grace – Sheila Dougal

Why I love “The Little Drummer Boy”

Dr. Russel Moore, me and my gone-to-Jesus Grandma Oleta have something in common: The Little Drummer Boy is one of our favorite Christmas songs.

I read Dr. Moore’s, “In Defense of ‘The Little Drummer Boy‘” this morning and smiled. I’ve been driving through busy traffic, writing to-do lists, wrapping presents, and trying to stay on top of the full calendar this December with the motivating live rendition of The Little Drummer Boy by For King and Country playing on repeat.

Dr. Moore’s mention of the Christendom that I grew up with, where the Little Drummer Boy was the “carnal Christian’s” favorite Christmas song because it wasn’t Biblically accurate and repeated the non-churchy phrase, “Ba-rum-ba-ba-bum” made me chuckle. I remember hearing my late Grandma Oleta say her favorite Christmas song was The Little Drummer Boy, and somehow in my family that was interpreted by me to mean she didn’t know her Bible very well. But even as a girl, I secretly agreed with my grandma- I loved the Little Drummer Boy!

In Dr. Moore’s article he shared how he longed to tell the Drummer Boy, “You don’t really need to perform for him. You really don’t need some token of excellence, to make you worth loving, worth being here. You’re loved and received already. You’re adopted for life.” I understand Dr. Moore’s empathy with the Drummer Boy from that perspective. I understand that conviction and desire to receive from Jesus his un-repayable love, and stop trying to earn his approval. But unlike Dr. Moore, that’s not where I feel a connection with the Drummer Boy. Like the Drummer Boy, I am a poor boy too (actually a poor girl, but I digress), and I just want to bring an offering with my life, my skills, my weakness, my poverty, my child-likeness, to Jesus.

The message I’ve spoken to myself this Christmas season has been, “Bring an offering Sheila. Prepare an offering. The Father loves your offering. As little and ineffective as your offering is on it’s own, bring it. The Father will light it on fire! He’ll make it powerful and effective. He’ll receive it as an offering of thanks, love and worship and he’ll use it powerfully to draw others to Jesus.” That is why I feel the Little Drummer Boy beating in my soul this year! And looking back on my precious Grandma Oleta’s broken life and legacy, I think she wanted her life to be an offering to Jesus too. She felt her poverty, but came as she was. She wanted to bring a smile to her King. So do I.

There’s a definite danger the Little Drummer Boy, Dr. Moore, my grandma, me and other poor boys face- the danger of thinking we can earn Jesus’ favor. But if we check our stuffy, defensive, Bible-literacy at the stable door, and with the child-likeness of a poor boy who knows how to bang a beat on a drum, approach our King wanting to play for him; just wanting to bring an offering, we’ll march right past all that looming danger and enter the worshipful relationship we were intended to have with the King of the Universe.

All that to say. Here are the five reasons the Little Drummer Boy has become one of my favorite Christmas songs:

1. The Drums! There’s something visceral, soul-shaking; a ring of command, order, and mission that makes me want to stand up against all odds and march behind my feet-washing King Jesus all the way home when the drums play.
2. Bring your gifts to honor him. You and I could never offer Jesus anything fit for his Alpha and Omega-ness. He’s the King of the Universe. But like the Drummer Boy, we should bring our gifts and offerings in response to what Jesus has done for us. We should beat our drums, or paint our paintings, or sing our songs, or build our bridges, or care for our kids, or whatever we do, we should do it as an offering of adoration for our King.
3. “I am a poor boy too.” Jesus knows our poverty! He became dependent and poor so that we could be free and rich in his Kingdom. Come in your poverty. Come like my grandma. Our sins and the sins of others have robbed us. But we come offering our lives too the one laid his life down for us.
4. “Mary nodded.” Mary’s life tells me to pay attention to Jesus. To look at him. To do what he says. To treasure in my heart what I don’t understand but sense is way bigger than me.
5.”Then he smiled at me.” Poor boy or girl, Jesus loves you. He loves your childlike offering. He receives it as worship. You’re not trying to earn his favor, you just want to honor him with what you have. He’s smiling.

How Josh Harris and I Fell

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Elevenish years ago I was ready to die on the mountain of the issue of women not working outside the home.

Today I read this tweet from Jared C. Wilson:

A few years back, I significantly reduced my exposure to Christian influences that prove more passionate about “issues” than Christ & I’ve been better off for it. If that voice you listen to isn’t regularly stirring your affections for Jesus, how loud should it be in your ears?

