glenna marshall

Faithful and Small

There’s a lot of temptation in ministry to be big. Big building, big budget, big numbers. As an author, I travel to speak at a lot of big churches, and I’m always amazed at their reach, their ministry organization, their long lists of volunteers and staff. One of the best parts of my job is observing the ways the Lord is using the global church to further the gospel.

But as pastor’s wife, when I return to my church, I’m often tempted to compare.

ministry spelled out in scrabble tiles

We’re a small church. We don’t have a large operating budget. We have three elders (two staff, one lay) and a financial secretary. We all take turns cleaning the bathrooms. I bake the communion bread and my son folds the bulletins. The pastors and a few volunteers share the responsibilities of teaching children and youth. You wouldn’t visit our church and think, “Wow, this is a big operation.” You’d think, “Wow, small.”

But God hasn’t called any of us in ministry to be “big.” Rather, He’s called us to be faithful with the ministry work He’s put in front of us. In some contexts, faithfulness will be visibly big. A large church might have a noticeable large reach in its community. In another contexts, faithfulness will look small as a small church works in small ways to equip the saints and reach the lost. Both are okay. Because the size isn’t the point.

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (1 Cor. 15:58)

Recently, a group from my church went to a local nursing home to sing with the residents. As we worked our way through a long list of hymns, we laughed and teased one another, gripped hands when a particular song brought tears to our eyes, and prayed together over the people who were attending. After singing, we dispersed to chat with the residents. I visited with two elderly women who were eager to talk. Both were seated in wheelchairs, so I got down on my knees while we talked. Both gripped my hands, so excited for conversation. One of the ladies was recovering from a broken hip, and her adult son was visiting her for the day. He sat through our singing with a big smile on his face. When one of our church members engaged him in conversation afterwards, the man remarked, “Wow, you all really love each other!”

“See that you fulfill the ministry that you have received in the Lord.” (Colossians 4:17)

When our friend relayed that comment to my pastor-husband and me, we both got choked up. Because honestly? What more could we ask for our church? Big or small, the command of Jesus is ever before us: “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).

We haven’t always been marked by love in our church. We had years of turmoil and conflict that displayed anything but love to our neighbors. But the Lord loves His church and has knitted our hearts together with forgiveness. He has taught us to serve and worship together through the faithfulness of showing up—of cleaning the building and prayer-walking our church neighborhood together, of going to the nursing home to visit some of the most forgotten people in our society. God has taught us faithfulness in holding on to Scripture and sound doctrine when nothing else makes sense, to cover one another in prayer in any and every situation. He has taught us faithfulness in welcoming the neighborhood kids, in sharing Christ with the men from the recovery house next door, in picking up trash and serving snow cones at the park down the street on hot summer days. He has taught us faithfulness in baptizing new Christians in an inflatable hot tub and celebrating every profession of faith as though a miracle has occurred…because it has.

 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Eph. 3:20-21)

We may never be a large church, but if our neighbors know we love one another in Christ, we have nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, we have every reason to believe the kingdom of God will grow through our small faithfulness.

Wherever we are in ministry, we can be both faithful and small. God will bring the harvest.

Wherever we are in ministry, we can be both faithful and small. God will bring the harvest. Share on X

Photo by Alex Shute on Unsplash

How I’m Reading the Bible in 2025

A quick scroll on any social media platform shows me one thing about the people I follow: everyone is mapping out their goals for 2025. Some are planning diets; others are beginning new exercise regimens. (Most are doing both.) Some are making financial goals or career plans. I’ve been encouraged to see many people making plans for Bible reading. Whether it’s refreshing an old goal that slipped during 2024 or continuing what we’ve faithfully maintained, we like to use the turn of the calendar as a chance for a new start.

The Slow Down Plan
While there’s always a surge in “Bible-in-a-Year” reading plans this time of year, I’d like to offer a reading plan for those who prefer to take a slower, more meditative approach to their Bible-reading in 2025. Don’t get me wrong—a plan with daily reading throughout the whole Bible is a great plan! These plans have the advantage of giving us the whole counsel of God in a set amount of time while also building in the habit of daily reading.

That said, if you’re looking for a way to read the Bible more slowly, I’ve got just the thing for you. I jokingly call it “The Slow Down Plan” because that’s what this method does for you: it forces you to read Scripture slowly, repetitively, and carefully. I’ve been using this plan for a decade, and it works for every genre of Scripture. This is the plan I will continue to use for my Bible reading in 2025. I have a weekly Bible study that meets in my home, and the women all use the same plan so we can discuss the text each week. I’ve taught the method to women of all ages, including teens, and it’s accessible for every level of learning. You can make it as in-depth as you have time and margin for.

Before you get started, you’ll need to do a couple of things first.

Gather Your Tools
Bible, notebook, pen. (I love the ESV Study Bible, CSB, and NASB.)

Choose Your Time
Pick the time of day when you can most faithfully show up to read God’s Word and pray. For many of us this will be first thing in the morning. For others, it might be that last half hour or so before bed. Or, you might choose your lunch break at work or your baby’s mid-morning naptime.

Pick Your Place
Put all your tools in one place, including a place for your coffee if you drink it and reading glasses if you wear them. Once you make your decision of time and place and have collected your tools, you only need to show up to your Bible-reading time as planned.

Begin the Plan
First, choose a book you’d like to read through. If you’re not sure where to begin, I’d like to suggest the gospel of John or the book of James. The first week of the year, read through the book as many times as you can. If you choose John, you might only get through it once. You could get through James three or four times since it’s only five chapters. The next week, start with chapter one and choose a portion to read. That might be John 1:1-14 or James 1:1-10. On day one, read the passage and follow the first step below. Day two, read the passage again and take the second step. Keep doing this until you’ve finished all six steps. You’ll notice you’ve got an extra day to catch up if you miss a day or to simply pray through the text and think about what you’ve learned.

The following week, move to the next portion of the text and repeat all the steps, one per day. Keep going until you finish the book. The symbols for the steps below simply keep you from having to write out each step each day. The process will come very naturally after a few weeks, I promise!

