Sometimes I wish I was a princess...

It's funny - I've always had a wild, surging longing inside me that becomes palpable when I read certain authors or stories. It's a longing to be noble, heroic, magical; a longing to outwit evil men and to rescue the small ones who cannot help themselves.


Mom read John Eldredge's "Wild at Heart" to us years ago, and it resonated deeply with my brothers and with me. I've felt this restlessness for something more all my life. And this morning, Oswald Chambers talks about it, too.


"If we are going to live as disciples of Jesus, we have to remember that all noble things are difficult. The Christian life is gloriously difficult, but the difficulty of it does not make us faint and cave in, it rouses us up to overcome...
"Thank God He does give us difficult things to do! His salvation is a glad thing, but it is also a heroic, holy thing. It tests us for all we are worth. Jesus is bringing many "sons" unto glory, and God will not shield us from the requirements of a son. God's grace turns out men and women with a strong family likeness to Jesus Christ, not milk sops. It takes a tremendous amount of discipline to live the noble life of a disciple of Jesus in actual things. It is always necessary to make an effort to be noble." (My Utmost for His Highest, July 7)


I'm always amazed beyond words when God becomes more to me through difficult circumstances. I should work on that - He says all throughout the Bible that (essentially) He is with us in the fire, He is living and active, and we have no reason to fear. But I always fear. And that is the root of my downfall.


A recent instance: Dave and I are moving to an apartment, and we were worried about the timing of giving notice in our current situation and signing a lease for the new one. As we went to look at the apartment, I prayed, "Lord, You have smoothed our paths, providing exactly what we need as we need it every time. I ask that You continue in Your faithfulness and make our next step clear." And the girl at the apartment offered to hold it for us so that we got the apartment without overlapping timelines or having to move in one week!


But I wonder: If I kept that mindset, that my God provides and my God is always ready to blow our tiny minds, wouldn't I live a grander, more noble and adventurous life? Wouldn't there be more taking on the enemy and more rescuing the helpless?

Where are the still waters? I need them!

I've fallen into that trap again - the one where I start to feel comfortable and in control of my life. Where I let my desperate need for God fall to the side, become less desperate. Where I get frustrated easily and nothing seems to go the way I want it to.


And then factor in an upcoming marriage. We're not even married yet, and I'm learning so much. Dave is my spiritual thermometer. When my heart is not right with my Father, the relationship Dave and I are building gets prickly, and there are tears and angry words and disharmony.


This morning, I was reading Oswald (surprise!) who simply asked, "Why do we doubt God? He has proven Himself. We have no room to fear." And then I was lead to James 3: 
"Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.
"But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness."


Looking on at my life, you wouldn't see these characteristics, you wouldn't feel the quiet assurance these verses emanate. Inside my heart there is a clear awareness of this lack of peace, and my heart literally quails at the thought. I am desperate for confidence in my Father that sings, "All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well." It's there. I've seen the effects of trusting God with everything. It's just in hiding, weakened by my selfish desires and sinful nature.


Father, draw me into Your heart. Renew my thirst, my desperation, for You.

Be like Peter. But only sorta.

Oswald's thought this morning was: What does it mean to walk with Jesus? (from the context of John 6:66-70)
To Peter, it meant Jesus offered salvation - "words of life."
But Oswald says it means a constant "certainty that I do not know."
Peter was almost right, but he talked too much - he should have stopped with, "Lord, to whom shall we go?"


I would be far better off remembering my own temporality.


Dave and I were talking about this last night with a friend: the best way of living is keeping a loose grip on things. Know that we are brief, know that we are not in control and the things we have are gifts. And in that mindset, do not grasp them too firmly - be open to letting go.


I once heard someone say, "It's only when you have empty, open hands that you can be given gifts."

Robin Hood always gets the best of the sheriff.

