What He has done for me

 "Come and listen, all who fear God, 

and I will tell you what He has done for me.

I cried out to Him with my mouth,

and praise was on my tongue.

If I had been aware of malice within my heart,

the Lord would not have listened.

However, God has listened;

He has paid attention to the sound of my prayer.

May God be praised!

He has not turned away my prayer

or His faithful love from me."

--psalm 66:16-20

Sweetness to my soul!!!  Our God is a good God!  This passage sums up all that is in me to say tonight...."let me tell you..all that He has done for me".  This is all that our witness and testimony need to be: a "telling" of what He has done for us.  No need to fancy it up, embellish, or disguise it in any way.  Plain, unrefined....raw.  He doesn't need or require anything more than that.

Thoughts on God's Timing

Not long ago I was invited to a girl’s night out that a friend of mine was hosting at her home.  She lived about 30 minutes from me.  As I pulled away from my home, I noticed that we had gotten a bit of snow that afternoon, but the roads seemed fine so I thought nothing of it.

Shortly after leaving my house, I turned on the Highway to find that what had seemed minor within city limits, was actually quite major when out of town along on the Highway.  

I began to count the number of vehicles that I saw in the ditch.  There were 9 of them.  Nine vehicles in the ditch before I had even driven 20 miles outside of town.  It was horrible and left me feeling like I had made a poor decision to go in the first place.  Eventually, wisdom set in and I called my friend, telling her that I would need to turn around and post-pone our evening altogether. 

As I drove back home that night, the Holy Spirit began to teach me more about the timing of God.  

Timing is everything.  

This was a road that I had driven on literally dozens of times before.  This was a path well-known to me.  There were no surprises regarding curves in the road or stop lights found along the way, and yet, on this occasion the road at this particular time took on an entirely different personality altogether. 

What was once familiar now seemed scary and unsettling.  

I came upon 3 different accidents.  Traffic was driving painfully slow, and still I managed to slide around several different times.  I was thankful to arrive home safely. 

The next morning I nervously set out on the very same path, as it was Sunday and that was the very road I needed to take to get to church.  I couldn’t hardly believe the difference!  

Fifteen hours had made the difference between night and day. 

The emergency vehicles were now no longer around, as traffic flowed freely.  There were, however, some remaining vehicles littered on both sides of the highway, serving as a chilling reminder of the storm that had been present the previous evening.   

And so it goes with God’s timing. 

The journey may be the same, but its timing that makes the difference between success and disaster.  Without the snow and ice I was able to arrive to my destination quickly, without my nerves feeling frazzled and heightened.  I did not worry that my vehicle would slide into another car or off the road completely, because the conditions were completely different.

Often in our lives God may, in His mercy, decide to wait “fifteen hours” longer than we would like.  Often we get restless and upset.  We wonder: what is He doing?  Has He forgotten us?  Does He still love us?  The list of my responses to God can go on and on.  Thankfully, though, He sees my entire path.  He knows my "road conditions".  

He sees the ice in the country that is hidden from my view in the city.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 starts by saying, “He has made everything beautiful in its time”.  This is the beauty of knowing God as our Father.  We give Him full reign in our lives.  We ask Him to give or to hold back; to send us out or to keep us from going; to close or to open doors.  

He is our Father.  When we give our lives to Him, we give Him the freedom to intervene.  We give Him the freedom to say no.  He is the Author of the Great Crescendo.  He knows how it should look and what will enable success in this journey of our lives. 

I say, have free reign in me, Father!  I delight in Your hand!  I delight in You!  Make me according to Your dreams, Your plans, Your design!  

That is the beauty of having Him hold the reigns of our lives.  He is the Author and Finisher of our faith.

Life Lessons...and other things I have learned from my dog.

Sometimes I wonder what my neighbors think about me when they hear me outside with my dog.  Henry.  He is my little buddy in life.  I just love him.  There is much that can be learned from observing the life of dogs.  He does not talk but he communicates quite clearly.

For starters, dog's are not self-conscious.  Whatever they "gotta do", they are "gonna do", no matter who's yard they happen to be walking through (or if said yard-owners happen to be watching from inside their home).  

When I was younger, I used to dog-sit for a cute little dog whose owners promptly trained him to poop in their next-door neighbor's yard.  He would potty in his own yard, but would run next door and poop in another.  

Genius.  

