Your Word Is Truth

I grew up in a nominally Christian home. I thought we were a thoroughly Christian family, though, and especially admired my mom’s “faith”. She was committed to good works; she was a hard-working, faithful wife and mother, she read her Bible daily, and prayed constantly. She got to know elderly neighbors and helped them in any way she could. She made baked goods for people we knew and delivered them. She was a model of good works. We rarely went to church. I do remember going, sporadically, throughout my childhood, but only for a time, and then we always stopped for long periods before trying another church. I went to a Christian school in my very early school years, and we were told that Jesus loved us and wanted us to invite Him into our hearts. My teacher prayed with me (I think she prayed FOR me) with my mom present, and I believed that I was going to heaven. I tried hard to be obedient and do good things. I believed what my mom believed…that believing Jesus died for my sin...

Like many people, I tend to make resolutions, or commitments, or goals at the beginning of a new year. But 2017 seemed to sneak up on me unnoticed and pass by without fanfare. Perhaps because there's so much other fanfare going on in my life right now! After two cycles of so-so jobs and unemployment (the former lasting a year), the Lord has graciously provided a wonderful job for hubby, and we have moved, from Houston TX to Arlington TX in the Dallas area, as of December 18th. We barely celebrated Christmas in the midst of all else. We are staying in temporary housing, provided by God's grace and by hubby's new company. We had my in-laws come down from Wyoming and stay nearby for a week and a bit, and now we're trying to start back into a school schedule, while comfortably (and sometimes not so comfortably) squashed in a house 1/3 the size of our home in Houston. And I'm so thankful for it all! We lived in the Dallas area for 10 years before moving to Houston....

If the Lord Jesus--in Person--was sitting across from me this morning, I'd be terrified. GOD. In person. Knowledge of everything I am. How would I behave? Would I attempt to "put on" an appearance of righteousness? Would I try hard to let no ugliness or sin be seen, as when a guest visits our home, or as we all too often do at church? Would I feel compelled to attempt to measure up to His perfection so He would be pleased with me? But this is the action of the Pharisee. What does the Lord desire of me? Open confession of my utter inability. Cease striving and attempting to gain His approval by my efforts--I cannot. He doesn't see as man sees; He sees clearly, fully, brightly, down to my very soul; my thoughts, words unspoken, intentions, motivations. All are laid bare before Him, in all their ugliness, sin, wickedness, deadness. I can't hide it, and to pretend I can or to attempt to is to deny His God-ship and is the height of hypocrisy. All I can do is fall...

I just read a blog post by a mom who decided to get rid of ALL of her childrens' toys. She loved the results...less mess, less fighting, more creativity, more appreciation for experiences, more contentment. Or so it appeared. On one hand, I would LOVE to do that. I would love to get rid of the constant messes. I would love to encourage more creative play and see my children get along better and be more content. I might even be less frustrated and more content. Right?  I'm not convinced that this is the way to go about developing true contentment. From the heart contentment. It seems to me that this would merely serve to hide the real gaping problem of ingratitude under a Band-Aid. First, if my children aren't believers, they will never experience true contentment, no matter how it may appear on the outside. It might last a little while...but their human, sinful hearts will always want something ELSE that they don't already have, wh...

"Experience is the best teacher" is an old saying. We may not hear or see it spoken so much anymore, but our society lives by it. It's the very shaky foundation of the our culture, and really, the world's shifting "morality". It's a very ambiguous statement. For one thing, everyone has different experiences; so if experience is our teacher, everyone will be learning different "lessons". Many people will also perceive the same experience in different ways and glean entirely different perspectives from it. This is an amazingly chaotic way to "learn" life lessons. Compare it to a classroom. What would anyone learn about reality if everyone was told something different? No one would really know anything, yet everyone would consider themselves an expert...because no one else knows what they "know." Secondly, I would like to ask, experience is the best teacher of what? Most of us will take any given experience and, if not guid...

It's cliché, but true--we don't really learn to appreciate many things until they're taken away. It also demonstrates the truth that we are generally an ungrateful bunch, taking God's great blessings for granted as if they ought to be there every day...as if He owes them to us somehow. Of course, unbelievers have no capacity to be truly grateful to God. But in the body of Christ, so many of us, while we may  not be actively complaining (which is a sin...addressed very clearly in this  sermon by my pastor last week--causing much conviction, I might add), we really don't actively give God thanks for His blessings. We live under His daily mercies with the assumption that they will always be there for us. Sun. Rain. Air. Food. Sleep. Family. Clothes. House. Friends. Neighbors. Church. Health. E-mail. Income. Job. Doctors. Transportation. And infinitely more. You should turn from these vain things to a living God,  who made the heaven and the earth and the sea  ...

A year and a half ago, my world seemed securely rooted, established, and flourishing. Our family was settled. We had figured our schooling out and carved out our niche. Our children were growing and had we had finally graduated from diapers and bibs and cribs and endless little mounds of crushed Cheerios, and I had mentally moved myself from the chaotic and unpredictable  "mother of small children" category to the more stable "experienced and involved" category (not personally being able to conceive of belonging to both). We were rather comfortable. We were happy with our school curriculum, our neighborhood, our co-op, our church, and our extra-curricular activities. Yet last summer, I found myself restless, and, if I'm honest, a bit... ...well... ...bored. But that wasn't the worst of it. I felt that I had taken the reins of my life and it was all going the way I liked it. And therein lies a big problem. God ought to be holding the reins, not m...