Birthday Celebrations

This is a week of celebrations at my house.  Yesterday my husband and I celebrated the 36^th anniversary of our first date!  And today one of my sons is celebrating a birthday.  I like to celebrate these kinds of milestones – to make sure that we remember the past and how it contributes to where we are today.

But my son isn’t celebrating the day of his physical birth today.  He’s celebrating the day 20 years ago when he chose to accept Christ’s sacrifice for his sins and decided to become a Christ-follower.  He’s celebrating his spiritual birthday! 

Sometimes parents make a HUGE deal out of their children’s birthdays – complete with lots of presents, food, decorations, games, friends, family, etc.  I had a lot a fun when my sons were still children planning and executing their birthday parties.  My husband and I made a big deal out of their birthdays because we downplayed Christmas giving and wanted their birthdays to be extra-special.  But most people don’t even know the date when either they or their children became Christians.  Why is that?

I’m not sure why, but maybe this is a product of our focus on earthly things instead of heavenly things.  Why don’t we throw parties every year to celebrate our spiritual birthdays?  Could it be that we really don’t understand how important our second birth is?  If our spiritual birthdays represent true repentance and life-change, then they are the most important day we could celebrate each year.  More important than original birthdays, more important than Christ’s birthday, and more important than any anniversaries – because they are celebrations that mark eternal changes.  Spiritual birthdays mark a moment in the past that changed who we are today: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). 

So let’s start celebrating!  Parents, make sure your children know the date of the day their eternal, life-changing birthday occurred.  Celebrate that day each year – in whatever way you feel is appropriate.  (My husband and I always gave our boys a card that acknowledged their spiritual growth in the past year and a present that encouraged further growth.)  And don’t stop when they grow up.  My sons no longer live in my home; but every year they still get an email or a text that shows them how important their spiritual birthday is to us and God.  Along with our “first-date” anniversary, these are days that are always transferred over each year to my new calendar – milestones of progress that should never be forgotten.  Will you join me in focusing our attention on the birthday that really matters?     

Fearful or Resting?

Sovereignty.  If you live in a nation that doesn’t have a king or queen, like I do, you probably have a hard time understanding this attribute of God.  Earthly sovereigns are usually people that command some degree of fear from their subjects; yet God’s sovereignty is so much different than what we see in earthly kings and queens.  That’s because God’s sovereignty cannot be separated from his other character traits: love, mercy, compassion, grace, wisdom, and justice.  All of these make up who God is in a perfect balance that we can’t completely comprehend.  Because our own human experience is inherently limited, we sometimes get confused about who God really is in relation to all we experience.  We have a narrow view of God instead of a Biblical view of God.

The point of God’s sovereignty is not to push us down or lord over us that he’s in charge.  The story of Job in the Bible makes it clear that we are not supposed to look at our circumstances using an earthly standard.  God showed Job that there is no standard or criterion higher than himself by which to judge what we see and experience.  The point of God’s sovereignty is that God himself is the standard, and he wants us to submit to his authority so we can rest in his care.  God’s other characteristics work together with his sovereignty, which provides the framework for ALL of who he is to be exercised in full measure.  Without God’s sovereignty, none of his other, perhaps more favorable, character traits would be able to operate correctly. 

The sovereignty of God is a place we can rest in – no matter what life brings and regardless of our inability to fully understand our circumstances.  We need to reach a point where God’s sovereignty becomes a personal place of rest and where we can live our lives in confidence instead of fear because God is sovereign.  Worship is a great start to getting there, like this song by Shannon J. Wexelberg:

            “I am overcome by your goodness

            I am overwhelmed by your lovingkindness

            I am swept away by your mercy

            And I am lifting my hands to the One who fills me.

            I am so amazed at your greatness

            So in awe of what You have done to save us

            I am bowing down to your holiness, my Lord

            I am undone.”

Undone . . . and resting in His sovereignty! 

Choosing Who to Believe

I feel like I’m stuck for another week on the topic of self-esteem.  My women’s Bible study group is studying the story of Gideon from the Old Testament book of Judges, and this week has continued to focus on the importance of believing what God says about us and not what the enemy or others try to convince us is true.  Gideon couldn’t see anything good in his life or himself, but God saw potential in him to be a leader – potential that didn’t match where Gideon was right then or how he felt about himself.  But here’s the lesson from Gideon: No matter how I feel, what Scripture says about me is true!

As Priscilla Shirer says, “. . . trusting God and walking in His pronouncement of (our) potential is the foundation of spiritual victory.”  Gideon had to believe what God saw in him and not what he saw in himself before he could complete the task that God had chosen him to do, and it’s the same for us.  How many times do we settle for a mediocre Christian walk simply because we can’t believe that God would really choose us or would fully equip us for what He’s called us to?  Believing what God says includes trusting that        “. . . he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion . . .” (Philippians 1:6).  Whether or not we feel that we are making progress in our Christian walk or capable of accomplishing anything worthwhile for the Kingdom, we have to believe that God won’t give up on us and promises to complete the work he started in each of us.  And don’t confuse Christian humility and meekness with unworthiness and low self-esteem.  True humility is not convincing yourself that you are worthless but recognizing God’s work in you and having God’s perspective on who you are.  

Lately, God has been calling me to do some things that are out of my comfort zone.  Can you relate?  I can choose to trust how I feel about myself and those tasks, or I can believe that God’s view of me is different and that he will fully equip me for whatever he is asking me to do.  Which of those perspectives I choose to believe and operate on will make all the difference in what my future walk with God looks like.  Are you ready to join me in allowing God’s thoughts toward us to transform our own thoughts about ourselves and enable us to step out in faith to be used by him?  Gideon had to climb out of his hiding place at the bottom of a winepress and face his enemies (the Midianites) with only 300 soldiers and God’s strength.  What do you and I need to do?  

God's Word Trumps Our Mistakes!

I make a lot of mistakes.  We all do.  Some of my mistakes could just be classified as unwise ways of responding to life, while others are actually sins because they are choices to go against God’s will.  No matter what the source of our mistakes, they all have one thing in common: they are Satan’s playground for assaulting our self-esteem.  He likes nothing better than to use our own mistakes, as well as the actions of other people in our lives, to make us feel unworthy, insignificant, or ordinary.  The result is usually low self-esteem, depression, or both. 

But, as with most areas of our lives, focusing on ourselves or our daily circumstances and trusting God don’t naturally work together.  It is imperative that we look at God’s Word to find out what God’s thoughts toward us are so that we can focus on those thoughts and effectively overcome the enemy’s assaults on our own thoughts.  Romans 12:3 says it this way: “The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him” (MSG). 

When we are inundated with doubt and other negative thoughts about ourselves from Satan and our mistakes, we must choose to believe what God thinks about us and recognize what he has done and is doing on our behalf.  It is important for us to remember what the Bible teaches us about God’s thoughts toward us in order to combat the attacks from the enemy on our self-esteem.  First of all, God created us in his own image (Genesis 1:26-27), so God’s character goes into the creation of every person.  God has bestowed high dignity on humans, and to question our worth is to question God’s work.  God also loves each of us enough to send his Son as a sacrifice to bring us back into relationship with him.  This perfect love also expresses itself in actions like kindness, patience, forgiveness, and the gift of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

I have learned through my own experiences with low self-esteem, guilt, and depression that, whenever we make mistakes and Satan assaults our self-esteem, we have to choose to climb out of our own feelings and base our outlook only on God’s thoughts toward us.  Let’s agree to approach our mistakes in a new way: by telling Satan where to go and backing it up with the truth from God’s Word!