glenna marshall

Our Eyes Are On You

I don’t know where the book came from.  

I didn’t buy it, don’t remember either of my kids opening it at Christmas or birthdays. Probably, it sneaked in with a pile of hand-me-down books from a neighbor or friend. I rarely say no to books anyway. However it got here, the book about pet monsters was perched on the bookshelf in the living room until my four-year-old plucked it by the spine and brought it to me.  

“Read with me, Mama?” 

I pulled him into my lap, opened the book, and began reading about the little girl who wanted a pet but instead of begging her mom for a dog or cat, hid a friendly monster in her basement.  

The story was full of pictures—the little girl, the silly monster, the strict mother, the basement full of snacks. But as I read, I noticed that my son was looking at my face more than the pictures. I pointed at the illustrations as I read, but he kept looking at me uncertainly until I realized what was going on. He was looking to me for the right reaction. Monsters are scary, right? But the story was about a friendly monster. And as a brand-new four-year-old, he wasn’t sure if he was understanding the story right. Should he laugh? Be scared? He wasn’t sure. 

His eyes stayed on my face, watching for a smile or an animated look of horror. Following the expression on my face and the tone of my voice, he’d know how to feel about the story. As his mother, I am his source for what is true about the world. He asks me dozens of questions each day. “What makes cars go, Mommy? Why is the sun hot? Where are we going? Why are you cooking the meat? Why can’t we eat it raw? When will Daddy be home? Do I have to take a nap? Where does rain come from?” He absolutely trusts my answers and parrots my responses back to me often.  

Long after the monster book was placed back on the shelf, I couldn’t shake the look of my son’s big, serious brown eyes from my thoughts. I thought about it all day until I remembered a verse from 2 Chronicles. The people of God were facing a dire attack from their enemies, and their king prayed on their behalf. “We don’t know what to do, but our eyes on are You,” he prayed (2 Chron. 20:12). I love that plea because really, in any situation where we’re uncertain–or even if we’re reasonably sure what to do—our eyes should be trained on the Lord for the path to obedience, for the right response, for the wise answer, for what is true. 

We don’t know what to do, but our eyes are on You. 

I’ve repeated this phrase often to the Lord. When I was sick and afraid of dying while my kids were young. When our youngest son’s adoption stretched out over nearly a year of fear that we would lose him. When our oldest had health problems I had no idea how to address. “We don’t know what to do, but our eyes are on You.” 

How do we turn our eyes to Him in such a way that we know what the next step should be? My default answer is always, “Go to the Word.” Keeping our eyes on the Lord requires regularly looking at the place He’s revealed Himself. But our Bibles aren’t roadmaps, exactly. There’s no “X marks the spot” buried in the ancient text. No “you should choose door number 1 rather than door number 2” hidden in the numbers and poems of Scripture. We can’t decode our Bibles for specific answers that aren’t there. So, how does keeping our eyes on Him help us when we don’t know what to do? 

During a decade of layered trials, I learned that there was nowhere else to look besides Scripture. When pain unraveled my rational thoughts, when I wasn’t sure if I’d ever safely call my son “my son,” when everything in my life seemed like ashes in my hands, I learned to look to the Lord to know how to react. Not at first, though. At first, I looked inward.  At first, I clenched my fists and shouted of injustice and demanded that God right all the wrongs I couldn’t fix. But as time ebbed and my demands were met with silence, I learned that the inward search didn’t help anything at all.  

I wasn’t sure about my life anymore. People said God could use hard things to make you like Jesus. Was suffering a curse or a blessing? I needed someone to tell me how to respond. The pictures in the story only fed my uncertainty. Someone tell me how to feel, I often thought during those long years. Scripture did just that. Like my son who searched my face for the true intent of the story, I searched the thin pages of my Bible for the true intent of the story. I asked my dozens of questions. “What is true? Who is God? How can this be good? How do I persevere? When will this end? What if it doesn’t? Is God still good?” 

I didn’t know what to do, but eventually, slowly, desperately, my eyes were on You. 

_______________

Yesterday, the weatherman said there was going to be a meteor shower. The best time to watch was in the middle of the night, “but you might see something at any point after dark,” he’d said. The kids were asleep, the house readied for bed. I touched my husband on the shoulder where he sat on the couch watching a movie. “I’m going out to see if I can see anything.” He asked me to come get him if I did.  

night sky

The heat index had been 114 with 70% humidity. It had been a misery of a day. Even with the blanket of night, I felt I’d opened an oven when I opened the back door. I walked into the dark heat and took a wet, heavy breath. The sky was surprisingly clear, the haze of the day setting with the last light. I stood in the driveway in my pajamas and tilted my head back to look at the night sky baking in the warmth of an already sleeping sun. The moon was bright enough to nearly hurt my eyes against the dark. The star to the right glittered so strongly, it actually resembled the five-pointed shape I draw for my kids when they ask for a star. I stood that way, head leaned back, neck aching, eyes trained on the night sky for a long while. I swatted mosquitoes and wiped at the perspiration on my lip. I watched and waited. The activity in the sky—or lack thereof—would tell me how to react.  

I didn’t see anything. When a mosquito landed on my eyelid, I called it a night and headed indoors. 

But standing in the dark and watching the sky for a lightened streak, I remembered my son’s big eyes. And the people of Judah surrounded by their enemies. And all the things in life that don’t add up or make sense. I don’t know what to do, but my eyes are on You.  

Much of the Christian life needs to be preparatory. We preemptively guard against sin before temptation strikes, we read the Word and pray to grow in an upward, forward motion, we order our lives around the commands of Scripture—all so that we’ll treasure Jesus more and more. We know God will use our obedience to conform us into the image of Jesus. He will finish the work He began. 

But the Christian life also calls for a right reactionary response. Sometimes there are days when all the knowledge we’ve stored up seems murky, when we know obedience is right but we’re not sure what it looks like, when the next step is just a big question mark that could be answered more than one way. “We don’t know what to do, so our eyes are on You,” we pray. But are they? We wrestle in our beds with fear and anxiety, we make pro and con lists on our phones, we talk to every person who will listen—parsing every little nuance in every conversation for a sign.  

But when our eyes are truly on Him, we don’t have to fret. Because looking at Him in His Word reveals that He is wise, kind, sovereign, present, just, holy, good, merciful, trustworthy. We can pray to walk in obedience, but then we must trust Him with the outcome. We look to Him on the days we’re sure and on the days we’re not. We look at what pleases Him more than what pleases us, what grows His kingdom instead of ours, what brings Him glory rather than what feeds our pride.  

When you don’t know what to do, look to Him for what’s true. Meditate on the truths of Scripture, what’s true about Him, what Jesus’ sacrifice at the cross has done to set you free—and what kind of authority He has over your life as a result. Make your decisions with those things in mind, and then rest in the fact that He is sovereign over your life. When life takes a hard turn, a confusing turn, an unexpected turn, His Word will stand sure, unchanging, true. When you don’t know what to do, make sure your eyes are on what’s true. It’s always, ever, thankfully Him.  

 

When you don’t know what to do, make sure your eyes are on what’s true. It’s always, ever, thankfully Him. Share on X

 

 

Photo by Jake weirick on Unsplash 

 

Women, Don’t Be Weak-Minded: A Call for Discernment

I was a junior in college when I realized she was a universalist.

My favorite author, whose lyrical style and captivating storytelling filled my bookshelves, had finally shown her cards in one of her non-fiction works. I had to read the paragraph three times to realize that she had departed from the gospel of Jesus Christ. No other writer to date had shaped my theology and love for the written word like she had. When I came face to face with her expression of eventual grace for those who reject Christ, I realized I had a lot of work to do to unravel truth from lie. This was 2001. The internet was still new, and I chose books based upon friends’ suggestions or a professor’s recommended reading list. Sometimes I just scanned shelves at the local bookstore looking for an interesting cover.

