, we want the best for our children but are we better parents than the Father God? He sent His only Son into the world, born into a poor family, to suffer and die for the world. This, loved ones, is an example of a Father providing the best for His child.

The best for our children is Jesus. Our best life now is one that obeys Jesus and follows Him wherever He leads. Yes, I want my children to be healthy, strong, loved, accepted, educated, and free to pursue a passion that utilizes all their talents and strengths. When suffering or obstacles interfere with that, I hate it. But suffering must come. Obstacles will appear. And the nearer we are to the end, the greater likelihood that more of us will have to sacrifice in the name of Jesus.

God always has the last word on our lives. Joseph’s brothers were wrong to sell him into slavery but God was the with Him in it. It was wrong for King Xerxes to take women into his possession as concubines but God was with Hadassah even when her name was Esther. It was wrong for the Jews to stone Stephen but he saw Jesus as he died.

We must pay attention to the persecuted church not only out of love for them but because we have much to learn from them about God’s best for His children. Some of us will write bestselling books read by millions and God be praised. But God also be praised by the writer who fashions a pen from stone and scratches a single verse of scripture onto a prison wall that it may bring comfort to the next inhabitant.

Do you or your children suffer, loved ones? This is the way of this world. If Jesus is with us, though, He will have the final word and it won’t be suffering, it will be FREEDOM!

Houston, We Have a Problem – But It’s Not What You Think

The powers that be in Houston are using the law to bully pastors into silence.

On one level, the issue is homosexuality. On another, the issue is freedom of religion and speech. Still, there’s a deeper issue here and it has nothing to do with the mayor who isn’t the devil, she’s just a woman trying to figure out her life and using her influence to work for what she thinks is good.

The driver behind this is the true enemy of the church who knows how easily we are cowed into compromise and into hushing each other at any concern that we’re causing offense. You know, that for every pastor who defies the subpoenas, there are dozens more across the U.S. quietly second-guessing their sermon texts and editing themselves in an effort to do the impossible task of removing the offense from the cross of Jesus Christ.

Have you noticed? It’s something many of us attempt. We keep trying to remove, to mask, and to camouflage the offense of the gospel. But today I have some questions.

What happens if, even with our sensitivity workshops, cultural research, training in millennial communication, hip hair, blue jeans, sick graphics, and elimination of every trace of Christian-ese, people still find it offensive to hear they’re sinners?

What if the subpoenas continue to be served even when we’ve practiced active listening, softened our language, wrapped the gospel in low lights, befriended atheists, couched our admonitions with relatable anecdotes, practiced transparency, exposed our own sin, and walked a mile in our brother’s shoes? What if they’re not satisfied simply putting silencers on our preachers and writers? What if they won’t stop until they take every thought captive that doesn’t please the crowd?

Have you noticed that the mob in Israel, who famously never heard Jesus expound on the topic of homosexuality, still cried out for His death?

Jesus, the One who preached to turn the other cheek, to love thy neighbor as thyself, and to deny ones’ self, the existence of this Jesus offended not only the religious rulers but also everyone else from the reigning powers to the common person quick to choose a hefty stone. They cried out for crucifixion with one voice, choosing to show mercy to a notorious criminal over the storyteller from Nazareth.

Clearly, they feared His parables more than they feared Barabbas’s sword.

Is it possible that the heart of that saving grace we claim as our Noah’s ark into glory is going to offend no matter how much aw-shucks flannel we use to muffle its beat? No matter how slick our presentation? No matter how we attempt to slip the offensive parts in unnoticed between amazing guitar riffs and digitally enhanced cardboard testimonies?

And if this is true, why do we keep trying to reinvent our image to align with what the crowds demand rather than with the One who died offending the crowd?

I worry that the wrong people are going to agree with this post. I’m not interested in throwing out effective outreach based on culturally-informed, sacrificial, listen-first, love-laden truth-telling that relies more on actions than sermons. I am interested in conserving energy for that task by abandoning the apologetic gymnastics involved in trying to become what it is impossible to become if we are ultimately becoming like Jesus.

To become like Jesus is to become offensive. To live like Jesus is to live offending others who are not. To speak like Jesus is to speak words that offend. An offense that extends from the powers on high to the religious posers to the neighbor just out trying to buy a loaf of bread.

To live like Jesus is to know that at any moment, the crowd could decide that you are more worthy of death than the most notorious prisoner. A move we cannot prevent with love or eloquence. To think we can is to believe there may have been some other day for Jesus than the cross.

Maybe it’s a time for straight talk.

Maybe it’s a time to forget about the production, strip off the caramel coating, and simply tell the Biblical truth (and for the most part, it’s clear and not in debate). No apologies. No song. No dance. No hopes that if we smile hard enough and speak with enough compassion, the hearers will ignore the fact that we’re saying they have sinned and cannot save themselves.

