The Simple Words of a Child

I still haven’t recovered from something my 4-year-old grandson said to us a few weeks ago, and I probably never will.  His totally unsolicited comment at the end of our Skype call melted Grandma and Grandpa’s hearts: “I love you, Grandma and Grandpa – so much!”  Please understand – this is a child who relies on his Dad’s promptings to carry on our weekly electronic call and rarely volunteers information.  He is often more interested in looking at his own image at the top of the screen than talking to us!  So his sweet words are forever embedded in the thoughts and feelings of these long-distance grandparents.

My grandson’s words have prompted me to think about how precious our words of love are to our heavenly Father.  Our daily relationship with an eternal God can sometimes seem very long-distance; and we often spend our talking time with him busily telling him what we want or maybe sometimes remembering to thank him for what he’s done.  We also spend a lot of time looking more at ourselves than at him.  But he longs to hear us tell him that we love him – “so much”!

Not because he sent his Son to die for us; not because he answered our recent prayer the way we wanted him to; not because things are going well in our lives right now; not because of all of our blessings.  While we should be thankful for these things and express our thanks to God regularly, what he has done for us is not the reason we should love him.

We need to be full of love and praise for God just because he is worthy of it, whether or not he ever does anything specific for us.  God’s perfect character deserves all of our love and devotion – and he deserves to hear us express that devotion to him regularly.  While this can take different forms (music, service, time spent in the Word, etc.), perhaps the simplest and most heartfelt is just to simply say, “I love you – so much.”  

God created us in his image and for relationship, and I believe his heart can be melted just like yours and mine.  It may be easier to tell our family and friends that we love them, but no one deserves our words of love more than our heavenly Father.  I am reminded of Jesus’ words in Matthew 18:3: “unless you change and become like little children. you will never enter the kingdom of heaven”.  Thank you, grandson, for reminding me to be more like you.  I love you, too – so much! 

          

Real Faith for Real Life

God never ceases to amaze me.  Unfortunately, neither does the enemy.  Sometimes it is hard to figure out if the difficult things we face in life are the result of the enemy’s work to sidetrack us or God’s work to refine us. 

A week ago, I had just finished speaking at a women’s retreat on the topic of “Real Faith for Real Life”.  I had shared some of my past stories in light of the truth from God’s Word and how God had faithfully guided me through difficult times for my growth and his glory.  I had challenged my listeners to choose to trust God in everyday, practical ways as life happens.  After hearing how God was using his words through me in the lives of those in attendance, it would have been easy to feel accomplished and that I had progressed beyond my past failures and moved on to new ways of growing spiritually.  I don’t remember feeling that way, but either God or the enemy decided to see if I was still going to model truth in the face of adversity.  A new and unexpected life challenge had presented itself in full force.

I’d like to say that I felt no stress and never fought the circumstances for a moment; but, alas, I am human, and there have been moments of unrest in the past week – even though what I’ve been facing is something that I’ve faced before.  I guess it’s safe to say that I don’t like it when parts of my life are out of my control!  But in this past week, I have been reminded of some of the words I spoke to others and some of the passages of Scripture God gave me to share at the retreat.

First of all, God is sovereign.  Nothing that happens to us is a surprise to him, and everything is designed by him to help us become more like his Son (Romans 8:28-29).  I can rest in his sovereignty and trust him because he knew and planned both my current struggle as well as the timing.  And everything is about him, not about me (Romans 11:36).  Responding the right way to life’s struggles begins with a good grasp on this truth.

In the Old Testament, Job was an incredible example for us in responding to God’s sovereignty.  When all of his livestock, servants, and even his children were taken from him on the same day, his response was to fall down on the ground to worship God (Job 1:20-21).  He recognized that nothing that we experience on earth changes who God is and his worthiness to be praised.

The next thing I remembered from my speaking was that God is always faithful.  This is obviously not news, especially to someone who has had a lot of ups and downs in life; but it is always something that we need to be reminded of and continue to focus on.  Focusing on God’s faithfulness instead of our circumstances is the best way to keep the enemy from winning a battle when we are walking through a valley.  Today when I turned my calendar to a new month, the verse was Psalm 31:23: “The Lord preserves the faithful.”  Probably not a coincidence!

Because faith is an ongoing relationship with God and not a one-time event, we will never reach a point where we have “arrived”.  Life’s challenges will always have the potential to unnerve us and provide the opportunity for us to trust God more or in a new way.  That’s just how faith works – it always carries with it an element of the unknown.  But what is always unchanging is God’s character and his love for us.  He can be counted on to always work in every situation to make us more Christlike and to glorify himself – the only One worthy of all praise.  I’m so thankful that I can rest in who he is and lay life’s challenges at Jesus’ feet before God’s throne.

Snowpocalypse Thoughts

The past couple weeks have been interesting here in the Pacific Northwest.  While other parts of the country are accustomed to receiving large amounts of snow every winter season, we are not.  Lots of rain, yes – but many winters come and go with few, if any, snowflakes falling.  So our cities can’t afford to invest in major stockpiles of weather-related equipment and materials to help ease our pain when the white stuff falls; and our many hills and trees around Puget Sound don’t help either. 

A week and a half ago I made a critical error.  After I began my pre-planned, 3-store every-other-week trek to buy groceries and other household supplies, I realized the error I had made – a major snowstorm had been forecast to arrive the following day.  I think I can safely say that EVERY PERSON who lives in my county was present at one or all of the stores I went to that day!  My first clue was when I got to Costco and there were NO carts!  By the time I hit the third store, there was literally not one loaf of bread – of any shape or kind – on the shelves.  This was snow panic at its finest!

After standing in long lines at the checkout and sitting in long lines on the road home, I started thinking about the panic mentality.  Thousands and thousands of people had shown their worst side that day in an effort to make sure they would have no needs (wants?) over the next few days.  I mean – how many loaves of bread does one house need?  (I heard later on the news about someone who a few days later filled their cart with nothing but table salt after the home supply stores had sold out of bagged salt and sand!)

I’m not sure why, but it reminded me of another panic that will take place in the future – when Jesus returns to earth and raptures his church, leaving behind those who have chosen not to place their faith in him.  Matthew 24:36-44 describes a little of what will take place at that time – when two people will be working side by side, and one will suddenly be gone while the other remains.  We used to sing a Larry Norman song at youth group when I was a teen called “I Wish We’d All Been Ready”.  The powerful lyrics reminded us that we all had friends and others around us who needed to hear the good news of salvation before it was too late.

I’m not one to use scare tactics to witness to people.  I think each of our own stories of God’s work in our lives is much more effective as a witness than the methods used by fire-and-brimstone preachers of the past.  But the question for each of us is this: are we consistently telling those around us – especially those who don’t know God yet – the story of what God has done for us and what he has done for them?  Admittedly, I’m much better at telling my stories to fellow Christians than to the non-Christians around me.

But those people we all know, who still need a restored relationship with the God who created them, will be part of the end-time panic when we are no longer here to be a witness.  Only God can save a soul, but he has chosen to use us to present his message to a dying world.  I have been newly convicted to do a better job of showing those around me why I love God and why their relationship with him is more important than anything else.  I don’t have to be a great evangelist to be a good witness regarding God’s work in my own life.