My days seem to only get more random. I know that sounds strange, coming from someone who most recently drove a tractor for work, but it’s true. I have a high tolerance for random schedules, but this ordeal is making even me a little fidgety.
So, I’m starting this day simple, with this reminder from Dorothy Sayers,
“The only Christian work is good work, well done.”
If I’m ever confused or disheartened or worried about what exactly is work, I just remember this. I must do whatever is before me and I must do it well, because doing it any other way would be, well, not Christian work at all.
There’s really no other option. We’re made in the image of a Creator who was only capable of good work, well done. And we are redeemed (after royally messing up) by a Savior who accomplished the greatest work perfectly on the cross so that we can set out to do good work well for the glory of our Father and with the greatest joy.
This song has found it’s way onto so many playlists. One of the many wise mentors in my life used to encourage me to read Scripture and then ask, “What does this say about God?” Now, I’m passing along this advice to others in need of this same reminder. When we have a right view of God, we have a right view of ourselves in relation to Him. This song, to me, is a beautiful illustration of that relationship. Just beautiful.
Before the throne of God above
I have a strong and perfect plea.
A great high Priest whose Name is Love
Who ever lives and pleads for me.
My name is graven on His hands,
My name is written on His heart.
I know that while in Heaven He stands
No tongue can bid me thence depart.
When Satan tempts me to despair
And tells me of the guilt within,
Upward I look and see Him there
Who made an end of all my sin.
Because the sinless Savior died
My sinful soul is counted free.
For God the just is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me.
Behold Him there the risen Lamb,
My perfect spotless righteousness,
The great unchangeable I AM,
The King of glory and of grace,
One in Himself I cannot die.
My soul is purchased by His blood,
My life is hid with Christ on high,
With Christ my Savior and my God!
I sing that middle part over and over and over again, “Because the sinless Savior died, My sinful soul is counted free. For God the just is satisfied, To look on Him and pardon me.”
As I thought over the past few days about the significance of Christ’s death and resurrection, I was tempted to stop several times because it’s just too much. It’s too much to think about how marvelous God must be to have a perfect, sovereign plan. It’s too much to figure out how many ways God set up history to reveal Christ’s glorious moment on the cross. It’s too much to understand the agony and suffering and war that must have waged in the very flesh of Christ during the final hours. It’s too much to grasp the encompassing all of Christ’s payment. It’s too much to believe that I can stand approved and righteous in front of a holy God because of Christ’s completed work and victory over the grave.
It’s too much.
I think so often we give up when it comes to understanding the Lord. We say things like, “Well, we’ll never understand anyway” or “Who are we to understand?” Sometimes it might be genuine awe of God’s greatness and sometimes it might just be laziness. What I’m realizing this week, through amazing conversations with friends and words in books and time spent with my Savior, is God’s intentionality in giving us a mind to understand. We cannot love a God we do not know. So, God gives us the ability, through our mind to become alive in our love for Him.
Regarding the command to love the Lord with all our mind, Piper says in his book Think, “loving him with all our mind means that our thinking is wholly engaged to do all it can to awaken and express this heartfelt fullness of treasuring God above all things.”
When we get lazy or distracted or discouraged, our thinking fails to engage fully, express deeply, and (most importantly) treasure God supremely. The strange thing is, the so-called shortcut is only hurting ourselves. When we choose to NOT treasure God supremely, we cannot experience the joy of all joys that flows out from this treasure!
I’m reading and processing and reading and processing. Is anyone else reading (or has read) the book Think by Piper? What are your thoughts? Here are some other things that I’ve been browsing that you might find interesting:
I’m kind of obsessed with this website: ChristianityExplored and not just because the people talk in English accents. I love that they answer hard questions and share personal stories about the power of God in their lives. If you need a little inspiration, check it out!
This quote is still so relevant today even though it was written in 1908 by G.K. Chesterton. This is pretty powerful stuff.
“What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert–himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt – the Divine Reason. . . . The new skeptic is so humble that he doubts if he can even learn. . . . There is a real humility typical of our time; but it so happens that it’s practically a more poisonous humility than the wildest prostrations of the ascetic. . . . The old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which makes him stop working altogether. . . . We are on the road to producing a race of man too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.”