Reading that I remembered my proud stay-at-home-mom years and cringed with embarrassment and regret.

The recent public announcement of Josh Harris’ divorce and statement saying he no longer considers himself a Christian, has brought up an issue for me. The issue of making issues the big deal and not Jesus.

It makes my gut ball up in knots at the thought that Josh tasted the goodness of Lord and walked away. I pray it isn’t so. I pray like Jonah, he’ll find himself hearing Jesus in the belly of a stinking situation. But this whole story about Josh makes me think about my own humbling, and friends I’ve watched fall while we stood tall, holding the issues we were passionate about high- the banner of Jesus’ love forgotten under our feet.

When I had a 3 and 4 year old at home I honed in on these verses

“Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. ” Titus 2:3-5

Whole ministries are formed based on these verses. And in the conservative Christian circles where I learned of Jesus, these verses have been central to teachings in all kinds of women’s ministries. When my boys were young I clung to them. I clung to them so tightly that I remember standing outside my garage one day thinking that I’d be willing to loose my marriage so I could, “work at home” and not have to go get a job outside my house and leave my kids in daycare.

I moralized a woman staying home as righteous and working outside of the home as sinful. Makes me nauseated remembering those days. If you search my blog far back enough, you’ll probably find all kinds of posts about how Christian women shouldn’t work outside the home. Thank God he humbled me, showed me how wrong I was, and used those same verses to draw me to the heart of Jesus and true homemaking (which has nothing to do with having a paying job outside your home and everything to do with serving and loving the people under the same roof with you).

I don’t know Josh Harris. But the fact that at one time he stood tall and wrote a book on the mountain of the purity issue and now is not only walking away from his marriage but his proclaimed faith makes me think he and I share a similar humbling. Both of us, and many others, have fallen on the mountain of issues in Christian teachings. We didn’t take heed like Paul warned, and we fell. I pray like me, Josh will find Jesus in the place he’s fallen.

The only hill worth dying on is the one where Jesus laid down his life for hypocrites- blind, wretched and pathetic like me and Josh Harris. Jesus is the banner we should be raising high. Not issues. Lest the very place where we think we stand tall and right, we fall.

Practices with your Bible that will keep you humble (and make William Tyndale proud)

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The accessibility of scripture is something people before us have given their lives for.

William Tyndale (1494-1536) laid down his life so that, “… the boy who drives the plow,” could know the scriptures even better than the Pope of his time. The stories of how the translation of the Bible, at the blood, sweat and tears of many, was preserved and made readily available to us should humble us. It is a treasure we have on our phones and bound in board, paper and leather. But for many of us, it’s a relic or a good luck charm or a reminder that we “should” read it, but we don’t. Our Bibles and the broken and beautiful people of God are the way the Holy Spirit feeds us, comes alongside us, leads us, teaches us, helps us see, and gives us faith.

I’m not a boy who drives a plow. I am a low-energy, struggles-with-depression, mom and wife who drives a Ford Edge with a dent scratched right through the Ford symbol on the back because I closed the garage door while the back hatch was open. Mr. Tyndale’s life was not spent in vain. His work to translate the scriptures into English has reached me. I don’t claim to know my Bible better than the Pope or a Bible scholar, but I have reaped the benefits of growing in my faith as I’ve wrestled with, prayed through, chewed on and shared what the Spirit teaches me as I read my Bible and hear its message proclaimed.

The Bible can be and has been misused. Like a sharp knife, it can be used to heal or kill. Throughout time, the word of God has been wielded to serve the self-exalting interest of the person or people holding it as a weapon of power or self-defense. It can also be ignorantly misused, like a child playing with his daddy’s hunting knife. I think when we pick up our Bibles we should do so with a kind of trembling. We should be aware that when we, prone-to-wander sinners by nature, redeemed though we are, read our Bibles we will tend to see it applying to everyone else, and turn every story into a moral lesson for making our lives more successful. But you don’t have to be skilled in Bible memory sword drills or have a degree in theology to be changed by God’s message in the Bible.

Here I offer these modern-day plow boy (or girl as it were) practices that will help you pick up your Bible with a holy fear and childlike faith that will serve to transform you, keeping you humble and growing in grace.

