glenna marshall

The Bad News is Really Bad

“I’ve got bad news, kids. You’re terrible people.”

That wasn’t my exact opener for my Wednesday night kid’s class at church, but it might as well have been. We’ve been going through Old Testament history for a few months and are currently working through the judges material. My synopsis of the book of Judges was received just fine by the three children in my class for 4-6 year olds, but when I asked for examples of doing what is right in our own eyes, the room was oddly quiet.

Admittedly, Judges is a tricky book to explain to small children. I focused on the cycle of sin that we see on repeat throughout the book: Israel sins, God sends judgment, the people cry out to God, God relents and forgives, but then Israel sins again, and the cycle repeats in a downward spiral. I even cut up a paper plate to demonstrate what a downward spiral looks like, so to speak. But, when I began talking about the cycle of sin in our own lives and the power of the gospel to break the cycle of sin, I received a few quizzical looks.

“What’s sin?” one little boy* asked me (in his defense, he doesn’t attend church often). Below is the dialogue that followed.

“Sin is any disobedience toward God,” I replied. “So, for example, when you disobey your mom, you’re also disobeying God because He has put your mom in charge of you.” I further explained that if we wanted to be reconciled to God (or, “friends” with God so the youngest in my bunch could understand), we need to believe that Jesus paid for our sin at the cross and then we must follow Him and live our lives like He did.

“Oh,” the little boy responded. “Well, I don’t do any of that sin.”

I tried not to smile. “You know what, buddy, I’m afraid you do. We all do.”

The look on his face was not one of amusement. “Not me. I don’t ever do anything wrong.”

I squelched a laugh. “Can you think of a time when you did something selfish or unkind?”

“Nope.”

I pressed him further. “So you’re telling me that every single time your mom has ever told you to do something, you have always immediately jumped up, said ‘yes ma’am!’ and obeyed perfectly?”

“Yep.”

I gently replied,”You know what, kiddo, I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, but I don’t believe you. You know why? Because the Bible tells us that every single person who has ever lived has sinned except for Jesus.”

He continued to shake his head in disagreement.

“Let me give you an example. So, it’s hard for me to admit this to you guys, but sometimes I get impatient with my kids and I yell at them. Does that seem kind?”  All three kids shook their heads no. “When I do that, I’m not doing what’s right in God’s eyes, and it’s sin for me to be unkind to my children. I’m disobeying God by not loving my children and showing them kindness. Does that make sense?” All three nodded. Great, I’m the only sinner in the room and they all know it. 

“Now can you give me an example of a way maybe you have done what is right in your own eyes?” (I wasn’t looking for a confession but rather trying to help them picture what sin against God looks like in their context.)

Mr. Innocent continued shaking his head no, but the girl sitting across from me shyly raised a hand.

“Sometimes my mom tells me to do stuff, but…(the little girl turned her head to the side and whispered into her shoulder), sometimes I don’t do it.”

“That’s a good example!” I encouraged her. “We don’t always want to do what our parents tell us, so we disobey–”

“I said sometimes!” the little girl interjected. “I disobey just sometimes.”

“Well…okay.” I was losing this battle. I looked to the last little member of my class. “Anything to add?”

He looked at me with big eyes and absolutely zero response.

“Pleading the fifth, I see.”

We Must Be Devastated by the Bad News.

To be honest, I didn’t think I’d meet any disagreement on human depravity in my class that night. But the resistance I encountered is just a more frank display of what I see in most adults. Perhaps it seems like I was badgering the kids in my class, but I love them each and was as gentle as possible while also trying to expose what we all have difficulty admitting: we are bad people at heart. I’m not addressing the value of our lives. This is not an imago dei discussion. I’m talking about the curse of sin that has run through the roots of every family tree since Eden. R.C. Sproul said it this way, “The doctrine of original sin teaches that people sin because we are sinners. It’s not that we are sinners because we sin, but rather, we sin because we are sinners; that is, since the fall of man, we have inherited a corrupted condition of sinfulness. We now have a sin nature.” (source)

It is counter-cultural and some would say damaging to teach this to our kids, but the good news of the gospel isn’t good news at all if we’re pretty good people at heart. Until we understand that we’re not “pretty good” at heart, we cannot understand the gravity of Jesus’ redemptive work at the cross. Pretty good people don’t need a savior and we should consider Jesus’ sacrifice at the cross wasteful if we all believe we’re not that bad. The truth is, even sometimes disobedience (only sometimes!) is still a wedge between our dark hearts and our holy God. Even one sin is enough to drive us from the presence of God; just ask Adam and Eve.

Coming to terms with our sinfulness and our bent toward disobedience and dissatisfaction in God is the first step to believing the gospel. The gospel will not be good news to us until we are first devastated by the bad news. 

The gospel will not be good news to us until we are first devastated by the bad news. Share on X

The Bad News Makes Way for the Good News.

I explained to my little class that they wouldn’t really be able to love Jesus until they realized how much they needed Him. Agreeing with God that we are a sinful people is the impetus for new birth. It’s something a child can believe and own, but it’s difficult at every stage to admit: I am not good. And further, I cannot make myself good. 