I was offended by the gospel and that offense was a gift that led me to Jesus.

Or haven’t you noticed that Jesus spends little time holding workshops on how to deliver the message (He IS the workshop). In scolding the Pharisees, He clearly teaches that our lives must line up with our message. Through His interactions with sinners, we see we are free to interact with the crowd without constantly mentioning what they’re doing wrong. But always, always, His stories and sermons deliver the offensive truth that we are not all right the way we are – none of us. We all need to seek the forgiveness of God, renounce our sin, and submit to Jesus Christ. That’s offensive no matter how you say it.

Repeatedly, however, Jesus does admonish the crowd to bring ears that can hear. The ears people bring to the message are as important as the style in which we deliver it.

Christians should do all we can to deliver God’s word honorably, faithfully, truthfully, artfully, and in love but at the end of the day, the hearer plays a part in this exchange and it isn’t to dictate our part.

Here’s my final question. Have you offended anyone lately? If the answer is no, ask yourself a question – what parts of the gospel are you holding back for fear of the crowd? And if perfect love casts out fear, why have you stopped loving the crowd enough to stop telling them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help us, God?

 

The Wild and Wooly Truth

“I’ve read the story you sent me. It’s not good. Try another form of writing.”

A literary agent sent that comment in response to my first attempt at fiction.

 

“You don’t even know what you’re trying to say, Lori. Until you do, you shouldn’t try to get someone to publish you.”

Words from one of the first editors I pitched.

 

“No. No. That was not good writing. I’m disappointed. I expected more from you.”

A writing workshop leader reacting as I read my attempt at his assignment.

I have framed and hung these words on the walls of a special room in my mind where I keep those things for which I am particularly grateful.

It’s true. I recall each of these comments with a heart full of thanks for the speakers.

That isn’t how I felt the first time I heard the words. My initial reaction to each was disappointment, embarrassment, and indignation. It would have been easy to build a special room in my mind just for these words and others like them. A small, dark room in which to keep vials of bitterness and black velvet paintings of heartache and dashed hopes. A cedar-lined alcove bereft of sunlight where the only music is “Say Something – I’m Giving Up On You” on a constant loop.

Yes, it was tempting to enshrine these words in my soul’s mausoleum, mentally eulogizing my attempts to write.

Instead, sitting alone letting the sentences run like news ticker beneath my regularly scheduled program, I invited Jesus to review them with me. I knew that each time I heard words I didn’t want to hear, I had a choice to make. Jesus whispered in my ear the same words He asked the crowds in Matthew 11 when his cousin John languished in prison for calling out the king on his affair with his brother’s wife: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see?”

John the Baptist told the truth. His truth telling landed him in prison and eventually, got him beheaded. So Jesus asks the crowd who had flocked to listen to John, “What did you go out into the wilderness to see?”

The essence of Jesus’ challenge to the crowd is this – what did you expect to hear from a prophet, someone chosen to deliver truth from God? Were you seeking someone who would sway his message to the prevailing wind? Or were you hoping to receive fine eloquence to seduce and entertain your ear? If, instead, you went out to hear a prophet, why then, do you reject the truth he tells or complain when it challenges your comfort?

When faced with hard words about my writing, Jesus asked me, “What did you go out into the wilderness to see?” Was I willing to live with the discomfort of frustrating truth and let it spur me on to greater excellence or would I set about to erect the dark room where self-pity could flourish like fungus beneath mounds of rotting leaves?

Making the correct choice has made all the difference in my life.

That literary agent is now my dearest mentor, friend, and representative in the writing world. That publisher respects my work and encourages me to submit proposals. That workshop leader is a treasured guide and friend. They told me the truth and by accepting it (instead of locking them away out of sight screaming “Off with their heads!”), my writing improved and so did my character.

How do you respond to the truth you entered the wilderness to seek? When you read God’s word, listen to sermons, receive loving correction from a counselor or friend – do you lean toward banishment? Do you decapitate the truth to facilitate your self-delusions and maintain your comfort? Or do you kiss truth on the lips so you can awaken from your cursed sleep to pursue a deeper relationship with the One who created you?

People who tell us the truth deliver gifts God will use to spur us on to greater adventures if we will receive them with grace. To reject the truth is to lock His work in our lives away in a cell. John was freer in prison than the king was on his throne. I was more blessed by hard truth than I would have been by false praise.

What did you go out into the wilderness to see, loved ones? And what will you do when that wild and wooly truth disturbs your comfort in the universe? The right choice will make all the difference.

Together They Have Become Worthless

“Your son will have to learn to fit in sooner or later,” the woman said to me with a scowl.

