Tag: Lord

the storm is passing over

This song appeared on a compilation CD to benefit those affected by Hurricane Sandy and I’ve been playing it a lot the last couple weeks. Hurricane Sandy is still a nightmare for some – struggling to put back the pieces of their lives after houses caved in on themselves and memories washed away with several feet of water. It’s not as newsworthy because there have been tragedies since that won out the airplay.

So many storms, this world has. So many storms.

You know what I love, though?

I love that my Lord promises the storm is passing over and I love that I can trust Him.

Because the storms, they just keep coming.
Death and destruction and disease – it all looks so relentless and it’s tempting to fashion our lives out of fear.

My Lord has a plan for redemption that defeats destruction and He invites all to let Him fashion our lives out of freedom.  

(Get the WHOLE cd for free and then leave a tip to help out the people in NYC)

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

 

Posted on by Caroline 0

flash flood prayers

Dear, Father
I just-
Lord, be with-
Oh, I just lift up-
There is so much-
Lord, you know-
There is just so much-
I don’t know-
Help me to-
God, please-
You are good.

This morning, my prayers got jumbled in a bunch of starts like water rushing a roadblock – just a massive surge leaving no time to consider convenient direction or map a course that makes sense.

Sometimes my soul wells up like that.
Sometimes my prayers swell in a most inconvenient and nonsensical way.
Sometimes my prayers sound like a flash flood.

And those times I rest in the knowledge that God hears my heart. God sees the needs I can’t express. God knew before the flash flood hit my morning news bulletin that the world needs Him.

He knows better than anyone knows the depth of that need.
God sent His Son to stand in the unfathomable depth of that need so now there is hope for flash flood mornings.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 0

carried away

With news like this morning, the world suddenly sees what ripples underneath the culture’s glossy veneer. It’s horrible. It makes us sick. It’s ugly.

The world is not okay.

No amount of money or brick walls or achievements of institutions will suffice to mend it.

The world is not okay.

It’s painful to peek through the blinds and view the world outside ourselves – outside the way we’ve arranged our lives to make things comfortable and proper. It hurts because what we see outside our windows is ugly. When we pull back the curtains, it’s horror we see when people can walk into a school and kill our little children. And how startling, once the drapes have been drawn, our own reflection in the window as we look out.

The world is not okay and it’s not just the horrors in the news.
It’s the horrors that don’t make the news, too.

Oh, friends. Be encouraged before you get carried away with fear and doubt and pain and sadness. Ask the Lord to teach you to know the number of your days (Psalm 39:4) and then ask Him to be the strength to keep your heart grounded in His Word and His promises.

Teach me to know my number of days
hold on, my heart, from gettin’ carried away

The world is not okay.

But what better reason to introduce a Savior?

let LOVE fly like cRaZy
Posted on by Caroline 0

pensive doubting fearful heart

Have you ever met a dead man who knows you?

Well, John Newton and I haven’t exactly met. I guess I should be clear: we haven’t met at all. But he couldn’t have started out a hymn with a more appropriate assessment of my heart. Sometimes, I excuse my pensive, doubting, fearful heart condition by calling it humility or wisdom or an attempt at being “gentle as a dove.”

Maybe sometimes it is true that I am those things, but I know for certain I make more excuses than my heart deserves. As I am being transformed from one little degree of glory to the next, my heart sometimes stumbles over thought and doubt and fear. I get anxious and make human calculations, which nearly always add up to paralyzing human fear.

The combination of vulnerable words (pensive, doubting, fearful) is tricky because each serves a purpose in making us more like Christ. Our best thoughts and greatest questions and deepest fears are all satisfied in Him, but the result is the opposite of paralysis. The result is freedom.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

(2 Corinthians 3:17-18 ESV)

Today, my pensive, doubting, fearful heart is dancing from one degree of glory to the next, swaying to this song.

Posted on by Caroline 2

in feast or fallow

It is not winter, not yet.

Now is the time for harvest. Now is the time for bounty and breaking bread and gatherings that overflow into more gatherings.
But sometimes in the middle of harvest one can feel the winter.