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy [Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1957], pp. 31-32
let LOVE fly like cRaZy
with all your HEART, SOUL, MIND, and STRENGTH
toward the Savior
This week has made itself available for much reading and I have certainly taken advantage! I’m flipping real pages, but I can’t give you links for those. So, here’s some bits and pieces of the online variety. Enjoy!
This Holy week timeline is super helpful in figuring out the wheres and whens.
Check out this interview with Joe Thorn, author of Note to Self, on the Gospel Coalition website. Do you preach to yourself? Or do you listen to yourself? This is the question Thorn asks, in the tradition of the Puritan pastor Lloyd-Jones.
Do we really have to use a qualifier? Too often, Christians think there is art and then there is Christian art. This is more than strange because for centuries Christians or non-Christians could express themselves creatively and everyone called it art. I really appreciate this article that takes the unnecessary qualifier to task. There is no such thing as Christian art .
This article cannot be more timely after I just finished up a study on David with a friend. I love this reminder, as we look at the actions of a fearful Adonijah, “There is no need to run and hide when God has come near to us in Christ. We have been laid hold of by the one who has truly become the mercy seat. We are Christ’s and Christ is God’s.” Check it out at the Gospel Coalition blog, written by a guy who is pretty close to my hometown in Iowa!
So, this guy John Mark McMillan is pretty cool. Check out this Death in His Grave commentary. The explanation of this song gives even more meaning and depth to an already soul-searching musical tale. I currently have this song on replay and it’s like victory every time it plays.
Today was a day that made living “a la orden” (see also here and here) a beautiful, precious gift! I sang a few songs at an all-school assembly this morning and then picked up a trumpet for a third. The band teacher, Dave, is pretty good about affirming gifts in other people… and when he found out I could play trumpet a few years ago, he hasn’t let me forget it’s a gift I should be sharing. And I can say I’m glad he hasn’t!
Then I had several conversations in my office where I said several times, “I’m going to be honest, okay?” and I just got down to the nitty gritty and it was completely received on the other end. Lately, I’ve been asking for recommendation letters from colleagues and several of them mentioned my abilities to meet students where they are. With that kind of affirmation, I’ve got to make it available… and when I do, it’s like EVERYBODY wins! I’m using my gifts (God-given), students are getting blessed, and God is getting the glory!
So then, there’s this other ability people have pointed out called “you’re crazy!” ….. Don’t laugh! I really do think it’s a gift!! I get SO much energy when people revel in joy. It’s CONTAGIOUS. Anyway, people call it different things, “ability to relate,” “crazy,” “energetic,” “young” … and, well, I’ve got to use that gift to the glory of the Lord, right? Because it’s only him that’s allowed me to be so willing (at the cost of awkwardness and embarrassment) to go all out in search of joy! Tonight we did just that. Our plans changed a zillion times, but the mission trip kids (after riding down the mountain in the back of a truck) ended up in the mall doing a scavenger hunt of my devising. We arrived out of breath and sweaty at our final destination with hilarious stories and pictures to share.
I LOVE IT. I seriously LOVE being available and not because I feel so important, but because I know anything good in me is the Lord. Anything I have worth sharing is the Lord’s … I am not my own! And when I share the gifts He’s given, I receive SUCH JOY and blessing to see Him at work!
Today is a day for rejoicing! In terms of routine and calendar, we were a bit early to be blaring “Because He Lives” from our trumpets this morning at the all-school assembly. But in terms of the Truth of Christ’s power over the grave we were every bit right on time. I love to proclaim with my whole heart God’s victory over the grave because it is my victory as well. I am a conqueror and co-heir with Christ … so I will be joyful in victory and joyfully available to share my gifts so that His victory over the grave might be boldly proclaimed! It’s truly more blessed to give yourself away.
Today marks the beginning of Semana Santa and I can’t wait to see what other joys the Lord has in store!
let LOVE fly like cRaZy!
Several of my students have a new “favorite” song and I am equally joyful at its truth as I am at their excitement about it! It’s a perfect preparation for this week:
I get to see this beautiful girl every day!this was our good morning chocolate chip pancake day!
