You choose

        Recently, one of our children had a very brief medical scare (brief as in just a couple of hours before they learned all was well. Thank the Lord!).  Our child called later that day to tell me all about it and explained, "I didn't want to call you before I saw the doctor, because I knew you'd freak out and start worrying."  Oh my, that brought conviction all the way down to my toes!  I don't ever, ever, ever want someone I love to fail to share a burden with me out of concern that I'll worry!  No, I want to be a prayer not a worrier!  I want my first response and the meditation of my heart to be faith, not fear.  
         But this little episode sadly reminded me that I've got a looong way to go.  Because let's just admit it right here, I can be a worrier. 
         Yes, I know that worry is a sin, because it's a refusal to trust God.  And because it sucks the life and joy right out of you.  And because deep down, it somehow mistakenly assumes that your plans and ways are better than God's--so therefore this thing you're worrying about better work out the way you want or hope. 
         Worry assumes the worst.  Worry basically removes God from the picture, failing to see that even if the worst occurs, God is still in control, still good, and will still be right there with you in the midst of it all, and that He will somehow, someway, ultimately use it all for your good and His glory. 
           Not to mention, worry does no good!  Seriously, as the Russian spy repeatedly told Tom Hanks in the movie, "Bridge of Spies," when he was asked over and over again if he was he worried or fearful about various possible, terrible outcomes: "Would it help?"
          Does worrying help? 
          Nope!  The answer to that question is a definitive "No."  Worrying about it helps no one, nothing, and it most especially doesn't help the one worrying! 
           Who wants to live this way? None of us!
           But the thing is, we have a choice.  Yes, a choice as to what will be the focus of our thoughts.  Will we marinate in the fear?  Will we meditate on the worry like a cow chewing it's cud?  Or will we choose instead to focus our minds and hearts on God's goodness, God's faithfulness, God's sovereignty, God's power?  Because thing is, we choose.  We choose what we think about, and we choose whether or not we'll worry. 
             I remember reading a long time ago that if you know how to worry, then you know how to meditate on God's Word.  Because worry is turning something over and over again in you head.  So flip the switch!  When that nagging worry starts rumbling around your brain, stop and choose to change the focus on your thoughts.  Pick a specific verse or passage from God's Word and churn that over and over in your heart and mind instead! Or go put on a praise song to God and listen...and maybe even belt it out.  Or don't forget the age-old but ever-effective, "count your blessings!"  Literally, start listing them...even if you have to start with something like, "Well, thank You that I can take this next breath." 
            When you choose meditate on God's Word or on God Himself...when you choose to sing a song of praise rather than to sit in a mound of fears...or even when you simply choose to count blessings rather than worries, it will change everything--because it will change you.  Your mind will start counseling your will to be thankful rather than fearful.  Peace will prevail over anxiety.  Faith will grow.  And before you know it, joy will bubble up and over...and worry absolutely cannot compete with joy. 
             So if there are any fellow worriers out there, it's high time we stop allowing fear and anxiety to rob us of joy, peace, and trust in Almighty God.  We have the choice as to what will be the meditation of our hearts.  Let's tell fear to take a hike and choose faith.  Choose the Word rather than worry.  Choose a song of praise rather than a dirge of anxiety. Choose to count blessings rather than fears.  And let's start choosing today.
              To God be the glory. 
         
       

To my fellow cleverly disguised missionaries

        A little follow-up to my last blog (because clearly God has quite the sense of humor)--
     
        So, after writing that last blog, boy, I was fired up and ready to dig in and get to work on the lecture and that mountain of laundry.  Yes sir, here we go...
  ...and then, later that afternoon, God in His infinite wisdom and mercy, gave me a terrible stomach bug!  Out of the blue.  And can I just say for the record: stomach bugs are the absolute pits.         

Now, at the time I didn’t exactly view it as a gift from Him, but I do now.  I felt really crummy for several days, but I realized two things.  One is that once again I had taken for granted the incredible gift of good health and of simply waking up and feeling good.

How could I?  My sweet sister-in-law, who went home to be with the Lord in early December after her brief battle with cancer, had said repeatedly, “I can’t believe I took for granted how great it was to wake up and feel good.”  For several months after that, I would awaken and feel overwhelming gratitude for that gift of health…but somehow, by the time January rolled around and the to-list grew long, I had forgotten.

