Spiritual Growth

Hey Hoser! Know How To Avoid These 5 Disastrous Mistakes Before Getting Drunk (On God)!

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

If you’re wondering why I just called you a “Hoser,” read this post, which begins this discussion.

Now that we’re best friends because of the deep connection formed in the last blogpost, let’s talk about getting hosed. “Getting hosed” is a Canadian slang for “being drunk.”

Getting hosed on alcohol is overrated. Think about the mess of your vomit, which is what happened to me the one time I got drunk 32 years ago. Ew! Plus, there are all the other messes that the actions of getting drunk bring into our lives. No thanks!

Getting drunk on God is much cleaner. For some reason, the messes of our lives that we are currently standing on as we get drunk on God often seem to disappear. Plus the joy!

And so, how do we get drunk on God?

To discuss this, I am dipping my toe across the very well-defined line between the things of people and the things of God.

Now I know that I can be a bit irreverent. I know I have even laughed at myself once, and even in public (!) and on this blog! If I’m honest, I’ve laughed at you several times too, when you weren’t looking.

But today, I feel we are standing on holy ground, on something reverential, and vital that is imperative to understand. Joking doesn’t fit.

Seriously. This topic is so, so essential and has derailed so very many spiritual journeys.

Don’t let these five common mistakes derail your walk with God.

Related to the last post, five common mistakes associated with a felt experience of God, also sometimes called being drunk in the Spirit are:

(1) Being drunk by the Spirit doesn’t mean we are more mature than others who haven’t had this experience. Probably (my inference), it means we are less mature. Maybe we needed this experience to follow God more fully. Others, more mature than me, follow God wholeheartedly without this experience, perhaps. The goal is to recognize, as much as we are able, how much God loves us. If we’re doing this and following God and getting back up again quickly after we fall, then THAT is the definition of spiritual maturity.

(2) It’s imperative we understand how getting drunk on God is NOT like getting drunk on alcohol – We’re not in control of whether or not this experience happens to us. God is. Period. Full stop. For example, we can point you down the road to the Wizard Of Oz, but your experience with him or the shoes is between you and the magic. Remember Point #1.

(3) We seek God, NOT an experience OF God. If experiences are what we’re seeking, we’re a ship off course. All we need is God and the fullest understanding of His love for us on this side of the grass they’ll put our bodies in when our hearts stop. Experiences don’t matter. God matters. Our path is to pursue Him, not the experiences of Him.

(4) We don’t need to wait for God to DO anything TO us or FOR us before we can begin our journey towards Him. He’s already given up His life, so you’ll notice Him. He’s been standing at your door and knocking your entire life. Got time to open the door?

(5) Many of you have had profound spiritual experiences that you can’t nicely fit into your existing categories of understanding. These experiences are one of the ways Jesus wakes His beloved, His Sleeping Beauty. Don’t ignore the spiritual experiences you’ve seen in others or have had yourself, friend. Instead, let’s commit to noticing the clues, praying and seeking advice.

Ready, yet to wake up?

Join us, friend, for the adventure of a lifetime!

(I’m ready to finally get out of these pyjamas and into the clothes God purchased for me, too.)

The Better Way To Overcome Discouragement Is To Get Drunk On God, Hoser!

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

I can sense that you are confused and perhaps befuddled, too. “Did someone just call me a ‘Hoser’?” you’re asking yourself. Yes, I did!

“And what does ‘Hoser’ mean?” you wonder.

I’m not sure. I heard it once when I was a youth, and since, by definition, youth are cool, we know that I am cool for using that term! And since you now appreciate how cool I am, we’ve instantly built rapport!

That’s what slang is for!

Let’s talk about the word “Hoser” and other slang because this is a way you can trust me due to your intuitive sense of my coolness.

As you know from previous blog posts, I have a surprising rapport with today’s youth. I was using this internal magnetism to show my teenage nephew how cool I am (deep down) recently. As you can see, I was taking his Sea-Doo for a ride.

As I look more closely, I’m unsure why he seems to have a headache in this photo. I’m also not sure why he never let me fully drive the thing without him, but whatever – we can’t expect perfection!

At least we have viable proof that I am a cool Auntie!

Then, I used slang to drive home further the point of my magnetism and ability to connect with younger people. “How do we get back on this thing if we fall off?” I asked him. But because he is a youth and therefore (culturally considered as) cool, I didn’t say “fall off.” I said, “Spill.”

“Huh?” he asked. He asked me to repeat myself three times. Whatever – Now that I think about it, he had no idea what I was talking about. Perhaps that term is too old for him, but let it be known that I’m sure he got the impression that I am cool.

Here’s another example of using slang to show off my magnetism.