6 steps for Bible reading

Step 1: Make a general summary statement about the text. Write down what you think the passage is about. This can be a sentence or a paragraph—it’s up to you.

Step 2: What does this teach me about God? This is His book, His story. It’s wise to always begin with Him. We’re tempted to rush to application, but we can’t know ourselves or how to live without first knowing who God is.

Step 3: What does this teach me about man? We learn a lot about humanity and our desperate need for Jesus from God’s Word! The Bible always tells the truth about who we are. Depending on where you are in the text, you might be jotting things down about the depravity of man, or you might be looking at the intrinsic value of human life as image-bearers of God. Or, you might be comparing the differences between the old man and the new creature in Christ. Resist the urge to personalize the text for now.

Step 4: What does this teach me about Jesus? He’s in all of Scripture, so don’t skip this step if you’re in the Old Testament! We must view Scripture with a gospel lens. If you struggle to see Jesus in an Old Testament passage, look at the passage with the gospel arc and see where the themes fall: creation, fall, redemption, restoration.

Step 5: How can I apply this to my life? God’s Word is useful for teaching, training, correction, and more. If we want to live a Scripture-shaped life, we must seek to obey God’s commands. Now that you’ve viewed the passage through the lens of God and the gospel, you can personalize the text without treading into heretical or man-centric waters. We must apply God’s Word, but we want to do it in proper view of Him and His redemptive story.

Step 6: Make another general summary statement. It might feel redundant, but you’ll see how you’ve grown in your understanding of the text over the week, and you’ll have a concise way to talk about what you’ve learned with others. We don’t just study God’s Word to gain knowledge. We study to know Him and make Him known! Once you start making summary statements about what you’ve read, you’ll find that the text comes up in your conversations over and over.

Keep Going
Continue the steps for each chapter until you finish the book. Then choose a new book and start over! Bible reading isn’t a race. It’s all about the journey of studying, praying, meditating, learning, digging, and growing in our love for God. We’ll never graduate from our need for Scripture, and we’ll never run out of new things to learn about our faithful, sovereign God. His Word is a treasure and a lifeline. As you make plans to reset and refresh your habits in 2025, make daily time in God’s Word a non-negotiable. We don’t read God’s Word to tick a box or feel accomplished but to be rooted in the nourishing words of the Lord. To stand firm in adversity. To hold up under trials. To speak the hope of Jesus to others. To grow in our knowledge of and love for God and to be so certain of His love for us.

How I'm reading the Bible in 2025: The Slow Down Plan. Share on X

It All Holds True

The sunlight lengthens across the dining room table where I sit and write. It’s late afternoon and in this part of the world, we’re enjoying that gold stretching of light at the end of the day. I couldn’t sleep last night, tossing and turning and trying to figure out why I’ve had so much trouble getting my brain to stop jumping the tracks when all is calm and quiet at home. We’re nearly a month out now from my teenaged son’s spinal fusion surgery, and he is now sleeping through the night peacefully, free from the crushing pain that threatened to swallow him those first weeks. He stands taller now—three inches, in fact. He’s fourteen-years-old and more than eleven inches taller than me now.

I wiped the dry-erase board clean of the medication schedule the other day. He’s on nothing stronger than Tylenol now, and only occasionally. He no longer needs a walker to stand up from the couch or the bed. He can get in and out of the car a little faster. He can almost take his shoes off by himself. When the surgeon showed me the before and after x-rays last week, I started crying. Miracle. Today I was filming my son walking around the house so I could document the improvement in his gait, and when he noticed, he broke out into a dance so normal-looking that you’d never know that most of his spine was broken, taken apart, and put back together 24 days ago. He’s a marvel.

I have moved to the other side of this ordeal with my son—the years of knowing the surgery was coming, the eight months of trips to the children’s hospital and planning and preparing, the surgery itself, and the month of recovery so far—and I have watched a child that I thought I knew inside and out become someone I am learning from. I didn’t know this is who he was. I didn’t know that the words coming from his truest self in his hardest life circumstances to date would be “God is carrying me through” or “I couldn’t do this without the Lord’s help” or “God is with me” or “Can we pray, Mama?” I hoped, but I didn’t know. Now I know. And I marvel.

Bible on scuffed up table with plants

As Christian parents, we want our kids who have professed faith in Jesus to learn perseverance and endurance. We want them to own their faith, to really lean into their relationship with Christ as their relationship with Him, not ours. It’s what my husband and I have prayed specifically for our son since the surgeon said “it’s time” last summer. But, on the other hand, we want to shield our kids from pain. We want them to learn perseverance and endurance and real, personal faith without having to go through anything hard. That’s not quite how it works in the Christian life. Perseverance is cultivated in adversity. When I’m praying for my sons to walk in faithfulness to and with Jesus, essentially I’m praying for God to use whatever circumstances He deems necessary to sanctify them. And while that scares me, I’ve learned lately that my son is safest in the hand of his God who called him out of darkness and into His marvelous light. I’ve also learned that safe doesn’t mean what I want it to mean.

I know kids are resilient, much more so than adults, I think. But, resilience doesn’t necessarily equal trust in God with your very life. You can be resilient after hard challenges and still reject the gospel. So, while my son has shown himself to have a layer of resilience I didn’t know he possessed, I also know that this tenacious faith in the Lord to sustain him in physical suffering didn’t just materialize out of nowhere. No, it was planted, watered, grown. The Spirit has been at work in him. Just like He is in me or you or anyone who is walking with Christ. Age is just a number. It isn’t an accurate reflection of how deep or how personal someone’s relationship with Jesus might be. What I’m saying is that I was surprised to see the Lord take years and years of unremarkable discipleship and teaching and church-going and praying—and He showed us that it all proves true. God really does sustain. Jesus really is with us. Faith really does grow with time. Scripture really is true. The Spirit really does sanctify. Your heart really is safe in the Father’s hand. His Word really doesn’t return void. Your kids really are listening when you’re sure they’re not. God really does answer prayers.

I was surprised to see this, and I’m not sure why except that much of the time I am Peter sinking in the waves, blindly grasping for Jesus’s hand while my eyes are glued to the things that scare me when I’d rather be the one crying out, “I believe! Help my unbelief!”

