Strength Will Rise ...

First off, I want to thank the Lord for meeting with me today in a very real, tangible way. I thank You, Father, for the little glimpses we get of You here on earth. Thank You for increasing my faith.

To be honest, I didn't feel like reading the Word this morning -- ever have those days? It's been a trying season. Lately it seems as though every time I step into deeper waters with God, drawing nearer to His heart, asking for His Spirit, pouring myself out in ministry and encouraging/serving others, I get hit that much harder with spiritual attack. Even last night I wrestled with wave after wave of doubt, fear, and depression and cried out, God, I just can't do this anymore. My family has been going through a lot of lately. But this morning, His Spirit was pressing me to open up His Word yet again.

He brought me to Psalms. God, I've read these before, I told him, expecting to change His mind or something. *face-palm* But He led me to a psalm I don't think I had delved deeply into before.

By the beginning of Psalm 31, I was hooked:

In You, O Lord, I put my trust; let me never be ashamed; deliver me in Your righteousness. Bow down Your ear to hear me, deliver me speedily; be my rock of refuge, a fortress of defense to save me ...

I read on and on, the Spirit refreshing me with the simple yet timeless truth that God is still my strength -- cuz right now, I feel as though I have none. Not only that, He is my defender. My mom and I have both had our share of injustices done toward us and people we love, so it is indeed comforting to know that God is a God of justice who comes to the defense of His children. Here is yet another beautiful reminder:

For You have considered my trouble; You have known my soul in adversities ...

Here I had felt as though I had dropped off of God's radar. But here, the psalmist confesses that God knows exactly what we're going through. He knows my soul in the hard times. He sees the tears we cry. He knows and understands when our souls cry out, God, I just can't take this anymore -- it's too hard. But who better to know us than the Lord Himself? I mean, really? Where else could we go?

The final verse hit me the hardest:

Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart, all you who hope in the Lord.

If I can be honest, I had given up in this area. Courage is a choice -- and I have felt as though I have not made the choice to fight or be courageous. Nor had I really had a solid hope that the Lord would come through in certain situations. But here is a promise, that if I indeed take courage, and hope in my Lord again with all the faith I can muster, He will strengthen my heart.

God must have anointed me with faith again, because I started to pray that I would indeed take this promise to heart as I went throughout the day. In fact, I wanted to write that verse down on my hand so that I wouldn't forget it!

But I turned out that I didn't have to. At work today, I was operating the register at the drive-thru window, getting lost in the chaos of cars and cash, when a smiling man drove up in his little beat-up Honda. I knew I had seen that smile before. When I handed him his change, I knew I had even felt those shaky hands before. It was when he pulled out some brightly colored cards and said, "Pick one!" that I remembered -- He was the guy who had come through my workplace before and handed us workers his scripture cards. So I picked one, the green one. My friend working with me also picked one. After I said a smiling goodbye to the man and he drove off, I looked at the scripture on the card I just picked. Wouldn't you know it, this was the verse he handed me:

Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord. -- Psalm 31:24, KJV

All I seemed to hear was God saying, "Noelle, I'm right here. I've never left you. I am right here with you. And if you continue to hope in me, dearest one, I WILL strengthen your heart." And He did.

You see, tomorrow is my last day at this job that I have been in for more than two years: definitely bittersweet. I had this hunch that God was indeed calling me to quit -- I say hunch because I am still plagued with a sense of doubt that it was the right decision! Especially when I consider all the people -- coworkers and customers -- that I am leaving behind. And considering that God would call me out without giving me another job to lean on. The world would shout at me, Are you crazy? Quitting before you know what you're doing afterwards? That's stupid! And to be honest, I still feel a little stupid about it. But God has been doing a lot through my resignation. He's already been doing a lot through my boss. And in that beautiful little affirmation through that little green scripture card given by that smiling man, God has given me some insane peace that it's all going to work out. So I am going to hope in the Lord. 

After church tonight, as another sweet affirmation from God, we sang these well-known (yet no less encouraging!) lyrics in the closing song:

You are the everlasting God ...

You're the defender of the weak 

You comfort those in need

You lift us up on wings like eagles ...   

Fully believing and trusting God's promises is not always easy, especially when we go through times when things just aren't working out the way we think they should, or at least what seems logical or reasonable to us. But I am slowly learning that God is not inside our box--He is the uncreated One who is completely beyond us. If He is that much more above us, how much more worthy is He of our complete trust? Who else could we ever trust? Who else could we possibly turn to? He is the only One. My problems and struggles are far from being resolved, but if I truly believe that He is ALL I need--my defender, my strength, my hope now and always--then I can do all things through Him who gives me strength. And I will be soaring like an eagle.   

