Category: theology and philosophy

o love that will not let me go

“How did Jesus have power to do miracles?”

The question was like extracting one drop of water in a massive wave off the coast of El Salvador – marvelous and impossible.

I sat across from Anna and considered the fireworks in my heart. Oh, how I love my Jesus. I got flustered and stumbled over my words in excitement. My haphazard words fluttered out like they would if I was trying to explain that I’d found a key to a secret garden in the center of the city, where hydrangeas and peonies and lilies bloomed year-round. It’s too good to be true and my heart knows it.

The more we study the life of Jesus, the more willing we are to stand in awe – to marvel at the mystery. Anna’s question came from our summer Bible study, “Walking as Jesus Walked” by Dann Spader and my delight came from the response: digging deeper. My delight is not that I have answers, but that through the Spirit we have strength to comprehend the love that surpasses knowledge.

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
(Ephesians 3:14-21 ESV)

As the weeks go by, my encouragement to these girls is to go digging – to taste and see that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8) over and over and over again. Nothing bad can come of studying the Word and asking God to give us insight. The Word never returns void. When we’ve uncovered verses that we think don’t make sense, it means digging deeper to uncover why they do.

The more we read God’s Word, the more we want to read God’s Word. As we study the life of Jesus, I am holding on to the love that will not let me go – the love that allows me to grow in wisdom and stature, in favor of God and man (Luke 2:52), just like Jesus.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 1

Until the Dawn Appears

Well the man of sorrows walked the shores of Galilee
And his eyes were cast with joy towards the crystal sea
Well the shadows will be gone and all these bitter tears
And my heart will hang on that until the dawn appears

Matthew Perryman Jones is one of those folk singers. He croons with a heart outside “mainstream” and his new album makes me emotional. Every time I hear, “Until the Dawn Appears,” my heart hangs on the last verse because without it the song would be only sad. Jones has a way of singing sorrow. It kind of seeps out slowly and settles in deep. The last verse (above) transfers all the sorrows of this world onto the shoulders of one man. One man who will bring the dawn that banishes the shadows.

One man who will never let me go.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 0

on the hook: making disciples in non-vocational ministry

I met a woman today while I was running errands for work. We fell into small talk and she asked if I had anything “fun” planned today. I took the road most traveled with my bland reply, “Just work, I guess.”

I thought of all the stories I could weave about my complicated life and my unpredictable schedule… and then I heard her ask, “Where do you work?” I kept up with the North American charade and chose the job where I have an office, “I work at the E Free Church here in town.”

Her eyes lit up. “Oh! The one on 24th street?”

Our conversation turned a corner and I arrived again at a crossroads. Though technically I’m employed by a church right now as an administrative assistant, I am growing into a stronger conviction about the power of non-vocational ministry. When Jesus spoke the commission over the disciples in Matthew 28, his directive was to make disciples – baptizing them in the name of the Father and teaching them to obey all His commands.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
(Matthew 28:19-20 ESV)

What he did NOT say was this, “Go into all the world and find leaders that you can pay to be disciples and hopefully people will follow them.”

We are settling for a powerless Christianity when we rely on paid ministry workers to carry all the weight of the Body of Christ. We have an amateur complex – an idea that we aren’t qualified or capable of reading and understanding the Word of God unless it is unpacked by an “expert” of the faith. We have elevated individuals in the church because of their knowledge or charisma or firm Sunday handshake and, in the process, given ourselves a ready excuse in the face of spiritual failure. “Well, I know I messed up again… but I’m no Pastor John. I wonder if there’s, like, a program where someone would help me with my addiction.” We make excuses (and we accept others’ excuses) for skipping devotions, church responsibilities, and Bible studies because we’re not “in the ministry” and there’s a lot more than Bible going on in our lives.

What?

Again, when God gave the direction to go and make disciples he was talking about regular people living like Jesus and inviting other regular people to do the same.

Do you know that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature (Luke 2:52)? He grew into more knowledge of the Lord just like he grew into size 28 jeans (or robe). Every day he found out more about His Father and every day He obeyed with more joy and every day Jesus found more favor with God and man. This was his vocation. He was expert at loving the Lord, growing in knowledge of Him, and serving others.