I've been watching my fiance struggle with finding a job and believing God will provide. There's almost nothing I can do beyond supporting him in prayer and filling in with good food, a positive attitude, and a safe space to be angry or sad or just tired.
There seem to be a lot of closed doors that are pointing him to something neither of us expected. And after a convicting sermon on Sunday (you gave your life to Jesus; how can you justify taking it back and going in your own direction?), we're wondering if the way God is taking us isn't down this difficult and different road.
Today Oswald (God love him!) had some timely insights on hanging in there:

Tenacity is more than endurance, it is endurance combined with the absolute certainty that what we are looking for is going to transpire. Tenacity is more than hanging on, which may be but the weakness of being too afraid to fall off. Tenacity is the supreme effort of a man refusing to believe that his hero is going to be conquered. The greatest fear a man has is not that he will be damned, but that Jesus Christ will be worsted, that the things He stood for - love and justice and forgiveness and kindness among men - will not win out in the end; the things He stands for look like will-o'-the-wisps. Then comes the call to spiritual tenacity, not to hang on and do nothing, but to work deliberately on the certainty that God is not going to be worsted.

If our hopes are being disappointed just now, it means that they are being purified. There is nothing noble the human mind has ever hoped for or dreamed of that will not be fulfilled. One of the greatest strains in life is the strain of waiting for God. "Because thou hast kept the word of my patience."

Remain spiritually tenacious.

Voices from the past are often clearer in the present.

This is the same idea as "Hindsight is 20/20." Oswald has hit the mark again.

He quotes Luke, when the disciples are standing around on the third day wondering where on heaven and earth Jesus has got to and why He hasn't shown up like He said He would. Two of them are walking to Emmaus and discussing recent events. A mysterious traveler joins them, asks what they're talking about, and they say, "We were hoping it was Jesus who was going to redeem Israel. Indeed, besides all this, today is the third day since these things happened. Then some women told us His body wasn't in the tomb anymore, and we're all amazed. He said He would rise again. But we haven't seen Him and are beginning to wonder if it was all true." The men didn't realize they were talking to Jesus Himself. They were dejected and feeling the eyes of the known world watching their belief in their Savior crumble.

Oswald says, "Every fact that the disciples stated was right; but the inferences they drew from those facts were wrong. Anything that savours of dejection spiritually is always wrong. If depression and oppression visit me, I am to blame; God is not, nor is anyone else." Really, you should just read the whole thing and come back to this blog...otherwise I'm going to end up copying and pasting the whole article: My Utmost for His Highest, February 7.

What I mean in the blog title by "voices from the past" is this: (and do pardon my writing today - it's Monday, and I'm struggling) Last year (almost exactly a year ago), I was dejected and physically sick over a decision I knew I had to make. And my friends - every last one of my friends - were telling me to do the same thing (the opposite of what I wanted to do). I was asking God (literally - crazy prayers) for a billboard with what I should do. Through it all, I missed the point that I was chasing the answers to my prayers, instead of the God Who answers prayer. If I had cleared my mind of what I wanted to hear and listened to the voices around me, I would have found that they were advising me to do what our Father wanted for me.

It's a slow journey, isn't it?

Slowed to a crawl.

I dislike Mondays. It's not that I have anything particular against the day itself, but the percentage of things that go wrong seems to be statistically higher on Mondays. Today has been no exception. And the majority of the things gone wrong have been my fault, which is just plain frustrating.


I have been drinking up Needtobreathe like cold water today.


I am more happy than I've been in a very long time. I am making plans with the man that I love. I'm financially stable. I love my crooked little house. But something's been under my skin, a tiny reminder. And Oswald, of course, put his finger on the splinter: my purpose is slipping.


He says, "The vision Paul had on the road to Damascus was no passing emotion, but a vision that had very clear and emphatic directions for him...Our Lord said, in effect, to Paul - Your whole life is to be overmastered by Me; you are to have no end, no aim, and no purpose but Mine...Paul was not given a message or a doctrine to proclaim, he was brought into a vivid, personal, overmastering relationship to Jesus Christ...There is nothing there apart from the personal relationship. Paul was devoted to a Person not to a cause. He was absolutely Jesus Christ's, he saw nothing else, he lived for nothing else."


It's not that the place I'm in right now is bad - by no means! I've been waiting, praying, asking my whole life for this place. And it is here. It's just hard to remember that, despite feeling like I've been given all of my dreams in one year, my true purpose is relationship with Jesus. It's hard, but I have to ask myself, "If everything I have now were taken away from me tomorrow, would I still pursue Christ?"


