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Dutch is neck deep in Frank Peretti. He discovered a stack of his books in our church library, and has barely come for air in the last 8 days. It’s made for some great conversations about prayer and the spiritual realm. It got me thinking about a few things this weekend.

It also came on the heels of a recent study we did on prayer, for our women’s Bibles study. It was fascinating and inspiring, and we spend quite a bit of time on 1 Timothy 2. You are probably familiar with this bit:

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.

v. 1-2

Yes! So good. Especially for our day and age, this is an excellent passage to meditate on and keep front and center.

But there’s a bit more that’s also applicable.

A few verses later Paul writes:

I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling.

v. 8

When talking about prayer, why would Paul toss in a bit about anger and quarreling?

Let’s just say, hypothetically, that one Christian leader called people to pray for something, according to Scripture. And then another Christian leader also prayed over this, according to Scripture. And then a whole bunch of other people decided that they didn’t like how one of them prayed, or how the other one prayed, and so they take sides about which side they should really pray like. Next thing we know we aren’t actually praying at all, we’re quarreling about whose side we’re on and whose prayer is better.

In the meantime, God was actually doing something beautiful in response to both men’s prayers, and millions of others who are actually on their knees lifting up holy hands in imperfect prayer, fumbling their way through, uncertain if they’re doing it right but wanting to seek God even if they aren’t doing it perfectly.

Father, thank you for the privilege we have of relating with You in prayer, and even of impacting the course of history through prayer. It is an enormous privilege that we certainly don’t deserve, but we thank you for it. Please help us to simply pray without getting distracted, defensive, or discouraged. We love you so much. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

You know you’re going to an unusual movie when you’re sitting in a fairly full theater and not a single person has food. No munching on popcorn, no slurping sodas. My own cupholder held kleenex. I’d been forewarned that I’d need them.

Last night, my friends and I went to see Unplanned. I wanted to briefly share my experience with you.

I struggled with the decision on whether or not to go. I am pro-life. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting in the lobby of our local Pregnancy Resource Center (then called Crisis Pregnancy Center) putting stickers on notebook pages, looking at the brochures with pictures of tiny, perfectly formed babies on the front. My mom’s coat lapel always had her tiny-feet pin attached. At all times the reminder of this oft-forgotten segment of life. I have wonderful memories of my mom’s involvement–her gentle, kind, caring ways as she interacted with women in crisis.

So why was I hesitant to see the movie? Only because I wasn’t sure the spirit in which it’d be presented. I’ve become convinced that God’s kingdom isn’t accomplished through anger. The Kingdom doesn’t come through arguments on Facebook, and I want to avoid anything that incites anger in me toward others. I know where I stand on this issue, so I didn’t necessarily need a movie to convince me of something I already knew.

But. I also know that my own heart drifts into indifference with alarming frequency. I need to consistently put in front of my face the reality of this world and ask God to please, again, break my heart for the things that break His. I could honestly see both sides–so I wasn’t sure.

I prayed over it for a couple days, then when I really needed to make a decision I went for a prayer walk and asked God. I’m not saying, “Thus saith the Lord,” but what came to mind was Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

As you probably know, Stowe was a faithful follower of Jesus. Her heart was broken over the reality of slavery and the horrific mistreatment of African-Americans in America in the mid 1800s. She was a writer, a novelist, so she figured the way she could help was by writing a story–a novel that told the truth about the situation at hand.

Little did she know that her little book would change the course of history. In just the first three months after publication it sold 300,000 copies (that’d be like 3 million today!). They couldn’t print copies fast enough.

Abraham Lincoln famously said to her, speaking of the Civil War,

“So you’re the little lady who made this big war.”

I read Uncle Tom’s Cabin several years ago and it completely wrecked me. There were times I felt so convicted I had to put the book down and wait a few days to continue. It made me squirm, weep, repent, and pray. It inspired me and gave me a glimpse into the reality of the slavery-era like nothing I’d read before.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin was so effective because it re-humanized a population that had been dehumanized. That can’t be done by facts and figures, or by arguments over Bible verses. It took art, it took the telling of a story, to radically re-paint African-Americans as what they actually are–precious people made in the image of God. And, it promoted HOPE, forgiveness, the gospel of Jesus Christ, of sacrificial love.

