teaching/sharing – Page 5

Make Room for the King

I love Christmas. It is undoubtedly my favorite holiday.

The biggest problem with our secular, gift-giving, party-going approach to Christmas is that there often isn’t purposeful attention devoted to the Christ child. I heard it said recently that if the Innkeeper in Bethlehem had known who he was turning away, he would have gladly given up his own bed. But would he? Would we? Sadly, just as the Innkeeper of Mary & Joseph’s time uttered the words “no room”, so too, we give in to the notion that we are “full”.

Holiday paraphernalia seems to hit retail shelves earlier & earlier each year…am I the only one uncomfortable with Halloween candy corn and peppermint candy canes on display at the same time? Despite this early rush to kick off the Christmas season, we still insist there is just no time…no room for the King. Buried in busyness we allow the trappings of this season to steal our joy and conceal the original message of “Peace on Earth”.

In January 2008 I had an epiphany that we don’t really know what day Jesus was born so why not celebrate Christmas everyday this year? As my act of symbolism, I left my home decorated with Christmas trees, wreaths, nativity scenes, stockings on the mantle, an elaborate village lit up…well, you get the picture. Much to their surprise friends coming to visit were greeted with “Merry Christmas” even in July as the smell of spices wafted through my indoor winter wonderland.

Now in December 2008, with snow blanketing the earth outside my festive Colorado home I taste the warmth of hot cocoa. I recall memories of the past 11 months…the joyful, the painful, the unexpected. For some of us making room for Christ will flow as it has throughout the year. For others, it will be more difficult…in my own life I pray for loved ones in financial crisis, employment uncertainties, a prayer partner facing serious health concerns, a family chair that will be left empty this side of heaven at the Christmas feast.

My heart is heavy even as Christmas music flows from stereo speakers. Quietly the Lord reminds me He inhabits the praise of His people.

If we truly desire to make room for the King this season, we can begin…even in the most painful circumstances…with something as simple as humming, singing, praising. There’s a supernaturalness about praise that clears away heart clutter and leaves an open space. A space where the King may enter in. The more we praise the more room we clear for Him and the more Christ enters in.

Will we leave “baby Jesus” out in the cold stall this year or will we make room for King Jesus to enter in?

“Rejoice, the Lord is King; Your Lord & King adore! Rejoice, give thanks and SING, and triumph evermore! Lift up your heart. Lift up your voice! Rejoice again, I say rejoice! “

{“Rejoice the Lord is King” by Charles Wesley 1707-1788}

Old What’s Her Name

Have you ever felt stuck?

You have a sense that God is calling you to move forward…physically, vocationally, emotionally, relationally, spiritually…yet something is holding you back. You know there is a life ahead of you requiring you to embrace change…do something different, go somewhere new…but you are reluctant. Maybe you’re more than reluctant; maybe you’re flat out defiant. Your life as it exists now is less than ideal but at least it’s predictable. There’s something comfortable in predictability. To have to give up something, maybe everything that is familiar makes you uneasy.

Do you have faith to trust God for change? Or do you drag your feet? Maybe it’s fear that’s holding you back, or perhaps a lack of clarity about where you are headed. You tell yourself there’s no harm in waiting a little longer…when God makes it obvious to me WHY He wants me to move or WHERE He’s taking me, then I’ll go.

But what if tarrying comes with a price tag? What if it disobedience to God’s call to move forward…even to a place unknown…costs you everything?

Do you remember Lot’s wife’s name? NO? Neither does anybody else. She was so insignificant that the Bible writer doesn’t bother to call her by name. In Genesis 19:16 & 26 she is referred to simply as “Lot’s wife”. I’ve dubbed her “Old what’s-her-name”. Not only do we not know her name, we don’t know much about her at all. She was a wife, a mother. And when God asked something difficult of her, when she faced His call to move on with her life, her longing for the security of sameness destroyed her.

God said, It’s time to move. Your family depends on it. Your life depends on it. DO NOT LOOK BACK. Just MOVE! Old-what’s-her-name was not a woman given to immediate obedience. Can you imagine the fit she threw before she finally got on the road with her family… WHY ME? WHY NOW? I don’t want to move. Where are you taking me? What if I don’t like it there? Why is this happening to me? Can’t this WAIT? I’m not ready to let go!! By the time she set out, begrudgingly following her husband I would imagine that she had worked herself into quite a tizzy.