It’s easier these days to see what’s popular. Through social media, blogging, and the irresistible Facebook share button, we can know exactly which book is making the rounds, what article or Instagram post has gone viral, what podcast is most empowering, which speaker is most enlightening. Beautifully curated bookshelves are photographed and tagged #amreading and #givemejesus but are loaded with a wide and varying degree of “Christian” authors, many of whom never address issues like atonement, redemption, depravity.

No, the colorful book jackets and podcast logos of today’s Christian pop-culture don’t often bring up terms as antiquated and demoralizing as sin. No, it’s more like flaws, or the Christian favorite, struggles. If anything, the term must deflect fault to something else: society, upbringing, victimization, hypocrisy in the church. Someone else’s sin, but not yours. That’s the whole point of these books, sometimes: excusing our flaws by explaining them. Or hyper-focusing on one moral code that will lead to genuine happiness, no matter where you fall on the infallibility of Scripture.

I’m grieved every time I see another woman I care about succumb to the latest “Christian” bestseller which, more often than not, is feel-good psychology scantily clad in a few decontextualized Bible verses. Sometimes I feel like I’m watching Paul’s second letter to Timothy play out in front of me when people I love fall prey to vacuous teaching that holds to a form of godliness but denies its power. I’ve been deceived myself, and I have to fight against weak-mindedness.

Weak-Minded Women

“For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.” (2 Tim. 3:6-7, ESV)

Weak women. In some translations it’s idle. In others, it’s weak-minded, and I think that explains the condition best. It “suggests a wandering into counterfeits, with no awareness that truth has been left behind.2”

I’m not immune. As illustrated above, it’s happened to me. I’ve been sucked in by writers and speakers who pull us up close to their stories with warm-hearted charisma and a finger that gently points elsewhere for blame. I’ve cast many an admiring glance towards teachings that free me from responsibility and let me “be me.” I’ve been tempted by books that promise to uncover God’s specific, secret words to me personally in case my Bible is feeling out of date or too non-specific. What warms our hearts with fuzzy feelings about God’s plans for our lives amounts to nothing more than treating the Almighty like a fortune teller while scraping off any culpability for sin off Jesus’ commands for us to be like Him. The section of the bookstore titled “Christian Living” is a buffet where we can stuff ourselves with forms of godliness while starving for the knowledge that really does lead to the truth. It means we’ll always be back looking for that next book that might fix us by denying there’s anything wrong with us.

I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush. This isn’t every book for Christian women by a clear, long shot. I’ve read some of the most encouraging, gospel-saturated books by women and for women in the last two years that were high and above anything else I’ve read in that genre in my adult life. But those books don’t often make it to the front page of Amazon or to the bestseller shelves at the book store. Be wary of the ones that do take the lead. If a book resonates with someone opposed to the gospel or its transformative effects, then that book probably shouldn’t be a source upon which you build your theology. Critical reading is one thing. But, trying to glean “something good” from an author who denies Christ’s supremacy, man’s depravity, or Scriptural inerrancy is entirely another thing altogether and should be avoided.

Hold Fast to the Gospel

As I’ve worked my way through 2 Timothy over the past month, the thick thread holding Paul’s letter together is his charge to Timothy to preach the Word faithfully, holding fast to the gospel of Christ Jesus. At the risk of repetition, Paul exhorts over and over to stay true to the message of Jesus and Jesus only. And I don’t mean exhorts like “this would be a really great thing for you to do,” but exhorts like “preach the gospel like your life depends on it.” Because you know Paul. He doesn’t play. From his jail cell where he was imprisoned for this very gospel, he had heard about the pervasiveness of false teaching that was capturing people weighed down by sin and led astray by various passions. His exhortations always carry urgency, and with good reason. This is life and death.

Paul’s urgency translates well to the 21st century for there is nothing new under the sun. We may be two-thousand years removed from Paul, but the creeping nature of false teaching is still one of the enemy’s greatest tools for leading people astray. A form of godliness will work just fine. It doesn’t have to be that far off from the truth. Just enough to carry a shadow of the truth but that doesn’t actually result in a life transformed by the death of Jesus and the repentance of our sins.

Pray for Discernment

Here’s the good news, sisters. “It is not God’s will that women be weak in their discernment, burdened with sin, and led astray by passions.1” God desires more than this for you. He created you! His will is that you hold fast to the message of the gospel which is Christ and Him crucified and resurrected. In James 1, we are encouraged to pray for wisdom if we lack it. Wisdom isn’t fortune-telling. It’s discernment. And I believe praying for wisdom in regard to what we read and hear is a prayer God is moved to answer.

The gospel is your measuring stick. If what you’re reading, hearing, or watching isn’t anchored to the truth that you were dead in your sins until Jesus gave you new life by paying for your sins at the cross, then what you’re engaging with is missing the mark. If, like my college epiphany, what you’re filling your mind with denies the damning effects of sin and rejection of Christ, it is missing the mark. It is, as Paul said in 2 Timothy 3:5, a form of godliness that denies the power of the gospel. If you are building your theology (what you believe about God) upon what other people think about the Bible without ever studying the living, active Word of God for yourself, you are missing the mark and opening yourself up for dangerous error.

Exercise Discernment

“But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed. You know those who taught you, and you know that from childhood you have known the sacred Scriptures, which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:14-17, HCSB)

We have been given the gift of God’s words to us in the Bible. If you want to know His will for you, take up and read. If you want to find freedom from sin, take up and read. If you want to know how to speak the gospel of hope to your unbelieving friend, take up and read. If you want to learn how to persevere through trials, take up and read. Study the Word of God as much as you can, and by it measure everything else you read. There is no other book that is infallible or breathed out from the Maker of the universe. He has loved you by revealing Himself to you through His Word. Take up and read. Know His Word inside and out, and in so doing, you will be protecting yourself from weak-mindedness because you will be learning the mind of Christ.

Study the Word of God as much as you can, and by it measure everything else you read. Share on X

I’m not telling you not to read books besides the Bible. I love to read a wide range of writers, and I encourage others to as well! Read old books, new books, commentaries, poetry, blogs, articles. But first and foremost, read your Bible. All of it. As much as you can. The only way to really know if a writer or speaker is worming their way into your heart with a knowledge that doesn’t lead to truth is if you really, really know the truth.

Notes:

1Piper, John. “When a Lover of Good Thinks About Evil.”

2Guthrie, Donald. The Pastoral Epistles: An Introduction and Commentary. (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press), 1990, 179.

*Are men excused from the need for discernment? Certainly not. Paul’s exhortations to Timothy are to hold fast to the gospel message so he can help others hold fast to it. I address women because Paul does, and because of the lack of discernment I’m seeing within my own gender. Additionally, most of my readers are women.

*Need a place to start? Check out the books I’ve loved and been profoundly shaped by here.

Photo by Sarah Noltner on Unsplash

I Have Spiritual Amnesia, and So Do You.

Something strange happens in the nighttime hours.

Every night, when I go to bed, I know who I am in Christ and what I believe about the gospel. It’s a hard fight, and by the end of the day it’s likely a worn-down version of what’s real. But, I’ve fought all day to believe it, and the Holy Spirit has reminded me of who God is and who I am, respectively. Temptations and frustrations alike have pulled at the strands of faith that feels a little thin. Doubts and pain pick at my resolve. From the rising of the sun to its setting, life is hard pressed on every side for the ones who long to remain faithful to Christ. But perseverance and grace propel me to the end of the day with faith intact. I go to bed resolutely resolved to keep believing the gospel. It’s not that the gospel is so weak that I must work hard to believe it. It’s that the gospel forged a new life out of my dead one, and sometimes it’s still hard to believe I am a new creation. 

