it is not a waste of your life to spend your life letting Jesus teach you to love another well
Come
with your indifference
with your mocking
with your doubts
with your questions
come with your lies
with your rejection
with your acceptance
with your imperfections
come with your health
with your doctrine
with your thoughts
with your past
come with your burdens
with your poverty
with your riches
with your fear
whatever you do just come near
to the king come to set you free
There’s a story in Genesis that grabs me.
Abraham and Sarah used their servant Hagar in their unbelief to get for themselves the child God promised. But when Sarah finally gave birth to the son God had promised, they sent Hagar and her son Ismael away into the desert.
In Genesis 21:8-21, the story goes that Hagar and her son are sent to wander in the desert with, “some food and a skin of water.” Basically they were sent away to die or become slaves to someone else. It’s horrible. But it gets worse.
Hagar and Ishmael run out of their meager provisions. Hagar knows her son can’t survive without food or water. So she puts him under a bush and walks away because she can’t bear watching her son die (verse 16). In the distance, her son out of sight, she slumps to the ground and sobs. And there God meets her.
The Bible says God heard the boy’s cries. And God tells Hagar to get up and hold her son. And he promises he will provide for her son.
I think as parents, and maybe more often as moms, we see our kids in impossible situations, maybe situations we fear will destroy them, and our slow-to-believe hearts can’t bear it.
Many times over the past 16 years of parenting I have succumbed to the belief that my circumstances would surely take my boys down. And in my fear and dread, I backed away from them and even wished I could just disappear so I didn’t have to watch them be destroyed. And every single time, the Holy Spirit did a, “Pull yourself together girl!” with me.
When God met Hagar, he told her to get up and lift up her son and take him by the hand. And that’s what God has told me many times. Even this week.
Moms, dads, when the circumstances in our lives seem certain spiritual or physical death for our kids, don’t turn your head and cave into depression’s lies. Get up! Lift them up! Lift them up in prayer. Lift their literal chin if you can. Take them by the hand and lead them to Jesus.
My boys are the children statistically most unlikely to be believers in Christ. Their dad is not yet a believer in Christ. They have been drug through three separations that almost led to divorce every time. They go to a public school system where they don’t learn Christ. They’ve been hurt by their friends, tempted to drink alcohol, do drugs and live for their own pleasure. And I’m sure they will go through more trials and testings, failures and successes. But just when I feel like I can’t handle watching the pain or confusion or bad choices they are enduring, God is there saying, “Get up Sheila! Lift them up! Take their hand and walk with them through this.”
Don’t give up on God with your kids. Don’t withdraw. Press in. Cry out to God, take your kids by the hand and follow Jesus.
Another dusk
another day of errands and planning,
dishes and laundry,
texts from you to pick you up-
tutoring was over.
But class is still in session.
The teacher is trying to answer your questions.
You can’t see him, but you believe,
you think.
You doubt.
You have questions.
But it’s another dusk
and the sun goes down behind the desert mountains.
Deeper and darker
yellow
then crimson red
as though the sun
is dead
buried behind a rock.
But tomorrow that passionate ball
of fire will rise from what seems to you a grave.
And I will rise too.
And I’ll wake you.
And I’ll take up my cross
and lay down my life
and pray you will see
that surely he is with you always
even to the last dusk.
“Now Jericho was shut up inside and outside because of the people of Israel. None went out, and none came in. And the Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and mighty men of valor. You shall march around the city, all the men of war going around the city once. Thus shall you do for six days. Seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark. On the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets. But Joshua commanded the people, “You shall not shout or make your voice heard, neither shall any word go out of your mouth, until the day I tell you to shout. Then you shall shout.” -Joshua 6:1-4,10
This story has always caught my attention. If I had to put it into my own words: God told Joshua to tell all the people to march around a wall where a bunch of strong and powerful men had locked themselves inside. He said, “Don’t make any noise, just keep marching until the day I tell you to yell.”
I mean of all the things God could tell his people to do to get at a prostitute and her family out of a city of proud and strong people. March around a wall? How mundane. How boring. How redundant.
I’m sure there were conversations back at the camp at night after days of walking around the wall of Jericho in silence. I’m sure there were those who wondered, “Why in the world are we doing this?”
Do you ever feel like you’re living this life of faith, doing what God tells you to do, and it seems like you’re walking in circles? Do you have a person or people in your life that you long to see surrender their hearts to Jesus, but year after year goes by and there’s no response? No change. No desire to come to church with you. No willingness to talk with you about the gospel. They seem perfectly and firmly shut in, keeping your Jesus out.
I do. And I start to get weary.
