Photo by Kinga Howard on Unsplash
Yeah, so I might have had a slight touch of fear now and then over my lifetime.
OK, let’s admit it. Fear is paralyzing me, my constant friend.
Jesus walks over to me, crouches in the corner next to me, and offers me His arm. It is time to stand. I rise on quaking legs.
Click here to continue reading this post.*
* This post is part of our “Say-It-Again-On-Friday” blogpost series, where we say it again, on Fridays!
So I went to church the other day.
A kind fellow welcomed me by taking off his hat and bowing to me. Then he slapped me upside the head and told me that I had to believe a political ideology as well before they would welcome me into their church.
They’ll make a show of religion but behind the scenes they’re animals. Stay clear of these people.
I left the church and got into that church through another entrance because I knew how to look for another door. But many of you don’t. Many of you turn away, saddened, looking for another path to God.
“That path is not in the church,” many of us assert.
Have we replaced our primary sense of belonging . . .to [Jesus] . . . with politics…?
So we stay home the following Sunday and watch TV or ask questions online, wondering, “Where is God?” Our hearts are stirred at night as God tries to wake us from spiritual slumber. We hear stories and wonder, “Maybe?” and then we are again distracted by our lunch and phone notifications.
But our hearts are a black hole that attracts the supernatural, often against our will or our reason.
Let’s dig deep down in our hearts today, friends, and see what we find deposited there in the depths. Like a vacuum attracting dust and debris, cultural beliefs swirl around in our hearts and sometimes settle there even though these ideas are simply filth, cluttering our minds. Instead, we need to find thoughts and questions that are food to fuel our spiritual journeys.
What we find often surprises us when we dig deep, deep down, hitting the depths of the heart.
Here’s some everyday clutter that we dig up and can inspect from all angles before DECIDING, with our MINDS, whether these ideas should be treasured in the depths of our hearts or thrown far, far away into the night, never to wake us again with their mischievous badgering. Sometimes, the wrong thoughts keep us awake at night. What do we toss, and what do we hold onto of the musings deep in our hearts, friend?
Here are several ideas:
Why?
A counterfeit Jesus, counterfeit rules, and counterfeit beliefs POINT TO THE TRUTH THAT SOMEWHERE OUT THERE, THERE IS “THE REAL” OF EACH OF THESE THINGS.
No one counterfeits items that hold no value.
The fact that someone bothered to counterfeit these items hints at the truth that the accurate, authentic, valuable versions are out there somewhere.
Don’t turn away from your path to God just because someone slapped you upside the head a bit.
Find the other entrance.
Sometimes, God says the same things over and over.
It’s because we’re too dumb or deaf or arrogant to hear the first time.
That’s ok!
He repeats it! Maybe we’ll bother to pick up the words that will heal us this time! When we pick them up and insert these words into our ears, the peace and joy are like beautiful music!
This reminds me of the point of this post – God sometimes speaks through music, and when we stoop to pick up the words He dropped and put them into our ears, we often find joy and a song to dance to.
Take this song:
This song spoke to me in the same way the other song did in the last post, in these three ways:
1.The sun shines on every patch of ground of earth.
Lyric from Who Am I by NEEDTOBREATHE: You won’t let go
God won’t let go of us – of me, of you, regardless of what we have done, haven’t done, what we have seen or have failed to see.
This is hope, friend.
2. Winter carries the promise of spring.
Lyric from Who Am I by NEEDTOBREATHE: You grow your roses in my barren soil
He grows an amaryllis from a 20-year-old neglected pot! He grows a lilac after ten years on a (perceived) dead bush! He grows a peony in a 13-year-old weed-filled “flower garden”. He can grow beauty through my barren life, too!
This is hope, friend.
3. Surrendering the throne of my life to its rightful owner, to God, instead of to the insecure, bossy child (me), is what releases life.
Lyric from Who Am I by NEEDTOBREATHE: I push you away, but you won’t let go
Sometimes, we push God away without even realizing it, pushing Jesus aside in our rush to get out the door when He has been standing there all night, knocking. Maybe it’s time to set aside the fact that we know best and let Him steer the ship.
This is hope, friend.
And this is how we begin the dance with God. He takes one step toward us, offering hope in the form of a flower, and we take one step toward him by receiving the good gifts He offers us. Ready yet to take another step on your adventure?
If we’re honest, we’re all lost and directionless in the snowstorm of life.
