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Hydrate

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I have two siblings, one of whom has lived in the UK for almost 5 years now. He and his wife moved there so they could travel, and they did a fantastic job of it. They hopped around Europe for years, spending all their free time in France, Italy, and Spain along with dozens of other places. Then, the UK went into lockdown, and they’ve spent the last year in their little London flat praying for opportunities to travel; but the lockdowns kept piling up. They’re moving back to the States this week, and though they’re excited to be closer to family, they are grieving a year of life that was taken from them.

I think that’s how a lot of us are feeling right now. We’re grieving all of the things we’ve lost; things like rights of passage, time with friends and family, and loved ones who have passed away. We are exhausted by uncertainty. We are all dried up.

I’m reminded of the vision God gave Ezekiel:

1“The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” -Ezekiel 37:1-3 (NIV)

The truth is that God is making things new in our lives, even in the desert. What we need to do is hydrate.

We are a thirsty species. In fact, humans are made up of about 60% water. I looked it up, and as a female adult, I should be taking in at least 11.5 cups of water a day. That’s a lot of water, y’all! We can only survive a few days without water.

But this thirst goes beyond our physical needs; we are thirsty spiritually as well. We thirst for love, purpose and, among other things, to feel in control. So when we’re suddenly uprooted and ripped from our normal way of being, we feel lost or forgotten. It’s like we are wandering around the desert searching for the life we once had. We don’t know which snakes are poisonous or not, but we’re pretty sure that the scorpion staring us down isn’t our friend. Either way, we’re parched.

But Isaiah 43:19 (ESV) says this, “Behold, I (God) am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”

God longs to bring us life and make things new! But notice God doesn’t say he will take us OUT of the desert. Instead, He meets us right where we are: in the desert, in the dust, at our pile of bones, and turns those bones into flesh. He gives us water that can quench our deepest thirsts:

“Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’” -John 4:13-14

The truth is that God is making things new in our lives, even in the desert. What we need to do is hydrate. Lean into Jesus through prayer, study the scriptures, dive deep into His love. Choose to rely on God for everything you need, and your cup will overflow with faith, hope and love.

“And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.” -Isaiah 58:11(ESV)

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Keep it Holy

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Living biblically is living holy. The truth of the gospel demands spiritual submission. PERIOD. Yikes! There’s no easy way to say, read, or write that, but now that I’ve gotten that out of the way…

One reason I believe we struggle with the truth of holiness is this: God is perfect, and we aren’t. First off, holiness isn’t acquired by a litany of good works, but it is freely attributed to us because of the perfect sacrifice of Jesus and the blood He shed on the cross. That sacrifice not only covers us but presents us pure and holy (set apart) before God the Father. Therefore, holiness is not subject to, or a result of, your opinion or emotions. By definition, to be holy is to be consecrated unto God. Putting to death our sinful nature requires recognition of causal effect.

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.”

Romans 12:1 NKJV

Holiness isn’t about our perfection, it’s about submission to His perfection.

Not only was the sacrifice of Jesus great, but it was complete and necessary to redeem us from our fallen and sinful state. And, if we receive salvation by faith through grace, then we live holy by that same grace. I like to think of it like this: Grace covers the gap. Here’s what I mean. Even in the middle of my sin, which caused separation from me and a holy God, His grace, freely applied, actively fights for me to have communion with God because and through the blood of Jesus. Knowing that, His perfect sacrifice begins to take on a more impactful and practical form and inspires us to present ourselves as an offering to God as well. Holiness isn’t about our perfection, it’s about submission to His perfection. This is the part that keeps us humble. How much are we willing to give over to the Lordship of Christ? Is my sin — my broken patterns of thinking — more valuable to me than uninterrupted communion with my Heavenly Father? Holiness in every essence of the word will make you feel unworthy, and that’s ok because you are. We all are. You’ll begin to realize that the only reason that you are presented holy before God is not because of anything you’ve done or try to do, but because of what Jesus has done. Simply put, the death He died in your stead is what makes you holy.

Pastor Josh in the “How To Be A Christian” series put it like this:

If you underestimate the holiness of God, you will underestimate the severity and consequence of your sin.

If you underestimate the consequence of your sin, you will never understand why Jesus had to come.

If you don’t understand why Jesus had to come, you will never fully understand the finished and complete work of the cross.

If you don’t understand the finished and complete work of the cross, you will never understand the magnitude of your forgiveness.

If you don’t understand the magnitude of your forgiveness, you will never be fully passionate about Jesus.