The Bible tells us that no one seeks after God and that there is in fact none who are righteous (Ps. 14:1, Rom. 3:10-11). The Law given in the Old Testament exposed the desperation of God’s people for a redeemer. They could not obey perfectly, nor could they rescue themselves. Case in point: Judges was a disastrous, dark period of biblical history wherein people only did what they desired. They were slaves to their flesh. The apostle Paul termed our crooked human nature a “body of death” (Rom. 7:24). He’s not being extreme.

Acknowledging our helpless sinfulness is a bitter pill to swallow, but swallow it we must in order to see the glory of the provision made for us at Calvary. The God we cannot reach in our state of despair reached out to us by sending Jesus as a propitiation for our sin. In a scandalous exchange, Jesus became our sin, and we get to wear His righteousness. Only repentance and faith in and through Christ can break the power of our sin cycle and dress us in the purity of Christ. In that exchange we move from sinner to saint. We’re not sinless, not yet. But one day we most certainly will be.

We Need to Hear the Bad News and the Good News.

I was a child when I first believed the gospel. I thought up until that point that I was a good kid and that God probably really liked me a lot because I didn’t disobey my parents very much. I thrived on being “the good kid.” Do you see it? Though outwardly obedient, my heart was dark and dead. Pride snaked its way through my veins hissing half truths that seemed probable: I’m not that bad. I’m not like that person over there. God probably even loves me more because I’m pretty good. 

But through the many gospel presentations given by my parents, my pastors, my Sunday school teachers, my Wednesday night class teachers–I gradually became aware of my sinfulness. It was crushing to understand that I wasn’t as good as I thought I was. But beneath the crushing weight of sin is where we hear the Savior say, “My burden is light. Believe in God, believe also in Me.”

I’m parenting two children myself, and it never feels good to tell my boys that they need new hearts. It goes against the grain of our self-esteem boosting, identity-affirming culture. Though I affirm my love for my children, their uniqueness and giftedness, their imago dei, I am doing them no favors to tell them they are innocent human beings who are pretty good at heart. And yet, giving them the bad news is quickly followed by the very best news: Jesus can make you new! 

*No names have been used in order to protect the guilty, the sometimes guilty, and the never guilty. 

Photo by Varshesh Joshi on Unsplash

Is it Sinful to Live in the Past?

I was juggling housework and a very energetic two-year-old yesterday morning when the phone rang. My friend on the other end, also dealing with a little one, had called with a very specific question about suffering and sin. As I’ve mulled it over, I decided to address her question publicly (with her permission).

She asked me, “Is it sinful to live in the past, even when the past wasn’t a result of poor choices but difficult circumstances not of our choosing?”

It’s a loaded question, really, and I told my friend that. When you dig into the root issues, you’re talking about God’s sovereignty and the problem of evil which are not easily explained in one blog post. And yet, there are some passages of Scripture that came to mind immediately when I considered whether or not it was sinful to dwell on a past marked by suffering. Specifically, I thought of Job and the apostle Paul.

If you’ve read my writing for very long, you know that I frequently address the topic of suffering. In one calendar year, we experienced a nearly failed adoption, the death of my grandmother, my persistent struggle with chronic illnesses, and my mother’s brain tumor and subsequent brain surgery. Because I’m a writer, I wrote about these difficulties as a way to both process and find hope. I shared them with you to help you connect the sufferings of your own life to what is true about God as revealed in Scripture. It’s the primary reason I write: to remind you to let Scripture inform your suffering, not the other way around. So often we work backwards, letting our circumstances dictate what is true about the character of God, which aids only in making God in our own image. What I hope to accomplish with my writing, speaking, and music is to point you to the Word of God first so that you can rightly view your hardships through a biblical lens that explains how God can be good, even in our suffering. Essentially, let’s let God tell us who He is. That said, I believe there are two thoughts to bear in mind when we consider our past sufferings.

The Past Can Serve Us 

My years of living with chronic pain and infertility are the vehicles I use to tell the story about God’s kindness and sovereignty, but they are just that: vehicles. The main story I tell is the one about God that comes from His Word, and the truth of the gospel must pierce every part of my testimony or else I’m just a resounding gong bemoaning the hard things that have happened to me. I’m not that unique; hard things happen to everyone. So, here is where I believe that my past experiences can serve as a place of ministry. When I stand at a podium and talk about how difficult it was to rock a baby to sleep every night for months without knowing if I could keep him, I share the ways my heart felt like broken shards of glass so that I can highlight how the faithfulness of God put all those pieces back together. When I write about the years that I cried out to the Lord for healing because of the disastrous effects of physical pain, I do so to explain how the Lord’s presence and the ministry of His Word persevered me through even the darkest nights of body and soul. The past experiences are merely the touch points for liberally handing out the greatest comfort, which is the truth of God’s unchanging, purposeful nature as seen in Scripture.

“…for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know both how to have a little, and I know how to have a lot. In any and all circumstance I have learned the secret of being content–whether well fed or hungry, whether in abundance or in need. I am able to do all things through Him who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:11-13)

I want to be able to say with Paul that I’ve learned contentment in every circumstance. I’m not there yet by a long shot, but with each round of small sufferings I’ve learned that when contentment is found in Christ, then the treasure is not so much the end of specific sufferings but rather His constancy in the midst of them. He is the treasure. In this way, our sufferings serve us as ways to recount God’s past faithfulness to us. You see this pattern in Scripture frequently. The psalmists often structured their songs about suffering by beginning with despair and ending in praise. How did they make this shift? The key is that they nearly always called to mind the past faithfulness of God in order to believe in His future faithfulness. The Psalms are rich with a beautifully relatable pattern of panicking about circumstances, lamenting what has happened, remembering God’s past faithfulness, and resolving to trust Him because of that past faithfulness. I don’t believe the psalmists are “living in the past,” but rather, are allowing the constancy of God’s goodness in the past help them to persevere through present and future sufferings.