And that’s the thing—we’re all good forgetters, aren’t we?  God teaches us something, and we think we’ll never forget that lesson…but before you know it, we’ve forgotten all about it and fallen back into a bad way of thinking and acting.  We hear or read a Scripture that resonates deeply within us, and we know is God speaking to us in that moment…but then time marches on, and we quickly forget.

That’s why we have to be reminded of things we once knew, but we’ve forgotten!  That’s why we have to get into God’s Word everyday!  Yesterday’s mana from His Word won’t sustain us today, just as yesterday’s meal won’t give us energy today.  No, we need to eat physical food today if we want to have the strength to do all we’ve got before us today. And we’ve got to get God’s spiritual food into us today if we want to have the wisdom, the love, the energy, the patience, the joy, the hope that we need for today's burdens and challenges.

And the second thing I learned—or I should say RE-learned—from the stomach bug is that it’s not us doing whatever we’re called to do, it’s Almighty God!  Anytime we start thinking to ourselves, “How can I do all this?” or “What can I do about this?”  or “Why am I having to do all this?” we’ve totally missed the boat!  We need to be reminded daily that it’s not us, but Him!  It’s not us trying to love or forgive the people God’s put in our lives—it’s Him doing it through us.  It’s not us running errands or volunteering at our child’s school or working at that office—it’s Him doing it through us.

If you’ve asked Jesus to be your Savior, then He lives within you, empowering and enabling you for everything He’s put before you today.  Yes, yes, you’re thinking, I know that.  But seriously, don’t you need to be reminded?  Because here’s the remarkable thing—you are God’s missionary.  No maybe you’re not a missionary being sent to a faraway country right now, but wherever you go, whatever you do, whoever you talk to today, you’re His missionary.

 Here’s how pastor, author, and teacher J.R. Briggs explains it: “The King is looking for subjects to join His Kingdom in His mission, and He invites you to join with Him.  You’re His missionary cleverly disguised as” a homemaker, lawyer, teacher, mother.  Briggs shares a story about a woman from his church named Jess who really caught this vision and began to see her mission field as the hair salon where she worked.  So one day, she knelt down in front of the whole church, and they commissioned her to be a missionary at that hair salon.  With that, others in the church realized the same thing, and they wanted to be commissioned too!  One was a missionary cleverly disguised as a public middle school teacher.  Another was a missionary cleverly disguised as an accountant and so forth.

If you’re a believer, then you, too, are a cleverly disguised missionary!   Perhaps God's plan for you is to go as His missionary to some faraway land to share the good news of the gospel. That may or may not be God's specific calling on your life.  But this I know for sure--for every single one of us, today, right now, He has called you to be His missionary right where you!

When you walk into Target, you’re His cleverly disguised missionary to that exhausted clerk.  When you’re at home, you’re His cleverly disguised missionary to all those little eternal souls that reside within your home or to your spouse or to anyone who comes to visit.  When you go to work, you’re His cleverly disguised missionary to your fellow workers and customers.

God has sent you—specifically you—to be His missionary wherever you go today and whatever you’re doing! And not only that, but He's the One—through His indwelling Holy Spirit—who will fill you and enable you to be that loving, wise, joyful, and faithful missionary!

 Today, you are sent as His cleverly disguised missionary...who will you love with the love of Christ?  Who will you encourage with His encouragement?  To whom will you show grace and forgiveness even if you don't feel like it or they don't "deserve" it? (and who among us ever deserves it?!  Aren't you thankful Jesus didn't hold us to that impossible standard?)

So fellow cleverly disguised missionaries, let's go out there today and be His salt and light in the world.  He's sent us, He goes with us, and He will shine through us.  And no darkness can ever overcome the Light of the World.   To God be the glory.

Laundry and lecture...and the LORD!