But I have watched the Lord answer eight months of incredibly specific prayers, some I prayed with so much half-heartedness and disbelief I’m sure the Lord answered just to show me something about myself.

I’ve got a lot of years ahead still of parenting kids at home. Not many more with this son in particular as he will continue to find his way in the world, but he has a younger brother and there is plenty yet for me to learn and navigate as a mother. What I’m learning is that raising kids to know and love Jesus is hard—gets harder, even, as they get older and closer to leaving the nest. And we have no guarantee that our kids will believe in Christ. But it is not a waste of time to point them to Christ each day. The family devotions that end in burping contests or kids flipping off the side of the couch are not as fruitless as you feel. Making sure they are in church regularly to hear the gospel preached faithfully and to see the body love and serve in Spirit and in truth is a discipline that will cost you time and rest but is crucial to shaping their hearts. Praying with your kids in the moment might feel awkward at first, but it can become a family practice that becomes as natural as breathing. Inviting your kids into your Bible reading may be cumbersome but is real life-on-life discipleship that shows them that God’s Word is a treasure. Laying the groundwork of lived faith in Jesus feels like unglamorous, unseen grunt work. But, I’m convinced that it is good work. When you give your kids the truth to hold on to, the Spirit can bring it to their minds when they need to hold on to it the most. He can do a lot with your weak faith and feeble parenting endeavors.

This post isn’t in any way intended to say that parenting a certain way guarantees faith in your children. We know that it is God who calls, justifies, glorifies. He is the One we pray to for our children’s salvation. We cannot manipulate that into being. But He is pleased for us to parent with faith, to point our children to Him, to disciple them in the big and small moments of life to see that Jesus is the greatest treasure of all and is worth giving our entire life to and for. It is our duty as Christian parents to obey Him in our parenting and also to trust Him with the results. I’m merely writing this post with gratitude that God has brought about saving faith in my son and is sanctifying him. Too often, I am fixated on what I fear, on the suffering itself and not the One who is doing ten thousand good things behind the curtain of His faithful sovereignty. 

I’m still barely halfway there, and maybe one day I will look back at these words and wonder why I thought I could write with so much certainty, but that’s just it—I’m certain. No matter what, I’m certain. It all holds. Jesus proves true. He always will. 

Maybe one day I will look back at these words and wonder why I thought I could write with so much certainty, but that’s just it—I’m certain. No matter what, I’m certain. It all holds. Jesus proves true. He always will.  Share on X

 

Photo by R K on Unsplash

What the Seasons Say

A few days ago on my early morning walk, I noticed some leaves drifting down from the neighborhood trees. A few leaves scattered in the breeze, falling right in front of me. I happily crunched over them because when the trees start undressing, I remember that the heat of a long, discouraging summer will certainly come to an end. Seasons are seasons, after all, and they don’t last forever. The changing of the foliage in Missouri during the fall is always a welcome respite for those of us who have sweated through the thick humidity and swarms of ever-present mosquitos.

Sometimes I’ve wondered why God created things the way He did. Why day and night? Why four seasons? Why the divisions in days and years? When you read the creation account in Genesis 1-2, you see God’s intentional design in separating light from dark, day from night, rotations and revolutions that give us clear distinctions between beginnings and endings. I can’t pretend to understand the mind of God, but I see His kindness written into the created order. When we’re living through dry or painful seasons, we can look at the world around us and know that nothing in this life lasts forever. Seasons change. Sometimes we weep; sometimes we rejoice. Sometimes we do both at the same time—an act of faith that only makes sense in Christ. There is a time for everything under heaven, Scripture tells us, and I find that knowing there are allotted times for weeping and joy held in place by a good, strong hand helps me to persevere through the harder seasons. If everything is appointed or allowed by God, we can trust the one who holds all our times in His hands (Ps. 31:15).

When we lift our eyes to the hills to see where our help comes from, the hills might be full of leafy, full trees. The next time we look, they could be emptied of all their greenery. The source of our help doesn’t change—our help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth—but we can see from the changing appearance of the hills He has made that in one season we might cry out for help with tears and anxiety, another with thankfulness and peace. Seasons remind us that our circumstances won’t last forever, but the source of our help will never change. He keeps us (see Psalm 121:8).

One day when we are in the new heaven and new earth with God forever, we’ll not need the divisions of days or years to remind us how to persevere. We won’t need to look to the changing of seasons to remember that we can hold fast. We’ll be done holding fast. We’ll be kept forever in the unchanging presence and safety of God. All that will be left for us will be joy everlasting.

If you are living with pain, deferred hopes, or difficult circumstances that just won’t change, look at the seasons and know that your trials won’t outlast our eternity with Christ. One day, He’ll return and make all things right, and because we have been buried with Him in baptism, we’ll also be raised with Him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised Him from the dead (see Col 2:12). Here’s what it comes down to: we have a hope that lasts longer than our earthly trials and tribulations. All will be set to right when we rise from the broken ground and breathe with resurrected lungs. The end of perseverance will come for us, and until then we can hold on to the Savior who holds steadfastly to us. As Don Carson said, “I’m not suffering from anything that a good resurrection can’t fix.”

I took another walk this morning to work out the kinks in my aching body. The air was warmer than I’d like, sticky still with humidity and moisture. Fall isn’t quite here yet; it feels far off when the air clings to your skin like a heavy, wet blanket. But the trees tell me it’s coming. The ache in my spine pulses with the reminder that my body is wasting away with the passage of time. But the inner self is being renewed each day that I look to the hills for my Helper. He’s preparing me for what comes next. I can’t see it yet, but one day I will. A leaf floats down from a yellowing tree, silently grazing the ground in front of me. Change is coming. This is what the seasons say.