Look For Jesus

Look and listen for sights and sounds of Jesus. In one of my favorite stories in the Bible, the risen Jesus walks alongside some men who, dejected and disillusioned walked a road processing what had just happened at the crucifixion of the one they thought would be their king. When Jesus, hearing how lost and confused they were spoke to help them, the story says, “…beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” (Luke 24:27). The Bible is meant to lead you to one person- Jesus! Looking for him in long genealogies, or poetry, or details about dimensions of a temple is challenging. One practice that helps (some good pastor taught me this), is when reading about kings, priests and prophets, let them speak to you of Jesus both in comparison and contrast. Jesus is the greater of all the kings, priests and prophets. In much of your reading it will take time, like following a long road home, to begin to see how these stories are leading to Jesus. But as you begin, ask yourself, “What does this tell me about God? How did this lead to a need for Jesus to come? What does this tell me about humanity?” Over time, like the men on the road to Emmaus in Luke, you’ll begin to see the things concerning Jesus. And when you do it’s beautiful! It’s so worth it.

Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” (Luke 24:44-49)

Study to Teach a Child

Tell your kids, or grand-kids or neighbor kids and kids at your church’s children’s ministry what you see of Jesus in a story or text. One of the most important things the Bible says we’re supposed to do with his message is tell it to the next generation. I have been an attender at many Bible studies over the years. They are good. Don’t get me wrong here. But the best kind of Bible study is not the one done among people just like you- all women, all men, all of a certain affinity- (and study books written by Christian authors does not constitute a Bible study). The best kind of Bible study is the one done in an effort to pass the message of the Bible on to someone else. Taking the rich feast of scripture and making it palatable and digestible for a child is a Christlike posture of humility that is sure to produce gospel fruit.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. (Deuteronomy 6:5-7)

Insert Your Name for the Bad Guy

Every time you read about the “bad guy” or cringe at some evil or bad choice someone makes, put your name there. Your first tendency will be think of your spouse, parent, neighbor, president, child… anyone but yourself. When you catch yourself thinking, “I wish so and so would read this, or believe this…” Or, “That’s just like such and such…” stop! Stop in your tracks right there. Put your name in the place of Sarah telling her husband to take another woman and impregnate her, then turning on the same woman abusively. Put your name in place of drunken Noah and his shady son. Put your name in the place of runaway Jonah, and mocking Peter, and money-hungry Judas. And then remember that Jesus died because in your heart and mine dwells the same sin that brought these to such shameful places. Then thank God. Sing. Praise him for saving a wretch like me and you and Noah.

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor? (James 4:7-12)

Insert Your Name for the Righteous

Every time you read the word “saint” or “righteous” or “redeemed”, put your name there and get on your knees. In you and I dwells the fallen tendency to feed the sinful, deadly instinct of our flesh. But thanks be to God, Jesus has put the shame and guilt and condemnation of that nature to death and given us a heart tender to his beauty and love. Let what you read about the saint and the righteous and the redeemed inform your identity as a child of God by expensive grace. The work of Jesus has made you and me saints. We are holy ones because Jesus died for us. We are righteous because Jesus has given us his righteousness. We are redeemed because the blood of Jesus paid the price for your life.

“…so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:29-31)

Take up your Bible today, even now. Start at the beginning, or start where your church is currently at in the Bible. Use a Bible reading plan. However and wherever you start, start. Let the lives of those before you who suffered so you could have the Bible in your language be honored. Let the life of Jesus who embodied every truth, won every victory, fought every battle, presides as the righteous judge over every judgement and became for us every bit of our sinfulness, bearing the curse of death in our place, making us children of God- let his life be feasted upon and resurrected in you.

to the beat of a different drum

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This morning I dropped my freshman off at his high school to play in the welcome band for today’s freshman day (yeah, school starts in like a week. Yikes!) . As I as walking back to my car I walked past the drum section. They were doing their drills to get ready. The visceral sound of the drum competing with my heart for beats woke me from my Monday morning grogginess and got me thinking. I want the rythym of faith in Christ to beat in me like morning drum-section drills.

There’s that saying, “Marching to the beat of a different drum.” You know, it means you’re not doing what everyone else does. You think differently. There’s a way you live that is motivated by a different rhythm than the masses.