Stowe also shows masterful brilliance in portraying the complexities at work. The lines between good and bad are squiggly and often blurry. She refused to paint all slave-holders as evil and all abolitionists as saints. She lets her readers sit with a great deal of ambiguity and discomfort and conviction. I cannot recommend this novel highly enough.

So this came to mind when I considered seeing Unplanned.

Plus, I read scores of reviews that convinced me the move was done in a spirit of love and humility, with a spirit of redemption and HOPE. Hope is the key word. I could get behind that.

I’m SO GLAD WE WENT. I cannot recommend it highly enough. I will say, I wouldn’t take my kids. Not because of anything inappropriate, but simply because it’s true and the level of intensity is beyond anything I’ve experienced in a movie theater.

I’d simply say: Please go. See for yourself. Yes, it is hard to watch, but it re–humanizes a segment of our population that’s been dehumanized. It helps us understand the real struggle, it fills us with COMPASSION for those women who are faced with this heart-wrenching decision. It condemns the violence and hatred that have surrounded some pro-life movements. It exalts redemption, hope, forgiveness, love. It will re-inspire you to PRAY.

Hopefully I’ll have a chance to share more reflections on the movie, but for now, I invite you to go. It’s only showing now through Thursday night. Thanks so much for considering.

It was the conversation I never dreamed we’d have:

“I don’t think we’re doing enough. School has gotten really easy.”

“Yeah, you said we’d be doing more this year, but we aren’t. Can’t we learn some more things?”

It was the kind of complaining that’s music to a mama’s ears. Both kids lamenting that they’re not learning enough? Both kids actually asking to do more school? 

After I picked myself up off the floor, I asked some clarifying questions, to understand what exactly they were wanting. At twelve and ten-years-old, they are mostly independent in their studies, and over the past couple years I’ve slowly decluttered our curriculum, simmering it down to the basic essentials.

I saw so much good coming from having more space, I was hesitant to add anything back in.

But now they were begging me for more. Wasn’t this exactly what I’d hoped for? Wasn’t this the whole point? Don’t they say that cultivating (or recovering) a love of learning was the whole point of these middle-years?

This was it. My confirmation that a love of learning was growing, and that now, now that they were asking for it, I could effectively add more work into their days.

I sat down with paper and asked them each in turn:

Ok, you’re already doing the basics, so what subjects would you like to add? What do you want to learn?

Read the rest over at Simple Homeschool. Thanks!

“Accept people.”

That was the last of 4 specific “marching orders” that God seemed to be giving me for the month of January. As I mentioned before, a couple dozen ladies from my church family rallied together to do a group fast, each of us abstaining from or focusing on certain things. I didn’t fast food, but instead felt called to focus my attention on issues of the heart the Father was addressing.

To be honest, I was a bit flummoxed by this “accept people” directive. The others were obvious things—get up early and pray, that sort of thing. What do you mean Accept people? Don’t I already accept people? Who don’t I accept? What does that even mean? Well, I figured even if I didn’t understand it I better say Yes, Sir! and start marching and He’d show me more in time.

And He did. Shortly after the fast began, I was reading through the Sermon on the Mount and was struck afresh by,

Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.

Matthew 7:1-2

It goes on to talk about specks, logs, we are mostly familiar with that part. But then right after, in the same breath, Jesus says,

Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.

v. 6

And then:

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits…

v.15-16

Ok, wow. That sounds a whole lot like judging. I mean, How do I discern who is a dog unless I make a judgment? How do I figure out who false prophets are unless I do some evaluation of fruit? All that discerning evaluating sure sounds a lot like judging. 

Right? But here’s the thing:

Discerning Heart vs. Critical Spirit

As I prayed through this what surfaced was that the bottom line is attitude. A critical spirit is an attitude that is eager to find fault. It is not so interested helping other people flourish but in being right. It kind of feels good to find fault. There’s a little tinge of pleasure when someone “shows their true colors” and messes up.