“So we do not lose heart. Though the outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” -2 Cor. 4:16-18

Seasons remind us that our circumstances won’t last forever, but the source of our help will never change. Share on X

Sorrow, Joy, and Forty Years

A warm June rain soaks the world outside my window. We’ve had a few of those wild, humid summer storms that send us to the basement listening for the tornado sirens. But not today. Today, it’s just a good, gentle soaking. While I sit at my dining room table tapping away on my laptop, everything in southern Missouri is vibrantly green and full and wet. I have noted the changing of seasons by the trees outside the dining room window. How many years have I sat here thinking and typing, watching the world rotate through its revolutions?

rain on window

I celebrate my fortieth birthday on Sunday, and I don’t quite know how to feel about this milestone. The culture tells me I’m as young as I feel. My heart feels older than my body. Ten years ago, my husband threw a big surprise party to celebrate my thirtieth birthday, and someone snapped a picture of me next to the giant frosted cake. I smiled into the camera with an unlined face and a confident heart. In many ways, I am exactly the same person I was standing next to the cake in the church fellowship hall. In other ways, I barely know the grinning girl in the photo with a birthday crown on her head and a crying toddler on her hip. She had no idea at thirty that the next decade would bend her body with pain, would crush her heart with disappointments, would give her a way to say what she really felt, would pull something strong from all her weaknesses. The toddler in the photo towers over me now at nearly six feet tall. When I turned thirty, our hat was in the ring of international adoption, yet we brought home a son four years later from Kansas and we nearly lost him. In the birthday photo, I’m surrounded by a crowd of church members, many of whom would soon leave our church in a way that crippled our ministry for years to come. In the photo, the toddler on my hip forces me to lean to one side, the small spot of pain in my spine first making its presence known. By my mid-thirties, that tiny flame would grow into an inferno that ruled every waking thought for years.

The last ten years have been hard and bitter and sweet and joyous, and it seems that it’s only in retrospect that you can sweep it all together into one long memory and call it good. Some of the good days didn’t seem good until they were swallowed up in sorrows. The sorrows seemed more sorrowful on the days that burned brightly with laughter. While there were days, months—one long year even—that I would never ever want to repeat, I don’t want to lose the memories of the trials and tribulations any more than I want to forget the recollections of golden days and peaceful nights. It’s when you hold blessing and grief together in one hand that you can see how the Lord has woven your joys with sorrows and sorrows with joy so that you don’t lose sight of the incomparable weight of glory that awaiting you at the end of your days. The beginning of your days, really.

My thirties were marked by both deep suffering and tremendous spiritual growth, and don’t think for one second that that is a coincidence. I am not who I was in the photo because the interweaving of joy and sorrow changed the way I viewed the world, my heart, and God Himself. The decade between then and now broke my heart with grief, my body with pain, my mind with fear. And the Lord quietly bound me up with healing through His Word and His faithful presence. If not for the pain, I wouldn’t have seen Him as He showed Himself to me—a still small voice on a thin, papery account of His revelation. He was more than enough.

Sometimes I look back and I cannot tell the difference between joy and sorrow. Therein lies the blessing of the Spirit’s work of steadfastness in your heart, I suppose. I am confident that there are just some things in the Christian life that can only be learned and revealed in the fires of suffering. Peter wrote of this in his first epistle, comparing our deepened faith to the refining process of gold.

“In [your inheritance] you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious that gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 1:6-7)

We grieve through trials of pain and loss, but through them, our faith is tested and refined. The dross of worldliness, sin, and half-heartedness is melted off through the fires of suffering, and since we know that the resulting faith—strong, deep, patient, steadfast faith—is more precious than pure gold, we can persevere through trials knowing God is at work in our suffering. He is making us more like the Suffering Servant we have devoted our lives to follow. In our physical pain, our griefs and sorrows, and the long stretches of mundane plodding in faithfulness, Jesus is ever near. We know Him more acutely in suffering, so let us not always seek to escape that which God will use to shape our hearts to look like His.

My thirties were hard in the way that storms blow through in the midst of a hot, dry summer, battering and bending the trees with high winds while watering the thirsty ground below. After the storm, there’s new, green growth. My thirties were a gain, not a loss, for Jesus was the fixed point in all of it. I am confident He will be thus in this next decade. Every year is for and from Him. Every month, every week, every day, hour, minute, second. In the blending of my memories, sorrows may have brought me near His side, but joy kept me there.

What more do I need in this life than to know Him more today than I did yesterday?

“Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus, just to take Him at His Word,
just to rest upon His promise, just to know ‘thus saith the Lord.'”

 

We know Christ more acutely in suffering, so let us not always seek to escape that which God will use to shape our hearts to look like His. Share on X

 

 

Photo by Xianyu hao on Unsplash

 

I Need Every Story

I’m reading a book about a man I’ve never met. But, deep down, I feel like I know him, you know? I keep reading his story and parsing it for meaning. There’s definitely something there. He led a nation after their first real leader died. And this nation he led? Nomadic. No country of their own yet. He had some mighty big shoes to fill—their last leader, after all, was integral in freeing them from national slavery.

His name was Joshua. And he had a monumental task ahead of him: pick up where Moses left off. Moses. The man who commanded the water turn to blood and for frogs to rain down from the sky. The one who parted the Red Sea with his staff and talked to God on top of a mountain. Though Israel had a long history of complaining, they did revere Moses to some extent. He had the ear of the Almighty. He walked right up to Pharaoh on more than one occasion and demanded the Israelites’ release from slavery. He led them out of Egypt and through a severed sea, following a pillar of cloud and fire, around and around a desert for forty years where food never ran short and clothes never wore out. This is the man Joshua was to replace.

I love how the Lord tells Joshua to “be strong and very courageous” when it’s time to take over after Moses’ death. Just straight up, three times: “be strong and courageous.” Be strong, Joshua. Be full of courage, Joshua. How do you conjure up that kind of strength and courage after the Lord tells you to do it? What’s more, God tells him to be careful to keep the law exactly as He gave it to Moses. It seems like too much to ask, especially considering Israel’s penchant for not being careful to keep God’s law. But there’s one driving promise that makes all of this possible. The Lord says to Joshua, “The Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” That was the secret to Moses’ success, if you want to call it that. What made Moses tick, what made him go and do and lead an entire nation of people was the promise that God would always go with him.