But every morning I wake up with a kind of amnesia. I’m not aware of it, not really. I wouldn’t say I’ve forgotten who I am or who I worship. I could tell you. Quickly, I could tell you while rubbing the grit of sleep from my eyes. My long-term memory works just fine. Still yet, I drag my weary body to the coffee pot while it’s dark outside. I sip coffee for a minute or two, waiting for wakefulness to take effect. I sit on the couch, Bible in my lap, and work hard to force out the forgetfulness that tries to wrap its arms around my heart.

I can’t stop forgetting.

Forgetting is the problem that sprang up in the garden of Eden. “Did God really say….” was all it really took for Adam and Eve to misremember what God had actually said. This is why all of the commands and statues given by God throughout the Old Testament were bookended by declarations of who He was and what He had done for His people. He knew how easily they forgot that He was their rescuer and that they belonged to Him. Golden calves turn up mighty quick when the people of God get distracted.

We’ve not changed all that much, we who belong to the Lord. Though moved from sinner to saint, from old man to new man, I’m still shrouded in this human skin, still fighting to put on the new self every day. And herein lies the remedy for that morning amnesia: renewing my mind every day (Eph. 4:23). I know from years of forgetting that without a morning review of what’s true, I will eventually struggle to separate fact from fiction. I know I’m not alone in this. I sit here each morning in the pre-dawn hours with a long line of believers who’ve fumbled through seasons of forgetfulness and landed in a position requiring regular recalibration to unchanging gospel truth.

Did you ever see the movie “50 First Dates?” The protagonist, played by Drew Barrymore, suffers from short-term memory loss due to a car accident she can’t remember. She relives the same day over and over until Adam Sandler’s character invades her life and puts her on a different course after the two fall in love (over and over). In the end, every morning she must re-watch a video of her life events to reorient herself to the reality she can’t remember. With horror and tears, she must remember the terrible things that have happened in her life so that she can grasp the new, good things that have come since.

In a similar way, when we expose our hearts every morning to the truth of the Word of God, we are forcing ourselves to grapple again with the horrible things that we have done so that we can be presented with the truth of what Christ has done to set us free. Every morning we need to remember who we used to be, what God has done, who we are now, and how we should live with that knowledge. Though we are redeemed, our new hearts are still buried beneath a cloak of human frailty. We live in the tension of already and not yet. Remembering but forgetting. Each day we wake up with a spiritual amnesia that must be addressed anew with the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

How do we remedy our spiritual amnesia?

Read the Bible every day.

Every single day. I’m not talking about reading a verse that’s emailed to you each morning. I’m talking about sitting down with zero distractions and putting the Word of God in your front of your face. I’m talking about whole books of it; I’m talking long, slow swallows of Scripture every morning. I know the dangers of legalism, so I don’t say “every single day” because you’ll be super-holy in checking off a little box every day. A far greater temptation to me is forgetting who I used to be, who I am now, and what God has done to resurrect this dead heart. As I am still fighting sin and longing for a better country, I need the Word of God every day because I need Christ every day. Renewing your mind each day isn’t done without exposing yourself to the truths of Scripture. Pray your way through the comforting, rebuking, teaching, correcting, eternity-hinging words of God each and every morning (2 Tim. 3:16-17). Neglecting Bible intake will gradually whittle down our resolve to follow Christ because we’ll forget how much we need Him. (A crash course in redemptive history will illustrate my point here, so start in the Old Testament to see what I mean.)

Meet with the people of God.

What I need most from my church is their presence in the pews every time the doors are open. I need them next to me to stand and sing, listen and learn, repent and resolve. I need to know that I’m not living this Christian life alone. My church needs the same things from me. Do not forsake meeting together with the family of God. Living the Christian life in solitude will not help you renew your mind or hold fast to the gospel. I’ve seen it in church ministry more times than I can count: disconnect yourself from the local church and you will find yourself slowly disconnecting from Christ. Instead, make every effort to come together with the people of God to proclaim again and again the goodness of God, the redemption of sins we have in Christ, the gift of eternal life in the presence of God that the Spirit has guaranteed. Let’s remember together who we are in Christ so we can take the very good news of the gospel to the world that is desperate for Him.

We need to remember who God is.

These steps couldn’t be simpler or more straightforward. They aren’t even steps, really. But they are often the very first things to go when life gets hard and unbelief presses in. They are, in fact, what we need the most when life gets hard and unbelief presses in. When we give in to temptation and can’t rise above our shame, we need to remember who God is. When the love of God seems cold and distant, we need to remember who God is. When suffering shows up on the doorstep unannounced and unexpected, we need to remember who God is. When life is full of sweetness and peace, we need to remember who God is. At the very moment we open our eyes in the morning we need to remember who God is.

When you go to bed tonight, make sure you’ve made room in your morning tomorrow to remember who God is and what He’s said to us in His Word. It’s too easy to find yourself standing next to a tree with a hiss in your ear and wonder what it is that He really said.

Each day we wake up with a spiritual amnesia that must be remedied anew with the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Share on X

 

Photo by Alexander Possingham on Unsplash

Future Discipleship: Perseverance Now Means Perseverance Later

A few hot summers ago, the first week of August found me in the early stages of marathon training. For accountability’s sake, I had already signed up for the St. Jude Marathon in Memphis, Tennessee, and paid my registration fee. My financial investment was the impetus for faithful training.

Immersing myself in the Bible now is not only for today's benefit. It is for tomorrow and next week, next month and a year from now.

I’d spent the previous year working up my daily mileage, and I had (like many runners) become a bit obsessive about mile time and long runs. Running a marathon seemed to be the crowning achievement for any committed runner, and I was eager to have that 26.2 mile finisher’s medal hanging alongside my other 5K and 10K medals.

Every evening I scrutinized my training schedule for the next day’s mileage or cross-training activity. Before going to bed, I laid out my running clothes, filled my hand held water bottle and popped it in the freezer, packed my running belt with salted caramel flavored energy gel (the high point of every run), and charged my iPod and Garmin watch.

Running in the intense, humid summer heat began to take its toll on my long runs. Once I hit 7 and 8 mile runs, I routinely suffered blinding headaches for about 48 hours afterward. After doing some research, I discovered that low electrolytes and low sodium were the likely culprits. I began to change my approach to my long runs by preparing the day before. In addition to normal hydration, I added about three bottles of water spiked with electrolyte/sodium tablets on the days before a run longer than 6 miles. I began to notice a difference after my long runs immediately after making this change.  Gone were the headaches! I also noticed overall improvement in endurance and mile time.

It always felt odd to be drinking so much salty electrolyte water on a rest day, but it helped tremendously with my long runs. Each time I did this, I was making an investment in a future event. I was doing something today for my physical benefit tomorrow.

Spiritual disciplines work much like this. 

This hot, first week of August I’m not doing any marathon training, but I’m reminding myself that what I’m investing in my spiritual life now will aid me later when my reserves feel low. Immersing myself in the Bible now is not only for today’s benefit. It is for tomorrow and next week, next month and a year from now.

I’ve lived through seasons of trial where my spiritual tank was so low that the bucket I sent down for endurance kept coming back up empty. I had not prepared for trials–or even just normal life events–because I’d spent almost zero time nurturing my relationship with Christ the weeks, months, and even years prior. When sorrow struck, I scrambled for something solid to hold on to. I grasped for a promise from Scripture that would help me persevere, but the truth was I didn’t know the Scriptures well enough to be certain of any promise.

Now, this is not to say that the Holy Spirit can’t still encourage and prod you forward in perseverance when you’ve not spent time arming yourself with truth. God is greater than our hearts and is full of grace and kindness. He teaches us to trust Him while we waffle and scramble for surety. But if I had spent time loving the Lord by knowing Him in His Word I could have enjoyed His nearness in suffering rather than doing so much exhausting scrambling just for survival.