And embarrassing...I could hardly handle watching the tragedy take place day after day while sitting for them.  Growing up, my youth group had a motto: "if you're gonna make a fool of yourself, make sure to do it in a foreign country".  I have exercised this often.  I have stories and witnesses to prove it...but that's another story for another day :)

My family dog, Sam, would often beg for food, no matter what we happened to be eating.  I was once struck by my own similarities in my "begging" of things from the Lord, when Sam sat at my feet one day...begging me for a piece of the dark chocolate that I was enjoying. Obviously we all know that dark chocolate can be lethal for our furry friends, but they give no thought to this whatsoever.  

They just want what they want...when they want it.  

God says of the ostrich that He has "...deprived her of wisdom.  He has given her no understanding" (Job 39:17).  The same, I think, can be said of dogs.  They do not understand.  They cannot reason with you.  They don't care if they are begging you for the very thing that would bring them death and destruction.  They just want it!  

And so we are with God.  It often silences me to think of how many times I have sat before Him, begging Him for the very thing that will bring death and destruction into my life, simply because of my own lack of wisdom and understanding.  How often I have begged Him for the dark chocolate without even realizing it.  

I used to struggle so much with un-answered prayer, until I realized how much "dark chocolate" I may be unknowingly asking Him for.  As children of God, Children of the Creator of all things, we have the distinct privilege of having Him intervene in our lives.  "A man's steps are determined from the Lord...." (Proverbs 20:24).  I cannot look to Him to direct my steps and then get mad at Him for doing so. 

And this leads me to what happened with Henry recently.  For some reason, deer have a fondness for my neighborhood.  

I love everything about this.

It is quite common to take Little Man out at midnight, only to find 3 or 4 deer just laying in various spots behind my home.  They love my yard, my neighbors yard, and the lot behind my house.  I have no complaints about this and neither does Sir Henry.  That is, when he notices that they are there. 

He often just misses them entirely.  He simply does not see them.  They are still.  They are smart.  They don't move.  Henry, on the other hand, is none of those things!  He is often so busy sniffing out the land around him, that he completely misses the amazing deer that are laying just outside of his vision.  

And so it is with us.  

In the Bible, Jacob was once visited by the Lord in a dream, only to awake and say, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not" (Genesis 28:16).  So often we fail to see God.  We may have heard of the Lord, but have we actually met Him?  Do we Know Him?  Do we truly see Him? 

***Are we so busy with life that is happening all around us, that we fail to notice what is truly going on just outside of the periphery of our everyday vision? *** 

I know I am guilty of this.


After God revealed Himself to Job, at the conclusion of the greatest storm of life that man has ever lived to tell about, Job simply said: "My ears had heard of You, but now my eyes have seen you".

I want to see Him.  I don't want to be so caught up in the day-to-day that I miss Him entirely.  My life's goal: Seeking Him...daily.  Asking to see Him....Daily. Expecting Him to direct my steps...Daily.

This is what life as a child of God is all about.  We may be shocked at what He opens our eyes to see....

Life is precious

Life is precious.  Today the unthinkable happened at work, and I am only just now beginning to feel that I have "thawed"...after hours of periodically crying, talking to the Lord and to my little-man Henry, about all of the events that transpired throughout the day.  Even now tears and unspeakable sorrow come easily, as I sit at this keyboard sorting through all of my thoughts.  As we all know, sharing is something that people in healthcare are not pr ivied too (hence my reason for talking to an animal :)).  However, there is so very much that can and should be said.  I can easily summarize, though, with three simple words: Life is Beautiful.

There are times in my own life when, due to my work, I feel as though I am witness to both the most majestic, and the most mortifying examples of raw humanity that are possible for humans to experience; oftentimes occurring within the very same day.  It is the oddest thing, leaving me often unable to fully sort through it all.  Today was no exception to this.  As I drove home from work, I was reminded of the continuance of life.  The sun was shining brilliantly and the temperature's were well into the 60's...seeing beauty abound while knowing that lives had just crumbled, never to be the same again.  It really was quite chilling.  I was there, witness to it all.  And then I swiped my badge out of work, walked to my car, and went on with my day.  Well....not really.

There is an interesting personality that people take on when working in life-or-death situations.  Many respond by putting on a sort of armor, a distancing of sorts, going into auto-pilot-mode, doing the duties that they have been trained to know how to do in the moments that they matter the most.  This may sound cold, but on the contrary, I really believe that it comes from a place of extreme brokenness for what is going on---all-the-while knowing of the need to continue to work and function, getting through the moment at hand.  Others seem to almost feel the need to embrace the fullness of the moment.  They will go through the motions but may begin to cry while doing it.  If they are lucky, they can hold on to have the breakdown until they are safely locked into the bathroom.  I find myself in the latter of the two most of the time.  