This can be so subtle. When someone makes a poor choice, for instance, and I know deep down it’s a poor choice, then when that choice bears bad fruit there can be a subtle (inward, secret, silent!) “See, I told you so!” in my heart, which is that critical spirit. No one has to see it in order for it to be sin.

“Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.”

1 Corinthians 13:6

We should never feel a tinge of self-satisfying smug “rejoicing” when someone does wrong, or when something surfaces. Even if we “saw it coming,” if there is any part of us that “rejoices at wrongdoing” then we are have not love, we have a critical spirit (and, most likely, a huge log hanging out of our eye!).

So I sat with God and my journal and asked God to show me some ways that this crops up in my life. He showed me some. I repented. It was so good.

Right after that I walked into the kitchen and Heidi had left her coat on the floor. Even though I wasn’t angry or upset, I said, “Heidi I don’t know why you always leave your jacket on the floor.” And immediately the Holy Spirit said, “THAT.” Those words were spoken from a critical spirit. Yes, Heidi needs to learn not to throw her jacket on the ground, but my words were cutting and critical, instead of life-giving and instructive. It just took that one word from God to show me the difference.

While God showed me plenty of ways I do this in my own life, of course it’s way easier for me to see it in others (ha!). As I watched certain people in the audience at the State Of The Union address, it was obvious, They don’t want our the current administration to succeed. Everything about their body language oozed arrogance and disgust. If our president fell into terrible misfortune, I have a feeling they’d be rejoicing.

That is so incredibly sad. And it’s sad that that sort of filth is in MY OWN heart too. Who in this world drives me crazy? Would I be secretly happy if Rachel Hollis fell flat on her face? No use lying, Jesus sees the heart! Friends, this isn’t for “those people” out there: WE need this truth. 

And here’s the thing:

As long as we harbor a critical spirit we can’t house a discerning heart.

There’s only room for one. And during these dark days we desperately need a discerning heart. We need be able to spot RAVENOUS WOLVES. We need to eye those pigs so we don’t waste our pearls.

In ever-increasing measure, we must be discerning people. But discerning people don’t rejoicing over wrong-doing. If I have a vineyard and I go out to inspect the fruit, I don’t inwardly gloat and rejoice and get smug when I find a bad vine. I don’t go, “Aha! I KNEW IT!” When I see some rotten grapes.

There’s a name for this: Schadenfreude. It’s a German word meaning, Malicious rejoicing. It’s being secretly happen when misfortune happens to another. And ultimately, that’s what a critical spirit is. It’s taking just the tiniest amount of joy in finding fault in another.

Who knew that all this was wrapped up in the little words, “Accept people.” But there you have it. Let’s be people who are discerning, wise, careful, skillful in eyeing ravenous wolves and dogs and enemies of the truth. But let us never stoop so low as to rejoice in evil. Let us grieve over other’s sin, not get self-righteous.

Amen? Amen.

Thanks for reading. 

Are you free from the Tyrant? At least a little bit? Now that you’re freed FROM something you’re freed FOR something. Ready? Now that you’re freed from slavery to your emotions, you’re free to enter fully into others’.

Say what?! I thought I was just freed from my emotions so I could be happier. So I could hold my head up high and soar on the wings of awesomeness. Isn’t that the point of spiritual victory?

No. The point is freedom FOR the sake of others.

Please understand, I believe we are called to be freed from having to obey our emotions, not so that we can be aloof, unfeeling, untouched by the sorrows of the world. The point isn’t complete detachment, it’s freedom. It’s freedom to set my feelings aside so that I can enter in more fully to the needs of others.

Here’s the thing: My last post? If inwardly I’m thinking, “Oh you know who REALLY needs to read this??” Then I’ve missed the point. Sure, we may mentally identify those who are in bondage to emotions, but if we’re super eager for them to “just get over it” we aren’t actually following Jesus at all.

Jesus wept. (John 11:35)

We just studied this passage in Bible study. We considered it. The shortest verse in the Bible contains a wealth of wisdom for us. Why would Jesus weep? Didn’t He know that He didn’t have to be ruled by His emotions? Was He a slave to the Tyrant? Had He forgotten how wonderful heaven is? Didn’t He know that we should REJOICE when Christians die? Furthermore, didn’t He know that He was about to raise Lazarus from the dead?