The act of remembering God’s past faithfulness is one of the recurring themes of Scripture I’ve noticed in my Bible reading over the past few years, and I believe the practice is meant to remind us who God is as we are bent toward disbelief. Or, in the case of suffering or hardships, we’re bent to let those things tell us what is true about God. Remembering God’s past faithfulness must be done by knowing Him as He’s revealed Himself to us in Scripture and looking for the ways He’s kept His Word in our past difficulties. In this way, I believe we can safely allow our past hurts to highlight God’s goodness to us and give us a place of ministry to those who are currently suffering. It’s incredibly important to keep God as the hero of His story and yours to prevent what I believe can be the sinful aspect of “living in the past.”

The Past Can Enslave Us

There is nothing more annoying than listening to someone recount all the ways they’re victimized by their circumstances. Our culture feeds this self-entitled worldview by liberally spooning out the lies that we are basically good and therefore undeserving of anything bad that happens to us, even the consequences of poor or sinful choices. Here again, we must let Scripture inform the way we think about even the most basic of truths about humanity: the heart is desperately wicked and there is no one who is good or who seeks God (Jeremiah 17:9, Romans 3:10-12).

Sometimes we suffer at the hands of our own sinfulness or at the hands of others. Sometimes we suffer because of our commitment to Christ. And sometimes we suffer and never know why. It is this last one that my friend was addressing in her question. Suffering that seems arbitrary is hard to swallow. I think of Job, who never knew what was behind the catastrophes that shattered his life. And yet, I am thankful for the account of Job’s suffering in Scripture because we are taught how to process suffering that we cannot understand or categorize.

The Job replied to the Lord: “I know that You can do anything and no plan of Yours can be thwarted. You asked, ‘Who is this who conceals My counsel with ignorance?’ Surely I spoke about things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know…Therefore I take back my words and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:1-3, 6)

What was most comforting to Job in the end was not the cessation of his suffering but the strong, bold statements about the character of God–His wisdom, His authority, His universal sovereignty, even and especially in Job’s suffering. I wouldn’t say that Job “lived in his past,” but he let his experiences serve as a vehicle to grapple with what was true about God.

“Not that I have already reached the goal or am already fully mature, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus. Brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead. I pursue as my goal the prize promised by Go’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus. Therefore, all who are mature should think this way.” (Philippians 3:12-15a)

Paul suffered a lot for his relentless preaching of the gospel, but I don’t see him as a victim of his past. Rather, I see a man who recounts them as a way to talk about the prize of pursuing Christ wholeheartedly. He presses forward for the treasure of Jesus, for maturity in the faith, for a citizenship anchored in heaven. The difference between living as a victim of your circumstances and rejoicing in them is again viewing God as the hero of the story. When we prop up ourselves as the heroes of our own stories, we count our sufferings as undeserved and unjust which puts us at odds with both God’s position of authority and sovereignty. Rather, I believe we should recognize that whatever God allows into our lives has first been filtered through fingers that are threading together a tapestry of redemption that we cannot fathom. Our sufferings may seem arbitrary at times, but what we don’t see is the way God may use them to display the power of the gospel to a watching a world. Avoiding self-victimization begins with trusting a good, sovereign God with our suffering. Maturity grows from the recognition that we’ve been taken hold of by Christ, not our sufferings.

Remembering God’s Faithfulness or Recounting My Miseries?

As people of the cross, the challenge lies in recounting God’s faithfulness in our past, rather than dwelling on how we felt about our suffering. Like most of our struggles as sojourners longing for our better country, we must challenge our feelings with the truth of Scripture. We miss the ways God has worked things for our good when we dwell on our miseries rather than His good purposes.

We miss the ways God has worked things for our good when we dwell on our miseries rather than His good purposes. Share on X

So is it sinful to live in the past? It can be if we allow ourselves to be enslaved to a victim mentality. In so doing, we miss the way our past sufferings can serve as a rich palette for painting a picture of the Scriptural truths about God’s unending, faithful goodness to us. But we must first endeavor to see Him as both the treasure and the hero of our past, present, and future.

 

Photo by Moritz Schumacher on Unsplash

Recommended reading: Future Grace: the Purifying Power of the Promises of God by John Piper

All Things New

I remember her determination. That’s what I remember the most. It was the first week of the new year, and my friend was, as my grandmother used to say, “bound and determined.” This year would be different. This year would be the year everything lined up straight, nothing stepping out of line. All her goals and plans would stand in resolute submission to her sheer determination to make everything right this year. This year she would make it work. This year she would be happy. 

Later, I watched her scramble when things didn’t pan out quite right. Still, she worked at it with an admirable resolution. She crowded her days with new projects and plans that would surely quiet the empty feeling she was desperate to squelch. I’d seen the uncertainty in her eyes, the way her shoulders slumped when she couldn’t mend her ache. I could tell she was troubled by the ways her resolutions had failed her. There was more spending, more giving, more fixing, more talking, more organizing.