Picture it: they’re finally fleeing Sodom as God had commanded. With no time to pack, Old-what’s-her-name has left everything behind. We know how women are. Our home is our sanctuary. Our stuff defines us. Our friends affirm our value. We yearn for that house and neighborhood where we hang our hearts. We desire our old friends. We crave our creature comforts. We languish for the security of familiarity. “Old what’s-her-name” was no different. She longed for her home, the things she was leaving behind. She hated the thought of starting over!! Having previously been an Army wife through multiple moves, I can certainly relate.

But in her pain &/or rebellion, Old-what’s-her-name made two major blunders: first, she tarried behind her husband. She refused to walk beside him on the journey. She hung back, probably whining, dragging her feet, and slowing down everyone else in the family as they were sent racing out of Sodom. Second, she turned around. I read a Biblical scholar who described her turning not as a glance over her shoulder but as a physical stop and turn around. She not only stopped moving forward, she turned to go back the other direction! The result was that she was left standing there dead in her tracks-literally!

It’s no secret God created women with a high need for security and sameness. But men can be equally guilty when it comes to a reluctance to relinquish the things of the past and move forward. Our Creator understands our longings and desires–He’s the one who gave them to us in the first place! He knows YOUR longings just as He knew Old-what’s-her-name’s. Still, He gave her a journey and her journey had a purpose {to save her life}. Likewise, He has given you a journey and your journey also serves a purpose. Though it may remain unclear to you exactly what that purpose is you can be sure that God has only your GOOD in mind. God doesn’t want you to be destroyed in this process of change & uncertainty. He wants to stretch you, to grow you and ultimately to bless you & bless others through you. In order for that to be accomplished, you cannot make the mistakes of Old-what’s-her-name. You must not tarry and you must not look back.

In Luke 17: 32 Jesus warned about such self absorption when He said, “Remember Lot’s wife.” {Gees, even Jesus didn’t give us her name!} I believe He wants us to remember Old-what’s-her-name not because she was anything special but because she is a classic example of how devastating it can be to live life with one foot in the future and one foot in the past. We must trust the Lord’s plan & purpose for the future rather than trying to hold on the things of our past, including our very life as we have come to know it. Jesus was clear… “Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.” {Luke 17:33}

Contrast Old-what’s-her-name with Abraham in Genesis 12:1. God told Abraham “Leave your country, your kinsmen, and your father’s house, and go to a country that I will show you.” Did you get that? Abraham had no idea where God was taking Him! Yet in Genesis 12:4 we read, “And so Abraham set out as the Lord had bid him…” With no clue where he was going Abraham put one foot in front of the other and moved in faith. Only through obedience to what God had already instructed Abraham to do was he able to learn where God was taking him.

The choice is ours…either move in faith as Abraham did or tarry like Old-what’s-her-name. It’s the choice between experiencing freedom or being rendered permanently stuck. We needn’t worry that we don’t have all the answers…God is not going to reveal more of His will until there is obedience to what He has already commanded. But every child of His can be assured He will give just enough light for the step you are on and He will be the Wind that propels you forward when you are feeling stuck.

In Dry Places

Miles of beach with no ocean, mountains with no trees. Sounds like the worst of both worlds. I mean, I love the mountains and living in the Colorado Rockies I regularly spend time hiking and/or driving admiring the beauty of the mountainous terrain, trees and wildlife. And at least once or twice a year I run away from home to get an “ocean fix” somewhere to listen to crashing waves, gather sea shells and wade into the coolness of the sea. So it was strange to find myself in the Great Sand Dunes Wilderness with nothing but mountains of sand. No waves, no water, not even a single sea shell. No trees, no wildlife, no vegetation. Just sand.

From the parking lot, the dunes don’t appear that challenging. But within the first several steps of walking into deep shifting sand I was struck with the thought that this is not going to be an ordinary hill climb. It was a bit like Michael Jackson’s moonwalk…I knew my feet were moving but they didn’t seem to be taking me forward. I pressed on looking up to the top and calculating that I should reach it within half an hour. That was my first mistake…miscalculating the “cost” of the experience.