        So this is a tiny glimpse of what "overwhelmed" looks like...as in a MOUNTAIN of laundry to be folded and put away.  And this picture doesn't begin to do it justice--the pile goes all the way back across our queen size bed.  And there are three--yes three--more giant loads in various stages of washing, drying, or still filthy dirty that are sitting in our laundry room. 
        Now lest you opine that I'm the worst homemaker in the history of the cosmos, let me explain.  We realized on the evening of December 23rd that our dryer was spinning and spinning but nothing was drying.  All the children were home.  All of them were exercising (to work off all the holiday treats).  And the girls wore all my clothes so that they wouldn't have to worry about taking back any dirty laundry to Charlotte.  Normally a perfectly fine idea...EXCEPT WHEN YOUR DRYER IS BROKEN!
        Christmas eve saw a teeming proliferation of dirty clothes.  Then we left in the wee early morning hours of December 26th to take a family trip.  Then, oh joy, we returned home and piled on all our yucky, smelly clothes from six days away.  And can I just note that at least one of our children believes that if he even ponders wearing an article of clothing--even if it never actually graces his body--it should absolutely be considered filthy and in need of washing. 
         Oh, and did I mention that no one could come repair said dryer until today--January 3rd, 2019?  Yes, by today our house looked a bit like NYC in the midst of a summer garbage-worker strike where all that trash accumulates in ginormous piles along the streets. 
          Now here's the semi-happy ending: the dryer has now been repaired! Hooray!  And I've been reminded once again of all the terribly ordinary things in life that I should be grateful for but that I always take for granted...things like hot water, ovens, working eyes and feet and hands and ears, the postman, refrigerators, tea kettles, laughter, quietness, singing...and yes, duh, clothes dryers.  Thank You, Lord, for dryers! 
           But right about now, I'm contemplating that Mount Everest of laundry to fold, and I just want to sit down, eat a large piece of chocolate cake, and read an entertaining book.  Instead, I need to--and here comes the second thing that has me a bit overwhelmed--

...work on a lecture for Bible study.  Well ,actually, I need to first work on some semblance of an outline for a potential lecture...but before that I need to pray and ponder over even a seed of an idea to form the basis for some kind of potential outline...You get my drift?  We're talking yours truly has an impossibly loooooong way to go.  And then there's that laundry. 
          I won't go into the other minor stuff that needs doing like trying to love, care for, and spend time with my family and friends.  (By the way, did you notice that behind my work on the lecture...uhh outline...uhh ideas...sits a manger scene?  Yes, not all the Christmas stuff has been put away.  So sue me.  And that wiseman on the far left lost his head--literally--in storage somehow, and I have been unable to superglue it back on him.  I feel for him, I really do. But it gives me a real sense of camaraderie knowing I'm not the only one around here who has lost her mind.)
        But here's the thing.  Moaning and groaning gets me nowhere.  Worrying and fretting accomplishes nothing.  And procrastinating most certainly does not help in this herculean battle of fighting inertia and overwhelmedness (yes spellcheck, that is not a word...until now) and doing what I don't feel like doing. 
        So I've got a choice.  I can continue to complain, wring my hands, and delay...or I can go to the Lord of all power, of all wisdom, of all everything, and ask Him to "lift my drooping hands and strengthen my weak knees" (Heb.12:12).  I can remember His promises in His supernatural Word. 
          And I can recall His exhortation that because "we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is before  us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.  Consider Him who endured from sinners such hostility against Himself so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted." (Heb.12:1-3)
         Oh my, that's some good stuff, and boy, did I need reminding!  Stop staring at the laundry.  Stop worrying about the non-existent lecture.  Stop focusing on the mess.  Stop looking at myself...and start looking UP! 
         Start focusing on Him. Start pondering all that Jesus endured for my sake.  Start remembering this Almighty One is with me and for me, and that while I was still a rotten, self-centered, utterly underserving sinner, Christ died for me.  Then rose victorious, decimating sin and death on my behalf and clothing me instead in His glorious righteousness and power and love and strength and grace. 
         And guess what?  You too. 
         Whatever overwhelming task you're facing right now...or painful family difficulty...or frightening diagnosis..or impossible challenge, please stop and remember that the shining, omnipotent King of Kings and Lord of Lords has already defeated far, far, infinitely far, infinitely more terrible and horrific problems on your behalf.  He's conquered sin and death for you! 
        And if He's on your side, if He's filling you, if He's empowering you, if He's strengthening you, then it's not you, but Him.  Not your power, but His.  Not your forgiveness, but His.  Not your paltry wisdom, but His.  Not your waning love, but His.  His unconquerable, unending, unbeatable love, grace, forgiveness, power. 
          So if you've got any mountains before you, pause and look up at your Savior.  Remember all He's done for you.  Rejoice in all He is for you and has for you.  And then, by His grace, for His glory, start right where you are.  Take that first tiny, tentative step...and before you know it, you'll be running. Running that race with eyes focused on the One who's already run it all the way for you.                And you know what?  He'll be running right beside you, cheering and smiling and laughing with His Father, "That's my girl!  Look at her go!"  Laundry and lecture, here I come! 
         To God be the glory.