Paralyzed but Prepared

There are days when climbing out of bed before 6 am feels like war. It is war, in a manner of speaking. Our enemy would love to derail our efforts to commune with Christ, and he does it by whispering lies when the shrill ring of the alarm jolts us from restful sleep. You need your rest. You can skip today. You’re not really getting much from your study right now anyway. It doesn’t hurt to take a break now and then.

I’ve listened to some of those lies this summer. I’ve let the clock dictate my commitment to faithfulness, and I’ve felt it’s numbing effects. Trouble is, those “breaks” turn into seasons really fast. Feeding a dry spell with a break from spiritual disciplines may feel like the right answer, but it will never serve you well when pain and suffering show up on your doorstep unannounced. On a broken, fallen planet, suffering seems sure until Christ returns or takes us home. So, we can be paralyzed when the phone rings with devastating news, or we can paralyzed and prepared for the moment life seems to fall apart. I’ve found that the paralyzing feeling comes no matter what, but I’ve seen unbelievable differences in whether or not my heart has been primed with the truths of God’s good character and sovereign hand.

What helps me fight the allure of the snooze button is knowing that my bleary-eyed Scripture reading in the morning, even when it feels like work, is not just beneficial to me now. The prayerful conversation with the Lord, the outlines of Scripture passages, the asking of hard questions, the work of study is also beneficial for my future. It is a stockpiling of truth and strength for days of grief and loss that are as sure the rising sun on an earth that groans for reconciliation.

Perseverance now means perseverance later.

When you’re feeling like your time in the Word is dusty and dry and not worth the time you could have been getting some extra sleep, remember that now is when God is teaching you to trust Him with your future. Now is the time He’s given you to fill your well with belief that Jesus’ work on the cross was enough to save you, that God’s goodness doesn’t waver, that the one who follows Christ is secure in the palm of His hand. Eventually, dry seasons turn into flourishing spring times of the soul. But it might take a long view of perseverance to get there.

Stay the course, friends. Guard your time in the Word with protectiveness if you must. Every morning that you show up  to meet with the Lord, you can know with confidence that He meets you there. He is faithful and ever-present.

Together, you are investing in your future discipleship.

 

For more on working through a spiritual dry spell, read this.

 (*For those interested: I ended up falling on a run during my training, which resulted in an injury. Thinking it was a strained muscle, I unwisely continued to train and ran 200 painful miles before finding out I had been running on a stress fracture in my femur. [Insert facepalm emoji here.] I was ordered 3 months physical rest by my doctor and had to quit marathon training. I’m sure there is another spiritual analogy in there somewhere, but someday I hope to reclaim my training and add that finisher’s medal to my small collection!) 

Photo Cred: Arek Adeoye for Unsplash

This is Your Reminder.

It was nearly 8 o’clock–that part of the morning when you’re scrambling to find shoes and fill lunchboxes. My husband was pouring an extra cup of coffee before driving our third grader to school.

“How was the gym this morning?” I asked him while I cleaned the baby from a breakfast he decided was beneath him.

“It’s mid-March,” my husband sighed. “I’m already feeling tired of my disciplines—the gym, eating right, even my Bible study feels dull.”

Our oldest piped in with his seventeenth “I’m tired” declaration of the morning while roaming the house in the snailish way that kids do when they have been warned for the tenth time to get your shoes on for the love of all that is holy or so help me I’ll throw away every electronic gadget you’ve ever touched.

“You have no idea what tired is, Son,” I quipped back to him. “You slept for ten straight hours last night. I got up with your little brother five times between the hours of 11 and 2. I’M tired.”

 

And to be frank, I am. I laid in bed from 6:06 am to 6:22 am wondering if I could keep my eyes open long enough to read anything in my Bible. Eventually the responsible, motherish side of the argument won, and I practically held my eyelids open with my fingers while I read 1 Timothy 3 this morning. Am I really sitting here reading about qualifications for elders and deacons when I could be sleeping? Am I really absorbing anything useful?

But I know that if I keep reading Paul’s letters to Timothy I’ll find Paul’s emphasis on the usefulness of Scripture because every word is inspired by God and equips us for every good work (2 Timothy 3:14-17).  And for those reasons, I needed the reminder to keeping going.

This is your reminder to press on.

It’s mid-March, folks.

And this is the classic era of lapse when it comes to disciplines, both physical and spiritual. I can’t speak much to the physical discipline part since I’ve exercised approximately three times in 2017 as sick kids, travel, and surgery have been the dominant themes of my year thus far. But, I can speak to the part where we all struggle to keep up our resolution to study the Word regularly. Back in January, I encouraged you to allow the new year to be a catalyst for setting up healthy spiritual disciplines. Now we’re at the point where you might need a little nudge to press on. If you began the year in Genesis and you’re now in Leviticus or Numbers in your Bible reading plan, you might be tempted to throw in the towel. Moldy walls? Weird physical ailments that make you blush? Incredibly long lists of names and genealogies? How can this be helpful for personal growth in Christ? What’s the point of pressing on when what you’re reading seems so far removed from your own life?

This is when it’s helpful to take a step back and look at what you’re currently reading in light of the entire Bible. Wading through the oddness of Leviticus? Look for the emphasis on holiness and the works of the priests. Consider how this prepared the people of God for the coming of Jesus who is our Great High Priest. Maybe you could read Leviticus in tandem with Hebrews, noting the way Jesus fulfilled the Law and put an end to our need for the sacrificial system. Compare and contrast the differences in living under the Law with living under the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus. Stuck looking for purpose in the long lists of names and people groups? Note the broad sovereignty of God over both the nations and the meticulous details of the institution of the sacrificial system for Israel.

Remember the goal is to see God in all of Scripture.

You’re looking for what you can learn about Him, what the Scriptures reveal about man, how even those unusual Old Testament passages point to Jesus, and how we can find application for our own life as believers. (Here is a detailed method and video demo for this process if you need a guide.) The endgame is not checking off a list but rather, knowing the God we claim to love so much. Growth and fruit come from long seasons spent in the Word, loving the Lord by knowing Him and keeping His commandments. We can’t really look at the last week of Bible study and prayer and marvel at our growth. This is a long-term investment, and six months (or a year, or two years) down the road you’ll be able to look back and see how much you’ve learned and grown in both your faith and affection for the Lord.

So hang in there, friends. This is your reminder to press on. Continuing to meet with the Lord in the mornings is well worth your fatigue and your fight against apathy.

Keep plodding!

 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed. You know those who taught you, and you know that from childhood you have known the sacred Scriptures, which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.  All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.     ~2 Timothy 3: 14-17

 

 

Pssst! If you haven’t checked out my music page, please do! I’ve got information about my album coming out next month, plus links to performance videos and my other social media outlets. I hope you’ll check it out! Find my writer page on Facebook to stay in the loop on new posts. You can also find my musician page so you’ll know when the album is available.

Secure in His Love

Sometimes I want to believe lies.

“Fake news” is tantalizing and volatile, emitting knee-jerk reactions from even the most diplomatic of observers. We react, we make plans, we form opinions and theories around what might be true. We hold on to those things even when the facts are shown to be false. We struggle to dismantle the lie and admit we were wrong.

All of my adult life I’ve struggled to believe that God loves me. I’ve held to the notion that He generally loves me in that begrudging way that you love someone who gets on your nerves but you’re related so you have to love them.  God promised He loves me, but maybe He wishes He could take it back if it weren’t in keeping with His character and that whole “I never change” thing. Perhaps on some level He regrets His promises to me.

I became a believer in Christ at quite a young age. My parents took us to church, conducted family devotions, and talked about the Lord with us so much that it was easy for me to believe that God loved me and gave His Son to die for me. I knew I did bad things. I knew I needed a Savior to rescue me. It was simple, and I guess that’s the beauty of childlike faith because I didn’t question the grip that God had on my young heart. My mother used to find handwritten notes crumpled up in my jeans’ pocket, full of scribbled letters of love and affection to the Lord. I don’t really remember that, but I don’t doubt it. It was before I let hard circumstances inform my perception of what God was like. When I was young, there was no question that God was the great Lover of my soul, and I found security in knowing my heart was His.