It was hard to watch.

No matter how much she poured into her life, no matter how determined she was to patch up what was broken, everything kept slipping out the cracks. Like a cup irreparably cracked, everything leaked out eventually. No matter how quickly she kept refilling her life with new things, every kind of remedy failed her. It all seeped out along with the dregs of hope she had staked her year upon.

She wasn’t the only empty cup I encountered last January. She was one of many people in my life who were medicating a deep ache with all the remedies the world promises will make us happy. Possessions, family, vacations, work, a well-ordered and well-maintained life.

We keep filling up our lives with things — good things even — but still find ourselves chest-deep in a yearning we can’t explain.

 

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How to Have Joy When the Holidays are Hard

It was December, 2015.

I’d never approached the holidays on such shaky ground. We pulled out the decorations and sipped hot cider while Christmas songs spilled from our favorite holiday Pandora station. If you’d seen us through the windows of our home, it was likely the warm, sugary image of holiday perfection. But tears streaked my cheeks while I hung ornaments on the tree, and I never was able to stem the flow as the magnitude of entering the Christmas season while parenting a child I could lose to the legal system made me painfully aware of firsts and lasts. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We’d said yes to opening our home but didn’t realize that our yes also included opening our hearts to absolute risk.

The Christmas season was supposed to be full of hope and excitement.
But for us, it was laden with fear.

Joy is wrapped up in the person of Christ, and when He is the source of our deep fulfillment, then risky living can be endured and heads can be laid on the pillow at night without fear.

Somewhere between decorating the tree after Thanksgiving and opening gifts on Christmas morning, I felt the Lord drawing me to choose joy in the midst of our unknown. I read Psalm 4 on one of those cold, December mornings, and the words nearly jumped off the page as they soaked into my bones and lodged themselves down deep in my heart. “You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and new wine abound. I will both lie down and sleep in peace, for You alone, LORD, make me to live in safety.” (Ps.4:7-8)

Joy isn’t the physical abundance of possessions or busy social calendars. Joy is found in the Lord; it is anchored in the never-changing, soul-safe character of God. When we root our definition of joy in Christ, we can purpose to rest our heads on God’s goodness because the source of our joy isn’t an outcome or a guarantee. It’s a Person—a Person who will never leave or forsake us, who will keep our hearts safe no matter the crumbling ground beneath our feet. In the clearest version of sacrifice we’ll ever see, Jesus left the safety of heaven and became the helpless infant in the manger. He risked His reputation, His name, His life to give us Himself. We might sing lullabies about the serenity of the manger scene, but it probably looked a lot like risk and fear to the people present.

Joy is wrapped up in the person of Christ, and when He is the source of our deep fulfillment, then risky living can be endured and heads can be laid on the pillow at night without fear.

Joy is found in the Lord; it is anchored in the never-changing, soul-safe character of God. Share on X

Christmas is different for us now. We confidently decorated the tree with both of our forever children. We feel the happy emotions that we often attach to the word joy, but I will never forget the memories of that Christmas when choosing to let my soul be satisfied in Jesus in the midst of unfathomable sorrow still gave me real, purposeful joy.

If your holiday season is brimming with grief or fear rather than hope and cheer this year, please believe me when I say it is possible to have joy in the midst of sorrow. Anchor your hope in Jesus, not your circumstances, knowing that He is with you. It’s why He came the way that He did. It’s why He came at all.
To be with us, to rescue us.
Immanuel.
God with us.
How to Have Joy when the Holidays are Hard

Photo by Josh Boot on Unsplash

Remarkable Faith

When Shauna Letellier explained her book concept to me and a couple other writers last fall at a writing workshop, I gave her my information and begged her to let me be on her launch team. “What an interesting concept for a book,” I thought to myself while she outlined the premise. I couldn’t wait to read it, and when I finally did read it, I was not disappointed.

In her book Remarkable Faith: When Jesus Marveled at the Faith of Unremarkable People, Shauna digs deep into the stories of eight people whose encounters with Jesus were marked by their faith. Sometimes it was desperate faith, sometimes a panicked faith. The neediness of these largely unknown and unnamed people moved them to seek Jesus because they had exhausted every other resource. Desperate for their own healing or forgiveness (and Jesus addressed both), each of these characters had a back story that Shauna reimagines for us to give some insight into what the lives of these people might have been like prior to their encounters with Jesus.

Remarkable Faith demonstrates the way Jesus meets our deepest needs.

When I read the book, it didn’t seem to matter that I was familiar with each of these stories. It didn’t matter that I could tell them by heart at any given time. It didn’t matter that I’d read them countless times throughout my life as a believer. With Shauna’s retelling of each person’s encounter with Jesus, I found I couldn’t read the words for the tears in my eyes.

That meeting with Jesus in each story is the denouement, the moment of climax, the point of every detail. While Jesus remarked on the faith of these people and offered both the healing of their bodies and hearts, He still shines brightest in each account of healing and forgiveness. His healing overrides illness, His strength overshadows weakness, His generosity meets every point of neediness. Coming to Him needy is entirely the point. He is the One we are desperate for. Remarkable Faith demonstrates the way Jesus meets our deepest needs.

I hope you’ll order a copy of Remarkable Faith today. You’ll be captivated by Shauna’s storytelling and greatly encouraged by the ways Jesus responds to weak, unremarkable neediness.

