Are you living by "what if" or "what is?"

Jennifer Rothschild lost her sight when she was 15 years old. She was a normal, active, healthy teenager who especially loved art and wanted to draw and paint when she grew up. One day she and a friend were painting on a large new white sheet for a field day event at school, and she noticed a lot of gray dust in one of the corners of the sheet. She tried to brush it away, but it wouldn't budge. Then she noticed some black marks in another corner of the sheet. When she complained to the friend about all the dirt and dust on this new sheet, her friend responded, "Jennifer, I don't know what you are talking about. She sheet is white." That was her first indication that something was wrong. Not long after this, her parents took her to an eye hospital where they did a number of tests that revealed that she had a disease of the retinas that would leave her completely blind.

Jennifer said that she and her parents drove home in stunned and devestated silence from the hospital that day. When she got home, there sat the upright piano her family had purchased several years earlier. She had taken piano lessons on and off so her ability was pretty limited. But though she could no longer see to read the music she sat down and began playing she had never played and never memorized. The song that flowed from her heart through her fingers is the song that still reverberates through her life and the dark places she goes through: the old protestant hymn "It is Well with my Soul."

When people asks her if she prays for healing, she responds that there are days where she cries out to God, "Lord, take it away." But generally she doesn't pray for healing. She knows that God is sovereign and He can do it if He chooses, but what she really prays for and what she needs most is contentment, "because if I don't learn contentment in the midst of these circumstances, then if in the mercy of God, He delivers me from it, I'll be grumpy about something else." How true that so many of us fail to redeem the difficulty in our lives, because we assume that we'd be content if our circumstances changed. If my finances improved, if my husband improved, if my children improved, if my job improved, if my home improved, if my health improved... But as Jennifer declared, "True contentment only comes in the midst of the difficult circumstances. Because God makes it well with your soul--not always with your circumstances."

One of the things Jennifer said she has learned as a woman navigating through the darkness of faith and blindness is that it doesn't have to be well with your circumstances for it to be well with your soul. We don't wait for our circumstances to change so that we can experience some level of contentment in our faith. Rather, we ask God to change us in the midst of our circumstances.

Boy that is a lesson I needed to be reminded of--I must daily ask God to teach me contentment right smack in the midst of whatever circumstances I am enduring or enjoying. I cannot choose my circumstances, but I can always choose my response. I can choose gratitude or grumpiness. I can choose faith or fear. I can choose resting in God's sovereignity or restlessness and anxiety. I can choose joy or joylessness. I can choose to enjoy the present, irreplaceable moments of my life each day or I can choose to be looking ahead in worry or behind in regret. O how many of those priceless moments have I missed, because I was mired in preoccupation with my circumstances or about ruminating over other moments that have already passed or that are yet to be!

Jennifer explained that as a blind young woman graduating from high school, the thing she most desperately craved was independence. Independence had been striped away from her at every level as a result of her blindness. So she decided to go to a college about 90 miles away from her house. On August 15 of 1982 she would be a college freshman, and "this seemed like the best idea ever--until August 14 at 3 in the afternoon." As she stood in the front yard of her house, she suddenly was filled with fear at the realization she would be away from home, away from help of any kind, away from all security. She didn't know anybody and wondered who would help her, how would she cross the busy streets--and on and on the fears assailed her. Her mom cried with her and told her she had to go, but she only needed to try it for 2 weeks. If she couldn't handle it, her mom and dad would come pick her up. Well, she loved it and she met her future husband in those first 2 weeks!

"For some of you, it's August 14th." We are looking at our future and it looks uncertain or frightening. "Much of the reason we hover in the front yard of our lives and it's always August 14th is because we are so dominated by our feelings...Fear is a legitimate emotion. But you should allow it to become for you an intuitive detective that holds the hand of God and walks you to Him." We don't walk by our feelings; we walk by faith.