We can’t really know it in the green pastures of tranquility until we can learn it in the rough, troubled waters of suffering. Though in opposition to all we perceive about love, it is in the trenches of trials and adversity where God’s love for us is best grasped and understood.
I remember exactly when my belief in His love began to unravel.

I was sitting in a doctor’s exam room, all the blood draining out of my face when the lady in the white coat said, “Probably never.” In a moment, just a fraction of a second, really—everything shifted, and my future seemed to come unhinged. I drove home that day in a blur of soul-crushing tears and disbelief. It was rush hour. I got stuck in traffic, and when I looked around at the people sitting in their cars looking so unbothered,  I wanted to scream at the injustice of having my future tipped over and emptied of its contents while everyone else went about their business with infuriating normalcy. The “probably never” reverberated through the following months and years. We moved to another state and began a new life while I walked around in a fog with a gaping, humiliating wound that had to mean God didn’t love me.

Time marched on, but my wound didn’t heal properly because I didn’t apply anything besides a gauze sloppily constructed of bitterness and grief. The wound scarred over, but was always prone to reopening and infection. It festered when our ministry became the most unhappy and discouraging of broken-down things. It throbbed when illness and chronic pain robbed me of rest for years on end. And it finally became numb when trauma and sorrow took a hammer to my sanity after a long season of waiting.
I knew the Bible well enough to know that my circumstances don’t define God’s character. He does. But it takes faith to believe the truth, and sometimes it takes a while for that faith to overcome the lies that are readily presented for my spiritual consumption.

One morning, I sat on my couch and thumbed through my Bible listlessly. I was so desperate to feel something other than the pain my circumstances produced. I wanted to know that God wasn’t begrudging in His love, needed to believe that His love was stronger than my doubt. I had to be sure that the dysfunctional workings of my body and my heart didn’t detract from His love for me. I needed to be secure in who I was when God looked at me. I needed to know what He saw.

I was reading the book of Isaiah when something uncurled down deep. It was the slow opening of a tightly clenched fist, knuckles bloodless and white, palm littered with the imprint of fingernails.  It didn’t happen overnight, but over long months of perusing and questioning and finally realizing I was doing this all wrong. I kept reading, and it kept happening. After Isaiah, it was a long year in the Psalms. And presently it is John. This pattern, once I recognized it, stood out from every page that I read. How had I missed it?

My Bible wasn’t about me.

Instead of looking for a way to feel loved, I began to trace the character of a sovereign, strong, faithful God all throughout Scripture. It was always about Him. It is always about Him. I didn’t know what to think about my circumstances, but the words of the prophets, the psalmists, and the apostles told me who God was—who He really was. Previously, I’d thought that if He loved me, He wouldn’t allow so much heartache. Why didn’t He miraculously step in and fix things? I believed He could but didn’t want to. Therefore, my logical conclusion was that He must not love me—me specifically—beyond His general declaration of love for what He has made.
But when I read about Him with my feelings on the back burner, I found that He wasn’t what I thought He was. Over and over I saw this phrase used to describe Him and His relationship with His people—faithful love— “chesed” in Hebrew. It’s a covenant love, a steadfast love, a committed love. It reads like a belonging, possessive kind of love. The kind of love I was desperate to know applied to me.

I bought a stack of spiral notebooks, and began to write down every phrase about God and His character that appeared in Scripture. Every morning, I read and wrote, taking a heavy hammer to my flawed and inadequate perception of God. It took some time, but subtly my vision changed. I saw that the Bible I’d read so much during my life as a believer in Christ was a book about God. I could find myself in it, but only after I began to see God rightly in His story. The more I wrote down in my notebook (God is sovereign, He is wise, He is compassionate, He is faithful when His people are not, He is present, He is just), the more plainly I could see my faulty approach to understanding God’s love for me.
His love isn’t based on merit, and sometimes He doesn’t express His love in the ways that feel like affection to us. Sometimes He puts us in the valley of brokenness so that we understand His faithful love is the only reliable source of sustenance. Sometimes He lets us endure hard things so that we understand that His promise to us wasn’t an absence of trouble but rather a covenant that He would always be with us. We can’t really know it in the green pastures of tranquility until we can learn it in the rough, troubled waters of suffering. Though in opposition to all we perceive about love, it is in the trenches of trials and adversity where God’s love for us is best grasped and understood.

What I needed, I found in the Word.
I saw that God is more than my perceptions ever allowed. His character is layered with faithfulness, and His love is sure. When He looks at me, He sees the beautiful covering of Jesus, and it is enough.  When He captured my heart so many years ago, He promised to never let go of it. Because of His faithfulness and steadfast love, I am safe and secure in the palm of His hand. And no lie about His goodness is so strong as to pull me from the grip of my Father who is always faithful and always good.

Lord, let us rest securely in Your love:
Psalm 107
John 10:27-30
John 16:33
Psalm 119:71
Psalm 130
Isaiah 46
Isaiah 52-53
1 John 4:7-21

Let January be a catalyst for Bible study.

January 1st dawns cold and bright, heavy with the weight of restriction for many of us. We use the birth of a new year as an opportunity to scale back our indulgences, tighten up our budgets, and pledge our allegiance to structure and discipline after a season of feasting and unrestrained consumerism.
Many Christians will assure themselves that THIS is the year they’ll finally commit to reading the Bible regularly. They’ll start in Genesis, but by the beginning of March find themselves confused by Leviticus and uninspired by all the lists in Numbers. By April, all pretense of Bible reading has been abandoned along with the tiresome march of salads and steamed vegetables, and replaced with an odd mixture of relief and guilt and cheese fries.
Not that I’m writing from experience or anything…. (sigh)

take January 1st as an opportunity to let a Bible reading plan be the catalyst to get to your deeper desire to know the Lord better and to draw near to Him. It’s impossible to know God without reading the Word. He gave us all we need to know in His Word and through the person of Christ. How can we love what we do not know? We can’t.

In years past I’ve viewed my annual January commitment to read the Bible with gritted teeth and what turned out to be the same short term resolve that I took to dieting or exercising.

But then one year I successfully stuck to a diet plan and lost forty pounds, which proved to me that I could actually be disciplined, contrary to popular belief. A horrifying number on the scale and the winded feeling in my chest after climbing one flight of stairs revealed my need for new habits. The pressing need was the catalyst for establishing the much-needed habit changes.

That same year I went through some difficulties that sent me to the Word out of sheer desperation and I realized how much I needed the daily ritual of being in the Word with the Lord, and it had nothing to do with checking off a little box each day so I could feel good about myself. But you know what helped me go to the Word with regularity? Going to the Word with regularity. I don’t know why I was surprised, but the act of setting up the habit of reading the Word served me for times of adversity when I absolutely had nowhere else to go. My default go-to-the-Scriptures response to suffering came from ingraining in myself the morning ritual of opening the Scriptures. Daily patterns prepared me for suffering because it trained me to know where to go for help.

Checking off a list had nothing to do with it. As a follower of Jesus, my heart longed to know Him better.  Allowing the daily reading requirement to be a servant to my desire to be in the Word regularly was everything. So, rather than viewing a plan to read the Bible in 2017 as a necessary-but somewhat bothersome-habit, take January 1st as an opportunity to let a Bible reading plan be the catalyst to get to your deeper desire to know the Lord better and to draw near to Him. It’s impossible to know God without reading the Word. He gave us all we need to know in His Word and through the person of Christ. How can we love what we do not know? We can’t.

I don’t know if you’re committing to a healthier year physically (I am really going to miss potatoes), but I hope that above all you’re committing to know Christ better. If that’s the case, I’ve got some resources to help you in your resolution to read your Bible with some regularity. I promise, no time in the Word is wasted. Even if it feels dry and dull on some days, the Spirit is still doing His work and imprinting the Word on your heart.