I'm afraid of the answer.


I don't want to be afraid. I want every confidence that "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing" will be able to sway my heart away from the love of my Father.


Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.

We wait impatiently and with anticipation.

The boyfriend and I have been talking a lot lately about trusting God's perfect will in our lives, and stepping back out of the way to let Him do what He's got planned. And as we talk, those lessons I learned last year are bubbling to the surface again. My faith in God is increased by remembering how many giants He's killed in my past. And my joy is returning (I vaguely remember saying months ago that something just wasn't quite right in my heart). It's good to be reminded.


And then Oswald does it again. I've been praying a lot about getting myself out of the way in order to let God in (which is very hard to do on your own, you should know). He says the one thing that keeps us from God is us. But this last paragraph caught my heart in the anticipation of God's handiwork in my life:


"Any problem that comes between God and myself springs out of disobedience; any problem, and there are many, that is alongside me while I obey God, increases my ecstatic delight, because I know that my Father knows, and I am going to watch and see how He unravels this thing."

Look how humble I'm being! ...Oops...

In small group a couple weeks ago, we were talking about the irony of humility. We work and work for it, and we finally attain it only to realize that we're humble - and destroy the whole thing. I find it divinely humorous that we were created self-aware and then were asked to give up all awareness of self for others. But it's that striving, that process that shapes us - consciously or otherwise - into living channels of our Father's love.


Oswald (emphasis mine):
It is one thing to go through a crisis grandly, but another thing to go through every day glorifying God when there is no witness, no limelight, no one paying the remotest attention to us. If we do not want mediaeval haloes, we want something that will make people say - What a wonderful man of prayer he is! What a pious devoted woman she is! If you are rightly devoted to the Lord Jesus, you have reached the sublime height where no one ever thinks of noticing you, all that is noticed is that the power of God comes through you all the time...It takes Almighty God Incarnate in us to do the meanest duty to the glory of God. It takes God's Spirit in us to make us so absolutely humanly His that we are utterly unnoticeable.


I cannot fathom what that state of being might feel like, although I'm finding out quickly what it's like to truly want another's best. Now if the two - the selflessness and the power of God in me - can meld, perhaps then I'll understand a little.

O-bey. OOOO-bey. That's what they remember.

Bill Cosby reference in the title - sorry if it doesn't crack you up like it does me! Ok, I'm not sorry. Whatever.


Oswald is a butt-kicker, man. I've been fighting these last couple weeks to find motivation to empathy, to activity, and to engaging. Let me break that down a little bit:
Empathy - as followers of Christ, we're asked to have the same attitude as He did: He humbled Himself, but He also had compassion on the crowds. I hate how many times I walk away from a crowded place (whether it be work, church, or even the Sunday market) and want to kick myself for pretending to be an island. Who knows? Rather than a sliding glance, a direct smile may do more to soften someone's heart than preaching or tracts ever will. And I'm not afraid of interaction. I don't understand my recent troglodyte inclinations!
Activity - Being tired isn't an excuse, because I'm not. I have enough energy to split pallets and burn marshmallows. I hiked two hours Saturday, and I've cleaned my house. Plus I workout at the gym several times a week - I've got the energy to do what I want. It's lining up what I want with what my Father is doing. Someone explained it this way one time: Remember that verse in Psalms? "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart." If your desires are His desires, how on earth could He deny you anything? But there's the trick - the delighting yourself in Him, the aligning your heart with the Heart of God.
Engaging - Kind of goes with empathy. If I want to touch people's lives, I have to step forward and talk to people, I have to love them the way Jesus loves me, I have to remember we really are all ragamuffins...but then I have to act out of that knowledge. Which means I've gotta get it lodged (wadged?) in my head first. And then - once I'm sure of all this - how do I do it?!