Identity

From King's Cross by Timothy Keller

Jesus is saying, "It's not enough just to know me as a teacher or as an abstract principle; you have to look at my life. I went to the cross--and on the cross I lost my identity so you can have one.

Once you see the Son of God loving you like that, once you are moved by that viscerally and existentially, you begin to get a strength, an assurance, a sense of your own value and distinctiveness that is not based on what you're doing or whether somebody loves you, whether you've lost weight or how much money you've got. You're free--the old approach to identity is gone. Nobody put this better than C. S. Lewis in the last two pages of his Mere Christianity, where he comments on Jesus' call to lose yourself to find yourself:

The more we get what we now call "ourselves" out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become ... our real selves are all waiting for us in him ... The more I resist Him and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surrounding and natural desires. In fact what I so proudly call "Myself" becomes merely the meeting-place for trains of events which I never started and I cannot stop. What I call "My wishes" become merely the desires thrown up by my physical organism or pumped into me by other men's thoughts ... It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His personality, that I finally begin to have a real personality all of my own ... [Nevertheless], you must not go to Christ for the sake of [a new self]. As long as your own personalitty is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all.

If you go to Jesus to get a new personality, Lewis says, you still haven't really gone to Jesus. Your real self will not come out as long as you are looking for it; it will only emerge when you're looking for him.

 

***

"Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it."  -- Mark 8:34-35

Rest Oration

This is skin.
This is the beginning of vulnerable.
Healing—
the sting of cleansing,
the burn of antiseptic.

Refinement is fire
And blood, purification

To rest before You

is to arrive
naked
of my sorrows,
my stresses,
my fear.
Comfort
is only found
in weakness.

If brokenness

is peace,
I throw my mirrors
upon the temple floor
and kneel
into the shards, 
bleeding
before Your mercy seat.

Revive me

with incense,
Melchizedek—
Or I’ll only go back
into the black.

Yet, lead me into darkness

so I can see the Light

And there, I’ll find my rest

Like an Unforseen Kiss

Intimacy. An idea I have struggled with lately. Actually, most of my life, come to think of it. I'm only being honest. It frightens me. Especially when I consider that the Almighty, Omniscient God of the heavens desires intimacy with me.

I don't know if anyone else is disturbed by this idea. But sometimes when I take a good, long look at everything inside, when I scrutinize my humanity, I gawk at the idea of anyone desiring an intimately close connection with this frail human being. Then I realize that Jesus died for such an opportunity. And it is nothing at all to be afraid of.

Yes, God, is combining my circumstances together to resound into a cry, a longing, a desperate burning for the intimacy He has created me to experience.

One night before I went to bed, exhausted from what has felt like running around like a mindless machine, I wanted to see a glimpse of God. I prayed, Jesus, can I please see You again? Can You just remind me who You are? And He lovingly gave me this passage: Luke 7:36-50.

My heart cannot possibly spill out the precious gemstones I collected from this passage. All I can say is, I saw Jesus.  

I saw the woman, this woman with a past: alone, desperate, and in a complete understanding of all this Man was for her. She recognized her need, her inner, desperate need for Someone to save her. And she had faith that He actually could save her. And that faith, that precious faith that perfectly understood who Jesus Christ was, why He came, what He could do for her, caused her to weep at His feet in what I believe is the most poignant picture of worship in the entire Bible. I truly wished I was that woman.

Yet who had I become? I found more similarities in the Pharisee, Simon, than I did in this humble, lowly woman. Simon had become so comfortable in religion. His sacred traditions had become his god. He had relied upon his own goodness to save him for so long that when the Savior walked into his house, he did not recognize Him as such. In his pride, he had no need for Him--for a Savior.

For years, I have realized in conviction how jaded I have become with religion: acts of duty and not of love. How easy it is to know doctrine, to memorize Scriptures and be consumed by them -- and yet be so blinded by such that it becomes difficult to see the face of Jesus Himself. I recalled the earlier years of my life, so focused on being a picture-perfect Christian that I had come to a place of reliance upon religion. Through religious ceremonies, I thought I was saving my own self. What a tiring, lonely road.

Yet I am touched that Jesus did not lash out at Simon. Nor did He lash out at the woman of sin. Rather, He gave them a glimpse of God, a God radically different than any Jew of the day had known before--a God who recklessly loves and graciously forgives all sinners, all the poor and powerless.


This week marks my church's two-year anniversary. In celebration of God's faithfulness and goodness, we looked back at how the church started as a Bible study among friends to become a larger body of believers all gathered under the roof of a local movie theater. And what a body it is. What testimonies all of these people have! I have heard with my own ears the glorious testimonies of dear friends who have been delivered from various addictions, pains, struggles, and sins. And yet I look into their eyes to see the freeing Spirit of Christ shining through them. Hallelujah! Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty! These friends of mine had each come to a point in their lives where they recognized their inescapable need for Someone to rescue them -- and they found their salvation in Jesus Christ Himself.