No one is off the hook. Not a pastor? You’re qualified if you are born again. Don’t have a degree in women’s ministry? You are adequate in Christ. Not confident in your less-than-perfect Christian journey? Jesus wants you, too.

Here’s the catch (wink): you WANT to be on the hook. For all the squirming and protesting Christians do to get out of ministry and outreach and loving neighbors, they don’t realize that a worm on a hook is how you catch a fish. Jesus has qualified us to be His ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20). God is making His appeal through us to the world so that they might come to know the saving work of Christ.

WHOA.

No one is off the hook, but no true Christian should want to be anywhere else.

God has called, redeemed, and equipped regular people to take His message of redemption to the world in our everyday, regular encounters with regular people. So, why is it so much easier for people in vocational ministry to have conversations about the Lord?

We are all in ministry.
We are all on “staff.”
We are all called to make disciples.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 6

the Priest who sat down

I was doing arithmetic to the rhythm of the running path tonight…
And things were adding up like this:

3 weeks
1 summer camp
1 missions conference
4 states
5 jobs
5 different beds
1 parent meeting
3 days of family reunion
hundreds of smiles, sighs, and near-tears
_____________________________

Arithmetic is not my thing, so I shook the numbers out of my head and thought about Old Testament priests. I thought back to their days full to brimming with activity – with messy, bloody, smelly activity. A priest’s job was never done. He would never get home at night and know that any real progress had been made. He would always, always have work and it would always, always be blood-drenched.

The entire vocation of “priest” was set up (in grace) because of man’s sin revealed through the law given to Moses. The people in Nehemiah 8 wept as they understood how far they had fallen from right relationship with the Lord. The distance was so far that there was no hope of recovery. The people listened to the Book of Law and looked at the chasm created by their sin and they knew – there was no way to reach right relationship with the Lord again. So they wept … and the priests worked overtime with blood-soaked hands because the chasm was so great.

The system was intricate and difficult to maintain, but the priests returned to work every day after blood-filled day because it was the only way that sin would find atonement.

And then there was Jesus. Oh, I love my Jesus.

Jesus, the great High Priest, stepped into the chasm that couldn’t be filled for thousands of years to accomplish what could never be bought by thousands of sacrifices. All those trips to the temple – all those long voyages – came to an end when Christ set his face toward Jerusalem.

He was the sacrifice that ended all other sacrifices because His was sufficient.

The temple no longer needed to bustle with bloody activity and the work of the priests changed overnight… and Jesus sat down. Though Jesus is the great High Priest (a vocation that would mean work without end), He sat down at the right hand of the Father (Mark 16:19).

There is something about the Truth of what Christ accomplished on the cross that can be claimed when mornings look menacing and when minutes refuse to stretch a moment further.

Jesus accomplished what nothing else could to offer what nothing else can and there’s not a single shred of doubt about it. The weight of His confidence is measured in His sure, seated posture next to His Father.

And that is why all my numbers smashed in to all my days inside of weeks point to One blood-soaked sacrifice and all the peace of a seated King.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 3

I asked the Lord

Oh, friends.

What happens when you reach the end of your rope? What’s after the end – another rope?

Today, I’m asking the Lord.
Actually, I just kind of sat for a few minutes and let space pass between me and the Lord. I let this song do all the asking, because it seems to write the kind of lyric my heart is singing. Hymns pack a pretty hearty punch when it comes to expressing what feels hidden too deep for language. John Newton first penned these words in 1879, so their strength does not surprise me. What does surprise me is how accurate his description is (after 133 years) of the woeful condition of my heart. Even as I seek the Lord in earnest prayer, I often ask for what most benefits me – what most quickly satisfies or appeases or quiets or calms. I am earnest, but I am disappointed when what He gives is abundant in every opposite way.

I hoped that in some favored hour
At once He’d answer my request
And by His love’s constraining power
Subdue my sins and give me rest

Instead of this He made me feel
The hidden evils of my heart
And let the angry powers of Hell
Assault my soul in every part

My conversation in quiet moments with the Lord that started with an honest desire to grow in grace and faith ends with frustrated confusion. God must not have understood – I wanted to grow in grace and faith. 