 

Resources: Bible Reading Plans

If you’re new to daily Bible-reading (or if you always find yourself struggling to make a plan), here are some resources that may help you get started. I recommend a Bible-in-a-year plan if you’re not in the habit of reading the Bible regularly as the daily requirements will help you establish the habit (which will serve you in the future).

My husband is a big fan of the 5 day reading plan. You can find a print out, app version, and even a Spanish version. With this plan, you can skip a few days without getting too far behind. If you feel that reading the Bible in a year is a lofty goal or that you’re setting yourself up for failure, this plan may be exactly what you need.

Tim Challies has a good list of resources including Ligonier’s plans, a plan to read through just the four gospels, and others. This ESV resource has several reading plans, including a chronological one.

Most study Bibles have a 1 or 3 year reading plan in the back, so flip your own Bible open to see if there’s a reading plan included. No downloads or apps required!

If you would rather do an in-depth book study, check out my post on what I call “One Book Study.” There’s even a VLOG demonstration. This post was part of a series I wrote over the summer of 2016 on knowing God through His Word. You can find all the posts here. This is my current approach as I’m camping out in the gospel of John for the next few months.

 

No Excuses.

There are so many good resources available for getting into a pattern of studying the Word. With technology, we have the Bible at our fingertips at all times. We really have no excuse. God has given freely of Himself to us. Let’s dive deep into His Word and know Him better this year!  Desiring God Ministries gives some wise advice for guarding our time with the Lord in 2017. “What might God be pleased to do in us and through us if 2017 was the year of our deepest fellowship with him through the word and prayer? Certainly far more than we can think or imagine today.”

Happy New Year, friends.

the harbor we are longing for

What is it about Jesus that makes you love Him?

Is it what He’s done for you?
Or is it aspects of His character?
Maybe a little bit of both?
When you have felt the most drawn to Him, what was it that pulled you toward Him?

One of the things that’s really drawing me to Him lately is His authority. I think that was one of John’s main objectives in writing his gospel–to show Jesus’ authority as the Son of God.

As I dig into the fourth gospel account on these finally-chilly fall mornings, I’m pulled to Jesus’ purposeful approach to His time on earth. I want to sit across a campfire from Him and laugh about how five loaves and a couple fish could feed so many. I want to sit on a Galilean hillside and listen to Him talk about bread and life and faith in Him and the One who sent Him. Lately, though, I really want to stand on top of a raging sea, salty wind blowing hair in my eyes while I’m locked into His gaze—face to face, knowing He’s the only One holding me up.

According to John, Jesus walked a long way across the sea of Galilee before the disciples saw Him. Did the water still as soon as His sandaled foot touched the surface? Did an unbroken, smooth expanse of sea spread out behind Him? When you line up John’s and Matthew’s tellings, you know the sea was still angry when Jesus got to the boat.

I can picture Him: shoulders forward, purposefully striding across a tossing, tempestuous body of water. Is there any other way for a God-Man to walk across a raucous, salty swell than with determined intent?
I can picture Him: shoulders forward, purposefully striding across a tossing, tempestuous body of water.
Is there any other way for a God-Man to walk across a raucous, salty swell than with determined intent?

When Jesus got to the boat and scared His friends witless, John reports that they finally arrived at the harbor they’d been fruitlessly rowing toward all night.

The study notes in my Bible signal the reader to look back to Psalm 107 as it’s possible John was making an allusion to a portion of this passage. I spent about a week in Psalm 107 in August, so I knew the verses the study notes editors were referencing. Those verses became some of my favorites in all the Bible for the imagery they give:

They went to sea in ships, conducting trade on the vast waters. They saw the LORD’s works, His wonderful works in the deep. He spoke and raised a tempest that stirred up the waves of the sea. Rising up to the sky, sinking down to the depths, their courage melting away in anguish, they reeled and staggered like drunken men, and all their skill was useless. Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble, and He brought them out of their distress. He stilled the storm to a murmur and the waves of the sea were hushed. They rejoiced when the waves grew quiet. Then He guided them to the harbor they longed for. (Psalm 107: 23-30, emphasis added)

I know Bible study can be arduous at times, but that is beautiful.
It’s most likely that the subjects of this passage are some of the people God had redeemed from exile, probably the Israelites who had returned from Babylon. They saw the wonders of the Lord at sea. He caused the waters to revolt; He stirred up the tempest Himself so that He would have a stage set for the people to see His goodness to them. Sinking in fear, they cried out to God to save them, and He stilled the storm, hushing it down to a murmur. And then He guided them to the harbor they had longed for.

the Man who purposefully walked across the raging sea walked purposefully up a hill and secured our soul-safety forever when His blood poured out and ran down the splintered wood of a crude cross, spreading out to both cover our disbelief and give birth to saving faith.

You’re probably seeing the connections between Psalm 107 and John 6 now, and this is one reason I love to dig into Scripture. It’s seamless. It’s one big story, and while I think the events in Psalm 107 happened to specific people during that time period, I think they were also meant to point us to Jesus. While these exiles were being redeemed, God was sending Jesus, preparing His people then and now for the Savior He was always planning to send. 

As believers who have the whole story about Jesus, we can read passages like Psalm 107 and think of Him walking across the water and guiding the disciples to the shore they longed for. We should see that Jesus held authority over the sea He created. We should also picture Jesus as the safe harbor for our souls, the One we anchor ourselves to for all the hope we could ever need (Hebrews 6:19) in knowing our salvation is sure–because the Man who purposefully walked across the raging sea walked purposefully up a hill and secured our soul-safety forever when His blood poured out and ran down the splintered wood of a crude cross, spreading out to both cover our disbelief and give birth to saving faith. 
If you feel like your faith is weak and that your life circumstances are stamping out any vestige of hope, look at Jesus. Shift your gaze away from your troubles and toward Jesus. Cry out like Peter, “Lord, save me!” Know that ultimately, Jesus is the safe harbor you are longing for. I know He is mine, and without Him holding out hope across a troubled sea I would surely have sunk long ago. Over and over, He reaches out and keeps me from sinking into unbelief, and every day He is propelling me closer to the harbor I long for.

It isn’t just an allegory. Jesus really did walk on water–a sea He created, actually. He didn’t calm the sea until after Peter jumped out of the boat, and when fear displaced Peter’s faith, Jesus both rebuked and saved him. Only God holds the authority to rightly rebuke and save.

 
I love Jesus for His authority, His ability to march across the unwalkable, to tame the untamable, to heal the unhealable, to love the unlovable, to trade the unthinkable by exchanging places with me and letting me wear His righteousness like a robe that I feel like I stole while He was watching.  But it was a gift, His eyes locked with mine—knowing all the deceitfulness down in me, the hopelessness, my bent to disbelieve Him—and saying anyway, “you are Mine. Get up and sin no more.” And I can because I am His, and because the One who walked on water and quieted the wind and fed the hungry and told broken men to get up is also the One who took out the ugly heart inside me and put in a new one that loves Him.

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{Leaving the Room}

It’s nearly 7 a.m. when I close my Bible, put the notebook aside, drop the pen in the coffee mug that holds its mates on my desk.  I could use fifteen more minutes, but my time is up.

leaving the room

My kids are stirring across the hall, and the serenity of this pale blue room, dimly lit from the morning sun, fades quickly as I’m pulled from the quiet world where I’ve been hiding reading and praying. My coffee’s gone cold in my cup, and I wrestle with the transition of leaving my writing room and putting on my “mom” hat. Well, I never really take that hat off, I guess. It would be more accurate to say I’ve been wearing it backwards since we tucked the kids in last night, and now it’s time to turn the hat around and step into my role more fully.

A dozen little things go wrong.