This is an odd example, but I have found myself remembering it all throughout the day today: years ago when my very first pet needed to be put down, as a teenager, I argued briefly with the Veterinarian until he let me actually hold my little guy while he did what he needed to do.  I simply had too.  No questions asked.  I had to run to it, instead of away from it.  There is a thread of that that carries over into my everyday life even now.  I want to cry. I want to feel the sting....because life matters.  People matter.  No matter how much of a stranger they were to me just a few short hours before.  This is how I cope.

When I worked with elderly people in my first nursing job, I would often volunteer to work on the wing with whomever was believed to be in their final hours of living, hoping to be there when they slipped from this life into eternity.  

Eternity.  It really is something, isn't it?  When it comes down to it: nothing else really matters.  No degree, title, portfolio or retirement fund means much of anything when you are taking your last breath of life.  In those final moments, if one is lucky enough to realize that they are having them, it is dumb-founding what people feel the need to say and do.  Some people fight it, almost running from death, while others have a sweetness that is evident even in the midst of great suffering.  It leaves me awe-struck.

It's days like these that I come home and read Solomon.  I love him and feel an incredible kinship with all that he would mull-over during intense moments of life.  Solomon said, "when times are good, be happy, but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other..." (Eccl 7:14).  How true is this.  The New Testament says that "He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" (Mt 5:45).  Another truth to mull over.

The summary of man.... the greatest secret of them all.....is knowing that walking with God does not give us a "free pass" from suffering and death.  I mean ultimately, yes, eternity with our Father is the only thing that really matters; but there is so much life to walk through between the "here" and the "there".  I have heard all the sayings like: "its not about the beginning or the end, but rather, the in-between that matters".  I get this and understand what is being said.  For my own life personally, though, I have come to see that it is not about the seasons of rain or drought....blessing or want....but rather, the key to my entire life is really about how much and to what degree my walk with Him remains the same all throughout.  That is the goal of my life.  Walking through life....praising Him regardless of what He may or may not do to me, with me, or through me.  He is who He is.  He said to Moses, "I am that I am" (Exodus 3:14).  For a long time I wrestled with this because I didn't really get what God was saying.  People would quote that verse, others nodding in agreement, deeply sighing and saying something to the tune of  "how true that is"....and the whole time I would sit there, thinking: I don't get it.  "I am that I am"??  What in the World does that mean?  How does that define You, Father?!  How does that give me something solid to call upon?  That is your ultimate name?  Your ultimate description?  I didn't understand and felt left out that I didn't understand.  And then it continued when I read Job for the first time.  Wow.

There is a lot in Job as well.  I felt so saddened by God's response to Job when He finally spoke to him, answering him from the storm in Job 38-42.  I didn't understand.  It just didn't feel to me that God was comforting Job, or telling him that He "understood and would make it up to him".  It left me uneasy and restless and I struggled with it for years.  And then it was as if God gave me a new perspective.  

If we could "define" Him, if we could put a "name" or a "definition" of God out there to stand thru the test of all times....it would be us being lord over Him, as opposed to the other way around.  There is no definition for Him because He does not bow to our descriptions.  He cannot be defined or boxed in.  Who can know the mind of God?  Who can discern His thoughts?  Psalm 50:21 says, "You thought I was altogether like you".  This was me.  I thought He was like me.  I thought He somehow needed to tell me more than "I am that I am".  I felt that He owed Job an apology.  But He did something far better for Job....He showed him the 10,000-foot-view.  He changed Job's perspective.  He revealed the breadth and width of who He was and what He had done throughout all of creation, putting Job's situation into a perspective that only God could do.

And that is what He will do for us.  He will uphold us, being the lifter of our heads and our hearts...changing our perspective and allowing us to see beyond the mud and mire of our present circumstances.  Life is Beautiful...but God is Extravagant.   I go with God.  Like David I say, as for me, let me fall into the hands of God.  He is to be trusted.  He can handle it.

Altars...