And here I feel, again, the guilt and weight of my sin – the hidden evils of my heart that lead even my prayer life away from the Lord. O, how gracious to set me free from self and pride – again and again so that I might seek my all in Him.

Lord why is this, I trembling cried
Wilt Thou pursue thy worm to death?
“Tis in this way” The Lord replied
“I answer prayer for grace and faith”

“These inward trials I employ
From self and pride to set thee free
And break thy schemes of earthly joy
That thou mayest seek thy all in me,
That thou mayest seek thy all in me.”

Posted on by Caroline 4

longing for a home

On my 15 hour trip across Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan, I finally had time to process Van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo. The lyrics to the new Matthew Perryman Jones song, “O Theo” have accompanied many of my night runs, but I hadn’t realized they were so old. They date back to intimate correspondence between Van Gogh and his brother and one such letter inspired this especially earnest and confessional song.

There’s something magnetic about the words – something that pulls you in and makes you listen to what was painfully penned from a brother to a brother of a dreadful waywardness.

Under the silence of water,
Into a sky full of birds
Out from the land of our fathers,
I am falling on your words,
Oh…

Dark as the night of a preacher,
I made a bed out of hay
They paid me a handful of money,
I gave it all away…
All away…

And the righteous raised their stones
And the devil threw his arrow
That was longing for a home
With nowhere to go,
Oh, Theo…

In the half-life of the city,
She took off all of her clothes
I flew from the height of the mountains
Into a valley of dry bones
All alone

Then my heart was still unknown
I was drunk and full of sorrows
I was longing for a home
With nowhere to go,
Oh, Theo…

So, I set fires of starlight,
To burn up against the despair
I was caught in the tangles of midnight’s
Long, unanswered prayer:
‘Are you there?’

And the light of morning grows
On a field of fallen sparrows
I was longing for a home
With nowhere to go,
Oh, Theo…

Are you pulled in to Van Gogh’s plea for a home? Does something deep inside turn over when you read about his waywardness?

Van Gogh describes his desperate and failed attempts to cure himself of loneliness. He reaches out and lays all things bare, longing for a home.

In a phone conversation the other night, I heard the same longing – a beautiful soul captured by grace who longed for the security of “home” without the fear of abandonment. I heard her confession of sin and her fragile hope of new life. I heard fear drip from every excuse as she listed reasons why now is a hard time to turn from sin.

And right there we called spades “spades.” We agreed about her sin and the fear that made her cling to it. We agreed that her life looked like Jesus hadn’t accomplished anything on the cross – that He wasn’t capable of holding her up when her world crashed.

We agreed that Jesus wanted a complete turn from sin so that she could look Him fully in the face and hear the words, “Child, you are mine.”

I remember sitting on my friend’s porch a cool, August night in high school. I remember trying desperately to convince my friend that I had sin to deal with. I remember my friend saying, “That’s it?”

We all get desperate and blinded by sin. The only hope of redemption we have is to believe that Christ willingly stood in the place of that sin (because it is sin) and continually sits at the right hand of God interceding for us, not that we would continue in sin but that we would enjoy the freedom that comes through repentance.

And it is with this honest, repentant heart that we do find a home that is secure.

Posted on by Caroline 0

doing what we ought = freedom

More than a little ink spilled recently in Iowa over an administrator’s questionable email etiquette. That’s a nice way of saying she used her work email to do some pretty dirty things. In fact, her behavior motivated the powers that be in Des Moines public schools to implement a morality clause.

Morality clause? Aren’t we living in a relativistic culture? Who has the right to implement a moral standard?

Seems like our culture’s digging her own grave, though we hate to admit it. If we all make our own moral standard, how can we say someone else’s is inferior?

C.S. Lewis differentiates moral law from the law of nature in that it is what we “ought” to do, not what we simply do. Trees fall when cut and grass grows in response to rain and sunshine. Nature does those things, but there is not another layer of “ought.” Trees aren’t looked down on if they don’t fall at the feller’s ax. Grass isn’t more supremely regarded if it grows than if it wilts. Nature simply does things and we observe these characteristics.