Though we’re talking about Joshua, if you flip back to Exodus 33, you’ll find an exasperated Moses who just can’t deal with these grumbling, obstinate, idolatrous Israelites anymore. The Lord’s reply is so simple and succinct, it stops the reader after Moses’ long litany of ranting. “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest” (Ex. 33:14).

There it is. The promise that Moses needed in order to persevere. The Lord would go with him. It’s important to note that Joshua was Moses’ right hand man. He went as far as he was permitted when Moses spoke with the Lord. So years later, when Joshua is standing at the edge of the Jordan River listening to the same God tell him to be strong and courageous, he had to know what was coming. There’s no way to lead a nomadic group of a people numbering upwards of a million across a river and into a land that does not yet belong to them without the powerful presence of the Almighty. This is how you take the next step. This is how you obey the Lord’s commands. You remember that He is always with you. That’s what separates you and these people from the rest of the world. God is with you.

I like to think of Joshua standing at the edge of the Jordan River, sandaled feet sinking in a little where he stood. Though the river wasn’t as big as the Red Sea, the Israelites came to the Jordan during the time of year when it overflowed its banks, swollen with snow melt from the region at its head. More than that, the land was known to be thick with brush, making whatever was under the water difficult to traverse even in shallow depths. The river could have reached far deeper than ten feet in the middle and as much as one hundred feet in width at that time of year. Crossing it would have been every bit as daunting as Moses’ Red Sea.

dry, cracked ground

So there stands Joshua, tasked with leading a nation across such a swollen river, and I wonder if he had déjà vu. I’ve been here before. They haven’t, but I have. Because, save one other, the generation that crossed the sea with him had all died off. But Joshua—he would have remembered that first footstep into the torn sea outside of Pharoah’s Egypt. He would have remembered the ground dry beneath his feet, the piles of water on either side. He would have remembered that the Lord was with Moses. And supposedly, He was with Joshua, too. When the waters of the Jordan piled up and his foot hit the dry river bottom, was he remembering the Red Sea? Did he feel strong and courageous? Did the promise of the presence of Yahweh send his foot into the river’s dry bed with confidence?

Joshua had twelve stones setup as a memorial for God’s faithfulness after Israel’s safe, dry passage across the Jordan. They were to remember what had happened there and tell the story to their children because forgetfulness would plague God’s people as it had done for the past forty years. Forgetfulness would always be Israel’s undoing.

That forgetfulness continues today. God’s people are a different lot, being grafted into His family from nearly every tribe, tongue, and nation through faith in Jesus. But the forgetfulness runs as deep as the roots of the tree in the garden where the serpent made us question what was really true. I can forget the promises of God as quickly as the Israelites could complain about water or their vegetarian diet. I can lose sight of my identity in Christ faster than you can say, “manna.”

I need Joshua’s story. I need to picture him standing by the swollen Jordan River, remembering that God was with him just like He was with Moses at the edge of the Red Sea. I need the psalms so I know where to go when my heart is broken or overwhelmed by sin. I need the prophets to help me see that sin merits judgment, but Hope was on His way. I need the Gospels to show me my Savior, and Acts so I know that the Spirit is always, always with me. I need the epistles to know what obedience and faithfulness look like and why my forever home in heaven is absolutely secure.

I need every story. I need every story of the Bible to help me remember who God is and what He has done. Here are my twelve stones laid out in sixty-six God-breathed books. I need every word of every story to help me remember that God is faithful. Joshua may not have known that that first step into the Jordan was the next step in God’s redemptive story. He would lead Israel, conquer the Promised Land, settle God’s people, and then he would die. But his chapter propelled redemptive history towards its climax—the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Every little story mattered in its own context and setting. Joshua was a real person with real hopes and dreams and struggles and fears. But his story reached farther than his last breath.

Sometimes when I read Scripture, I forget that the people were real flesh and blood people. Not characters. Not protagonists. Not heroes crafted by creative thinkers. They were people like you and me who lived and loved and lost and sinned and forgot and repented and hoped and cried out for mercy. I need their stories to remember the story. Their stories help us to be faithful in ours.

I need every story of the Bible to help me remember who God is and what He has done. Here are my twelve stones laid out in sixty-six God-breathed books. Share on X

 

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The Power of a Hidden Word

A few years ago, my mom was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Between the day the tumor was discovered and the day it was excised from her head, she had to wait about six weeks. Living in another state, I called often to see how she was doing, to see if the mercury at the bottom of the thermometer had risen from concern to fear to panic.

I had trouble sleeping during those weeks, and all the more as the surgery day drew near. But each time I checked on my mom, she was calm and full of an unearthly measure of peace. Knowing the risks of surgery and the months of recovery that would follow, she kept her gaze fixed on Scripture. She had memorized the first few verses of Psalm 139 and was particularly comforted by the fifth verse.

“You hem me in, behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.”

She explained how comforting it felt to be “hemmed in.” Whatever the outcome of surgery, she knew her soul was safe in Christ. The hope of every Christian is pulled tight with that truthful thread. Whatever may happen to the body, our hearts are forever secure.

She asked me to pray over her when my dad, my aunt, and a few close friends circled around her bed just before they wheeled her to the operating room. I prayed Psalm 139 over her, having tucked the same verses in my heart. The Lord was unmistakably present. Where can we go from His Spirit? If we rise on the wings of the dawn or settle on the far side of the sea, He is there. If we quiver with fear in the pre-op room or the waiting room or beneath the surgeon’s knife, He is there. He hems us in and holds us fast.

In the weeks following my mom’s surgery, I watched her struggle. Words were elusive and slipped to the periphery of her mind, the way a dream runs through your fingers like water. You know you dreamed something, can just almost touch it—but it’s gone right beyond your reach.

One morning, we sat on the deck behind her house sipping spiced tea. Fall had made a reluctant arrival to the humid mornings of Tennessee, and we watched the squirrels empty a birdfeeder in the backyard. I had brought a stack of books to read while staying with my mom that week, and I offered to read to her. “No thanks,” she said in a distant voice. “I’m just trying to catch all my thoughts and line them up. It’s hard to make them behave.” She motioned with her hands as though trying to line up stacks of canned vegetables in the pantry or a row of books on a shelf. I opened my book, but over the pages, I watched her sip her tea and gaze out at the yard, another world away.