And we should be honest because truthfulness with ourselves and God about how lost and scared we often feel is like being a moth in the darkness and then finding a light source and being drawn together.
When we can no longer see because we’ve put blinders over our eyes again, we can sometimes hear God calling us softly through the gobs of earwax we forgot to clean out. (Sorry for the gross illustration, but one of my exceptional talents is producing immense quantities of earwax. This metaphor has an arresting punch for me).
Do you hear God calling?
This song was like a megaphone God used through another’s voice when I was too deaf again to hear him speak.
During my last winter season (spiritually speaking), God whispered in this song in a way that touched my heart, if not my ears in the following ways:
1. The sun shines on every patch of ground on earth. The following lyric was like a knife touching the hardened parts of my heart, the sections that God could not break through with the warmth of his breath because I had locked and sealed it off. God seemed to breath on this lyric, waking a deep part of my soul:
Melt the ice of this wild soul
2. Winter carries the promise of spring. This lyric would quicken my heart and bear the baby of faith:
If you’re not done working, God, I’m not done waiting
Have you been waiting for an exceptionally long time for the voice of God to whisper more clearly to you, too, friend? God might be digging around your soil, preparing to transplant you to a sunnier location, to a spot where you can feel the sun’s rays a little more easily before he breathes on your ears, restoring them. (He’s not done working).
3. Surrendering the throne of my life to its rightful owner, to God, instead of to the insecure, bossy child (me), is what releases life. The voluptuous blossoms in your life will look different than what you imagined.
Like a seed you [Jesus] were sown, for the sake of us all. From Bethlehem’s soil grew calvary’s sequoia
The full blossom of Jesus’ life was the cross, dying to set you free so your ears can be opened to the voice of God and you are free to soar.
Ready to pick up the gift He left for you, friend?
Ready, yet to be awakened?
And so a peony blossom suddenly appeared one morning in my untended flower garden.
Of course, God’s fingerprint can be found within every living thing, but was God’s Holy Spirit wind hovering over this flower, asking me to notice His hope through this blossom?
God made plants that I thought were dead or non-existent to bear beautiful blossoms three times this spring – amaryllis, lilac, and now this peony.
What was He saying? I sat up a little straighter in my seat, adjusted my tie in my executive-looking suit and sharpened my pencil, ready to hear the encouragement from God that I knew was my due. His reply knocked the legs out from under my chair, and I landed back on the floor where I belonged.
God showed me a picture of Him trying to give this peony to someone else because I wouldn’t take it.
The message was that I was receiving this gift from God not because I had something inherently unique in me. I was receiving this metaphorical flower because I was available. And the leeches of arrogance that had somehow covered me again had to be pulled off one by one, painstakingly, as I sat on the floor, having fallen off my stool of self-righteousness again.
God will use anyone available.
He doesn’t use little Jesus look-alikes. The ones who view themselves this way are so covered in leeches that we can’t see any reflections of the light of God in them anymore. I’m not special, He was reminding me.
Jesus is.
Would I follow him out of the barren garden and take this message that He was offering me in the form of a peony to others?
Because if not, he would offer this flower to another.
This thought felt a bit like a sucker punch to me, but one that would remind me to put away the robes of self-righteousness that I so cleverly fashioned and to dress myself again in the beautiful royal attire of the robes that He purchased for me, to put on the signet ring of the authority of his kingdom that he offers to each one of us should we have the humility to dress like a child of the king.
And now that I dress this way, will I get to work scrubbing the filth I encounter with living water? Jesus’ sleeves are rolled up, and we smile together as we rub shoulders, cleaning together and doing the work He has called me to join him in. Will I do it?
Will you?
What exactly I felt God calling me to will be discussed another time, but perhaps what doesn’t matter. It’s more about the yes. If I am available to follow Jesus on the journey He leads me on, we can expect a trail of blossoms to follow our lives.
Are you available when you hear Him whisper?
Have you time to find the royal princess shoes He gave you that are stuffed in your closet behind so many other pairs of shoes it will take a bit of work to find them? Will you step down the rungs of the spiritual ladder of self-importance you’ve been climbing, too? Or if a cloud of self-hatred surrounds you, will you climb up the spiritual ladder to meet Jesus?
In either direction, He’s waiting there for us, ready to give us His love and the strength to complete our spiritual assignments if we remain shoulder-to-shoulder with Him.
Are you available for a cup of tea, a sharing of the heart, and the healing balm he offers? Come on! Let’s go!