You can connect with Shauna at her website, and on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

 

 

 

 

This post contains affiliate links which means if you order a product through the link, it doesn’t cost you any additional fees but I receive a tiny portion which helps me run this blog.

I Prayed for Healing. He Answered with His Presence.

These are slow summer days, stretching long at the ends from first light to last. We drink them in deep swallows, savoring the absence of hurried schedules. We sleep later than normal and wear pajamas longer than we should. The hours unspool without our notice or care. It seems a luxury. I’ve not had such a peaceful summer in years, and I couldn’t put my finger on the reason until I remembered the shroud of pain that used to wrap me up tight with fear and misery. The familiar heaviness of July heat has settled over our low corner of Missouri, a wool blanket dipped in boiling water and hung out to steam and dry above our heads. It’s hard to get a good breath when the air is so hot and wet. In being well these past 12 months, I’ve nearly forgotten the summers past when I struggled to separate the heat of a southern summer with the fire that encased my spine. It was always hot, inside and out.

Two summers past, I was on the brink of a breakdown. My health had deteriorated to the point I was losing my hair, struggling to remember things, sleeping only an hour or two at night, wrestling with pain like it was my full-time job. Physically, I was wrecked. I was also losing my grip on faith. I wasn’t just sick, I was heartsick. My husband and I were walking through a season of doubt about our vocational ministry while also watching our fourth year in the adoption process come to a fruitless close–a lot of loose ends, frayed and pulling at my confidence.

I was sorely tempted to hold hands with bitterness. She’d been a longtime companion, bitterness. But she is a difficult root to kill, the kind of plant nobody wants in their garden, a tangle of vines that spreads with ferocity. Bitterness is the kudzu of discontentment. At its best, kudzu cloaks the world in greenery, turning trees into stooped giants with draping, viney arms. It kills everything underneath, but it’s not until winter when we see the degree of damage. Kudzu inhabits what it covers. And I know from a ten year contention with it that bitterness works the same, inhabiting the heart with tightly wound tendrils that suffocate life and light.

I was afraid of the kudzu effects of bitterness again in my life. Desperate for health, for relief, for purpose, for contentment, I turned with halting steps and faltering prayers to Christ. I hesitated because it seemed too much. My health. My complete inability to have another child, no matter what avenue I tried. My internal wrestling with a decade of failing church ministry. The dizzying effects of everything at once.

The believing part of me knew Jesus was the one to run to, but the doubting part of me couldn’t hold His gaze. I was Peter sinking in the Sea of Galilee, unable to take my eyes off the choppy, churning waves. But Jesus was Jesus, chastising my weak faith while also holding on to me. His grip was stronger than bitterness, His gaze steadier than mine.

His strength overrode my weakness.

He held on to me while the pain engulfed my spine, when every rejection email from the adoption agency landed arrived, when Sunday morning rolled around and I dreaded being the pastor’s wife, when doubt felt bigger than faith.

How did it happen, you ask. How did He hold on to you?

And I would answer that He did it by walking the floors with me in the middle of the night that summer of heat and pain. Pain was the word reverberating through my body, throbbing in time with my pulse. Pain, pain, pain. 

But there was also Christ. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Reminding me of the words He’d said, of the promises He’d made, reminding me until His words were louder than my pain.

I am with you always. (Mt. 28:20)

I will never leave or forsake you. (Dt. 31:6, Heb. 13:5)

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. (Is.43:2)

I will be with you in trouble. (Ps. 91:15)

Nothing can separate you from My love, not things present or things to come. (Rom. 8:35, 38)

While I waited long for healing, for a child, for some kind of purpose, He held fast to me. He did it in every turn of the page in my worn Bible. He did it when I struggled to pin down the words to pray. He was present. Visibly, no. But in every way I needed, He was present because He has promised to be, even (and maybe especially) in pain and doubt. In the white-fisted vise of pain, I learned that Christ could sustain me. He could hold my gaze and teach me to hold His. He could deepen my faith when He reminded me who He was. I could walk on water because He was with me.

  I remember the way I called out to the Lord to heal me and the way He responded by being with me instead.  

 I wasn’t healed that summer. My pain worsened, actually. It would be another year before I would begin to experience pain’s release. It slipped away slowly, hesitant to leave me, I guess. And then one morning at the beginning of last summer, I woke with a jolt and scrambled to name the startling absence I felt. It was nothing. I felt nothing. Instead of a body on fire, there was just a body. I turned to the clock in a room bathed in bright morning light and realized I’d slept all night for the first time in six years.

These past few weeks, I’ve let myself remember those days fogged up with heat and humidity and pain and doubt. I’ve had a bit of a flare-up, and while the ache settles into my joints, there’s a stifling muscle memory there, too. I feel those surges of anxiety that used to steal my breath when I tried to imagine a future shrouded in lifelong pain. I remember the dark, still nights and my splintering sanity. I remember the song I sang to keep me grounded.

I remember the way I called out to the Lord to heal me and the way He responded by being with me instead.  

I remember the words He spoke long ago that throb with truth in time with my pulse, whether there’s pain or just the memory of it. His words of promise and presence. Words I needed then, words I need now. Words that remind me that He is enough on these long, summer days that shimmer with the heat of pain and faithfulness.

My pain and God’s faithfulness. I am not sure I could know one without the other.