Growing up in a Christian home I often thought of Christianity as a to-do list. There were things you do and there were things you don’t do. And if you didn’t know what to do, well then, you should ask yourself, “What would Jesus do?” But as John Piper put it- I don’t have his exact quote, but he said something like, “Most of what we do in a day we do without thinking.” What’s in us, comes out in the way we live every day. We don’t stop every second and ask, ‘What would Jesus do?’ That would be weird. And it’s not what being a Christian is. Being a Christian isn’t so much trying to do or not do certain things. Being a Christian is something that has happened to you from the inside. From your gut. From your heart. The drum beat that moved the melody of your life along has changed. So it’s not so much that you have to ask yourself all the time what to do or not to do. But rather, a new law, a new way of life is written on your heart. Every beat is electrified by the life of Christ in you.

More than one crisis of faith brought about this awareness in me. When a cup gets shaken, what comes out is what’s really in there. When I was shaken, all my put on piety fell apart and the drum drills of my heart were revealed. That process of being shaken and finding out what’s on the inside is the process people call sanctification I think. The drum beat gets off and the conductor has to stop the music and say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. That’s off. Let’s get that beat right.” It’s sort of a process of cardioversion of the Christian heart.

I wish the drums of Christ’s life in me beat louder. I wish I had ears to hear them better. I don’t need to wish. There are practices that God has provided for me to grow in the grace he’s drumming in me. One particular comes to mind.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. – Colossians 3:16

I need the word of Christ. I need to read my Bible and look for Jesus in it’s pages. I need to receive it with meekness cause I don’t know so much. And I need to chew on it because that’s how it’ll get dwelt in me richly. The drills for the drums of my Christian heart are divinely given in pages of scripture where, if I’ll practice, I’ll learn to hear and be moved to live out of a beat to the drum of Christ in me. And when I get shaken, grace will spill out and lots of repentance.

5 helps for hard, I mean, all marriages

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In September my husband and I will have been married for 25 years. And that’s no testimony to our skill, secrets or practices. We’ve done just about everything wrong. And making it this long is no guarantee that we’ll make it another 25 years. When our friends ask how we’er doing, I tell them our marriage is healthier than it’s ever been. Nevertheless, the past tries to swallow me in a mire. And my previous attempts at holding tightly to our vows- as though they are the grace that saves me- have proven my idolatry.

Listening to Rachel Welcher yesterday on a Grace Covers Me podcast by Christine Hoover I heard a few things that struck a chord with me. Rachel is a woman who has at least in part walked a mile in my shoes. In listening to her story I echoed amens and scratched down a bunch of thoughts. Here’s five I thought were beneficial for all marriages:

Just because you’ve done everything right, doesn’t mean everything will turn out right. Describing how she met her now ex-husband, Rachel, she talks about how she tried to do everything, “by the books.” She did what she was taught was wise and godly in dating and picking the right person to marry. Yet her marriage still ended in a divorce she didn’t want. She brings up a great point: There’s a prosperity gospel theology undergirding the idea that if we do all the right things our marriages will turn out great. It’s not true. You can do all the right things and God’s will for you can be suffering and even divorce. Like Rachel, I too wrestle with how it works theologically that God can hate divorce and it still be somehow part of his sovereign will that you walk through a divorce. I may not understand but it’s true. The fact that we will suffer and experience blessing even in walking through things God hates does not mean we shouldn’t make wise decisions in dating and marriage. Our motivation is not freedom from suffering. Our motivation is love of God. We obey because we love God, not so that God will bless us. For the Christian the blessing in suffering in a hard marriage or even in loosing your marriage is that God is near to you.
Living with the looming possibility that your spouse might decide that the two of you are just too different now. Rachel talked about the torture of living in this limbo state where you know your spouse is considering a divorce. It’s interesting to me that we who have experienced this uneasy limbo in our marriages attribute our lack of control of the destiny of our marriages to our hard marriage situations. God has taught (is teaching) me over the years that no marriage is a guarantee. The truth is even the best and healthiest of marriages could be completely destroyed by one or the other’s decision at any time. Living in a marriage with an unbeliever these 25 year has taught me to live with open hands to God’s will. 1 Corinthians 7:12-16 gives specific help for believers married to unbelievers who want to leave the marriage, but the message in that chapter is also for all marriages: Let go of clinging to the shadow of marriage (vs. 29-31). Rachel’s description of the torn feeling of whether to focus on being a wife or, “… prepare for inconceivable heartache,” is a reality for people in hard marriages. But it’s also a reality for any marriage. Rachel’s friend’s advice,”You won’t ever regret loving him too much during this time,” is good for every marriage. As Rachel said, “While you’re married, your heart’s in your marriage.”
It’s not your responsibility to convince or save your spouse. 1 Peter 3 has been a go-to passage for me these 25 years of marriage. As I wrote in my piece at Desiring God, my desire to win my husband to Christ with my Christ-changed life is something, by God’s grace I will try to do until I die- whether we’re married or not. But Rachel talked about how the message some people delivered her way was that if she did the right things she might be able to save her husband. I know what she means. Over the years I’ve heard the same message. Maybe you should invite him to such and such. Maybe he should read this book. Maybe he should go to that movie. Have you taken him to that church? Would he go out to poker night with me? I’ve tried everything to “win” my husband in my own power. But Peter’s call to seek to win your husband is a call to be a light not a call to be your husband’s savior. I know the pressure Rachel speaks of, but I think the message of 1 Peter 3 is that even if we loose our spouses to divorce, while we are married, we should give our hearts to loving God and loving our husbands in such a way that desires to win them to Christ.
Living with shame in your marriage. Rachel talks about how her divorce was her identity for a season after she lost her marriage. I feel like I’ve wrestled with that recurring climate in my marriage for 25 years. When you’re in a hard marriage that’s been hurt by each other’s sin, divorce, differences of faith, etc., the pain can be so overwhelming that it’s the key landmark by which you identify your life. But the shame of brokenness in our marriages and in our lives is not what Christ wants to leave us with. We can take our shame to him and learn to live out of the identity of who we are in Christ. The brokenness in your marriage doesn’t define you. Christ does. I have to feed myself that truth daily, several times a day, in season and out of season.
You must be fueling your own relationship with God. Rachel mentions having been in the midst of privately writing essays on Job for two years when her husband filed for divorce. She was able to draw on what she knew of God during that terrible time because of her time in the scripture. Whether our marriages are broken by divorce, differences of faith, past sins and failures, or just the everyday sins and failures that make lifetime companionship with another person hard, we, like Rachel, can be steadied through the various seasons of our life knowing God can allow us to suffer and be good at the same time. But to know this kind of steadfast love we must feed our relationship with God by being in his word. Meditating on it day and night. Wrestling with it. Praying it. Daily.

Common grace when you feel like you have nothing in common

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I should be in bed but my other half likes to lay in bed and relax to YouTube videos of funny cats, and I want silence.

I read Alia Joy Hagenbach’s essay about the hospitality we must extend to one another in marriage. I feel the same. My marriage is an unlikely union. Even worse, as Paul said, its without common affection. We love different loves. But even though our hearts do not set their hopes on the same thing, I am here, in this house, doing life these almost 25 years with him. And tonight we share a bed and the need for sleep, because tomorrow we take our two teenage sons on a family vacation. A long, overdue family vacation.

You look for common grace when you’re married to someone who’s got affections for pseudo-saviors. And you pray for God to stir the heart of a man like rivers of water, wherever He wills. And then you thank him for answering your prayer for time together as a family. And then you pray you will see the common grace and not the great divide that separates you.

I’m going to bed praying for eyes to see this grace poured on my husband like the rain that soaked the desert ground yesterday. I’m praying for conversations, silence, listening ears, words of wisdom and kindness, boldness and humility and lots of laughter and light-heartedness.

When you don’t share affections for the One who created cool climates, streams and Pine trees, you lay down your longings, look to the One all your hope resides in, and grab a pole and some lures and enjoy the high-altitude day with the husband of your youth. That’s what I’m looking forward to. May God meet us there with allurements of his faithfulness.

‘ “Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. ..And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord . ‘

Hosea 2:14,19-20

Being God’s child changes everything – A meditation on 1 Peter 1:13-16

‘Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” 1 Peter 1:13-16

As you’ve probably heard, if you read the word “therefore” you should probably look at what precedes it so you can see what it’s there for.

Before verse 13 Peter breaks down the weightiness of this salvation we have received as Christians. I’ve grown tired of the phrases, “born again” and “saved”. They come with the connotation of a superficial Christiandom that says it’s #blessed and has no sobriety about what it means to be saved or born again. But Peter gets to the down and dirty of what it means to be born again and saved in a way our western evangelical selves have gotten all sterilized and plastic.