I felt strange leaving a few days later. I had kids at home I needed to get back to, and my dad was capable of caring for mom. It took months to get all her words back, but nestled in the folds of matter and memory, the words of Psalm 139 still resided. “You hem me in, behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.” More than just words repeated like a recipe or a multiplication fact, the words of Scripture were hidden in the core of her person. Whatever the substance of soul and spirit, the words of the Lord lived there, woven into the fabric of who my mother is. They marked her because the Word of the Lord is living, active, and able to help you think like the Author. They’re His words, permeating the crevices of thought and action and belief. His words change us when they’re embedded into our hearts.

autumn leaves

I’ve noticed over the years since my mom’s surgery and recovery that the practice of Scripture memorization is one largely ignored by a lot of Christians, myself included. I’ve memorized snatches of verses here and there, but I’ve not given myself to the Scriptures heart, soul, and mind. Not the way I want to, not the way I need to, not the way that will serve me with comfort and hope when sorrow or tragedy or temptation walk in unannounced.

One day, that changed. Looking through Scripture for the key to actively fight sin, fear, and anxious feelings, I stumbled upon a verse I learned as a child. “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you” (Ps. 119:11, ESV). I learned it in the NIV as a child, so the translation differs a little, using the word “hidden” rather than “stored.” But the effect is the same: to fight sin, the psalmist had hidden God’s Word in his heart, stored it up like a treasure. If we want to put sin to death in our lives, we must treat Scripture like the treasure it is, hiding it in the recesses of the heart, soul, and mind. If we want to hold fast to the faith in times of suffering, we need reserves of the Lord’s promises piled up in our hearts, pulled to the front of our memory when we feel overwhelmed by fear or sorrow. They aren’t just words in a line with parts of speech put neatly in place. The words of the Lord give life (Ps. 119:24), strengthen us in sorrow (Ps. 119:28), aid us in faithfulness (Ps. 119:30, 33), make us certain of God’s love for us (Ps. 119:41). Of all the things we could settle our thoughts upon, what can calm and comfort and teach like Scripture? Of all the things we could hide away like a treasure, what could make us richer in love and truth than the words of our God?

I began with a Psalm. Then another. And another. Then a chapter from the New Testament. And another chapter. Another. Then nearly a whole book, which I am determined to finish before the humid mornings of Missouri turn cool with autumn’s reluctant arrival. As I’ve turned over the words of the Lord repeatedly in my mind day in and day out, my thoughts have changed. More than that, the very patterns of them have changed, as though they travel new paths throughout the folds of memory and matter. If ever I find myself sitting on a deck with thoughts that won’t align or behave, I will still have the ancient and everlasting words of my Maker resting in the soul that He keeps.

As I’ve turned over the words of the Lord in my mind over and over, my thoughts have changed. More than that, the very patterns of them have changed, as though they travel new paths throughout the folds of memory and matter. Share on X

 

 

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The Danger of Drifting in a Pandemic

Last summer, my family spent a week at the beach on Tybee Island in Georgia. Like most vacation beach spots, the Tybee shore is dotted with brightly colored condominium rentals anchored in the sand. While swimming in the ocean with my eleven-year-old son, I pointed out a bright yellow set of condos and told him that if he got separated from me or if we drifted down the beach, that particular building was our point of reference. After spending time diving for shells and riding waves into the sand, we looked up and realized we’d drifted nearly a mile down the beach. We couldn’t even see the yellow buildings.

“How did that happen?” my son asked me as we walked down the length of sand back toward the condos. “We never mean to drift,” I told him. “If we don’t pay attention, the current can carry us far away without us even feeling it. That’s why we have to pick out a point of reference that helps us know if we’re drifting.”

ocean wave at sunset

The author of Hebrews gives five major warnings about drifting from faith in Christ. We find similar warnings in Paul’s letters where he mentions men by name who used to follow Christ but later “swerved” from truth (see 2 Tim. 2:18, 4:10). The thing about drifting is that it rarely seems to be intentional. Most Christians don’t wake up one day and decide not to follow Jesus anymore. Rather, there’s a gradual pulling away from the truth of Scripture, a lessening of concern about growing in godliness, a paring down of church involvement, and a growing love for the world over Christ. My son and I never intended to drift a mile down the beach. But we did, and we wouldn’t have recognized it if not for the yellow building beckoning us back to safety.

Drifting doesn’t always look like deliberate disfellowship with the church or intentional swerving from the truth. Because drifting happens slowly, we can adopt habits and schedules and goals that prevent us from holding on to the truth of the gospel. Drifting might not look like a swing from Christianity to atheism. But it might look like lessening your ties with your church family over time. It might look like filling your mind with news, entertainment, and social media because that’s easier to ingest than Scripture. It might look like favoring leisure activities over the proclamation of the Word each week.

And it might be easier to drift during a pandemic.

These past four months have changed the way we do nearly everything. From work to education to shopping for groceries—the pandemic has touched most areas in life. Church life is one of the biggest changes for Christians. We went digital, then to outdoor services, then to socially distanced services with reduced occupancy and virtual options. And we know that spikes in local viral cases might mean we shutter our doors again and return to streaming services. I don’t love our services right now—there’s little fellowship, lots of distance, low physical attendance, and an aching to return to a true normal. We have many older members and some folks with compromised immunity who don’t feel comfortable attending yet. Church hasn’t really felt like church since early March.

Yet, it is important to engage with the church in the manner that the leadership has deemed wise for today. Not loving the way services are conducted doesn’t mean I get to disengage from them altogether. When my husband was preaching into a camera in our living room and I was playing the piano for “corporate” singing on our church Facebook page, I did not enjoy the medium through which we were having our church services. But to neglect the manner of meeting together would not have been good for my soul. Even with regulations, modifications, and distancing, I still need the regular connections with my church family to help me think biblically, worship regularly, process the news in community, and help safeguard my soul from living in complete isolation. There is danger in separating ourselves from believers, especially when we’re forced to comply with a certain level of separation to begin with. We can lose sight of our reference point in Christ on our own. It’s more important than ever to stay connected with your church in the ways that they have made connection possible.