Back to Oswald and O-bey. I'll let him finish (he pierces my heart... truth'll do that, won't it?):
The Lord does not give me rules, He makes His standard very clear, and if my relationship to Him is that of love, I will do what He says without any hesitation. If I hesitate, it is because I love some one else in competition with Him, viz., myself. Jesus Christ will not help me to obey Him, I must obey Him; and when I do obey Him, I fulfil my spiritual destiny. My personal life may be crowded with small petty incidents, altogether unnoticeable and mean; but if I obey Jesus Christ in the haphazard circumstances, they become pinholes through which I see the face of God, and when I stand face to face with God I will discover that through my obedience thousands were blessed. When once God's Redemption comes to the point of obedience in a human soul, it always creates. If I obey Jesus Christ, the Redemption of God will rush through me to other lives, because behind the deed of obedience is the Reality of Almighty God.
(My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers, 1935, from StudyLight.org)

Our story is the tale of a fool made wise.

This paragraph from Oswald Chambers caught my attention this morning:


When looking back on the lives of men and women of God the tendency is to say - What wonderfully astute wisdom they had! How perfectly they understood all God wanted! The astute mind behind is the Mind of God, not human wisdom at all. We give credit to human wisdom when we should give credit to the Divine guidance of God through childlike people who were foolish enough to trust God's wisdom and the supernatural equipment of God. (My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers (1935), 26 October; emphasis mine)


I can't explain to you how much I long for that phrase to describe my life: "Do you know Jess?"
"Yes, she's one of the most childlike fools I've ever met, but her trust in God's wisdom is unshakeable."


Granted, to the world, that's a very unflattering picture. But I've spent enough of my life (all of it) struggling to be independent, responsible, self-sufficient. And by the world's standards I was. But because I was measuring myself by those around me rather than by the One who made me, everything I got was hard-won and empty. I lived for four years in near-poverty (legally, I was in the absolute lowest tax bracket). And it took four years of misery, frustration, and self-loathing before I threw up my hands and said, "God, what You're asking me to do doesn't make any sense, but I'm choosing to trust You. I believe; help my unbelief."


I also can't explain to you how quickly my life reversed itself. It wasn't overnight (and believe you me, I still have to be responsible, independent, self-sufficient - just never alone, and never beyond help). It took over a year for the commitment to root itself in my heart. I often grew in leaps and then baby-stepped my way through months at a time.
And now I am in a place of remembering - keeping ever before me the long, long list of what Dad did for me, the things I learned. It's a place of trying daily to apply the lessons. That's the hardest part - the day-to-day. But every time I come to my senses and throw my voice heavenward and drag my eyes away from the rocky path in front of me, my Father is relentlessly merciful and overflowing in grace - He picks me up in His arms and carries me a ways so I can rest, and He can soothe my heart.


This all reminds me of 1 Corinthians 1: 

Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.
Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble;
but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong,
and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are,
so that no man may boast before God.

Master and Lord have little place in our vocabulary...

...we prefer the words Saviour, Sanctifier, Healer.  (Oswald)


It's true.  This month has been significant for me: birthday, and two anniversaries of sorts.
Anniversary One: September 1st of 2009 I embarked on a commitment to myself to do new things, to live a bolder and less fearful life, to step it up a bit.  September 1st I went alone to get my first tattoo.  And that was just the beginning.
Anniversary Two: My birthday weekend marks the one-year of a relationship - it began that weekend and ended (rather abruptly) three months later.  And somehow, in the space of a weekend, I gladly gave him a piece of my heart.


Here's the irony in all this: the tattoo - on my ribcage, over my heart - is an Old English word meaning "bound, fettered, captive" (hæftling).  At the beginning of September, I physically and permanently turned my heart over into the care and keeping of my Father.  I offered myself up to be mastered by Him.  And two weeks later, I took part of my heart back and gave it to a man.  He is a good man and deserves all the love and respect of a good woman, but it was not my place to give my heart away any longer.  I'd trusted it to Dad; taking it back only said I didn't trust Him.


It's been a long year.  God presented me with Abraham and Isaac's story over and over during those three months, asking, "Do you trust Me? Do you believe that I have better for you? Will you let Me be the One who makes decisions with your heart?"  I obeyed Him (with all the pieces of my broken heart).  It cost me sleep, energy, ten pounds (that I couldn't really afford to lose), passion, creativity - everything I was proud of in my life.  It cost me a friend.