 

 Photo cred: Jake Givens with Unsplash

Story of the Song: Meaningless

I remember how we argued, standing awkwardly next to the table. My attempt at a joke to lighten the mood fell flat, and I’m pretty sure you stepped on my forced levity with your foot and ground it into the linoleum for good measure. I deserved it. I hadn’t meant to bait you; I just wanted to challenge your resolute commitment to your carefully planned future.

“Sometimes plans don’t pan out,” I offered. Mine certainly hadn’t. But maybe that’s because I didn’t have what it took to make them happen like you actually did. I’d never really been a goal setter anyway. Life happens; I react. That’s the extent of my life’s to-do list. We could not be more different in that regard.

But I knew I’d unknowingly stepped into something serious, and I thought about our talk for weeks afterward. What if all the things we work for—good things, amazing things, admirable things, God-honoring things—don’t come to fruition? What if the events of life preclude us from meeting our goals? Will it be enough to just be faithful with what’s in directly in front of us?

Or, what if everything goes exactly as we dared to hoped? Is that how we measure success?

I pictured myself stacking together all the unspoken dreams of my heart. Maybe my tower wasn’t Babel-high but high enough for the Lord intervene and scatter when I lost sight of my purpose on this earth. To know Him and to make Him known—that’s what all this planning and striving and working should be about. It’s why He gives us gifts.Every day I have to look at what I’m building. Is it His kingdom or mine?

But the truth is, if all the things I hope to do in my life come crumbling down around me, it won’t matter that much if I know that Christ is my treasure. He will sustain me, and He will be enough. Sometimes the scattering of well-intentioned dreams is a gracious intervention if we survey the detritus of an organized future and realize that Jesus is all we can be certain of.

But what if every dream comes true and I achieve the status my heart secretly longs for? It won’t matter a bit if I know that Christ is not my treasure. It’s all vanity if He is not the captor of my heart, if He is not the one guiding this ship.

I thought I was writing this song about you, but it turns out that every day this song is about me. Every day I have to look at what I’m building. Is it His kingdom or mine?

Every day I have to look at what I’m building. Is it His kingdom or mine? Share on X

Here is the anthem that rings true with every endeavor to work, to create art, to write, to sing, to serve, to love: Christ matters more. If He is not my treasure, it is all rubble and chaff.

I apologized to you after our argument, but really I should have thanked you for challenging me to think deeply about what I treasure the most when it comes to how I spend my days. All of my accomplishments are vanities when weighed against what Christ as done for me.

Here are a couple clips of my husband and I performing “Meaningless” live at my album release show April 28, 2017. Video cred: Hannah Svebakken

 

Story of the Song: I’ll Never Let You Go

I am a chronic worrier.

I worry about the past.
I worry about the present.
And of course, I worry about the future.

Mostly, I worry about what might happen.

When I was a kid, I took it upon myself to constantly remind my little sister to stay close when we were in stores or restaurants or amusement parks. I was so worried about losing her somewhere in a crowd; apparently, I was completely oblivious to the fact that I had two parents who absolutely knew where she was and whose actual job it was to keep tabs on her. I assumed their role because I worried that if I didn’t, my sister would get separated from us or kidnapped or something. (It was the 80’s. We were all concerned about being kidnapped by a stranger who promised us candy.) I thought that if I didn’t take on the worrying, overseeing position at the age of nine, then something really bad could happen.

It’s ridiculous now to think I was running the family at nine years old, but that’s how I viewed it. If I didn’t do the job, then everything would fall apart.

I think at it’s core, that’s what worrying is about.

It’s fretting about what might happen and assuming control to make sure the “might” doesn’t become reality. But whatever control we think we may have is just an illusion. No matter how much I like to think I can run my life, I’m not the one calling the shots.

To be clear, this isn’t about doing the things you should do to protect your kids or feed your family or to generally be a responsible person. No, I’m talking about dwelling on the “what-if’s” in life and not trusting God to do His job well. I’m talking about being a controlling person and running on frenetic activity to make sure my plans come to fruition because no one has thought this through like I have. What I’m talking about is living my life like I’m all-knowing, all-wise, and all-powerful.

Newsflash: I’m not. (And neither are you.)

The Song

I can’t remember when it was exactly when I wrote the song “I’ll Never Let You Go,” but I know where I was living at the time because I can see myself at the piano in that particular house when I wrote it, so it must have been sometime between 2005-2006. I also know I was completely consumed with my infertility at the time and had taken it upon myself to worry endlessly about my future. What if there were no kids in it? Could I really be okay with the prospect of never experiencing pregnancy? What if adoption turned out to be a dead end? Would we be lonely when we grew old? Would I ever be okay with the way my life was turning out to be? What if I never actually became a mother? What if my circumstances never changed?

So I worried and made plans which didn’t pan out because I’m not sovereign or wise, and it wasn’t ever in my job description to assume the role of my Creator.

I need songs to remind me of truth, so I set out to write a song from God’s point of view, which is a bit tricky since I’m not Him (though I definitely have acted like I thought I was Him). But since Jesus addressed worry head-on in His Sermon on the Mount, I had plenty of material to work with. In Matthew 6, Jesus says this:

This is why I tell you: Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the sky: They don’t sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth more than they? Can any of you add a single cubit to his height by worrying? And why do you worry about clothes? Learn how the wildflowers of the field grown: they don’t labor or spin thread. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was adorned like one of these! If that’s how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won’t He do much more for you—you of little faith? So don’t worry, saying, “What will we eat? or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” For the idolaters eagerly seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you. Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (Matthew 6:25-36, HCSB)

Instead of fruitlessly trying to do His job, which we are ill-equipped to do, we should focus our attention on obedience for the sake of His kingdom. All our striving and frantic fretting is a big, huge waste of time as well an expression of unbelief in God's sovereign character.