People, on the other hand, get angry when someone steps in front of the shopping line or if someone steals the family car. We get angry because they “ought” not do such a thing. It’s wrong.

Everyone has their own version of “ought” – the place they draw the line in the sand where relativity fades and objectivity says, “you can’t do that to me.”

I struggle with the controversy in Des Moines because we are clamoring to say this woman “ought not” do what she did, yet we told her all along (as she gained experience and degrees in our system) that she needn’t bother with someone else’s morality. We told her that hers would do just fine.

How many people implementing the city’s new ‘morality clause’ could stand under its inspection? Are some positions more ‘moral’ than others because they are more public?

I race around these questions in my head and wish that C.S. Lewis was giving a lecture next week on a public campus. Jesus would obviously be the first choice, but C.S. Lewis seems more within reach (is that bad?). Honestly, I imagine the same response following a lecture by Lewis and a sermon by Jesus – a bunch of people filing out of a sterile auditorium mumbling their disagreement or support as they walk to their next engagement.

It hurts to hear the high-browed arguments about what should or shouldn’t be done in the public eye. Moral rules outside of divine wisdom are like walking on railroad tracks to an unknown destination.

The excitement and joy of doing what we “ought” is in knowing that in doing so we are free. It is not a morality clause that keeps us behaving as we ought, but a love that can’t imagine behaving any other way.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 3

let us never grow weary of God

Paul Tripp shared his frustration in this post, “No Longer Amazed by Grace” after hearing the director of a national ministry claim nothing excites him anymore. He shared something from B.B. Warfield that has my heart all in rumbles with agreement. Read the whole thing, but here’s the last bit where Warfield sums up his warning to the seminarian who has become numb to divine things due to his constant contact with divine things.

Think of what your privilege is when your greatest danger is that the great things of religion may become common to you! Other men, oppressed by the hard conditions of life, sunk in the daily struggle for bread perhaps, distracted at any rate by the dreadful drag of the world upon them and the awful rush of the world’s work, find it hard to get time and opportunity so much as to pause and consider whether there be such things as God, and religion, and salvation from the sin that compasses them about and holds them captive. The very atmosphere of your life is these things; you breathe them in at every pore: they surround you, encompass you, press in upon you from every side. It is all in danger of becoming common to you! God forgive you, you are in danger of becoming weary of God!

O, that we would never lose our awe of God. No matter how many books, studies, conferences, or personal devotions at sunrise – may we never get bored of meeting with the Creator of the universe. May we always hold this gift of communion with tender gratitude, knowing we have no right to know anything of His mysteries. Every little bit revealed is pure gift.

Several weeks ago, I was babysitting a 6-year-old and his 4-year-old sister. Moments after their parents left, Connor found his sister and I in the middle of a stuffed animal introduction. He picked up some silver Mardi Gras beads and said, “Let’s play a game. Here’s what we do: I drop the beads on the ground and then we see what shapes we make.” He let the beads fall to the carpet and then we all just looked at the squiggles until shapes emerged. Our observations overlapped, “I see a heart!” and “Oh, there’s a butterfly” and “Do you see the snake?”

Once we’d exhausted the shapes, it was someone else’s turn to throw the beads to the carpet. The whole time, I was absolutely giddy with excitement. How many adults would think of such a game? This 6-year-old is brilliant! I loved how matter-of-fact he was about the game and about spotting shapes and about including his sister. I mostly loved the rasp in their voices right before they found something wonderful “..Oh, oh! Look at this flower!” The shapes came alive in those silver dots in a mess on the floor.

And if we can get excited – even giddy – about silver dots, then how much more should our excitement soar at the wonder of creation? How can we be amused by far lesser (yet still wonderful) things, and bored with the greatest and most wonderful things?

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 1

ransomed from futility

The Lord’s faithfulness does not depend on me. What a mess I’d be in if that weren’t true!