I miss it, too. I kept thinking of opening lines over the past few weeks, but they never found their way to the keyboard. I apologize for the absence of electronic words, but my excuse is that I’ve been living. I’m trudging through a great mix of emotions as I fill my days with sometimes the most random things. Yesterday was the Junior/Senior banquet… which made the end of this year even more final.
Well, my mom has suggested in more than one way that I will regret it if I don’t blog during these last months, so I am going to throw out some bullet points to get started. This is a mezcla of things I’ve been up to lately:
I am just eating up every message from the Gospel Coalition Conference that’s happening right now in Chicago. They are not only posting the plenary sessions online for free, they also made the live hymn sing available! Go check it out, download it all and then send me a message so we can talk about it! The only (BIG) downside to not being there is the discussion that I’m sure is happening over coffee and around book tables.
This quote by John Stott, as I think about the cross,
“Every time we look at the cross Christ seems to say to us, ‘I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.’ Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross. All of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self-righteousness, until we have visited a place called Calvary. It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.”
John R. W. Stott
I love this new blog I found llevo el invierno where a super creative, crafty lady from Monterrey, Mexico posts some great stuff! Also enjoying this and this.
I have found out that working out and strength training doesn’t necessarily mean slimmer… I feel like I’m training to be a football player or something!!
This year is winding down and I’m all mixed up with how to feel about it. The seniors have 23 days of school left and I’m getting as weepy as they are! I have other students in and out of my office and I try hard to keep my emotions at bay because if I don’t there’s no controlling them, they’ll just go crazy!
The Nichols siblings are about to embark on a half-marathon journey for the fall. I’m super pumped to do this with my sister and brothers (praying for James’s injuries to be completely gone in time to train). This is something I’m so excited about, amidst all the other confusion and changes.
Mission trip momentum… this is the time where I need to be praying the hardest for my students. They are getting attacked on every side by people and things that say they should be “over” the mission trip by now, but in their hearts they know it’s a lifestyle they’ve been called to. I love them so incredibly much and want to pray them into the Lord’s presence!
Next year. Oh heavens! The Lord has this, too, in His hands.
Semana Santa is next week and I have a lot of hangout time planned with students, as well as some goals to spend some reflective time with books and words and writing and (yes) even my blog. I want to hit up the stations of the cross with these Songs for Lent, which you can pick up for free.
I have been doing this really cool fast/pray/give thing with Living Water as a practice for Lent and I’ve got nothing but good reflection about it. Hard at times, but good.
Tonight I made a bucket list of sorts for the seniors/students/mission trip/me and it is completely unfinished but even as I was writing it I felt excitement and sadness go back and forth like ping pong in my soul.
I am still trying to process and understand the many lessons from the past week. Really, it’s not just the week busting at the seam with lessons… it’s the week of the mission trip pointing to everything God has been moving in my heart over several years. This week, one of the students from the mission trip literally gave the shoes off her feet to a woman whose sandals were broken in half. She walked out with plastic bags tied around her ankles. Later, she told me, “I mean, it didn’t seem like that big of a deal.”
I’m just sitting here, amazed by it all. God is transforming lives right in front of my face. I can’t shake off the joy! I just can’t! One thing I kept telling the students during the week was, “I promise that if you are serving the Lord with your whole heart, you will find yourself with an abundance of joy. I’m not promising this because I can give it to you… I’m promising because the Lord is faithful.”
I know I can’t tell them they will always be happy when they serve others, but I can say that a life of serving others will bring you close the Father’s heart… and there joy runs deeper than anything else. So, I’m trying to encourage this reflection of the trip because I don’t want the students to think it is only about the people or the memories (because given a different purpose, like vacation, they would have had a completely different experience with the people). I hope they will look back and remember how beautiful it is to come together in community with the goal of loving God and loving others… with an attitude of “a la orden” in the ways God has gifted us.
crazy group of fired up kids 🙂
With that, here is David’s reflection. It’s very long, but very worth it!