Of course He wasn’t a slave to the Tyrant. Of course He knows how great heaven is. Of course He knew He’d resurrect Lazarus in a moment. Of course.

Jesus wept because Jesus cared.

Jesus, the most emotionally-healthy person who ever walked the planet, wept.

He didn’t weep because He was a slave to His emotions, He wept because He wasn’t.

When we are freed slavery to ours, we can freely enter into theirs.

Here’s what I mean: If I pursue emotional freedom in order to avoid pain, I have missed the point. Escaping pain was never Jesus’ plan. Jesus actually chose pain. He chose to enter into the messes of this world. He BORE the brokenness and sorrow and agony of this busted up world. His emotional freedom gave him the capacity to weep with others.

He was free to truly love.

If we exasperated with others’ emotional challenges, we don’t need to tell them off, we need more love. We need patience. We need long-suffering. Yes, we might need to speak some hard truths, that most definitely does happen. But that truth must be born from love, not exasperation.

Jesus didn’t rail at Mary and Martha, “Come on, you emotional women! Get a grip! Move on. Don’t you know how great heaven is? It’s all good when people die, it’s just a promotion, right?” Jesus didn’t say any of the idiotic things that people insensitively say in the face of others’ grief.

He wept.

And then He brought resurrection.

He was able to help because He first felt.

Before He was a Savior, He was a Friend.

Personally, that’s a word for me. Recently I swooped into a situation as a savior, before being a friend. I’m learning.

Will you learn with me? Will you choose to be free FROM slavery to emotions, and FOR the purpose of loving, caring, and serving those around you? We’ll probably make a few messes along the way, but let’s not give up. Let’s look to Jesus, again and again and again, and pursue emotional health so that we can reach out to the world with His compassionate love.

{Thanks for reading.}

Just imagine: Every single day, as soon as you wake up, the Tyrant comes into your room and starts bossing you around. He insists you immediately go his way, no questions asked. All day long, you are tossed back and forth by his every-changing demands. One minute, he insists on this. The next, it’s something else. It’s exhausting, never knowing what is next, as you bow before his tyranny day after day. Others can’t expect much of you, because you are constantly busy obeying the Tyrant. In fact, everything else and everyone else have to take a back seat to the Tyrant’s ever-changing will. It’s a full-time job to say the least. Actually, it’s more like slavery.

This sounds absurd, but sadly this is the reality, one one level or another, when we believe we have to live by our emotions. 

In our culture, where we’ve rejected absolute truth, oddly enough our feelings are the one non-negotiable we treat as absolutes. Paul Miller writes,

“Modern psychology immobilizes us… Emotional states are sacred. If I’m grumpy, I have a right to feel that way and to express my feelings. Everyone around me simply has to get over it. One of the worst sins, according to pop psychology, is to suppress your emotions.” 

For the month of January, two dozen ladies from my church family did a fast together. We all fasted various things, including fasting from fasting (ha!). It looked different for each of us, but one constant was that we each had marching orders from God: What He wanted us to abstain from, engage in, focus on, or give ourselves to. We had an ongoing email thread throughout the month to share the things God was doing and showing us. It was SO COOL because everyone had different experiences, but there were some common threads throughout. 

At the risk of sounding dramatic, in some ways I feel like I “got saved” all over again. There were some significant shifts in my understanding of the gospel that have creoriented my perspective. I’m still unpacking it all, but I hope to share bits and pieces here as I’m able. 

But one of them was this: You don’t have to obey your emotions. They are legitimate. But they aren’t absolute. They are part of my fallen nature that is being redeemed by Christ.

Christ is Lord, not my feelings.

His Word is truth, not how I feel.

In just one week, God allowed me to see several different situations where I had feelings about something, only later to discover the truth, and realize that my feelings had been completely mis-informed. Similarly, day by day He keeps reminding me that I don’t have to live out of how I feel. If I’ve been up all night with a baby, and my body is tired, that’s fine, but I don’t have to therefore live out of grumpiness. I don’t have to let that fatigue define me. If I’m irritated with my family, I don’t have to sulk or sigh or give them the silent treatment or whatever. 