And so the astonishing reason God feels far away is because we won’t receive the flower blossom He offers us.
By faith, Noah . . . acted on what he was told [by God]. . . As a result, Noah became intimate with God.
The astonishing surprise of Jesus is that he desperately wants us to follow Him on a journey to learn to garden with Him so that blossoms arrive unexpectedly in our world, but He doesn’t need us in particular. (It’s not about us.) Let’s not waste the opportunity.
Come on!
Let’s try flying!
God, help us to long to receive what You offer.
I looked out my window this morning and saw something surprising in our overgrown “flower” patch.
This flower was so entangled in the weeds I had to cut back greenery all around it to snap a photo.
I knew God was speaking through this flower and will explain why soon. But I also wondered, “What are You saying?” I felt confused, which is usually how I feel when God seems to be whispering.
Several years ago, I shared with friends that God was whispering, calling me into something new but I was stuck in the weeds of my fear and misplaced identity, and I had shrunk God down to my own size again. But those are other stories for another day.
My friend had a prophetic word for me that night several years ago about a stick of a plant above ground in winter.
That stick was me. “But a blossom is coming,” she said. Three times this spring, a flower blossom has surprisingly appeared even though I did nothing or very little for ten years, thirteen years, and more than twenty years as amaryllis, a lilac, and now this peony appeared out of nowhere.
I didn’t plant a peony.
We’ve lived in this home for thirteen years, and this is the first time a peony blossom has appeared in the flower garden the previous owners planted. I didn’t know one of the plants without flowers (was it a also weed?) was a peony. The peony was my favourite flower when we lived in another home.
Perhaps because the blossoms on this flower are so remarkable, the peony had become a symbol of this word about a blossoming season that is coming.
I had a photo of a peony on my iPad wallpaper and a painting of peonies hanging on my physical wall for a long time, symbolizing a blossoming season that is coming, God seemed to whisper.
I had filled dozens of journals in the last few years, but early this week. I sensed God asking me to purchase this journal, which features an artistic rendition of peonies on its cover.
And today, one peony appeared amidst the weeds of my garden.
What did it all mean?
We can make several mistakes when our ears start itching with the things God is saying and we try to interpret His heavenly language into our own language.
Here are three common ones:
What are the solutions to these three problems?
With these three attitudes – honesty (that we are spiritually lost and confused again), thirst and surrender- we are ready to take our next step on our spiritual journeys.
Is the map you received becoming a bit less blurry for your next step, friend?
Mine too.
Let’s rest here at this cabin in the woods before we go our separate ways on our journeys following Jesus.
I’ll tell you more about what I think God may have been whispering through the surprise of a peony in an unkept garden next time.
Discouraged as a homeschooling parent?
Today, let’s talk about the foundations of this discouragement. We will never be able to come up for air, to feel like we are swimming in the lake on a bright summer day (i.e., homeschooling with joy), if public school culture guides the foundation of our homeschooling.
They will be holding our heads under the water. If we do what they tell us, we gasp, struggling for breath during our homeschooling journey.
The truth is teaching kids isn’t as complicated as we thought.
Teaching kids is sort of like the scatological habit of rabbits. (Yes, scatological means poop. Stay with me.)
We have an amazing little bunny that runs all over our house and currently only poops in two locations- in her little toilet and on my husband when he is sitting. If she only pooped in her little toilet, this would be a perfect analogy, but we can’t have perfection. We’re homeschooling!
My point is that you can train rabbits to use their toilet.
Our rabbit has almost attained this lofty goal. But there’s a trick to teaching a rabbit to go to the bathroom. This same trick (well, nearly!) helps us homeschool our kids so that we don’t constantly feel like drowning.
The rabbit decides where she will go to the bathroom.
Similarly, kids decide, at least in part, how (or what or where) they will learn.
Understanding how to work within the nature of rabbits’ scatological habits and kids’ learning habits is the key that sets us free.
I’ll explain.
Pet rabbits were traditionally kept outside in pens, as it was assumed these animals couldn’t be toilet trained.
Someone brilliant figured out that if the rabbits are allowed to choose their place to go to the bathroom inside your home, they will go to that one place with proper training. If a rabbit owner decides on the location of the toilet for the rabbit, complete with carrots, rabbit toys and treats of every kind, this won’t work. They won’t become toilet trained.
But if we set the rabbit free in our home and wait, a fantastic thing happens with some training.