When you are fully passionate about Jesus, you will pursue a life of holiness.

“For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works.”

Titus 2:11-14 NKJV

The things listed above — the grace of God, salvation, and redemption — are all received by faith. In addition, denying ungodliness and worldly lust requires the grace of God to empower us to do it. When we are convicted of sin it doesn’t always feel good, but it is good. Conviction of sin is a sign that the gospel is working in you and at some point, or many points, our character becomes a better reflection of the character of Christ. If you haven’t caught it yet- Jesus is the beginning, middle, and end of this equation. Because of love, He came to earth. Because of love, He gave His life for us. Because of love, He conquered death, hell, and the grave and now presents us as righteous and holy before God the Father. And because of love, we offer our lives back to Him as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable.

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ThinkAgain_Blog

Think Again

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Imagine that you are stuck in traffic on Route 66 on your way home from work. You’re in one of the two middle lanes that is crawling along, when suddenly you notice the right lane is moving. Your instincts tell you to wait; surely this lane will eventually start moving. But then five more cars pass you, and you reconsider. You decided to be bold and merge into the right lane.

And, of course, the moment you do, the right lane grinds to a halt and the middle lanes begin moving. Why must we constantly overthink every decision when our instincts are usually right? If we could just learn to trust ourselves, life would be so much better.

But is that true? Is overthinking really the problem that we think it is? Are our gut reactions really more powerful than our measured reconsiderations? In 2005, Justin Kruger, a Psychologist at the University of Illinois, published a paper in which he decided to find out. Researchers monitored the midterm exams for 1,561 students and counted the number of eraser marks on the paper, comparing the final answer to the correct answer. What they found is that 51% of the changes were wrong-to-right compared to 23% were right-to-wrong.

So, what made these students so bold to challenge their own gut reactions? Were they all living by the mantra of Jerry Seinfeld to his friend George Constanza, “If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite must be right,”?

Hardly. When Kruger interviewed the 51% who changed their answer from wrong to right, he discovered that 75% of them expected there would be more changes from right to wrong than from wrong to right. They changed reluctantly, in spite of their assumptions.

When you submit something to God, He always replaces it with something better.

What Kruger discovered is that while changing our answers from right to wrong isn’t more common, it is more memorable. You remember the time changing lanes on the highway didn’t work because it is incredibly frustrating, and you feel dumb; you don’t remember the dozens of times you changed lanes and it worked out better.

This is what has come to be known as the First Instinct Fallacy. It is the idea that our first instincts and assumptions, while not necessarily bad or wrong, carry a greater weight in our own estimation than they might merit upon closer examination. 

This is not that big of deal, of course, when it comes to what lane to crawl along in during rush hour traffic or what line to pick at the grocery store. However, when it comes to our assumptions about life’s big issues, this form of confirmation bias can keep us from applying the truth of God’s word to things like relationship, family, morality, and politics. Because if my gut instinct is correct, why bother checking it against the truth of God’s word? 

The truth is that we do not want to submit our gut instincts to anyone, God included. And yet, this level of submission is what the gospel requires of us.

Jesus himself highlighted this point with a very strange illustration in Luke 9:23, when He says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” Jesus says it’s not enough merely to deny yourself. You must also take up a cross, an instrument of torture and death, every day to be his follower.

This is why being a truly devoted follower can be so challenging. There are parts of you that do not line up with the word of God. These parts can be assumptions, beliefs, behaviors, habits, or mindsets. And because they are our first instincts, we think they are true, good, and right. But they are not true, good, or right. They feel good, but they are killing us. Still, letting go of them will be difficult. It will feel like a kind of death.

But the wonderful thing about Jesus is that He is a resurrected savior. When you submit something to Him, He always replaces it with something better. This is the testimony that echoes across history from a Pharisee named Saul of Tarsus, who spent years trying to stamp out a heretical movement in first century Judaism called the way because he knew this is what God wanted. Until God Himself met Saul on the road to Damascus and invited Him to think again.

Saul reacted to his encounter with the living Word of God with humility. And through that humility came freedom, influence, and authority. That’s the power in dying to self. You might sacrifice the fleeting comfort of self-reliance. But in Christ, that death is met with a resurrection, and it is that resurrection that our world is dying to encounter. So, let’s be a church that is ready and willing to think again.

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Running on Fumes

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I have to admit something to you, dear reader: right now, my “hope tank” is running on fumes. As I prepared to write this week, all I could think was, “How on Earth am I supposed to encourage people when I, myself, feel so incredibly discouraged?” 