 

It has to be one of the most practical paragraphs in the Bible, right? If the birds and the flowers have all their needs met by God, how much more can we trust God with our own care? As bearers of His image, we matter more to Him than flowers and birds. If He is so attentive to their hunger and physical needs, how much more attentive is He to us? Worrying doesn’t add to your height or your life span, He says. In other words, worrying about your life gains you nothing. It’s wasteful because He holds us in His hands, He knows what we need, and He is trustworthy. If we could move our attention from worry to seeking His kingdom, our time would be much better spent because we can trust that the Lord will provide for our needs. Instead of fruitlessly trying to do His job, which we are ill-equipped to do, we should focus our attention on obedience for the sake of His kingdom. All our striving and frantic fretting is a big, huge waste of time as well an expression of unbelief in God’s sovereign character.

We can rest in the fact that our sovereign God holds all things together. It’s not hard for Him. He’s not frantically pacing the heavens trying to figure out what to do next; He is not surprised by anything or caught off guard. He has ordained your days for you before you were even born (Psalm 139:16).  And what’s more, our hearts are eternally safe when we follow Christ. According to John 10, He’ll never let us go. He says it more than once: “My sheep hear My voice, I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish—ever! No one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” (John 10:27-29)

So, fretting is useless and worry is wasteful, when I’ve got you here in My hands.
Nothing can pass through My purposeful fingers that I did not intend.
And I will be faithful when you are faithless; there’s safety in trusting My Word
‘Cause I am sovereign and I’m always working, and—
I’ll never let you go.

   

You can purchase the song “I’ll Never Let You Go” at my Bandcamp Site or wherever you buy your music online.

You can listen here:

No Stoic Tears

It was an aneurysm that sent my strong, active grandfather to death’s door. In a matter of hours after the angry vessel in his brain burst, he died with his family around him. Minutes before he left us, I sang“It is Well” into the antiseptic hospital air, bolstering—I hoped—my grandfather’s willingness to step into real life. “Go easy,” my aunt kept whispering to him. “Go easy to Jesus.” I gripped his hand when his last breath propelled him from life to death…and to life again. I remember the tattered grief that filled the small ICU room as we absorbed that he was quickly gone from us.

There’s something oddly holy in watching a believer give up his earthly breath. Unrestrained tears poured down our cheeks at our great loss, but we knew it was his great gain to see Jesus up close. As Christians, we live in the tension of hating death, our enemy, and loving Jesus, our life. Pulled between the two, we long for the day when death is put to death for good.

 For though Lazarus would eventually die again, death will loosen it’s grip on all who believe in Christ. When Jesus returns for his bride, we will, like Lazarus, come out of the tomb and meet our death-conqueror face to face. Lazarus simply had the blessing of a dress rehearsal.

Jesus was no stranger to grief while He lived on earth. In chapter 11 of his gospel, John tells us that Jesus burst into tears. Some translations even liken his outburst to the snorting of a horse, which sounds like an odd descriptor of grief to our American ears. The expression is wrapped up in a somber two-word English sentence in our Bibles, but when Jesus wept it wasn’t one grave, diplomatic tear that gently worked its way down his cheek.

I’ve always pictured it that way, though. Maybe it’s because I first read it in the KJV as a child and pictured a serious-faced Savior, stoically allowing himself the barest expression of grief lest people think he err on either the side of extemporaneous grief (making him unstable) or stolid, unfeeling insensitivity (making him harsh). Twenty-first century American English makes it difficult to pull emotion from the king’s English of my first childhood Bible, but even so, “Jesus wept” has transcended most of our modern translations. “Wept” holds the weight of heavy crying, but my familiarity with the story of Lazarus’ death and subsequent resurrection has never given me pause until my recent trip through the book of John. I came to a full stop in my reading when I saw the study notes for 11:35 which suggested that Jesus cried hard. I stopped reading the gospel narrative as story-telling in that moment and instead tried to stand there next to John as Jesus wept. The depth of Jesus’ unmissable expression of grief tells me more about the Savior than I ever expected to pull from one proper noun and one four letter verb.  

I picture him assessing the situation when he walked into the outskirts of Bethany that day. He didn’t just arrive after Lazarus was dead but waited to even begin his journey until he knew Lazarus was well past sick and deep into the grave. Jesus knew what he would do about his friend’s death. He even gave his reason for it to his disciples, “I’m glad for you that I wasn’t there [when Lazarus died] so that you may believe.” (11:15, emphasis added) It’s almost as though he was making it more difficult in their eyes to perform a miracle by waiting for Lazarus to be four days dead.

It’s tempting to separate Jesus’ humanity and divinity into solitary threads here. An initial glance at this story might lead one to categorize Christ’s tears as human and his miraculous resurrecting power as divine. Neatly packaged that way, we see both facets of Christ’s persona in two disconnected manifestations. However, the threads of Jesus’ humanity and divinity cannot be so easily unraveled and separated, nor should they be. His tears here seem both human and divine, for God is compassionate and near to those who suffer. Jesus was “deeply troubled” when he saw the grief of his friends, giving a necessary insight to how he felt about his people and their despair. He wept when he came to the tomb.