The rabbit chooses her location to go to the bathroom.
So when you find a large pile of about 100 poops (because rabbits poop about 150 times per day), don’t despair, rejoice! Put your little rabbit toilet in that location and let the training begin.
Kids are identical to the pooping habits of rabbits.
If we believe the Ministry of Education that kids need to learn over 300 discreet and tiny bits of information every year and that this changes every year depending on the child’s age, we might as well put the kids outside in those rabbit pens and forget about homeschooling them.
It’s impossible!
Sure, if you have 30 kids exactly the same age and leave them in the same room day after day this could work . . . (Wait, that analogy breaks down. This approach doesn’t work in the classroom either, if we’re honest. But that’s a discussion for another day).
The point is that this approach will kill our kid’s love of learning, our love of homeschooling, and maybe even change how much we like our students (which happened to me once) if we work diligently, trying to do what they tell us, and how they ask us to teach our kids.
Instead:
How specifically to help them do this while we put up our feet with a cup of tea and watch our rabbit use a toilet inside will be discussed another time.
Yes! I forgot to finish the blogpost series about “Hosers” I started last week! Thank you for reminding me!
I meticulously and fastidiously conducted extensive research for this blogpost series.
For example, I made a note to figure out what the slang term “Hoser” means and learned this:
1. The NCAA states that in hockey, before the invention of the Zamboni, the ice would have to be “hosed” down after a game. The losing team would traditionally do this mundane job. Thus, the term “Hoser” is synonymous with the term “Loser.”
2. So when I called you a Hoser, not knowing what that meant, I was calling you a Loser, but I have already done that in other blog posts, where I encourage all of us to embrace our inner loser!
3. “To get hosed” is also a Canadian slang term that means “to get drunk.”
So how can we get drunk on God, Hoser? Great question. This way:
1. We realize that deep down, we are all hosers, or losers. When we want to draw near to God, we must ask, “Are we honest?” We are all a bit like a rat’s behind when we stand next to God.
So let’s bow our knees, get down on our faces, and acknowledge that we aren’t God, but are specks of dust floating through the world until we return to the dust we emerged from.
We all have ego problems if we are honest. For example, MOST people believe they have greater than average intelligence. As we both know, dear reader, only you and I have above average intelligence, and no one else does.
(Wait – wha..? What is my editor yelling at me about now? Whatever!)
The summary is we’re not as impressive as we imagine.
It’s time to be on our faces on the floor. This truthfulness about our human condition allows God, who is truth, to draw a bit nearer with his FELT love, which we can sense, a bit more. (Caveat: He is always near whether we sense His love, but that is a topic for another day).
2. Do we bury the jewels we find along our path in life, the hints of the divine, and trample them in our busyness?
If so, this makes us a bit more deaf to the whispers of God the next time He blows the breath of His wind in our direction.
Are we thirsty for Him, asking Him to draw near, begging Him to touch us with His love? Are we reading about God, asking questions, and seeking Him to help our boxed-up minds open to the new ways He wants to reveal Himself? These actions help us remove the blinders we put over ourselves, making us unwilling to see Him standing at our door, knocking.
3. Will we put aside our maps for our lives that we ask God to follow and instead, will we be willing to follow Him?
Will we surrender?
God is not looking for people who know He is near but who thumb their noses at Him again and again. Will you, friend, pick up your mat and follow Him when he shows you the way out of your mess, the path to healing?
These 3 heart attitudes – honesty, thirst, and surrender – are a bit like a nest for the dove of the Spirit of God to rest awhile, to linger so that our hearts can receive more of His love.
Jesus . . . saw God’s Spirit—it looked like a dove—descending and landing on him.
Ready to take another step on the path towards being drunk on the love of God, Hoser?
Jesus holds out his arms to you.
He is so glad you came.
(And so are we)
I was discouraged that day.
My head was in my hands as I slumped on my desk. That light on the horizon, the hope I was clinging to, in this case, “summer” for a homeschooling parent, seemed very distant. I reached out my hand but couldn’t touch this horizon today.
I got up, dressed and showered, a “skill” I had learned from previous years of homeschooling. I knew I needed to wear my best outfit and smile like I had a job outside the home. I knew I needed to greet my little students with love as they emerged from their bedrooms in their little onesies and messy hair.
But how do I give my children what I don’t have?
I fall on my face alone in my room.