“But it’s a global pandemic!” you might say. Yes, it is. And it’s easier than ever to go from churchgoer to fringe member to zero church involvement. And if that’s the case for your corporate spiritual disciplines, it is likely that your individual spiritual disciplines have slipped to nearly nothing as well. When Scripture warns against drifting, the warnings come with reminders of the ways God has equipped us to hold fast. We regularly see in those exhortations that prayer, Scripture, and church connectedness are grouped together (see Heb. 3:12-13, 4:11-16, 10:19-25). Faithfulness in one feeds faithfulness in the others. And neglecting one will likely mean neglecting the others.

I’ve never lived through a pandemic, and I’m guessing neither have you. But saints before us have, and saints after us likely will, too, if the Lord tarries. The calls of Scripture to faithfulness still apply to us here and now in the midst of a global pandemic. They are a protection for our souls in a time when it is too easy to live on the fringes of church life.

Don Carson writes:

“People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.[1]”

In the best of times, we must be vigilant to stand firm. In the worst of times, all the more.

My encouragement to you is this: watch out for the danger of drifting in a pandemic. The author of Hebrews tells us not to neglect meeting together, and “all the more as we see the Day drawing near” (Heb. 10:25). That means that we must keep watch over our souls in community so that we don’t unintentionally swerve from the truth of the gospel. The only way to prevent drifting is to have a fixed point by which you navigate your life. For the Christian, that will always be the inerrant, unchanging truth of Scripture. And we will always need to abide by God’s chosen means of our steadfastness: feeding our souls with Scripture, prayer, and fellowship with the body of Christ. Pandemic or not, the commands and exhortations of Scripture hold true. A pandemic isn’t a time to pull back but to lean harder on the things God has given us to hold fast.

Today, that means we must engage with our churches in the ways the leadership has deemed right and safe. We must not disconnect simply because services are conducted online and can be watched later. Do your best to be as active as you can from a distance, and to be present when possible. If risk is a real reason, then do your best to be virtually present and in regular communication with the church. But if you’re going to sporting events or restaurants but not church, you might be using a pandemic as an excuse. And you might be in danger of drifting without knowing it. A pandemic is not an excuse for a vacation from the faith. We don’t know how long this will last.

For those who are fully engaged, the charge is the same. And yet, it’s more. Those who aren’t drifting need to look out for those who are. Throw a life preserver and pull them back, for as James tells us, “whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins” (James 5:20).

The calls of Scripture to faithfulness still apply to us here and now in the midst of a global pandemic. They are a protection for our souls in a time when it is too easy to live on the fringes of church life. Share on X

[1] D.A.Carson, For the Love of God, Vol.2: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God’s Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2006), 23.

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Pruning

I had to watch a YouTube video first. I had never dead-headed a rosebush before, but the razor-sharp secateurs in my hand promised to make it an easy job. I watched the man on the video three times to be sure I had the process right. Grab the dead-head, go down to the first five-leaf shoot, snip.

My husband bought the knockout rosebush for Mother’s Day about six years ago, maybe seven. It was a small bush when he gave it to me—less than a foot high. Now the roses bloom well over my head. I’m not much of a gardener, but I’ve noticed the paucity of blooms this summer. Knockout roses are supposed to bloom continuously throughout the warm months, well into fall if properly maintained. That “properly maintained” part is the problem. I’ve done little to maintain the rosebush. Actually, I’ve done nothing. And it shows with a bush full of scraggly branches, multiple dead-heads leftover from last year, and few blooms.

Which is why I found myself standing next to the bush with a new pair of pruning shears in my gloved hand last weekend. Wary of thorns, I began the job of pruning. The severed branches and former blooms piled up on the ground at an alarming rate. Was I trimming too much? Would it grow back? Cutting the bush so it would produce more blooms? This feels very counterproductive.

Pruning, by definition, is the cutting away of dead parts of a vine or tree (or rosebush) so that fruitfulness and growth are increased. It does seem counterproductive to cut something in preparation for growth. But as the man in the YouTube video explained, pruning the old bloomed-out branches allows the bush to expend all its nourishment on the branches that hold new blooms. Pruning keeps the bush from working to sustain dead branches.

roses

There have been few times in my life when I’ve been able to clearly see my proclivities to sin like I have over the past year. Perhaps it’s the time in quarantine. Perhaps it’s coming to the end of some big projects and finding mental room to reflect. Perhaps it’s the Lord answering years of my desperate prayers for Him to make me more like Jesus. Whatever the impetus, I’m seeing some hard things in my life and finding I must face them head on. Sins lurking beneath the surface of my heart have broken through the barrier of oblivion, and I see that I cannot continue in certain streams of thought and practice. To be frank, it’s been a bit demoralizing. The Lord is doing some much needed pruning in my life, and I’ll be honest—it hurts.

While the severed branches and dead portions of the rosebush piled up, I had to tell myself I was doing what was best for the roses. In order for the blossoms to increase, the bush must shed the dying and diseased branches. The same is true for believers who are growing in godliness. The recognition and removal of sin is a painful cut, but God uses it to produce fruitfulness in our lives. The severing of sin and the habits or practices that feed it will make way for growth in Christ. Though it is crushing to grapple with the amount of sin or its pervasiveness in your life, it’s actually a gift. Awareness and conviction of sin is God’s grace in your life. God doesn’t prune what is destined for the fire (see John 15:2). If He reveals parts of your life that must be removed for growth, you can be sure that He is keeping His promise to sanctify you. The pruning of our hearts is purposeful. Painful, but purposeful. We weren’t better off oblivious to our sin, dragging around dead vines and diseased branches.