How many of us are daily living our August 14's and saying, "what if?" What if my husband loses his job? What if my child can't handle college? What if our family can't handle this health crisis? What if..... You fill in the blank. What if I really do trust God more than my feelings? As Jennifer declared, "What if is the language of fear and speculation." If we want to be people who truly follow God and walk by faith, we need to stop speaking "what if" and start speaking "what is." And here's "what is: God who called you is faithful, the God who in Isaiah 45 says I will give you treasures in darkness."

The bottom line: I want to be a woman who stops saying "what if" and starts saying "what is--God is faithful and I choose to trust Him more than I trust my feelings." How we all need to remind ourselves daily of this truth! We have to counsel our hearts, for our feelings are such variable, unreliable, wobbly things! But God is changeless and eternal and true and good and great, and I can trust Him with my families lives and with my friends lives and with all in this world that can seem so hopeless.

So today, when those "what if's" assail you, choose to counsel your heart to say "what is" and remind yourselves of the faithfulness of Your almighty, all sovereign, all glorious Lord! He has brought you this far--He will not let you down now...or next week...or next year. Even when we don't understand what He's doing, we can trust His heart and choose to speak the truth of "what is" as we walk by faith and not by feelings. To Him be all the glory.

We will remember what we've forgotten!

"Everything we need to learn is what we've already forgotten... The Church doesn't need to reinvent, but to remember." Dave Owens (one of our church's ministers).

We will remember, we will remember

We will remember, the works of Your hands

We will stop and give You praise

For great is Your faithfulness

So goes the chorus of one of my favorite songs, "We will Remember." Such a simple truth and yet so profound. I know that I have the memory of a gnat. I can't remember names. I struggle even with faces! I forget to take my children to birthday parties or to attend school events, even though they are written on my calendar... because I forget to look at my calendar! There is so much that I forget, but when I forget who God is and what He has done, then discouragement and disillusionment and despair and distraction will set in and take over.

Just the other day, my husband and I grew very discouraged over something one of our children was dealing with. Suddenly, our minds were filled with all the worst case scenarios, and we felt defeated and anxious. Note the word, "felt." It was all about feelings rather than Truth. Somehow in all our dire calculations, God had been left utterly out of the equation! And He is the equation! We had forgotten who our Almighty God is, what He has done, and that He is still on the throne and is still in the business of doing "immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine..." But we needed to remember!

We all need to stop in the midst of whatever crisis or challenge we are facing and choose to remember who our God is and what He can do and remember that His Holy Spirit dwells within us and can enable us to face whatever life hands us and to do whatever He's called us to do. But it all has to start with a conscious choice to remember and then to ask Him to enable us in the power of the Holy Spirit to act upon the Truth we know rather than the emotions we feel.

During a very difficult time in Martin Luther's life, he was carrying a number of heavy burdens and fighting many difficult battles. Though usually jovial and light hearted, Luther was depressed and anxious and very discouraged. His wife, Katherine, endured this for some time until one day when he returned home, she met him at the door wearing a black mourning dress and veil.

"Who died?" he asked her.

"God, " his wife responded.

"You foolish thing!" said Luther. "Why this foolishness?"

"It is true," she persisted. "God must have died, or Doctor Luther would not be so sorrowful."

Luther got the message, his perspective changed, and the depression lifted.

How often I live as if God has died! How quickly I lose perspective and grow discouraged or fearful or discontent--for I've forgotten that My God, the One who created the far flung galaxies, who sustains the world and causes the earth to turn and the sun to shine, who raises the dead to life, the One who renews and redeems and restores and reinvigorates--My glorious, omnipotent, gracious God is in control of everything and everyone and every moment!

In his old age, John Newton, in one of his last sermons, declared that he was a very old man and his memory was failing him. But two things he always remembered, "How great a sinner I am and how great a Savior Christ is." Amen!

How thankful I am that I don't have to get it all together to remember the greatness of my Savior and the infinite enormity of His resources! I am a helpless, hapless sinner...but he is a great Savior! I am exhausted and overwhelmed...but He never runs out or runs low. As Paul Miller put it: "Jesus opens His arms to His needy children and says, 'Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest' (Matthew 11:28). The criteria for coming to Jesus is weariness. Come overwhelmed with life. Come with your wandering mind. Come messy." Boy, now there's a standard I can meet: overwhelmed, wandering mind, messy. And Jesus bids me "come." Come weary and worn out and weak... but come remembering who He is and what He has done and what He can do.