Then I hold out my outstretched hand containing the seed of homeschooling He placed in my heart many years prior. I have carried the seed close to my heart. I have worked and tended this garden. These seeds (No! – Wait! These small plants!) have been watered by my sweat and hard work, ploughing in the sun and the rain. Will these small plants grow thick, strong roots downward? Will these roots find the hidden, underground springs that will sustain and nourish them?
That is my hope.
That is why this tired mother rises early again, gets dressed, puts on lipstick, and seeks hope in these pages that have fed her in the past. But what happens when we search these pages of the book but today there is no hope to be found? We have searched and turned the pages, but it is a dry season, a time of drought.
What then?
I set my three-minute timer, my little “vacation” getaway. I close and lock the door and lie down on my face alone in my room. I try to ignore any sounds outside my door, for those few minutes.
And do I pour out my heart and explain to God my life situation, knowing at a deeper level that He understands more than I do about my problem?
No.
I put on a worship song, fall on my face in my room, and praise Him for three minutes. Sometimes, the tears flow, sometimes, the anger comes, and sometimes, the drought feels too much to bear. But every time, after a couple of minutes of focusing on Him, the one who created the world, worship reminds me how big God is.
And by definition, I then remember how small I am.
And this is my hope.
When I stop shrinking God down to my size, the rains come. This drought today is over for now. Because He is so big, powerful and wise, He has multiple answers to my problems in His little pinky finger.
Will I trust him, remember His grandeur and pick up the hope that came with this rain of his presence? Will I take a drink? Will I stand in the rain? I’ll be cleansed, if so, my face uplifted to the One who is the source of living water, the God who, by touching the hem of His robe, can make us well.
And I don’t understand it, but I can trust the rain and hope I found today. And this rain becomes living water in my heart so that I can pour out hope on my children today and face whatever dangers, tigers, or math come our way.
And when we stop at the end of the day, decade, or season of life and put up our feet, we can thank Jesus for giving us the strength and hope to keep going.
. . . I provided water in the desert. . . Drinking water for the people I chose, the people I made especially for myself, a people custom made to praise me
It’s an awakening season.
Holy Spirit has been poking me early, early every morning. Wake, wake, He is saying. There’s something new. Do you see it? Do you perceive it?
Forget about what’s happened; don’t keep going over old history. Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new. It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it? There it is!
It is time to get dressed in the clothing of royalty, the robes my Father gave me.
Do you see the clothes your Father gave you? They are crumpled up and dirty in the corner of your room. Can you find the shoes He gave you? They are in your closet behind dozens of other pairs of shoes you’ve purchased. It’s time to sort your closet.
What has God been stirring in your heart?
Let’s start there. After our morning coffee and looking out at this new day dawning, let’s leave room on our to-do lists. Action item number one is left blank. This item is the most important I need to do today, and I must try to do it first as soon as I have time.
It is the response to God’s whisperings to my heart.
What is it for you?
My first task is to turn down the noise in my head, the cacophony of sound that tells me that God can not use me. For me, my first task is remembering who I am. It is shrinking myself down to the size of a piece of dust, my proper form.
The body is put back in the same ground it came from. The spirit returns to God, who first breathed it.
It is raising God to the glorious infinite that He is big. I am small. He has always used insignificant people!
Good morning!
And as I put on the long princess gloves that God gave me, I remember that these hands were bought with a price.
The color red of the gloves reminds me of Jesus’ blood that was shed for us so that these hands can be used to help, comfort and serve.
I found my shoes! Here they are in my closet, behind all those pink heels I had forgotten about. These shoes the Father gave me are decorated with jewels, a reminder that the message I understand is rare, a priceless gem many step on but few pick up to keep close to their hearts.
And many more have only seen cheap, counterfeit copies of the real jewels we wear on our feet. Will we carry the message of a long obedience following Jesus, shined in its brilliance, wherever we walk today? Is He asking you to walk a new path with Him, a path overgrown with branches because so few have travelled in that direction?
And I wear a smile on my face.
This smile is not shallow, resulting simply from the movement of the muscles on my face. A genuine smile is the outpouring of a great joy born in the heart, which overflows out of my eyes as a sparkle that can’t be hidden. (Need some?)
Let Him awaken you and help you out of bed, friend.
Then:
1) Remember the size of you and the size of your God.
2) Donn your gloves.
3) Find your shoes.
Then let the joy bubble forth.
Being with You is to be full of joy
Restoring Life 