I can tell my emotions to please be quiet because I’m going to go ahead and be like Jesus who came not to be served but to serve and give His life for the sake of others. 

Do you see it? Jesus! Jesus is our example, not this world that tells you to look out for yourself and “be true to yourself” by indulging in every emotion that comes your way. That’s just slavery. It’s bondage to the Tyrant of feelings, and as long as we shackle ourselves to our senses, we’ll never be free. 

I can feel hurt, feel neglected, feel rejected, feel angry, feel agitated, feel forgotten, but I do not have to obey that Tyrant of feelings. I can choose Christ. I can choose love. I can choose forgiveness. I can choose to die to myself and take up my cross and love people who don’t deserve it because Christ did that for me when I most certainly did not deserve it. 

Freedom, friends. Freedom. 

Go, be free. 

{Thanks for reading.}

This week I had the joy of curling up on the couch across from a dear friend, steaming cups of tea in hands, and a sweet squishy baby between us. It’d been a long time, and it was pure joy to hear her story. In person. Face to face. It’s so much better than liking a picture or even reading a post. The sharing of our lives and stories, in person, renews my soul like nothing else. God is such a creative, relentless pursuer of hearts. He’s always on the move. Everything He touches is changed. He makes all things new.

One of the things we talked about, as it related to both of our lives, was the supernatural power of Sabbath. We have both observed a prescribed, prolonged period of rest from previous ways of life, and the result has been healing, wholeness, peace, renewal, vision, focus.

In a word, Revival. 

I was so grateful to take 2018 completely off from speaking. I also stepped away from writing, and my other formal leadership roles. I had the joy of just simply being.

Of course, God knew the timing would be perfect. This year brought relational demands that would require my whole heart, mind, and attention. I was so grateful to have the bandwidth to devote my heart to those I love so deeply. This year also brought a baby…a pretty big time commitment. 🙂 It also happened to be the start of the seventh year of our Renew Church adventure, so the timing seemed significant.

Over the years, I’ve reflected on the idea of Sabbath in various ways. It remains interesting to me that this is the one commandment we seem to completely disregard. In the famous Isaiah 58 passage, we constantly quote the part of about loosing the chains of injustice, but never follow the passage all the way to the equally strong exhortation regarding honoring of the Sabbath. 

In the New Testament, Jesus rebukes people because they had completely missed the point of Sabbath. Similarly, I’ve often heard that Sabbath is simply “doing whatever makes you happy or brings you joy” and yet God clearly says that honoring it is “not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words.” It feels offensive to us that even our “day off” must come under the authority of and direction of One greater than us.

God wants our work days and our rest days to be consecrated to Him completely. Why? And here is where, I believe, the disconnect comes:

Because God actually knows what is best for us. 

The very end of Isaiah 58, after the strong exhortations about justice and Sabbath, this is the promise:

then you will find your joy in the Lord,
and I will cause you to ride in triumph on the heights of the land
and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.”
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Yes, God wants us to have JOY, but He knows that if we pursue it directly we won’t find it. Only as we seek first the kingdom will “all these things” be added. 

Do you want joy? Work tirelessly for others. Speak up on behalf of the voiceless. Feed the hungry, house the homeless. Refuse to point the finger or speak maliciously. And, in humble submission to the good plans of the Good Good Father … Rest. 

I recently had to get a new (hand-me-down) phone, as my old one quit. It took awhile to power down, transfer over, and start up in the new phone. It was a hard reset.

The Sabbath is the hard reset. It is not just a nap, or a glass or wine or a game of golf or sleeping in once in a while. It isn’t merely a natural thing. Sabbath is a supernatural secret, a choosing to come into agreement with an authority above you, and recognize that He knows how best to live.

For Israel, every 7th year was the Sabbath year. Even the ground got a break. No tilling, planting, harvesting.

A hard reset.

And the result: More fruitfulness. More harvest. Renewal. Even the land needs revival. 