“No doubt,” I replied, “but maybe he could learn to walk first.”

My son’s crime? He resisted circle time at our baby gym class for the opportunity to play longer in the ball pit. Yup, he was a rebel.

Much of life is about fitting in. I believe that’s important. Getting along with others, obeying laws, and working for the greater good are valuable pursuits. But, there come times in our lives, many, in fact, when we have to muster the fortitude to defy the majority.

Why the majority is wrong as often as it is remains a mystery to me and yet, there it is. Often, we must defy the very community we seek to serve. I remember, as a young mother in that baby gym class, contemplating the complex nature of that paradox. How do I raise children who know when to serve the community by conforming and when to serve it by standing alone?

Unity is beautiful but when people unite around evil, “together they become worthless” in ways that can destroy not only those who won’t go along with the majority but ultimately the majority themselves.

Right now, people are coming together, uniting all over the world around bad ideas, with global technology to speed their efforts. While John Lennon dreamed of a world that would someday be one, there is a dangerous unity lurking on the horizon. In Romans 3:10b-12, Paul describes this tragic unity: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”

I want you to meditate on that phrase: “together they  have become worthless.” Let it ping-pong in your thoughts today. “Together they have become worthless.” Consider it when you watch the news, work at your job, care for your children, worship with your faith community, or hang out with your friends. “Together they have become worthless.”

How is that for an epitaph on a community? Frightening, I would say, but incredibly common and easier to spot in someone else’s majority than our own.

You know what I’m talking about. You’ve seen it, most of you, firsthand, how a group of people can unify around the wrong idea and together become worthless. From the schoolgirl clique that decides to exclude the new girl to the street gang to the power-brokers in the PTO to the ruling council of the denomination to ISIS to architects of genocide, one person finds a wrong idea and when others agree – there’s a unity that binds them to one another and to evil. If the one had remained alone with his or her wrong thinking, the notion might have died but instead, together they become worthless.

But what are we to do? Not every bad idea seed comes inside a packet illustrated with its adult flower. And if one can convince a dozen, then a hundred, then more; how can another one recognize the danger lurking in their unity? And every decision not to join the crowd comes with consequences. It ain’t all as easy as sitting out circle time, is it?

We aren’t helpless in this. There are some things we know.

First of all, any idea can be weighed against God’s word to measure its worth. It’s not always simple and reasonable believers sometimes disagree but there is a standard of truth. Knowing God’s word, obeying what we know, and surrounding ourselves with Godly teachers who live what they teach is baseline for surviving the dangerous unity to come.

Second, we can be faithful in the small things. What’s true for calories and true for pennies is also true for ideas. We can nibble our way to obesity. We can nickel and dime our way the poor house. And we can work ourselves into a mess one evil thought at a time. The people of Israel entered the Promised Land determined to remain faithful to God but by the end of Judges, one of their leaders was cutting up a concubine to prove a point. Paul warns us to take every thought captive, not as a type of bondage or legalism but as a way to uproot any bad idea seeds before they can sprout.

Third, we can believe God when He says He is with us so we shouldn’t worry about tomorrow. Listen to Him now. This moment, is preparation for the next. Being here, now, with Him where He is, is key to being with Him tomorrow. The world is not keeping pace with Jesus – it’s goose-stepping to the rhythm of an evil drum. When they unite around that ultimate evil idea, when together they become worthless, you won’t even be there because you’ll be hidden in Christ, strong in Christ, protected and emboldened by Christ. Worthy is Christ and worthy are you (not worthless) because of Him.

Fourth, don’t resist the conditioning He sends in your direction. A drill sergeant in boot camp knows what his troops will face on the battlefield. He readies them through exercises that make no sense to the inexperienced soldiers at the time but if they submit to the training, they’ll be equipped for the field. It’s the same with us. Every time God strips something away to force you to rely on Him alone, it is a gift against the coming battle. That reliance is the spiritual muscle memory you’ll need to draw your sword and raise your shield against the dangerous unity growing like a storm cloud on the horizon.

You choose. Join with those who by unifying around godless ideas have made themselves worthless or join yourself to Christ and stand against them.

King David said this: “For by you I can run against a troop, and by my God I can leap over a wall.” 2 Samuel 22:30 (ESV) Eternity resides in that leap of faith. Make the worthy choice, loved ones. He is able to make us stand, even against the evil unity to come.

Tweetable: Together they have become worthless – standing strong when evil unites http://wp.me/p4y0mC-12Z  #standfirm #yieldtoChristalone

Together they have become worthless – standing strong when evil unites http://t.co/sLEVUb1GsV #standfirm #yieldtoChristalone

— Lori Roeleveld (@lorisroeleveld) October 15, 2014