I don’t share this with you for sympathy or for any selfish gain. Quite the opposite, actually. I share this because the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there can be power in discouragement; it really just depends on what we do with it. 

If anyone knew discouragement, it was David. We talk a lot about David before he was anointed and then we talk a lot about David and his less than stellar decisions when he finally became king, but really, I imagine the wait during those two bookend events was rather dark. I mean think about it: David had been given a promise and an anointing from God after being overlooked for so long. Finally! Someone saw him and not just anyone, the God of the universe. He had hope. He knew where God was taking him, but after the years started to stack up, at best, it really seemed like God was taking a whole lot of backroads to get there. Bumpy, rocky, dangerous backroads. Frankly, if I was David, I’d wonder if God had really been the One behind all of this after all or if that old guy, Samuel, got it wrong and wasted all that oil on the wrong guy. Because when you consistently have people trying to kill you for what God called you to, you have to wonder, “God what the heck are you doing here?”

The presence of opposition isn’t a sign that you’ve been disqualified from God’s ultimate purpose for your life.

You might not have people actively trying to kill you, but in some area of your life, you probably have a great deal of opposition threatening to discredit what God has promised. It’s important to remember though that even though he always seemed to find himself in precarious situations, David was called, “A man after God’s own heart.” This encourages me because it shows me that the presence of opposition isn’t a sign that you’ve been disqualified from God’s ultimate purpose for your life. Because despite all of David’s troubles – both those that he brought on himself and those that he didn’t — it was from his lineage that the Hope of the World was born.

Still, you have to wonder if David ever thought about giving up. It had to be exhausting doing the same thing to fight for your life every single day year after year only to be met with more of the same thing when you opened your eyes the next day. You have to wonder if he ever thought, “What’s the point?”

But what if David had given up and let Saul kill him? What if he had given up and just gone back home to tending sheep? What would the lineage of Jesus be like? Would there be a lineage at all? Furthermore, what would our hope be without Jesus? That’s a sobering thought.

But that’s not what David did; David let his discouragement bring him closer to God.

See, the decision you choose to make in the midst of your discouragement is about more than just you. And regardless of how hopeless it seems, you always have a choice to make when you are discouraged: you can choose to let discouragement be the end of your journey, or you can choose to let your discouragement be the fuel that propels you into the arms of the Father. I know which one seems easier, but which one will be worth it in the long run? Not just for you, but for those who will come after you. Choose that one. The fumes of hope can still move you forward. It might be ugly, and it might be slow, but forward is forward. Keep going.

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For When You’re Falling

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I grew up with two Siberian Huskies: Shadow and Bandit. We had a huge backyard, so they normally stayed outside, fenced in. I’ve heard from other couples and learned personally that there are normally two very different kinds of people, and they marry each other. The same could be said of those two dogs, and it was demonstrated most frequently when Shadow would find a way to run off. She would jump the fence or dig under it. She even chewed a hole through the fence at one point. Every single time she ran off, Bandit would stay by the part of the fence she’d escaped from and WAIL. He would bark and whine and cry. He was our living alarm system. The best part is that he was so consistent that whenever she would stray, he would always help to bring her home.

If I’m being honest, I’ve definitely gone through storms that made me want to run away, but I’m so grateful that there’s always been someone to bring me home. Sometimes, I would feel Jesus telling me to do something and I’d put it off for months. I’d hear Him telling me to stop doing something and keep doing it for way too long. I’d be struggling with depression and would rather just feel numb than to be vulnerable and talk to Jesus about it.

I know falling on a rock hurts and its hard, but the truth remains that when you fall down on it, you won’t fall any lower than it either. 

So, when I think of Matthew 7:24-27, “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash,” I’m reminded not only of the stability when I’m standing on the rock but of when I feel like I’m falling on it. I know falling on a rock hurts and its hard, but the truth remains that when you fall down on it, you won’t fall any lower than it either.  

I grew up in the church, but I didn’t have a deeper relationship with Jesus until I was in college. Because of that, I distinctly noticed the difference between knowing God was a firm foundation and feeling it. The benefit of having a solid rock in a storm is that you’re never not being held up when you feel like you’re falling. I used to feel like my depression was at its worst after I had come to know Jesus; I even wanted to blame Him for it sometimes. But the truth was, that my relationship with Him had just given me the foundation I needed to be vulnerable with it for the first time. It was the first chance I gave myself to just cry, to scream at Him, and to ask Him why because I knew that He wouldn’t be moved by my storm. Our storms will come and go, they’ll change, but the stability found in His love never will.

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