There is much to be said about altars. When I was growing up, my family worshipped at this little church in my hometown. At the front of the sanctuary, there was this man-made altar-of-sorts that held the “church Bible” and the communion pieces on various Sundays. Altar times were not the exception, they were the norm. I loved them. I loved being up at the altar and would often crawl below this man-made altar and use the small opening underneath it as my own, private little prayer space. I just loved it. It allowed me to feel closed-in with God. Private. I would go there often, even during off-times when church wasn’t going on. I got a key and would go there to meet with the Lord. It was there (amongst other places) that I learned to know God. I loved Him and would sit before Him, allowing Him to love on me. Even now it is an intimacy that I find hard to explain. It was an intimacy that I was made for…that we were all made for. As I began to grown up, I started to go to the altar less and less. At the time I did not question this. For some reason, I was able to reason this out within myself, chalking it up to my not “feeling a conviction that I needed to be there”. I wasn’t the one that needed to be there, as I had gotten everything out before the Lord in my own personal quiet time prior to coming to church, etc. You name it—I’m sure I used it as a reason for not going forward. During this time, I also became painfully aware of my own personal, physical short fallings, and would often feel self-conscious at merely the thought of going forward in front of a congregation full of people. The sweetness of the altar somehow lossed its sweetness. Over the years, church itself seemed to change quite a bit. One church I attended on the East coast would not refer to “altar time” but rather, would call this “family life time”…..even now I am not really sure what that means. Somehow along the way, it seems to me that the church in general became somewhat embarrassed of the altar. We seemed to go out of our way to make ourselves, and our visitors, feel comfortable. It wasn’t uncommon to hear statements like: “Right there in your seat, take a few moments with the Lord”; or “Lets take a few moments and quietly pray to the Lord before we go on”…or the one I have heard the most, “No, I’m not going to ask you to come forward, but if you will just quietly lift up your hand…nobody else but me looking around”. We all, it seems, had become self-conscious. It’s as if altar time altogether had gone thru a transformation of sorts. In recent months I have felt as though God was re-visiting this in my own life. There is a breaking, a revealing, a vulnerability of sorts that occurs within me when I put one foot in front of the other and walk forward to the altar at my church. Even now it is hard for me to explain, but I am quite certain that it is a real and tangible thing. I have begun to crave it. I have begun to crave the vulnerability, the breaking, and the revealing that seems to occur within myself during these moments of time. And then God spoke something else to me about these altars. As a young girl, the sweetest of these moments occurred when I was actually under the altar. God has begun to revisit this. I had no idea during those times years ago that I was actually living out a mental picture of our lives before God. What He is saying has been clear: He wants me over not under. When I was young I would eagerly go to the altar and crawl under the table of it, in hopes of closing myself in with God. But He does not want me under the table of His altar. He wants me to actually be over. As in, on top. As in, a living sacrifice. Fully alive. Fully aware of life around me. Fully surrendered to Him and His will for my life. Paul tells us to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1). This is true worship. True intimacy with our Father. Allowing Him to do as He pleases, trusting that He alone knows how our lives should be and turn out. Living sacrifices. May this be our lifestyle of worship before Him.

thoughts...

I've been wondering lately about witnessing. Okay...honestly--it is one of the things I think about the most. Witnessing. When was the last time I really did it? My conclusion is that we, as a people, are content to witness very little. We instead are content just to "plant a seed". We hear about it all of the time. Think you should have said more? Don't worry, you "planted a seed". Stopped short of vocally laying out the Gospel? Don't worry. You are just one among many who "planted a seed". I fear that we have heard too much about the statistics behind a conversion. You know what I mean...the "how-many-times-a-person-must-hear-before-they-are-saved" statistic. Just how many times is it again? 100? 500? The number, I'm quite sure, would startle us even today. Along with this comes all of the catchy sayings. Quotes like, "Your actions speak so loudly that I can't hear what you are saying". We have heard much about this. Consistency. Actions over words. Showing instead of telling.
I am convinced, however, that we are missing the boat. I am missing the boat. Everybody wants to plant a seed, but nobody is much interested in reaping a harvest. I was struck with a thought several years ago as I was praying for a friend to come to the Lord. As I was praying, I began to pray for the type of Christian that I wanted to come across that person's path. I was speechless and humbled to realize this: Our world is full of Christians who are just like me. Christians that say, sadly, very little. Who is going to do it? Who is going to open their mouth and "declare the wonders of God in their own tongue?"
I love my church. I must confess, however, that I was saddened to hear one of the leaders tell the entire congregation one time, that all they were asking of us was to invite the non-believers in our lives to church. "Don't worry about not knowing what to say--let us do that. Just invite them". I know what they were saying, but deep within my soul I felt completely disturbed. I contend that the exact opposite should be true. We expect very little out of God and even less out of ourselves. First off, we should "know what to say". Whatever happened to "Be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks"? (1 Peter 3:15) Are we ready? Secondly, and most importantly, I fear that God will not let us off the hook. He is calling us to open our mouths. Revival will not happen until we begin to publicly declare the wonders of God. Us. Common, ordinary, everyday people. We must declare the wonders of God. The more I am in my workplace, the more I am convinced that God is calling me to open my mouth in radical ways to share with people about Him. Then we can talk about bringing them into the church.