Somehow, I eased out of my daily Word-drenched routine and into a more me-saturated schedule. I took my eyes off eternity and set my gaze much… lower. It wasn’t noticeable in bold-lettered ways, but the pages I’ve written in life the past week are missing the main character – the voice of the Writer, Narrator, and Hero – you could say I’m missing the red letters. It’s probably that weaselly Wormwood character doing his work in the trenches to make me think I’m “just fine” when I really need to deal with sin.

Today was the glorious antidote, though I shouldn’t be surprised.
Truth is a powerful serum. It gets inside the blood stream and awakens all the right sensors to alert the body of all the “false” that has taken over.

As I was reading Proverbs 1, Truth seemed to seep in and spread over all that sin that was crowding His story in my life. Specifically, the call of wisdom in verses 20-33. The call to turn from simple, foolish whims to deep, mysterious wisdom seems an easy sell (who wants to be simple and foolish?). But, as I read the words of the wayward, I realized that wisdom would mean the pages of my life would be filled to full with red letters – those would be the words I breathed in and lived out.

In 2 Timothy 3, Paul writes about how things will run amuck in the last days – about people who will be completely conformed to the world and calling others to join them. In his caution, “Avoid such people” (v. 5), he explains that they are “burdened with sins and have been led astray by passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth” (v. 6 -7).

What maddening futility! To always learn and never arrive at a knowledge of the truth – this sounds like what gives a scientist the “mad” prefix. And what joy that we’ve been rescued from futility!

…knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
(1 Peter 1:17-21 ESV)

Today, I am sad for my wandering.
Today, I am amazed that God allows me to learn and arrive at a knowledge of the Truth through the work of Christ.
Today, I am blessed by the call to wisdom and for ears to hear.
Today, I know I can dwell secure, without dread of disaster.

but whoever listens to me will dwell secure
and will be at ease, without dread of disaster.”
(Proverbs 1:32-33 ESV)

Because when I am faithless, the Lord is faithful.

Posted on by Caroline 1

parody, tarp surfing, learning to teach, and open heaven

It’s been awhile since a “this & that” post. There’s plenty to look at, click on, hear, watch, and do. Do as little or as lot as you wish, but whatever you do – let knowledge be something that produces action. It’s my hope that the more I know, the more I can translate that knowledge into love actions in a way that pleases my Lord. Just like all Truth is God’s, all knowledge is possible only because He’s allowed it to be so.

  • Andrée Seu is a woman I’d love to meet. This piece, “Under an Open Heaven,” seems to be a page right out of my heart. Here’s a taste, now please go read the rest!

My lover is the fresh wind of the Spirit, blowing through the rafters of my melancholy. My lover speaks of God “in season and out of season,” like Jesus at the well in Sychar, in his fatigue and hunger. There is no difference between his “religious” talk and his regular talk. He does not sound one way in church and another at the mall.

Walking with him I feel no sides, no floor, no ceiling, and everything all new: No past, no future. No rules but God’s. No servitude but to Him. No man-made impossibilities. We do the adventure called “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” Let me be blunt: This is fun!

  • Wanna know what makes a great story? Seems like this post would answer it, “1+1=3 Ken Burn on what makes a great story” but it may not answer your math questions.
  • If I could choose a conference to go to this summer (in addition to the Muslim Missions Conference in Dearborn, Michigan), it would be the gem of a conference in Florida – The Gospel Coalition Women’s Conference. The next best thing, of course, is to read/listen to everything. Carrie Sandom, hailing from the UK, will be speaking and here’s an introduction that makes me excited to hear more from her. “Learn the Bible to Teach the Bible” makes a bunch of sense.
  • Do you doubt that a landlocked country could surf waves? Doubt no more. This is really sweet.

  • Not to be “that kind of fan,” but Metaxas has proved himself as a brilliant writer and historian (Amazing Grace and Bonhoeffer). This article, “Spirituality as Parody” is definitely worth the read as well (and a lot shorter than Bonhoeffer).
  • What does your view of Scripture have to do with your view of God? See what J.I. Packer has to say about that, “Your View of Scripture and Your View of God.”
  • If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been grooving to the new band Citizen. They’re cool enough to spend $3 on, for sure.

Okay, friends. That’s all for now. Click, read, listen, watch, and… then DO something.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 0