When God, through regular Scripture and prayer and whatever means He deems necessary, reveals sin that we must put to death, we’ll feel the painful cut as we seek to remove it from our lives. Because we’re not as strong as we think we are, we’ll need to cut the path to sin, too. If your regular struggle is with entertainment (quality or quantity), you may have to severe your relationship with Netflix or the cable company. If anger is your bent, you may have to seek regular accountability for self-control. If unforgiveness is always lurking in your heart, you might need to have an uncomfortable meeting. If pornography is a daily pull, you might have to trade in your iPhone for a flip phone. If gossip characterizes your conversations, you may have to change the way you communicate with others. If your right eye causes you to sin, you may have to pluck it out. If your right hand causes you to sin, you may have to cut it off. Jesus was talking in extremes, but we know what He meant: do what it takes to cut sin out of your life (see Matt. 5:29-30).

These are painful cuts that cost us something, but they are valuable when they give us the freedom to be who we are in Christ and to not sin—even tread sin’s path. When we obediently work at removing the gateways to the things that promise everything but deliver nothing, we find freedom to look at Jesus more. Sin easily entangles, but when God begins to prune our hearts, we can see Him and love Him more. That’s the point of the pruning God is doing in our lives: to see Jesus more and to become more like Him. If He’s pruning you, He’s keeping His promises to you (see Phil. 1:6).

About a week after I cut off all the diseased and dead parts of my rosebush, my husband walked through the back door after work and asked if I’d noticed all the new blooms. I looked out the window, surprised to see a new profusion of red blossoms.

This is why you prune, I thought. For growth.

_____________________

That’s the point of the pruning God is doing in our lives: to see Jesus more and to become more like Him. If He’s pruning you, He’s keeping His promises to you. Share on X

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Losing Youth, Gaining Growth

This morning I realized a universal truth for women: under-eye concealer only goes so far.

I’ve tried a lot of beauty products over the last few years to slow the visible process of aging, but no matter what concoction I slather on my face every night or sponge around my eyes in the morning, the tiny crevices still spread and deepen. It used to alarm me, these lines and wrinkles. Without my permission, they tell others what I can no longer hide: I’m getting older. I can’t pass for twenty-five or even thirty-five anymore. I’m rushing towards middle age, and you can tell.

Everywhere I look—commercials, ads, Instagram posts—I get the message that this process of aging is something to be overcome, beaten, conquered. If I’m not actively trying to shut down this process, I must be failing my body. When the crow’s feet first began to surface, I panicked and planned a counterattack. But no matter how much money I plunk down on a beauty counter, no product on this planet will stop the process of movement toward death.

It’s Eden’s curse. We’re all slowly dying.
And we can’t make it stop.

Sometimes I don’t recognize the girl in the mirror with the lines on her face and the silvery strands springing from her scalp, but as I’ve reflected on the slow vanishing of my physical youth, I’ve watched something else slowly diminish: my spiritual youth. I can’t disentangle the two, really. Alongside the slow fade of physical youth is a similar, bittersweet release of my young years in Christ.

woman wrapped in plaid blanket

Spiritual maturity grows in long years of following Jesus. Day in, day out, ordinary faithfulness to Him. Over time, the edges of immaturity are sanded down by the cumulative effects of reading the Word, of laboring in prayer, of loving the Lord in community with other believers. The Lord keeps His promise to finish what He started in us, but He never promised to do it overnight. He promised to make us more into the image of Christ and He does it, bit by bit, from one degree of glory to the next (see Rom. 8:29, 2 Cor. 3:18).

As we grow in godliness, we’ll see certain areas of sin lose their grip on our hearts. It happens over time—incrementally, I’ve noticed. A slow scraping away of selfishness and pride, layer by layer until we start looking more like Jesus and less like us. We’re slowly decreasing, He’s slowly increasing—this is not a sprint but a lifelong race of becoming less like us and more like Him. We see better now than we did ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty. Usually, victory in one area turns our eyes to other blind spots so we can begin killing those sins, too. But it’s that daily, tandem sin-killing and Jesus-seeking that moves us from one degree of glory to another. From seed to blossom. From infant to adult. From zeal without wisdom to zeal beautifully tangled up with wisdom.

It’s a sloughing-off of the old and settling in more and more into the new. While our bodies wear down a little more each day with signs of age, our spirits are renewed day by day. We’re becoming less like the broken down, sin-laden old versions of us and more like the Spirit-filled new versions of us. As we grow in age, our bodies might be marked by wrinkles and gray hair, arthritis and creaking knees, back pain and waning vision. But as we grow in the faith, our hearts are marked by faithfulness, love, kindness, self-control, joy, peace.

Paul tells us to be encouraged by the inner work that’s happening, even as our bodies wear down: “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day” (2 Cor. 4:16). That renewal happens inwardly, not outwardly. Crow’s feet and knee pain might tell you that your body is wasting away, but inwardly the Spirit is still working to make you more like Jesus. As you grow up in bodily age, you can be growing up in faith. One kind of growth results in a diminished frame; the other results in imaging Jesus more than you did when your skin was smooth and your knees could tackle a flight of stairs without complaint. What a trade-off! If the passing of youth is a necessary loss to walk the long path of growth in godliness, I can live with that. I can age with that.

The benefits of growth and spiritual maturity far outweigh that of any investment in maintaining an appearance of physical youth. We’ll have new bodies in heaven free from the repercussions of Eden’s curse. What matters now is pressing forward in faithfulness to Christ. We can grow older with confidence that He will finish what He has started in our hearts.

This morning, I followed my normal make-up routine. I sponged concealer around my eyes and stood back from the mirror. Dabbed the places where the creases grabbed too much makeup. And I smiled a little. My skin definitely bears the signs of early aging, but I don’t mind it so much. I don’t have the skin of a twenty-five-year-old. But I don’t have the same spiritual state as my twenty-five-year-old self because the Lord is as faithful to sanctify me as He was kind to save me. He has been scraping away those layers of selfishness and pride—and praise Him—He’ll keep at it until I see Him face-to-face. The physical signs of aging can remind me that He is making me new.

Your body might bear the marks of age, but if you are in Christ, your heart bears the marks of Jesus’ redemptive work. And as you grow in Him, don’t lose heart. Your body is getting older, but He is making you new.

Your body might bear the marks of age, but if you are in Christ, your heart bears the marks of Jesus’ redemptive work. And as you grow in Him, don’t lose heart. Your body is getting older, but He is making you new. Share on X

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