Today, I drove into the driveway of my house, the grey skies and dormant yellow grass leaving a dull hew on the visage of my normal veiw of home. I shut the car off and sat there for awhile, looking up into the thick cloudy skies, and muttered a prayer of fatigue. “Lord, how long? How long am I supposed to keep…” My prayer was interrupted by the verses above ringing in my ears. “Yes Lord, how long am I supposed to keep marching around these walls?” I surrendered.
The Holy Spirit searching my thoughts before I spoke them, knowing my doubts and slowness to believe, helped me remember that eventually those walls came crashing down and Rahab and her family were saved.
I love a man who has resisted my desire for him to know Christ for 25 years. And for 25 years the Spirit has continued to give me my marching orders: Keep dwelling with him. Keep loving him. Keep bearing with him. Keep serving him. Keep worshipping me while he watches what the King James Version of the Bible calls, “… the conversation of your life.”
One day the walls are going to fall. Just as Jericho’s walls fell, one day the walls around the heart of those I love, those God has commanded me to stay the course with, are going to crumble at the sound of the instrument God choses to bring them down. And on that day I am going to be overjoyed.
So now, while I sit in my driveway on a cold, grey day, feeling weary of not seeing God bring down the walls yet, I chose to praise him.
Beloved, don’t grow weary in doing good. God is using your life to save others. Keep marching. Keep following Jesus. At the right time, whether he uses your mouth or another’s, he’s going to destroy the proud walls that are keeping the guilty from their rescue.
My husband is my friend. For almost 25 years we’ve shared a bed, a home and all the dirty humanity we can’t groom or hide in those shared spaces. And although we don’t share a worshipful response to Christ, we do have something very much in common: doubt.
I listened to the end of a podcast called Hinge the other day. I need to go back and listen from the beginning, but it in essence it’s a series of podcasts where two friends- one an athiest, one a pastor- look to find the answer to the question: Who is Jesus? What struck me about the last episode of that podcast was how much the two of them were actually alike in their exploration of that question. They both had doubts. They both had unanswered questions. The difference was not that one had all the answers and the other didn’t, or that one even had a strong faith and the other didn’t. The difference was that one confessed he was captivated by this Jesus he heard about, and despite his doubts, he was convinced that Jesus is who he said he is and the other confessed he was not captivated- he just couldn’t believe.
It has helped a lot over the years to listen to my husband’s doubts and questions and explore my own, being honest with him about them. I used to tend to get defensive when Jesus got brought up (ususally cause I felt mocked). But the more I have listened to my friend’s thoughts, the more I can say I understand and let go of the things that don’t really matter.
I’m just now learning about the Enneagram, but I’m sure I’m a 9. And 9’s avoid conflict. I definitely do that. Being married to a man who gets energy from conflict and challenges all the beliefs I’ve held dear, has helped me to learn to deal with conflict and seek the peace I want for myself and my husband. It’s good to be challenged by people who don’t agree with you. And that’s a very hard thing for me to say.
Jesus said, “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
Conflict (tribulations) is inevitable. I can’t avoid it. And most definitely in as close a relationship as marriage it cannot be dodged.
If I seek peace by avoiding conflict I’ll never find it. But in the conflict with my husband there’s a peace, a shalom, a wholeness Jesus gives that allows me to meet my husband where he is. I pray that these years of work Jesus has been doing in me will be a witness to my dear friend of the realness of Christ. And I pray Jesus will one day meet with my husband in one of our honest conversations and wrestlings over just who this Jesus is.
I always look up when I talk to you
The dark sky
speckled with stars-
so far.
My little words
from this two foot plot
don’t travel much.
Certainly not way up there.
I hang my head.
Do you hear little speck-of-dust me?
I close my eyes.
You seem so too far.
But the word is near,
even in my mouth and heart.
You feel closer in the closet of my closed lids.
I don’t need to see the stars.
If I was one of the disciples who followed Jesus while he walked on this planet, I would have been one he looked at and said, “Oh ye of little faith. Why do you doubt?” (Matthew 14:31, 6:30, 8:26, 16:8, 17:20).
My faith-relationship with this Jesus I’ve never seen but love (1 Peter 1:8), is overwhelmingly more held together by Jesus than it is by me. In fact, it’s totally held together by Jesus. If he let go, I would fall deep into the waters of unbelief and drown.
But he has me. Me of little faith. He has me like he had Peter. And like Peter I look at this Jesus in the Bible, out there walking on the stormy waters of my life, in total control, bringing me peace in the midst of my turmoil, building up our relationship by increasing my trust in him, and I get a rush of faith. I believe him. I know that I know that I know that he’s got this. I trust him so much in those moments that I ask him to let me walk out there with him, in the miraculous place of not be ruled by my circumstances.