One kid wakes up cranky and demanding, the other one won’t stop begging me for video games. The breakfast I fixed wasn’t what was desired, I forgot to pay a bill, I have a head ache. The laundry is piled up, and as I’m pulling exactly fifty-one cents from the baby’s mouth (I wish it weren’t true), I just feel plain insulted by the sink full of dishes I was too tired to wash last night.

Before I know it, I’m irritable and crabby. I yell at my kids, snap at my husband, and indulgently decide to lie down instead of work when the baby takes his morning nap even though I know it will make me run late on everything all day. I’ve had twelve arguments in my head with that person who made a snippy offhand comment to me the other day, and anger bubbles up, spilling over into every thought, word, and action.

What happened to the peaceful time with the Lord that I enjoyed this morning?
What was the point of getting up early, blearily ignoring the snooze button, and dragging myself out of the warm cocoon of blankets if everything I “learned” during my time with Jesus goes flying out of my head with the tiniest annoyance?
How can I connect what I’ve spent the first hour the day learning with my work, my parenting, my relationships, my marriage, my decisions?
Will I always leave all the good stuff God is teaching me in the room with my Bible and notebooks? What good is it if I don’t see any fruit from it?

I’ve asked all of those questions with regularity. Sometimes it seems like the warm glow of time spent in the Word is harshly scraped away by the immediate derailment of my day. But–when we leave the room and close down the hour of study and prayer, it isn’t as though we’re ending one session and beginning another. It may feel that way when the baby is screaming or you’re stuck in traffic that will certainly make you late for work. I would do anything in a stilted moment of stress or anger to recapture the peace that dominated those quiet moments in my writing room when it was just me, my Bible, and my Savior. But the reality is that there is…reality. And rather than separate my cherished morning time with Christ from the other fifteen waking hours of my day, I’ve got to connect what I hope sunk down deep into my heart at 6:15 a.m. with what’s directly in front of me—whether that’s a toddler having a tantrum, a looming deadline for work, a family crisis, or the argument I just initiated with my husband (recently true story, unfortunately). This is where the apostle Paul’s statement to Timothy is really helpful:

“All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that every man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
2 Timothy 3:16-17 (HCSB)

If we believe that all of God’s Word is, in fact, HIS unfailing and inerrant words to us, then it is to be our standard for living. Paul says that Scripture is useful for four things (teaching, rebuking, correcting, training) and then tells us why: so that every believer will be complete and equipped for every good work. This is such a practical passage because it shows us pragmatically how the Scripture applies to our every day lives by teaching us, calling us out on sin, correcting our errors, and training us to follow Christ. These are ways that you can practically take what you learned from your Bible study and apply it directly to the day in front of you. Keep these four ways in front of you when your good intentions crash around you and the day seems bent on destroying your faith. Think through these four modes of applying Scripture and remember that you’ve already steeped your heart in the Word. Now is the time to apply it.

When I’m in that argument with my husband, I need to reign in my angry, selfish thoughts and remind myself that following Christ means putting my anger to death. Christian marriage means that I need to respect my husband more than I love myself, and that fighting for what I think I deserve is the very antithesis of following Christ. When I’m frustrated by whining and disobedient children, I know that yelling is not helpful and that God has told me not to exasperate my children. (Boy, God has a lot to say about familial relationships in Ephesians, by the way.) When I’m in freakout mode over the high stack of bills and the low amount of money in the bank account, God brings up those ancient words about His owning the cattle on a thousand hills and how much more He’s concerned with me than the sparrows He so regularly provides for. He reminds me to cast my cares on Him since He cares about me, and that my worry produces nothing good (Psalms, Matthew).
Scripture both rebukes and corrects my sin. The Word tells me what not to do, but it also tells me what TO DO instead. It’s not just emptying your life of sinful behavior, as if that were ever enough. No, it’s a lifelong lesson of remembering that Jesus took on all your sinful behavior at the cross and that as a result you are not a slave to sin anymore. Go, sin no more. Go, and pattern your life after Him by doing what He tells you. God repeatedly gives us ways to fill our minds and hearts with good thoughts, good actions, sanctified ways of response that are pleasing to Him and good for our relationships with others.  Here is where the Holy Spirit does a lot of work as our Helper. He brings those things to mind that we’ve read and studied and prayed about day after day. He uses the unfailing patience of God to teach us to emulate Him as we parent, mentor, relate, and love. He gives us direction and He enables us to do it because it is Him who is at work within us, so that we can love and serve unreservedly–for His glory and the spreading of His kingdom.

Some mornings I hesitate at the door of my writing room. I don’t want to leave. The serenity of the morning will cease to exist when I turn the knob, and I’m afraid of all my potential screw-ups on the other side.  But my sanctification awaits in the hallway, and this is where my life as a follower of Jesus takes its breath and stretches and grows, even in floundering and failing. True Jesus-following life was never meant to be lived in solitary confinement, no matter how peaceful and unbroken that quiet hour of the day promises to be. I can always get back to my quiet hour tomorrow morning. But my faith will not be challenged and tested if I never open the door to see how well God’s Word stands up to all that challenges and wounds and scares me.

I’ve prepared for this. Leaving the room.
Meeting with God in the mornings to dig into Scripture—this is where He helps me unearth everything I need and where I learn to hear and recognize and love His voice. This is when I hide His words down deep in my heart, where they get wrapped and knotted tightly around my slowly growing faith. His words are strong enough and loud enough to be heard throughout the day when everything fights for my affection and attention. It’s safe to turn the knob and leave the room. He goes with you.

This is post #8 and the final post in the series “Knowing God in His Own Words.”

Post #1 “Knowing God in His Own Words”

Post #2 “Do I Need the Bible Every Day?”

Post #3 “Know Him Because We Need Him”

Post #4 “The Morning Person Myth VLOG”

Post #5 “Bible Study Methods + VLOG demo”

Post #6 “The Beauty of the Dry Spell”

Post #7 “I Can’t Read the Bible When the Baby is Crying”

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{I can’t read the Bible when the baby is crying.}

Maybe you’ve said these words before: “I can’t read the Bible when the baby is crying.” I know I have.

When people tell me that their babies started sleeping through the night at six weeks old, I kind of want to punch them in the face. (The parents, not the babies.) If they tell me their babies started sleeping through the night before that, I can’t be their friend anymore. It’s not personal. (Well, maybe it is.)

biblebabycrying

Neither of my babies slept through the night as infants. My older son gave up his midnight feeding at four months but still woke throughout the night consistently until he was about 10 months old. My younger son held on to that 2 am feeding until he was almost 9 months old. Granted, both of them are rock solid sleepers now; they go to bed without any fussing or use of stalling tactics, and they sleep all night. But I’ll be honest, the first year of each of their lives was tough on me both as a new, young mom with my first baby, and then seven years later as a tired, older mom with my second. Doing something like reading my Bible with an infant in the house seemed about as likely to happen as my becoming the next president of the United States.

At the other end of the spectrum are people who find themselves caring for an aging parent. My mom lived in this reality for several years, and as she spent daytime and nighttime hours caring for her mother, I remember her once telling me that she deeply missed her regular time for studying the Word and prayer. She wanted to be everything her mother needed (and in sharing the responsibilities with my aunt, she was just that), but it required a lot of personal sacrifice. Waking throughout the night was a regular occurrence during one period of her caregiving, and because it was followed with daytime caregiving, it was much like taking care of an infant. I remember what I told my mom, because I reminded myself of the same thing when I was in that newborn fog with my second baby: “You have prepared for this. You have spent years studying and hiding the Word in your heart. This time of on-the-clock caregiving is a season, and it won’t last forever. Remind yourself of all the Scripture you have stored up in your mind and heart, and dwell on it when you don’t have time to sit down and study.”

Yes, this is just a season.  And it may be a long one, but it shouldn’t last forever.

Give yourself some grace, Mama.

Don’t be too hard on yourself, Daughter.