While seated at the abundant table, the soul can sometimes taste the bitter cold. It’s not that life is depressed and dreary – not necessarily a sudden dark night of the soul. But sometimes in the middle of harvest, our hearts stretch pained because we daily do battle with brokenness.

It’s a beautiful thing, really, to feel the brisk breeze of winter while seated at the table of abundance. Oh, how sweet it is to remember who provides and protects and presides over our broken assemblage! It is not the work of our hands, but the Lord’s alone that allows us to taste and see that He is good. In the harvest, we remember that “whatever comes, we shall endure” because He is good. And so, we give thanks. We delight in provision and give thanks for the warmth before winter, but we know that in winter our certain hope is found in the same place.

Our winters will surely come, but in Christ our hope is found.

For these times, we need a simple tune that invites us into praise for every season. We need a song that prays, “Come, Emmanuel.”
Sing with me today?

When the fields are dry, and the winter is long
Blessed are the meek, the hungry, the poor
When my soul is downcast, and my voice has no song
For mercy, for comfort, I wait on the Lord

In the harvest feast or the fallow ground,
My certain hope is in Jesus found
My lot, my cup, my portion sure
Whatever comes, we shall endure.
Whatever comes, we shall endure

On a cross of wood, His blood was outpoured
He Rose from the ground, like a bird to the sky
Bringing peace to our violence, and crushing death’s door
Our Maker incarnate, our God who provides.

come, oh come, Emman- u- el
come, oh come, Emman- u- el

When the earth beneath me crumbles and quakes
Not a sparrow falls, nor a hair from my head
Without His hand to guide me, my shield and my strength
In joy or in sorrow, in life or in death

Posted on by Caroline 0

a steady boat | a raging sea

O, goodness.

When life is like a fistful of jacks, jostling around in a child’s sweaty palm and waiting to be thrown to the carpet – when life is like that, you get desperate for something steady. My first inclination is to pray for the jostling to come to a gentle stop because the obvious antidote to jostling is the opposite, no?

I recently scrawled this prayer,

Thank you, God, for your provision that steadies the seas so you are glorified in my sailing.

And then, I thought about my prayer. I tried to cut through my poetic tendencies to find out what my heart was saying (sometimes my pen gets carried away and wants the words to read like a song). I thought about my prayer of thanksgiving for steady seas, paused, then added,

Thank you, too, for “steady enough” to sail through the thickest of storms looming on the horizon. 

If I only thank the Lord for steadying the seas, then I would be silent while I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I was offering God thanksgiving that depended on His actions (and my judgment of them) and not on His character. God is always able to steady the seas, but sometimes He instead steadies the boat. When we pray desperately for Him to stand up and lift His hands to silence the storm, sometimes He simply readies the boat to weather the waves.

I am thankful He provides and protects, but if my thanksgiving is dependent on the existence of storms, I will end up feeling abandoned. His provision and protection are simply part of His character – He will never not be Provider and Protector.

We can always describe the Lord as being steadfast – His love never ceases. During the storms? He is steadfast. During the stillness? He is steadfast.

For the LORD is good;
his steadfast love endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations.
(Psalm 100:5 ESV)

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. Lamentations 3:22-23

We must always remember that it is appropriate to be thankful for who God is even when we are hoping for His character to provide or protect in a specific way. The raging storm is not evidence of His carelessness.

God is always able to steady the seas, but sometimes instead he readies the boat to weather the storm.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 0

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

6 feet under blessings

Today my pen felt too heavy and my journal page felt too blank and the day stretched before me with weight it didn’t deserve. I was sitting with my Bible and journal on my lap – my eyes glued open but my mind in spreadsheets and deadlines and packing in weekend plans.

None of it bad. All of it good.

And this is how the enemy attacks – crawling up and under and through and on top of everything that is good.

The blessings have buried me six feet under and I feel stuck. And I’m mad at feeling stuck because every good thing comes from above and what the Lord gives is anything but stuck. His blessings are freedom. His blessings are joy.