I praise God for the work in their lives. And each week, I see them come in to serve. They wash the feet of Jesus with their tears, pour out a sweet fragrance before Him as they minister, and kneel in utter gratitude at the miraculous work He has done for them. They know the definition of adoration, for they who have been forgiven much love much (Luke 7:47).

And so I ask myself the question: will I walk in the pride of religious practice, building a protective barrier around my heart impenetrable to God's amazing grace? Or do I have the guts to humble myself, realize how broken I am, and realize that grace alone saves me and not the confines of religious ritual I have followed for so long?

How much sweeter to feel the gentle touch of the Lord's deep healing? How much more freeing to experience His radical grace and forgiveness? How much more rewarding to possess so great a faith to believe--to clasp tightly to my chest--that Jesus loves me? Heaven meets earth like an unforseen kiss. Am I afraid of that kind of intimacy? Or can I just let go and let love come crashing in?

I have come to understand that my inbred desire is to be like this God, to live the words of Isaiah 61 by the Spirit who lives in me, to be like the beautiful Jesus described in the lyrics of this song:

You are the God of the broken
Friend of the weak
You wash the feet of the weary
Embrace the ones in need
I want to be like You, Jesus, to have this heart in me
You are the God of the humble
You are the humble king

Oh, that I can live out Christ's undying love to others by adopting His Spirit, that I can be a vessel of healing, as He has healed my friends of so much, that I can reach out to those hurting as He so desires to do. He says blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn and are broken (Matthew 5:3-10), those contrite (or literally lame and weak!) in spirit (Isaiah 66:2). And that I might behold that glorious, awe-filled day when we may all, equally, rejoice and worship before the throne together.

Oh, that I can weep uncontrollably at the incredible reality of all the God-man has done for me. That I might experience true intimacy. That heaven might meet earth in that incomprehensible, radical, passionate, unutterable unforseen kiss.

Dissolution

The call to die

resounds alarmingly within my heart—
But how can I walk the land of the living
as one dead?
How can the heavenly ghost endure
the casual comings and goings
of the common man?

With one foot, I run to You

With the other, I run away
I come so close,
tip-toeing along the brink of the edge
where I know I must plunge head-first
into the crevasse—
One does not merely trip onto the altar

He holds the dagger above His holy, all-knowing head

I welcome the sting of the blade,
the cutting of the self,
the purging of this spotted heart—
and yet,
when the edge becomes immediate,
I flinch—
I flee,
crying, Father of Abraham,
Why me?

 

Why must I be given
the gift
of intimacy?

A Closer Heaven

Within a few brief days, a number of pretty intense incidents have sent my emotions reeling into quite a roller coaster.
 
I have watched my grandmother's terminal illness take another turn for the worse. And I'm scared.
 
My great-aunt is dying of cancer. Hopefully she'll make it through another couple of weeks.
 
My neighbor across the street fainted in her kitchen, banged her neck on the counter, and was paralyzed from the neck down.
 
A friend and coworker of my father, who had been a quadripalegic all his life, was quite suddenly taken to be with the Lord.
 
As my brother is barely weeks into his new job, he has seen three of his coworkers hospitalized with urgent maladies.
 
All of these events, one on top of another, have left me exhausted, trembling, and confused. But I have to tell you that all of the above certainly brought me to my knees -- they went crashing to the floor.

I thought I could come up with some kind of neat summation, some lesson learned, something I could wrap up in a blog post and put a nice, pretty, spiritual bow on it. But somehow, I can't bring myself to do that.

What I will say is, heaven seems a whole lot closer now than it ever has been before.

I love the way Max Lucado puts it -- a "Goodbye" on earth is in reality a "See you tomorrow" for the Christian. That brought me so much peace. I remembered the face of my dad's friend and realized he has a new body now, one that's completely whole. He has gone to his heavenly home and is waiting for us.

I really don't want to think of the day my grandma will pass -- though there are some days admittedly where I just can't stand to see her go through anymore pain or discomfort and wish God would take her soon. Then I realize that she too, along with my great-aunt soon, will pave the way for me, to heaven. They'll be waiting for us.

For those who have experienced death before of an immediate friend or family member, it really does bring the reality of heaven so much closer, doesn't it? It almost gives me a giddy feeling inside to picture those whom I love, those who are sick, with entirely new bodies, ones that can withstand the immense glory of God. And I remember what heaven is really all about -- seeing God.