What if the season of little sleep, parenting young children, or taking care of a parent seems prolonged?  Do you check out spiritually until the season ends? What can you do during that period of time to prevent losing any intake of the Word on a regular basis? Is there anything you can do to carry yourself along until life slows down or reorients itself to a more doable routine?

I want to give you a few practical ways to get some semblance of Scripture and study into your day, even if you’re stretched really thin. The thing to remember, though, is that seasons don’t need to become your lifetime normal. If you’re just overly busy and it’s not because of babies keeping you up or because you’re a caregiver, then it might be time to say “no” to some things so that you can say “yes” to the best things. I’ve already established that every believer needs the Word of God on a regular basis. You can’t grow spiritually without a steady diet at the table of Scripture. Don’t let what should be a season morph into a way of life. Treat seasons as times to extend grace to yourself, but when you can fight for normalcy, DO IT.

Until then, consider these fringe moments and tips as helpers until you can move out of your current window of crazy. Feel free to offer your own in the comments; this is by no means an exhaustive list!

Naptime

If you’ve got littles who nap, this is your first window of time to crack open your Bible. I realize it may also be your only time to shower or eat or pay bills or make a phone call. If you can count on a pocket of time each day without a child attached to your body, then try to dedicate a small portion of that time to sitting down with your Bible and a cup of coffee. You don’t have to spend your whole hour here, but you won’t regret devoting part of your hour to the Lord. You’re living in the trenches while you parent little ones or care for a family member full time. You NEED some time to refresh your weary soul. It’s okay to admit you’re tired, inside and out. Read through the Psalms, or take two paragraphs a day from the gospel of Mark. You may not have the time to follow the methods I’ve laid out for in-depth study, but you can read and absorb and pray.

Early morning

Okay, I can hear you laughing. The whole point of this post is that mornings don’t work when you’ve got kids keeping you up all night. But, if you’re like me and your kiddo’s naptime is dedicated to a regular activity or chore (for me, it’s writing), then you may just have to extend your sleep deficit a little more for the sake of spiritual health. With my second baby, I was older and tireder (I know it’s not a real word, but we all say it). I needed sleep like WOW. I attempted to compensate by going to bed as soon as the baby was asleep. I knew I had to get up for feedings, I knew I was going to be exhausted in the morning, but I also knew that it would be way too easy to simply give up on reading my Bible and blame it on the screaming baby. {My disclaimer here is that we were living through the darkest and most uncertain days of our life at that time and I was absolutely desperate for the Lord’s nearness and reassurance. That got me out of bed on the mornings the baby happened to sleep past six.} Mornings were hard, but eventually the baby did sleep through the night, and now I get a solid 7-8 hours myself. Let me be honest here: I am not Superwoman, but I lived for five years with an average of about 3 hours of sleep per night due to chronic, waking pain. I sincerely understand long-term sleep deprivation. Your body is tired, but I assure you, so is your soul. And your soul needs the rest and encouragement found in the Word.

Bedtime

You night owls, this is for you. I don’t understand you or your late night bursts of creativity and productivity. But maybe this time of day is best for you. It’s like speaking a foreign language to me, so I won’t try to elaborate on a subject I know little about. But, don’t forget that right before bed, after the kids are asleep, is also an option. For some people. Not me.

Listen while you work

I can’t for the life of me remember where I heard the following story (a Google search was no help; I think I read it in a book), but I once read an anecdote of someone’s mother many decades ago who was so busy raising her children and cooking and cleaning, that she took to propping up her Bible at the table where she kneaded the dough for the bread she would bake for her family each day. She would look up and read, knead the dough, look up and read, knead the dough. I love that image of a busy mom going to such lengths to incorporate Scripture into her day. And what a model she must have been to her children! So I tried to imagine the modern day equivalent of this since I’m not doing too much bread baking in my life. I think it could translate into listening to the Bible on audio while cooking or cleaning or chauffeuring the kids around town. It could mean picking a book of the Bible and listening to a podcast or audio sermon series through that book while you’re getting ready in the mornings or folding laundry in the afternoons. You’re just absorbing in a different way when you’re listening. My dad has always traveled a lot for work. I wish we knew how many miles he’s put on his vehicles throughout the years. Hundreds of thousands, at least. At one point he had the entire Bible on a set of CDs (this was before the MP3), and he listened to them while he drove hours in his truck every day. This is a great way to supplement your Bible intake or to serve as your means of Scripture consumption if you struggle to carve out time to sit down with your Bible during the day. It shouldn’t be your permanent solution to daily intake, but it’s a great supplement and a fine alternative in the mean time.

Memorization

You weren’t expecting this, were you? Don’t write it off just yet! I think memorization can be a useful tool when you need to comfort a crying baby rather than sit down to read the Bible or think seriously about Scripture. I used to think that my youngest son had some kind of newborn radar that let him know the exact moment I was laying my head on the pillow or sitting down to open my Bible. He was so prompt with his shrill cry—I wondered if he was secretly some kind of superhero—like Superman, able to detect the exact millisecond when Mom thought it was safe enough to sit down. It was uncanny, really.

I digress.

Scripture memorization is hard, or so we say. We all tell ourselves we’re terrible memorizers, and maybe that’s true for some of us, but I bet most of the time we’re selling ourselves short at best. At worst, we’re just being lazy. We can quote lines from The Office or lyrics to songs we heard as children, but we seem to set ourselves up for failure when it comes to remembering verses from the Bible. If you’ve read the Bible for very many years, I bet you remember more than you think you do. When the baby won’t let you sit down for a quiet time or when as a caregiver you struggle to have a regular time to study, try shifting your focus to memorization. Put note cards around your house, on the dash of your vehicle, above the sink where you wash dishes. Read the same verses over and over until you can say them without looking. As you’re trying to memorize them, think about the words and what they mean. Think about the context in which they were written. What thoughts do they give you about God? About Jesus? About humanity? How could you apply them? <— See what you’ve done there? You’ve studied a passage or a verse through the act of memorizing and thinking deeply about it (what we call “meditation” as Christians; not to be confused with emptying your mind as with mysticism or eastern religions). My husband will often type out a passage for memorization, slip it upside down into a gallon size ziploc bag and tape it (zipper down) to the wall of the shower. If you’re showering every day, you’ll see the passage every time. Also, dry erase markers work great on mirrors—try writing your passage of choice on your bathroom mirror and you’ll see it when you’re brushing your teeth or putting on makeup.

Grace + Seasons

Mamas, listen. I know your baby has to eat and be held and changed and loved and nurtured. Baby needs you. Don’t feel guilty for putting down your Bible to pick up the baby when she needs you.

Alternatively, if baby is content in the bouncy seat, don’t feel guilty for putting him there for a few minutes when you need to pick up your Bible.

If your elderly mother is resting, don’t feel like you’re wasting time by resting yourself. One day that might mean a nap. The next day it might mean quickly gobbling up some wisdom from your Bible.

Remember that seasons are just that—seasons, though they may at times be lengthy. Like those dry spells I wrote about recently, they don’t usually last forever. You can still grow as you persevere through them. The Lord can teach you in small fractions of time. He sees your devotion to serving your family, and that honors Him as you fill the roles He has called you to in this time of your life. You may feel like you have to choose who you will be devoted to, but you don’t have to neglect time with the Lord—even if it feels like all you have are snatches of borrowed moments. He is still near and His Word is still available, even in fragmented nooks and crannies of your day.

Press on, friends.

This is post #7 in the series “Knowing God in His Own Words.”

Post #1 “Knowing God in His Own Words”

Post #2 “Do I Need the Bible Every Day?”

Post #3 “Know Him Because We Need Him”

Post #4 “The Morning Person Myth VLOG”

Post #5 “Bible Study Methods + VLOG demo”

Post #6 “The Beauty of the Dry Spell”

 

 

 

 

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