Now, as 2018 comes to a close (I actually reached my “1-year off” mark last weekend), I’m slowly reintroducing items into life. Some things, like useless apps on my old phone, are gone for good. A few new habits have found their way into my day (learning guitar!), and more than anything I want to continue to give the lionshare of my time and attention to relationships right in front of me. My man, kids, our parents, church family. Our widowed neighbors.

Face to face. Shoulder to shoulder. Looking in the whites of each other’s eyes.

So, nothing earth-shattering here, but it’s been so long since I’ve said hello in this space, I wanted to give a quick update, and explain that I’ll be in and out occasionally in this coming year. One goal is to revisit the archives more often and share some sweet nuggets from years past. For now, Merry Christmas. Hug your people. Have your next political discussion in person, not online. Smile. Pray. Go to bed by 9pm. Sip tea. Read your Bible. Go for a walk. Skip the extra cookie. Hold a squishy baby. Visit someone who’s lonely.

Sit on the couch, sip tea, join hands, and pray with a friend. 

Joy to the world.

Last week in the US:

• 13 mail bombs were sent to political officials.
• While my husband was in Louisville this week, a white supremacist entered a grocery store and killed two African Americans.
• A man opened fire in a synagogue shouting “All Jews must die,” killing 11.
• Approximately 21,000 innocent babies were aborted.

Each of last week’s tragedies have something in common: Someone seeking to do away with what he perceives as a “problem.”

Democrats, blacks, Jews, unborn babies.

Of course, in no way am I implying that an overwhelmed pregnant woman is the same as a hate-crazed racist, certainly not. But in each instance we see the natural outworking of sin—believing others’ lives are worth less than our own.

Thinking that “they” are the problem. We each have our own ideas of who the problematic “they” are.

But the root is the same, and sadly, that same root is found in my own heart too: A refusal to see my own sin. 

Right now I’m being ruined, once again, by looking at the life of Mother Teresa, as displayed on the pages of Finding Calcutta. Mary Poplin writes,

“The [Calcutta] missionaries look deeply inside themselves for the remaining vestiges of jealously, greed, anger and other sings, and then confess them. They do not look outside to see the cause of the world’s problems; they look inside first. Clarifying what is inside helps to understand what is outside. The heart is only a tiny mirror of the world I so often bemoan.”

Yes. Yes, it is. My own heart that wants its own way, that resents inconveniences and demands certain circumstances. My own heart that wants Jesus, but that wrestles with having to give up my own way.

It may manifest itself as premeditated murder or deliberate shoulder-shrugging indifference, but either way, I place my own life above all others. 

I do it. You do it. We’re all caught red-handed, daily. As G.K. Chesterton remarked,

“Sin is the most empirically proven principle in Christianity.”

Every single day we prove it.

And every single day Christ offers a better way.

I cannot solve all the world’s problems, but I can deal honestly with the sin in my own heart. I can repent. I can seek restoration. I can humble myself.

And, if I am an Oregonian, this week I can VOTE. 

If I am an Oregonian, I can “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed.” (Prov.31:8). Right now, Oregon is the only state in the US that has no restrictions on abortion.

“No restrictions” to an unborn child, means “no protection.” 

No protection, whatsoever, to the most vulnerable people group in the world. To the most voiceless.

Those who literally cannot speak for themselves. 

There are extensive (and expensive!) measures taken to protect various plants, bird eggs, and various animal species, while we actually provide funds to end human life. In fact, nearly 2 million dollars from out-of-state political groups is being funneled into our state to make sure these unborn babies don’t get protected. To make sure that anyone can still, for no reason at all and for no cost, kill a child all the way up until the moment it is born.

If ever there was a calculated, deliberate, focused attack on a certain people group, this is it. 

Of course, Measure 106 does not end abortion, but it is a step in the right direction. Of course, legislation won’t change hearts, it isn’t meant to, but legislation can protect the most vulnerable, and we should use the freedom that we have to speak up for them.

Of course, we shouldn’t only vote. Let us also pray, love, give, volunteer, support. But let’s at least vote.

{Thank you for caring, and reading.}