Lately, I had not had the courage to even look God in the face. I so easily become caught up in self-condemnation and shame. Yet the closer I draw near to His cross, the brutal cross which I could never entirely stomach before, the more He is giving me the boldness to look directly into His piercing eyes. That is heaven. Looking into the face of God. The overwhelming reality, the overpowering feeling of "now" in which we are forever caught in His embrace.

I guess what I'm really trying to say is that we are closer to heaven than we think. It is literally just around the corner. Heaven is just another word for the place where God dwells. It is not some magical place on a cloud in the sky. It's right next to you. God is right next to you. You can't see Him face to face now. But you will.

Do you know Him well enough? If you were called home or raptured today, would you have gone on enough coffee dates with Him, read enough of His sweet love letters, experienced the joy of His Spirit to really know Him? Because heaven, eternal life, is one big reality of Him. God the Father. God the Son. God the Spirit.
 
Are you ready to meet Him?






I hope this was encouraging in some way. And if you could, Reader, please pray for the people mentioned above. For me, even. For my family. Praise God, my neighbor was able to itch her nose and move her upper torso, but please pray for complete healing. I'll hopefully post praise reports as they come.

Poured Out

Per request of my good friend who could not make it to study tonight, I scribbled a few notes from my church’s midweek service, in Philippians 2. Being such an admirer of metaphors, and since it coincidentally has much to do with the title of my blog (We are all vessels in the hands of the Master Potter, my pastor said), I copied this metaphor down for being so poignant.

  

In Philippians 2:17, after Paul encourages the Philippians to do all things without complaining or making excuses so that we can shine as lights amongst our generation (v. 14-15), he says that as he is being poured out like a drink offering, he is rejoicing. "Poured out like a drink offering." I confess, I didn't know what that meant until my pastor came up with an illustration for his interpretation.

Imagine I’m holding a ceramic mug in my hands (since I am oh so fond of ceramic mugs). Now, you can’t see what’s in the mug. It could be water. It could be cranberry juice. It could be coffee (and if you know me, it probably would be). But you cannot see its contents from the way I am holding it.

But say my friend, maybe the one who asked me for the notes from study, comes up from behind and bumps into me (accidentally, of course). Well, you can imagine what would happen. All of a sudden, the contents of my mug would come spilling out. And if it really was coffee that I was storing inside of the mug, well, you would see a flood of coffee-colored liquid pouring out. (Try not to think about the carpet.)

The question is, should your friend knock you over, what would be inside your mug?

Things in life are going to bug us, drive us crazy, depress us, trouble us. Circumstances beyond our control will take us for a spin. They will “disturb the mug,” if you will. What comes pouring out is entirely up to you.

My pastor gave this example. Say you are driving on the freeway, going a casual speed, and someone cuts you off, slams on their brakes in front of you, gives you the, well, finger, and screeches off in a puff of smoke. Your reaction will be one of two things, depending on what is already in your mug.

A. If you have been filling your mug throughout the day with the world, with complaining thoughts, excuses, and selfish desires, your reaction is going to be one of anger, naturally. You might lash back and cut him off in that anger. The thing is, since you were storing up all of that anger throughout the day, it only makes sense that when something irksome happens, that’s what would come pouring out. All that anger was already in your mug. It just took someone to cut you off on the freeway for it to manifest itself.

Or …

B. If you have been soaking in God’s Word, meditating on Him, thoughts tuned in toward prayer and worship, when that person cuts you off, sure, it’s only human to have a reaction of surprise or alarm—even frustration. But then you can return back to a state of peace, because that peace of mind was already in your mug. You might even say a prayer for that person as he zooms off. Nothing can phase you because you have been filling your mug with Jesus all day.

So what is in your coffee mug? What will come spilling out when life gets tough?

Paul said that he was being poured out as a drink offering as he was in prison. In that position, he had every right to be depressed or angry. But he had been filling the mug of his life with God’s Spirit, and because of that, he was able to pen the “epistle of joy”—the letter to the Philippians—as a result of his consistent communion with Christ his Savior. A drink offering is also symbolic of "the joy of completion." It symbolizes the completed work of Christ in what He did on the cross. David, in the book of II Samuel, poured out a precious drink of water that his men risked their lives for by crossing enemy lines to get it for him. Yet as thirsty as he was, he poured it all out, that water. Paul's life was filled with that holy water, that work of Christ, that sacrifice that Jesus Himself was made out of, was filled with.

Convicting, I know. But we all have the opportunity to be poured out as a drink offering. People are watching us, whether we like it or not. Some will bump into us on purpose just to see what will come spilling out. So before life hits you from behind, before times get crazy and you are knocked over by happenstance, what are you filling your little mug with? And are you willing to be poured out so others can see the joy that is in you and glorify God?

Sometimes, God Himself will nudge you just to show you yourself what you’re made of, or, what you're filled with. What will you find? He already knows.