Commentators disagree as to why exactly Jesus was so upset. Some say it was because the mourners were grieving without hope while the very Son of God stood in their midst. Others say that he was angry at the ravagers, sin and death, standing so boldly in his midst. D.A. Carson pulls both views together and gives helpful insight into what might have been happening that day in Bethany:

 

Perhaps these two interpretations are not irreconcilable. With most of us, to be angry with someone is inconsistent with being loving and empathetic toward that person. With Jesus, as with his Father, the antithesis breaks down…The one who always does what pleases the Father (8:29) is indignant when faced with attitudes that are not governed by the truths the Father has revealed. If sin, illness and death, all devastating features of this fallen world, excite his wrath, it is hard to see how unbelief is excluded. But the world that is at enmity with God is also the object of God’s love. 1

 

John made it abundantly clear in the opening sentences of his gospel that Jesus is the revelation of God the Father. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (1:1) So in the deeply troubled spirit of Jesus, we glimpse the compassionate, kind heart of the Father who is perfect and also concerned. No, we cannot separate Jesus’ humanity and divinity as they are gloriously and beautifully tangled together in his confrontation of grief, death, and unbelief. 

No, we cannot separate Jesus’ humanity and divinity as they are gloriously tangled together. Share on X

 

I came back to chapter 11 after finishing John’s gospel, and over coffee one morning I asked my husband a barrage of questions I knew no one could answer. When Jesus saw the broken grief of his friends, did he think of how his disciples would react to his own death? When Martha cautioned Jesus about the stench of her brother’s tomb, did Jesus think about his own borrowed tomb? When he called to his decaying corpse of a friend, “Come out!” did he also think about the three words he would call out when history was split into everything that came before and after his own death-killing death? It is finished. Did those words ring in his ears when he yelled to Lazarus? Were the disciples paying attention? Could they see this foreshadowing of what was coming for their teacher? As much as I want to, I can’t psychoanalyze Jesus, but I long for heaven to fully know what I dimly see now.

 

When Mary and Martha explained their brother’s death we see Jesus’ compassion for their grief, his carrying of their fresh sorrows. Those tears seem to be not only for them but for the anguish of death itself, the enemy. More than just our grief, Jesus carried our death sentence to the cross. He would raise Lazarus, yes, but Lazarus would eventually die again. Maybe Jesus felt righteous indignation at death winning again in spite of the miracle that day. In his outburst of tears is a tangle of grief, compassion, and a right hatred of death.

 

It would be short-sighted to pause too long at Jesus’ tears, for buried in the middle of the story is the hope that will not disappoint, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live. Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die—ever.” (11:25-26) Martha cautiously considered it for what it could mean for Lazarus, and certainly it was meant for Lazarus, but doubly so. For though Lazarus would eventually die again, death will loosen it’s grip on all who believe in Christ. When Jesus returns for his bride, we will, like Lazarus, come out of the tomb and meet our death-conqueror face to face. Lazarus simply had the blessing of a dress rehearsal.

A couple of months ago, my husband visited the relative of a church member, an elderly man suffering from severe dementia. While my husband gently tried to encourage him, the man could talk of nothing besides escaping his assisted living facility. He begged my husband to get him out and rebuked him when he said he couldn’t. My husband left the facility brokenhearted for the man held captive to his diseased mind, and with tears in his eyes he remembered our conversation about Jesus’ grief in John 11. “This,” he told me later, “may have been why Jesus wept. This broken-down, fallen world where disease eats at the mind, where sin has affected every part of our humanity. This is worth weeping over.” When directly confronted with the frailty of human existence and faith, tears are merited.

But the important thing to note in Jesus’ tears is the absence of hopelessness. He spoke the hope, “I am the resurrection and the life,” and the weight of truth in that statement bears us up when we grieve the circumstances of suffering on our broken planet. He never tells us not to grieve, only to do so with the hope that is rooted in his resurrection and ours.

He never tells us not to grieve, only to do so with the hope that is rooted in his resurrection and ours. Share on X

 

The beauty of Jesus’ tears in John 11 propels us to the cross, I think. After pulling Lazarus from the clench of death, the stage was set for the God-man to kill death once and for all, and the great paradox is that he would do it by both dying and living again. Death lost its sting when Jesus, who is both beautifully relatable while also wholly other than us, was resurrected. No stoic tears. No loss of hope. This is how we grieve as believers in Christ, and how we can “go easy” to the arms of our Savior.

  

Remembering to Long

I find myself full of longing at Christmas, yearning for what I’ve missed and for what comes next. There have been years when I’ve wanted to hold tightly to the last days of December, finding comfort in all the joy that has transpired and filled up our days. And there have been years where I could hardly wait to tear the calendar from the wall and empty my mouth of the bad taste of a year of crushed hopes. Either way, I wake up on Christmas morning remembering. I’m remembering the things I can recall with the fragrance of a cup of apple cider, the things that hover at the barest edge of my memory, and the things written down deep on my heart that I long to fully know when Jesus comes next time as a warrior instead of a helpless baby.

Read the rest of this post at Crystal Stine’s blog.

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