Maybe I’m cynical. Maybe it’s because I live with an unbeliever, but for me, all the Christianization of things is nauseating. If Jesus isn’t real, if he doesn’t change the way I think and give me a whole new outlook on life and new desires and affections… if he doesn’t really turn my world upside down then he’s a hoax and I’m a liar. But if I’m really born again I’ll find a whole new kind of life growing in me. And if I’m really saved, that will mean something that’s very sobering. I mean, if “saved” just means put the Christian cherry on top of my devil’s food life then fooey! That’s not saved, that’s sugar-coated. Peter doesn’t say in verses 3-12 that we’ve been sugar-coated. Jesus had things to say about people that said they were saved and evangelized others to make them “saved” when they were really rotten dead walking around in white washed tombs making walking dead in nice suites out of their converts.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.” Matthew 23:15

Peter, the one who knows what it feels like to betray Jesus, fall under the weight of that shame and guilt and experience restoration with Jesus, talks about being born again as a radical, life changing experience Jesus does in us. Being born again we love a Savior we have never seen, even while we suffer (vs.6-8). Our affections have been radically changed. It’s like we’ve been born all over again.

And our salvation is just that… a new birth that will grow up (by God’s tremendous grace and mercy) till the day when Christ perfects us at his coming.

Salvation isn’t a ticket out of hell. It’s death to our old self, daily. And new life growing in us, daily.

This is what verse thirteen’s “therefore” is there for. I just see Peter full of expression and passion looking at us with wide eyes after showing us the scandalous wealth we’ve been given in being born anew as God’s own children, saved from the destruction our sin-rotting selves were destined for, and say, “Put your big boy and big girl pants on cause it’s war now! You’ve been utterly changed, and now for the rest of your life here you need a sober perspective. You need to stop putting your hope in people, status, wealth, achievement, health… even this life and you need to fix your eyes on that promises that you’re gonna see Jesus. And when you see him, you’re gonna be made like him. And the war will be over!”

I was born in 1974 to Bob and Verna Deane. In 1990 I was born again to God. And now as His child, I don’t go the way of Bob and Verna and all that my firstborn self had set her hopes on. All those passions I had were due to ignorance. I had no idea how good God was and so I put all my hope in things and people that are not good. As God’s child I am set apart from all that. I don’t live from a place of poverty hoping that some broken person or lying status or temporary wealth will make me satisfied and secure. I live from a place of abundance with confidence in the One who laid down his life for me and took my old passions and all the deadly fruit they bore with him to the cross.

I am holy. Because my Father is holy. And by his grace he is bearing the fruit of his holiness even in me. That’s beyond amazing.

Coming Friday!

A new series

I’ll be posting a historical-fiction short story this Friday. This first installment of Fiction Friday comes from a piece I submitted to a writing contest. It didn’t win, but it got me thinking I should try to write some fictional pieces more often. I really enjoyed it. Anyway, I’d love it if you joined, and if you’re so inclined to write a short 1500 words or less fictional short story and email it to me at awomanfound@gmail.com I’d love post your piece on one of my Fiction Friday posts.

My relationship with the Jesus I’ve never seen but love

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.

April fools, Easter, the Prodigal and my son

I wonder what the son who betrayed his father’s love and provision, left home squandered it all and came back seeking restoration was like the years before he decided to leave. I wonder if he resisted his father’s love and discipline. I wonder if he threatened that as soon as he was of age, he was out of there!

Obviously I don’t know. And I’m sure scholars who know these things could give me a better historical idea of what a father and son in the ancient Middle East might have typically been like in their culture. But I thought about the prodigal the other day when my oldest son, who will be 15 on Easter Sunday (which also happens to be April Fool’s day) scowled at my every instruction and resignedly breathed out a, “Yes, mom” instead of an argument.

He is the spice of my life and is also the reason I have so many frowning wrinkles in my forehead. My April Fool’s day baby has been testing the boundaries and seeking a thrill since before he turned one.

As an infant, he wouldn’t be held and cuddled. I bought a rocking chair while I was still pregnant with him, but the only time he was still in my arms in that chair was when he was nursing. Once I tried to hold and rock him and he squirmed and wiggled and strained to raise his head. I laughed and starting tickling him and within minutes he was asleep. This boy didn’t want to be rocked to sleep he wanted to be tickled to sleep. Before he turned one he managed to figure out how to escape his crib. And when we decided to put his crib mattress on the floor for his safety he wouldn’t stay in his room at night.