Jesus said, “Who among you that does not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple; for which of you intending to build…doesn’t sit down first and count the cost to determine if he has sufficient to finish?” Luke 14:27-28

It didn’t take long to determine that this hike in & out of dunes would be much more strenuous than I originally expected. Shoes full of sand & feeling as if I was navigating with cinder blocks on my feet, there were times when I congratulated myself for going 30 steps without stopping to catch my breath. It didn’t help that I was there at the hottest part of the day. I’ll have to ration my water supply or I’m going to run out, I told myself. Not being able to drink in as much as I wanted was miserable.

I am nothing if not determined and so I continued for a solid hour to what I perceived was the peak. Every so often I would turn to look down the mountain of sand at the poor souls just starting out, appearing the size of gnats, and because I could see how far I’d come already I was encouraged to keep going higher to the finish. I was within a few feet of it when I was hit with the reality of a false pinnacle. The climb had been so steep to this point that the view beyond was obstructed. Only when I reached the “top” did I see that I had gone barely half way through this journey…there was at least another mile ahead of me that I had not expected. My spirit sank and then it rebelled…that’s it. I’m done. No more. I sat down with my half empty bottle of water and a piddly little snack bar that wouldn’t even begin to sooth my hunger pains…I wasn’t planning on being up there through lunch so I failed to bring enough to nourish my body. I told myself the view from here is good enough. I’ve got nothing to prove. I’m not going on any further. I sat down in the hot sand & complained by text message to a friend…

Ever found yourself there? Sitting down in the middle of a half-finished journey, complaining that it’s just too hard to go on? Possessing a sense of smugness as you compare yourself to others not as far along the climb? Experiencing the sensation of going nowhere while the sands of life’s daily challenges keep shifting? Heat pounding you as you struggle to climb out of a pit? Feeling beat up by false peaks of life, where every time you think you’ve conquered some mountain in your path you find a bigger one up ahead? So overwhelmed you’re able to move only short distances at a time before you feel the wind knocked out of you again? Hungering with only a small snack in your spiritual belly because you failed to plan for the long haul? Parched & thirsting without living water to sustain you?

It’s in times of walking through the barren dry places that God speaks…

I give Living Water John 4:10, 14

I am the Bread of Life. John 6: 35, 48

They shall not hunger or thirst neither shall the heat nor sun smite them. For he that has mercy on them shall lead them, even by springs of water shall he guide them. Isaiah 49:10

The refreshment of the Holy Spirit never leaves us. Our place is to hunger & thirst after Christ, to come to the fountain and be filled, to never stop hungering & thirsting after the righteousness of God as we trudge in & out of the valleys & peaks of this thing called life. We can give up when faced with ominous mountains in our path, telling ourselves that this view of God is “good enough”. But what if we miss heaven, the angels, the Hallelujah Chorus? What if we miss Christ altogether? Let me encourage you to read Matthew 25:1-13 and diligently study the parable of the foolish virgins & the wise virgins. Discover for yourself what it means to have a heart of good intentions but still not be prepared for the final part of your journey.

Exhausted, discouraged, hungry & frustrated I wanted the hike to end. I justified why I didn’t need to go on any further. But the words of a friend urged me in reply to my earlier whiney text message…“Quit texting and CLIMB! You can do it, Di !” You can do it! Someone believed in me at my lowest point and that was enough to keep me moving. Three more ridges of false peaks and 95 minutes later I found myself at the pinnacle flat on my back making sand angels and singing the Hallelujah Chorus. I was having a moment. I had finally arrived. A short while later came a second text from my friend… “look behind you at one set of footprints…” The symbolism of Christ carrying me brought me to tears.

It has taken a couple of days to get the sand out of my car and my clothes and my ears! But the exhilaration of reaching the top remains fresh in my spirit. And the message of hope that inspired me is not forgotten.

When you find yourself in the dry desolate places, listen to the voice of hope from your truest Friend, the One who tells you that you do not have to go it alone. He loves you so much that He cannot get you out of His thoughts!

“How precious are your thoughts toward me, oh God. How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the grains of sand…” Psalm 139: 17-18

In dry places, know that it is He who carries you through the desolation and He who will deliver you from it.

“I am He…I will carry you; I have made you & I will bear the burden. I will carry you and bring you to deliverance.” Isaiah 46: 4