His blessings release the weight and unite us with a lighter load.

So, feeling buried under blessings makes me angry at my affections. I must be dealing unwisely with what I’ve been given… and I hate being unwise. Proverbs is making me want wisdom as a constant companion. The more I linger on the Word, the more I understand Jeremiah’s encouragement to take and eat the Word. This is every bit where joy and delight dance in my heart.

Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O LORD, God of hosts. Jeremiah 15:16


How does one explain stress from too many blessings? I only know that my salvation depends not on what I’m buried under, but on the power of the One who rescues me out from under the weight. Yep, I know that like I know the droop of my eyes. It’s what will keep my eyes open when the burden of blessing seems to much.

Because this is how the enemy attacks – crawling up and under and through and on top of everything that is good.

When thou sleepest, think that thou art resting on the battlefield; when thou walkest, suspect an ambush in every hedge. —C.H. Spurgeon

Posted on by Caroline 0

I almost forgot: the importance of clamará

I was standing between pews of neat rows and English words hung in the air above my head. I was supposed to sing along after the guitar solo opened the song, “Inside Out.” I was supposed to be thinking of God’s attributes. I wasn’t doing either of those things. I was thinking about the word, “clamará” and the first time I heard this melody.

Panic froze my praise. I grasped for the words – the right words – to fill in the space between me and the sky. I wanted just the right words to put my heart’s love to song and English wouldn’t do. The drums swelled and voices harmonized and I stood unable to sing.

I tried to read the words on the screen and translate, but the order is all wrong in English. The phrases are all out of place and the r’s are dull.

I closed my eyes and my heart opened up.

Dios eterno, tu luz por siempre brillará
y tu gloria incomparable sin final
el clamor de mi ser es contigo estar
desde mi interior, mi alma clamará

Every word climbed on top of the next, an expression in process – a verb in past, present, and future tense all rolled into one presentation of praise to my Lord. The word, “clamar” means “to cry out” and I love to picture my soul crying out in a way that rolls over into future tense. In Spanish, the chorus reads,

“God Eternal, your light for always shines/and will shine,
and your uncomparable glory has no end.
The cry of my being is to be with you
From my innermost, my soul cries/and will cry out”

I’m starting to think the notion of “heart language” or “native tongue” can mean many things and sound many different ways. This morning, singing praise to my Savior meant communion behind closed eyes with the Lord in a second language that seemed to better explain the verb tenses of my soul.

A little waterfall followed my communion, but I meant that to be praise as well. I knew the Lord would understand. He speaks all languages and knows the importance of clamará and remembers the events that make it mammoth in my understanding of who He is. He knows each young lady who pushed me to a more honest “clamará” in Tegucigalpa as I desperately wanted to know, love, and delight in Him so that they would, too. He understands the unspeakable desires in my heart that won’t ever find an outlet in letters. He knows my delight is and will always be found in knowing Him, finding out what pleases Him, and delighting to do those things.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 4

we could be…

We could be reveling
forever in the love You bring
and we could be wasted on
You and not count it loss 

Like fools in love
we’re bound to make a scene

Our hearts bleed for you, whoa

What beautiful way to usher in a Monday (fyi – John Mark McMillan comes out with a new album tomorrow).

Especially after such a blessed weekend, I love this.

Like fools in love, we’re bound to make scene. Isn’t that the truth.

Do your days feel like this? Like you can’t HELP but make a scene? If we are reveling in the love of Christ – wasting everything else and not counting a loss, then our lives will speak (maybe even shout) like crazy that there is something greater!

We might be the people that get pointed at or the people that get ignored, but the bottom line is that the scene bound to happen is for an audience of One.

The Lord welcomes His sons and daughters into worship, where our hearts bleed for the Creator of the Universe. I’m so thankful that God also knows, as we endeavor to worship with our very lives, that there are bound to be scenes.

Our love can look near foolish, but if anyone deserves a scene it is certainly our Lord and Savior!

How could you be reveling today in His love?

let LOVE fly like cRaZy!

Posted on by Caroline 0