He smiles. Glad I asked. Says, “Come out here daughter!”
I climb out of my safe little boat- sleeping in, to-do lists, schedules, meal plans, exercise routines, Bible devos…all the things I do to try and keep some order and safety in the midst of the troubling waters that threaten to destroy. Those dark waves of depression, hard marriage, challenging teenagers, pressures from outside and pressures from within engulf me. All the time. And it’s good to have a boat to keep those things from ruining. But it’s even better to walk where Jesus is, with all that threatens under his feet.
I start making my way to Jesus. I choose prayer over a little extra sleep. I choose meditations on scripture before I plow into my to-do list. I choose words of life over criticism and jabs when I feel hurt. But most days, just a few seconds into those steps of faith I realize, “I’m walking on water! I’m trusting in someone I have no control over!” And I start to doubt. “He might let me sink! I can’t handle all these hopeless attacks that come with depression. I can’t make my husband love Jesus with me. I can’t make my sons want to follow Jesus for themselves. I can’t handle all these pressures in life…. I can’t!” And just like that, I’m under water, struggling to come up for air.
Disoriented by the waves of my hopeless, unbelieving thoughts, I kick my legs, push water with my arms, trying with all my might to find my way to the surface. And there I feel his warm, strong hand in the cold, violent waters grabbing my flailing arms, pulling me with his steady strength to the surface. There, drenched in unbelief, I cling grateful to this Jesus I’ve never seen.
The metaphor of me, walking on water with Jesus, and sinking in fear and doubt, plays out in my day to day.
The other day, I woke up late after working three long twelve hour shifts at the hospital, hurried to wake my teenage son, and went about my morning routine at a faster clip. In thirty minutes or less I read the Bible verse of the day on my phone, made my son a quick breakfast to-go, slipped on some shoes and drove him to school in the dark. We drove in silence while I prayed for words of life to speak to my strong-willed son who’s been resisting boundaries since he found out how to escape his crib at 11 months of age. None came to mind.
We pulled up in silence to the high-school at the coldest point in the morning, when the sun’s light just begins to drive out the darkness. “Ok, I’ll see you this afternoon at your game son. I love you.” He mumbled, “Thanks mom” climbed out of the car, threw his backpack over his shoulder and made his way into the institution that will not teach him about this Jesus I’ve never seen but love. I sighed a pleading prayer and started driving home.
On my way back home burning tears welled up, my throat tightened, I felt like I couldn’t breath. I was sinking. “How will he ever believe?! What if he never believes?! Why can’t I think of any life-giving things to say to him? I’m doing nothing for him…” And then I felt the strong grip of God’s faithfulness yank me out of my faithlessness. The remembrance of God’s sovereignty in the stories of Joseph’s betrayal, Moses’ call, Ruth’s redemption, Daniel’s answered prayers… and Peter’s restoration came to mind. And my tears flowed with thankfulness. This Jesus I’ve never seen whispered to my heart, “Oh you of little faith. Why do you doubt? Remember who I am. Remember what I’ve done.”
“I am the Lord your God, who rescued you out of slavery to your sin. I am the one that made you able to want me in the first place. I am the one who gave life to your body and made you born from above. I am the one who took out your heart of stone and gave you a tender heart to love me. I am the one who teaches you and guides you and will never leave you or forsake you. I am the one who began this good work in you and I will be faithful to complete it. I am the one who invites you to bring your children to me. I am the one hears your prayers and gives good gifts. I am God. Nothing is impossible for me!”
This is everyday real life for me as a Christian. I heard the old old story. I believed it. And now everyday I go about my daily life with a heart that beats with tender-love for this Jesus I’ve never seen, and the people he’s put around me. But I forget so easily what He’s done for me. I forget that He’s the one who made my hope in him possible in the first place. And I start to sink. Even still I’ve found he’s always there, pulling me out of death into life, over and over and over again. This history I have with this Jesus I’ve never seen but love is proving to me that not only did I believe in him in the first place because he miraculously gave me a heart to have affections for him, but every day I will only continue to believe in him because his strong arm is holding me.
Jesus saved me. He saves me daily. He’s my hope for waking up tomorrow and still trusting him. He’s my hope for the human-impossibility that my husband and sons will see his worth and love him. For with us it’s impossible. But with God, nothing will be impossible. He will keep holding our relationship together until I see him one day face to face. And then, oh finally then, I’ll never sink in the waters of unbelief again.
Sheila Dougal