Very frequently, as imperfect human beings, we tend to believe that the world is a bubble formed by our own problems, fears, difficulties, and achievements. However, when one takes the time to let go of worries and decides to focus on others, one finds that there is much more in life. As a Christian, I had many times wondered, “What is my purpose here? What is God going to do with my life?” It was this 2011 mission trip that served as an eye-opening experience and answered these questions I kept in my mind. This mission trip has been used by God to revolutionize my world and give me a new perspective on life.
“Why did we decide to do this? Why did we decide to give up the daily comforts we have? Why did we decide to make sacrifices that people out there might consider out of place?” If I were to answer these questions with one word, that would be LOVE. It is because of love that today we can declare that we are saved. What a greater example of love than He who came down to the world and took the nature of a servant, making himself nothing to give the world a chance? As Christians, we need to resemble Christ in every way possible; it is our duty, then, to go out to the world to share His love and His wonderful message of salvation.
Christian life is a narrow road that few are able to find. Once you find it, walking in it demands everything you are to the point that you are willing to give up all you are for it. Even though at the moment it might not seem so, at the end you will have what is actually important- the salvation of your soul. Personally, before going on the mission trip, I decided to let God guide me and was willing to listen to his soft whispers. Like always, He was faithful and gave us the most spectacular and spiritually-rewarding week that we could have asked for.
God called us during this past week to do several demonstrations of His love. Personally, what impacted my life the most was the evangelism we did at Villa de San Francisco. I was amazed after seeing how little people know about God and how desperate they are to establish communication with their Daddy, the one who gave them life and created them in His image. When I stepped out of the van with my group, I thought to myself, “I don´t know how, but God will do amazing things through us today.” I made no mistake. Just starting, we met a group of about five teenagers who were clearly not very pleased with us coming to talk to them; after giving us the opportunity to talk to them, a couple of them seemed to be interested in learning more and started to debate with us about whether God was real or not. Even though the conversation wasn´t as fruitful as we would have hoped, we were sure that some of the guys were questioning themselves about how unlikely it would have been that Jesus was made-up by history, taking into account the fact that He is the only one that has turned the world upside down in such a manner.
After our first encounter, we felt even more motivated to find people to talk to about God. We found several more people and talked to them about God and about His purpose for their lives. It was really hard to conceive that most, if not all, of the individuals we approached that day had misconceptions about the requirements for getting to Heaven. Several were amazed to be told that all that was required was to truly believe and accept Jesus Christ as the Messiah and Savior; many said they were not ready to make this choice, because they did not want to change their way of life. A guy we talked to that day told me, “I might be rejecting the best invitation that has
ever been made to me in my life; however, I assure you that one day you will come back and I will then call you ‘brother.´” This phrase made me smile, even though I tried to make him realize that the next day could be too late for him. Like him, many others shared how much need they had of a God who helped them get through life but how unwilling they were to give up everything for that God.
The seed has been planted, and we are sure that God is going to do what He needs to. We were just humble instruments used powerfully by the Holy Spirit throughout the week to bring a smile to a number of orphans, do a couple of work projects, and spread the Gospel. The world is in need of people who are brave enough to stand up for what they believe and for what God expects from them. Are we willing to be part of that group of people? Are we going to answer? We need to be ready to listen to God and be quick to answer, “Here I am LORD. Send me!” There is much more work to be done, and what God has done this past week in our lives is just a great motivation to let go of ourselves and give out all we are in name of Jesus Christ, our wonderful and mighty Savior.
There are so many stones for this monument of blessing! I’m learning so much from these students as we build up a place of remembrance for our Lord!
Here’s a little piece I wrote for the guidance newsletter this month:
My friend went to Kenya in 2008 and found himself surrounded by refugees displaced by civil war.
We all marveled at the pictures and listened to his tales when he returned, but after a while, we found ourselves again caught up in our lives layered with routines and more “important” matters. His experience was forced to fit into phrases like, “Oh, yeah, when you were in Africa…” because we didn’t have time for deeper questions requiring deeper answers.
As we step into this Christmas season, much of our discomfort results from crowded checkout lines and shopping cart traffic jams. Our culture presses in to define this celebration with catchy tag lines and guilt-ridden advertisements enticing us to add another gift to the cumbersome pile.
