What we need to navigate these crazy days…

Baking bread can wait; we need to talk.

Today’s my beloved baking day, where we make no plans besides our normal homeschool routine, and I heat up the oven and chop the veggies and knead the dough and whip up all sorts of wonderful all afternoon long. I love Tuesdays. I measure and munch and inhale heavenly aromas and revel in domestic deliciousness. There’s just nothing like loaves of fresh-baked bread lining your kitchen counter.

BUT, today baking can wait.

We’ve been busy and I haven’t been able to write much, and quite frankly there’s so much happening around me I can barely keep it all straight, let alone articulate anything with any hope of cohesion. It’s no wonder God led me to quit reading books for a season — He knew that just reading LIFE would require all my attention. No need for the distraction of additional inputs!

Here’s why I’m writing: I hope to share some simple ways help us navigate these crazy-days we’re living in. 

I’m not going to include links and, “Did you hear about???” stuff here. My point is not to draw attention to the insanity out there, but to help us be prepared just in case we need to navigate it well. We probably will at some point.

I will say this. I’m not a dreamer. I’m not a vision-person. I’m a regular ol’ girl who reads her Bible and tries to pray. But in the last 18-months, things have ramped up in the spiritual realm something serious. I’m not trying to be dramatic, I’m just saying that I wholeheartedly believe the “last days” described in Acts 2, quoted from Joel … are here. Specifically, much of what’s been brought to my attention has to do with false teaching, deception, and potential natural disasters. I’m not shouting doomsday here, I’m just saying these are serious times and we need to stay awake and pay attention. Here are some thoughts. These are three things we desperately need in order to navigate crazy-days.

• We desperately need truth.

The Word, prayer, fasting, and the local church community are no longer optional items we can take or leave. 

Gone are the days where we lazily pull out our Bibles because we “should.” Here are the days where we desperately need to see current events, issues, and influences through the lens of God’s truth. ALL of the clear insights, warnings, guiding, and direction of this past year have been through the Word, prayer, fasting, and close, fellow-believers with whom I do life with. None of it has come through some famous person online, or a celebrity, or a politician. None of it is in isolation, but rather considered and prayed over with the community around me. Every dream/vision/impression been filtered, clarified, interpreted through Scripture. Too much is at stake to go without truth. We can’t be lone rangers trusting our feelings or be blind followers who swallow everything a certain leader says. No one is infallible except God. We desperately need His take on things. Jesus is the truth.

• We desperately need love.

We don’t just need open-arms love. We don’t just need truth-bombs love. We’ve got Gracers and Truthers but we need to be Lovers. We need Jesus love. God defines love. Jesus was the one willing to clean up messes he didn’t make. He didn’t ignore wrongs or error, he never swept sin under the rug. He called a spade a spade. He didn’t dance around hard topics. But He always spoke, acted, and responded in love.

For me personally, the Lord has put his finger on the importance of not just pursuing loving actions but on true love coming from my heart. I mean, I cannot act in a loving way toward another until I actually love that person. Recently, I felt a slight schism in a relationship and was agonizing over how to respond in a loving way. As I sat quietly and prayed about how to respond lovingly, I sensed God ask, “Do you love her?” Duh! What’s the point of trying to act in a loving way unless I actually love this person. I recognized that the problem was a lack of love, not a lack of understanding the right response. I stayed in prayer, asking God to change my heart until His genuine love was birthed in my heart. And He did! He’s amazing. Then, when genuine love was birthed in my heart, it was easy to know how to respond. It felt natural to respond lovingly because I loved.

It doesn’t matter a lick if we are on the “right side” of some controversy. If we don’t love, none of our super spiritually matters at all. (1 Cor. 13)

• We desperately need the mind of Christ.

Jesus was perfect truth and perfect love, on display for us. I believe that more and more, “conventional”‘ wisdom will not work. As Paul wrote,

⁶ Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. ⁷ But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. ⁸ None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. ⁹ But, as it is written,

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
    nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—

¹⁰ these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. ¹¹ For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. ¹² Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. ¹³ And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.^[d]

¹⁴ The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. ¹⁵ The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. ¹⁶ “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

This does not mean we elevate our own fancies and notions, assuming every flitting thought is divine revelation. But this means we humbly immerse ourselves in the Word, in prayer, in fasting, in love, and ask God directly to guide us during these crazy days. It is so exciting to me to hear story after story of people who are hearing from God more than ever! In beautiful ways that totally align with Scriptures, in ways that bring peace and confidence, that cut through confusion and bring clarity and direction. Hallelujah! We need the mind of Christ.

No area is too small or insignificant to invite Christ into. Jeff and I prayed over our ballots, we pray over our budget, we pray over our big and little decisions, all the time. And we need to grow in this as well.

Guide us, Spirit of God, in your truth. Help us humble ourselves and submit to your Word. Make us brave. Make us loving. Make us unflappable and full of faith. We love you. 

{Thanks for reading.}