This boy ripped out his first tooth gnawing on a bar stool before he could walk. He fell down a flight of stairs when he was 2 because he was curious about the door we had told him, “No” to. Everywhere we went I worried that he would run in front of a car, or jump in a pool of water or fall off a cliff because he had no fear and boundaries seemed to say, “Come here and test me!”

As I’ve watched my son’s personality come to light I laugh at God’s timing in making April Fool’s day the day he would be born. No mom wants to call their son a fool, but I’m pretty sure that the 15 year old, impulsive, curious, pubescent, strong-willed boy is pictured in the dictionary as the definition of fool. And to be fair, right behind it is the 15 year old, shallow, silly, emotional, pubescent, self-focused girl (that was me at 15). This child loves to make people laugh. He seeks thrills, often without thinking first. He’s curious, especially when there are boundaries. He opens his mouth and at least 5 minutes of senseless arguing about E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G comes out before being corrected for the offensive nonsense that just spilled out or he stops himself and walks away.

I worry about him. I know worrying does nothing to help him or me, but I can’t stop the downpour of stomach acid and tears that come with my daily interactions with this young man I would endure years of obstinance and resistance for.

The other day he looked me in the eye and said, “All I know is as soon as I’m 18, I’m out of here!” He was angry. He’s tired of running into his parents boundaries. And he’s not ready to willingly bend his knee to God or his parents. He’ll acquiesce. He’ll do what we ask after lots of resistance, for now. But the will to run hard into a wall is strong with this one.

That’s hard on a mom. And a dad. But I think it’s hard on a mom even more. I think the dad can let the resistance increase his resolve a little easier than with the mom. With the mom, well, “…a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother.”

I do have hope though. I have hope for the fool because I have been, and still show myself to be, the fool. God broke through my foolishness and gave me wisdom and a heart to love him. He’s done that with many an infamous fool. Nebuchanezzar. Jonah. Paul. Peter…

It’s fitting that April fool’s day is Easter Sunday. Before Christ rose in our hearts and we saw a glimpse of his worth and pledged our hearts to him, we were foolish, stiff-necked, rebellious, children of wrath. We thought we knew better than the One who made us and we were going to do life our own way, thank you very much! Psalm 107 poetically tells what some of us did with our lives when we gave our Maker the finger and set off to do life better than He. We found ourselves ruined and He brought us to our senses like the prodigal son. Then we turned to him, receiving lavish unearned favor and love.

Before my son was born I sought God, asking Him for a scripture that I could cling to and pray over his life. The verse that resonated with me was Psalm 119: 73.

Your hands have made and fashioned me; give me understanding that I may learn your commandments. Psalms 119:73

This little sentence has been my hope over the years for this strong-willed son of mine. He didn’t make himself. God did. And although right now he has no understanding and is like a brutish and ignorant beast (just as I was) before God, the same God who made him is able to give him understanding. He is able to take our foolish ignorance and make us wise. He’s able to make us actually love God’s boundaries and embrace his ways as beautiful.

Before the prodigal left home and chased his self-loving pleasures, he probably spent years chomping at the bit to do so, much to his father and mother’s grief. But the love of the father brought him to his senses.

I don’t want my son to go through ruin. But I do want him to see the love of God in Christ for himself. I want him to want to submit to this God who gave him life. And so, I must trust the one who made him- who knows how to save him.

On Easter Sunday, lots of fools will gather in buildings around the world to worship the one who took them from being brutish and ignorant beasts of rebellion, to fools for Christ’s sake. We, who once gave God the finger with our lives, now fall prostrate in awe of the one who calls us sons and daughters. We came to him filthy and defiled like the prodigals we are and he embraced us and set a new garment of acceptance and worth on us and has called us his own children. A bunch of fools in love with this Jesus we’ve never seen. A bunch of fool’s taking up our crosses daily and following him. A bunch of fool’s turning from the temporary pleasures of sin and enduring suffering for the glory that is set before us in being united with the Father who has graciously forgiven, restored and loved us.

This is the foolishness this mom is called to. Somehow, in God’s wisdom, to take what is foolish to a strong-willed son and endure, trusting in the one who takes the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.

‘We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things. ‘ 1 Corinthians 4:10,12-13

‘For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; ‘ 1 Corinthians 1:18,20-21,25,27