We will remember, we will remember

We will remember, the works of YOur hands

We will stop and give you praise

For great is Thy faithfulness.

You're our Creator, our life sustainer

Delivered, our comfort, our joy

Throughout the ages You've been our shelter

Our peace in the midst of the storm

With signs and wonders You've shown Your power

With precious blood You showed us Your grace

And we will shout, our God is good

And He is the faithful One

We will remember, we will remember

We will remember the works of Your hands

We will stop and give You praise

For great is Thy faithfulness.

Our Lord never ever forgets us. May we stop forgetting Him. In the midst of the storms or the sunshine of our lives, in the mundane or the messy, in our sinfulness or our strengths, in our busyness or our barrenness, we must choose to remember. He is so worthy, so great and so good and to Him be all the glory forever and ever. Amen.

Fear the Lord, not the Future

Last night I awoke at 1:30 and was filled with dark condemnation and anxiety. As I lay in bed, a litany of worries engulfed me, and my exhausted mind poured over imagined dire possibilities as well as all my pitiful shortcomings. There is something about the late nighttime hours that seems to give birth to every frightful worry and care, and we feel oppressed and lonely and utterly inadequate.

I finally got up at 3 a.m. and went and poured out my heart to the Lord. I read in those quiet moments, "Ps.147:11 "The Lord delights in those who fear Him, who put their hope in His unfailing love." And Ps.145:19 "He fulfills the desires of those who fear Him; He hears their cry and saves them." What a reminder it was to me this morning that we are to fear God, not circumstances or possible senarios or failures. He is our Hope when life seems hopeless. He is our Way when we have no idea where to go. He is our wisdom in the midst of confusion. He is our abundant Life when we are empty and exhausted. He is our Victory when we are facing defeat. He is our Song when are joyless. He is our Light when we walk in utter darkness. He is our Peace when we are anxious. He is our Grace when we are completely unworthy.

And He is the source of every good thing in our lives. As I poured out my heart to Him, I started thanking Him for every blessing I could think of--and as the list grew longer, my anxiety grew weaker and weaker. Ps.136 commands us over and over: "Give thanks to the Lord for He is good; His steadfast love endures forever." Sometimes we cannot figure out what on earth He is doing. Sometimes His plans seem mystifyingly and dramatically different from our hopes and dreams. As Beth Moore wrote: "God's ways will always be higher than ours, but we don't have to understand Him to settle the matter in our hearts that we can trust Him." Amen! It really is true that you cannot be filled with gratitude and worry at the same time! We daily, hourly, have to choose to focus on Him--the awesome unchangeable One-- on His greatness, on His blessings or focus on our ever changing circumstances. I choose Him! And for all the tomorrows, when faced with the choice once more, I pray for His grace and mercy to choose Him again and again and again all the way to glory!

In the words of one of Peter Marshall's prayers:

Thou knowest, Father, the things of which we are afraid--the terror by night, the arrow by day that takes us unawares and often finds us without a vital, ready faith. We know that Thou hast not promised to surround us with immunity from all the ills to which flesh is heir. We only pray that when they come, if come they must, they shall find us unafraid and with adequate resources to meet them. Give us a constant faith and a steady courage, that we may neither whimper nor in peevish petulance complain before Thee. We thank Thee that Thou dost still rule over the worl that Thou hast made. Kings and emperors come and depart. All the shouting and the tumult, the screaming hurricanes of time have not deviated Thee from Thy path. Help us to remember, O Christ, that Thou art victorious--Christus Victor--reigning over all; that in due time, in Thine own good time, Thou wilt work all things together for good to them that love Thee, who are called according to Thy purpose. May we find our refuge in that regnant faith, and so face the future without fear. Give to us Thy peace, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.