The joy in the angels’ announcement that filled the sky at Christ’s birth is somehow reduced to greeting cards and cavalier “Happy Holidays” thrown around like plastic swiped in those nifty little machines.
Image via Wikipedia
Is the subject of your holiday adoration worthy of all the discomfort?
As I examine my own motives for crafting homemade gifts, my mind wanders back to my friend who went to Kenya. Maybe we moved on so quickly from his experience because being near to someone’s pain brings a certain suffering to our lives as well.
Thinking about Kenya beyond the powerpoints and post-trip Q & A is… uncomfortable, and we have a tidy way of stuffing uncomfortable stories in the attic while we stuff stockings over the fireplace.
Though we often set them against each other, suffering is not opposite joy. Christ, who for the joy set before Him, endured the great suffering of the cross. When we open our lives and hearts to let the Spirit move in us, we will experience some of the greatest suffering and most abundant joy.
Christmas is both a time to celebrate the joy of a Savior and a time to long for Christ’s appearing as the only response to the suffering around us.
The closer we walk with those who are suffering, the more we will wonder at God’s joy in this season. Who will you choose to walk beside this season, sharing their pain? Great joy awaits, dear sojourner… GREAT JOY!
So many beautiful things have happened today and it’s not even 8:45 am!
Here are the two link-related ones:
First, I discovered this last night and I could watch it a million times. Art+Truth=BEAUTIFUL. Here is a description from the Crossway website about this amazing project:
Makoto Fujimura, one of the century’s most highly regarded artists, has illuminated the Four Holy Gospels. Fujimura is known for his use of traditional Japanese Nihonga techniques and his passion for reconnecting Christian faith with fine art. This will mark the first time in nearly 400 years that an illuminated book of the four Gospels has been undertaken by a single artist.
Second, this morning I read Andrée Seu’s article on weakness and I’m tempted to let out a hearty AMEN right here in my office chair. We make so many excuses for ourselves and then try to justify our whimsies and failures with Scripture. It’s like we’ve resigned to the idea that “we are sinners, so of course we’re going to be weak and fail.” I could say so much more on this, but Andrée says it so well!
Here’s her last paragraph:
It is time to stop re-infecting ourselves with bad theology. If someone wants to keep repeating that we Christians are “weak,” please let him always clarify the statement with the adjectives “physically” or “psychologically.” Say that we are tired, and weary, and perplexed. But let’s lose the morbid and counterproductive self-image of the Christian as “Sinner” and (morally) “weak.” Paul gives instructions for self-image, as he does for other areas of Christian life: “You also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ” (Romans 6:11).
Hope you are encouraged today by these two beautiful things!
My mom sent me an email this morning, bright and early before electricity was working in my neighborhood. She wrote to update on James, who was released this morning, praise the Lord! He posted pictures on facebook from the collision and I am thanking the Lord for His presence and provision on Friday night.
God's hand of protection surely covered him!the mash-up
God has surely preserved James so he can continue to live glorifying the Lord. I’m praying James’s life verse will be rooted more firmly in his heart,
But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.
(Hebrews 10:39 ESV)
The only reason my mom left the first surprise hospital visit was to trek across the state to be with my gram in a different sterile room. My grandpa followed an ambulance in the middle of the night in a snowstorm on Friday and yesterday my mom joined them. Praise God, gram is stable and my mom is there to support both of them. She will get a pacemaker tomorrow and we will pray she flies through all procedures without any difficulty.
And here I am, making a mess of crafts in my bedroom.
the space in the middle is where I sit
I guess this is what I do when my arms can’t reach that far.
I am so confident placing my loved ones in the care of my Savior. I am confident in His plan and in His eternity and in His love. And only for that confidence can I trust it will be okay, because in His presence there is fullness of joy (Ps. 16:11). All the time, joy.
So, when I read my mom’s last words of encouragement I smiled a silly smile inside.
“Have a great Sunday, sweetheart. You are not that far away. We are looking at the same stars.”
Yep, we sure are. And, today, the goal is not to worry or be anxious, but to walk boldly in the peace of Christ,
letting LOVE fly like cRaZy, for the glory of Christ’s name and for the good of all people.
MUSINGS IN THE MIDST 