But our Father never asks us for obedience only to pat us on the head and say, "Tha'll do."  He lavishes His love on us, slowly healing the self-inflicted wounds, reassuring us over and over that He is proud of us.  And His reassurances have not stopped: I finally have the job I've been asking for; enough money to live comfortably and maybe buy my own home; I have sweet, supportive friends; I have resources to help others.


But my Father didn't stop at blessing me - He still speaks directly to my heart, telling me He is indeed the Master.  Saturday morning, birthday weekend 2010, I spent at a community service project organized by our church.  The Trail of Tears motorcycle ride was kicking off as we got started, and my heart was heavy (a year ago I had been falling in love with a man who rode motorcycles, and loved puppies and sunsets, and whose laugh made my heart feel too big for my chest).  I had been praying for him all week and that morning in particular.  As our missions pastor kicked off our day in prayer, he added (almost as an afterthought), "And God, we ask that You protect these motorcycles and their riders, that You keep them safe and bless their efforts.  And God?  I ask that You would save each and every one of them."  Erik didn't know - how could he? - but my Master was telling me He heard my heart's cry.


How quick we are to doubt the good Master!

Toward what I understand as good...

Oh, Oswald.  He's the most relevant dead guy I know.  Today:


Temptation is a short cut to good things we want.  It's a false short cut - we never get what we want (good things) in the form that we desire them (pure, worthy, and pleasurable).  God promises us good things beyond what we can imagine, and temptation says, "I can get them for you quicker."  But we end up with a twisted or tainted version of what we truly desired.  We all experience temptation; it's a characteristic of being human!  But we have a High Priest who has been through "every temptation as is common to man" (Hebrews 2:13-18).  We are free to run and fall at His feet, begging His help.  He is the only one who can help us.


"Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.  For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.  Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."  (Hebrews 4:14-16)

If I thought I had to say it better than anybody else, I'd never start.

“If we try to overcome self-consciousness by any common-sense method, we will develop it tremendously. Jesus says, "Come unto Me and I will give you rest," i.e., Christ-consciousness will take the place of self-consciousness. Wherever Jesus comes He establishes rest, the rest of the perfection of activity that is never conscious of itself.”  (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost, August 20, via StudyLight.org)

…the perfection of activity that is never conscious of itself… that’s painting, or writing, or doing what I was created to do – creating, itself.  Like Madeleine L’Engle said – we were created for nothing other than to create, like our Master.  And Chambers describes that self-conscious-less state when a painter forgets himself and opens up to the creation, when a writer is so overcome by the words that she loses her grasp on her present time and place, when a sculptor thrills to the touch of his tools so much that sleep and food are unnecessary.

You know me better than you think, you know, and you shall know me better yet.

We are apt to forget that a man is not only committed to Jesus Christ for salvation; he is committed to Jesus Christ's view of God, of the world, of sin and of the devil, and this will mean that he must recognize the responsibility of being transformed by the renewing of his mind. (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, Sept. 9, via StudyLight.org)

Oswald says a lot of times Christians look on other Christians and criticize them for being slow or inactive when in reality the slow ones have taken every thought, every action captive and move only in the will of God.  If our impulsive desire is to serve God, that’s good, but it’s to be caught and questioned – since when has human nature instinctively turned to God?  No, that’s the beauty of Christianity – we use our strong human nature to bend itself to a pattern of seeking God first; by the spiritual, we overcome the natural.

The tendency to-day is to put the emphasis on service. Beware of the people who make usefulness their ground of appeal. If you make usefulness the test, then Jesus Christ was the greatest failure that ever lived. The lodestar of the saint is God Him self, not estimated usefulness. It is the work that God does through us that counts, not what we do for Him. All that Our Lord heeds in a man's life is the relationship of worth to His Father. Jesus is bringing many sons to glory.  (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, Aug. 30)

How often am I distracted by the call to action in Scripture and find that I’ve overlooked the relationship?  And again, I am more concerned with what Jesus did for me than for the standing of my relationship with Him – I see “bringing” and “glory” and miss “sons.”  In our minds, it is somehow easier to earn our way to heaven (and to God’s heart) by acts of service than it is to exist in relationship with Him.