I was hiking with some friends. Our younger friends, a married couple, stayed behind us on the trail, and we were waiting for them to take a group photo. After a few minutes I thought it was long enough to wait, so I yelled, “Hey! What are you two doing up there? Necking?” Our pastor, over 30 years older than me, laughed and said, “You’re showing your age! They’re so young! I bet they have no idea what necking is!”

(It means kissing! How can people forget that stuff so quickly? Are you trying to say I’m older than I feel?)

But let’s get to the point: “How do you get drunk on God, Hoser?”

Actually, “CAN you get drunk on God, Hoser?” is perhaps the question to ask first. Yes, you can! Here’s proof from the ancient text that has shaped your life more than you realize (regardless of how frequently, or if ever, you’ve opened it to take to read).

Others joked, “They’re drunk on cheap wine.” That’s when Peter stood up and . . . spoke out with bold urgency: “. . . listen carefully and get this story straight. These people aren’t drunk as some of you suspect. “In the Last Days,” God says, “I will pour out my Spirit on every kind of people . . .”

The Message

I accidentally got drunk on God once, and I’ll tell you about that another time.

For now, you can trust me when I talk about Hosers and getting drunk on both God and alcohol because:

(1) I’m cool.

(2) I’ve been drunk on God.

(3) I’ve been drunk on alcohol.

Using pure, unadulterated logic, if you, for example, have been drunk on alcohol but never been drunk on God, then you can’t say which one is better!

Since I’ve had experience being drunk on both, you can trust me implicitly to tell you that being drunk on God is way, way, way (infinite way) better!

So give it a try, Hoser!

Another time, we’ll discuss the common ingredients that help us have a softer heart towards the things God cares about. This heart posture doesn’t throw water on the fire of His Spirit quite as much as we usually do, so sometimes, if we’re very fortunate, the water of His love can penetrate a smidge further into our hard hearts and thick skulls. This love may make us feel a bit drunk by His Spirit.

But that discussion is for another time.

For now, know that you’re deeply loved by God, Hoser!

You’re welcome!

Good luck!

The Best Solutions Suddenly Materialize When We Embrace Our Inner Loser!

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

The problem I couldn’t solve in that season was, “How do I, a VERY busy, mentally fragile (We’re around kids a LOT) homeschooling parent, find time to exercise?”

I did, eventually, find a solution to this problem by embracing my inner loser. I hope this problem-solving method helps you find solutions to your biggest problems, too! Here’s what happened, which is a continuation of this post.

And yes, I realize this last post was useless without an explanation, which I didn’t have time to provide.

Now, where was I? Ah yes. Smelling kid’s butts. After the low of us parents becoming butt-sniffers, we hit an even lower low several months later.

Butt-sniffing became our accidental family culture.

Our two-year-old, who loved to mimic our behaviour, stopped next to me as I sat on an office stool and then had a sniff before she carried on with her other little tasks. I looked at her, startled and then smiled lamely at my husband.

How did we become THAT family?*

The point is, as discussed last time, the person we become is not always the person we aspire to be.

Not only did I find it convenient to assume the identity of a butt-sniffing parent, but I also found it convenient to shirk the identity of a homeschooling parent who has all of her ducks in a row.

Which brings me, finally, to embracing our inner loser so we can become a homeschool parent who exercises.

Before I started on this homeschooling journey, I, like you if you homeschool, envisioned myself as a particular type of homeschooling parent. This is not the parent I eventually became. I’m okay with that now.

But the shaky ground of this identity incongruence was a roller coaster ride.

I envisioned myself nicely coifed and looking like my favourite public school teacher in Grade Three, Mrs. Chamberlain. Instead, I very quickly became that parent still wearing a house coat and curlers in my hair at 11:00 am, downing my fourth coffee, and trying to find the kids so I could corral them inside. We began the day with our “Homeschool Morning Routine”, which, for us was trying to find our books or pencils strewn around the house and yard the day before.

A new problem also emerged: I knew my inconvenient, neglected body needed to start exercising again.

I couldn’t even figure out how to encourage, bribe or command my children to put the milk away after they finished breakfast (In fact, I still haven’t figured that out with one of my teenagers). How would I keep these little ones on their homeschooling tasks while I left their side to exercise?

The feat seemed impossible.

Until my new identity as an incompetent homeschooling parent thought up a solution.

Realizing I was – ahem- a BIT of a (whisper) homeschooling loser, once I stopped trying so hard to be an exercise enthusiast, and embraced mediocrity, the solution to my problem was obvious!

I’ll tell you specifically what that is next time.**

The point is, let’s embrace our inner incompetence!

Perhaps the solutions to your problems can be found there, too!

Since we’ve . . . proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God . . . got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.

The Message

Once we accept our identities as people who are incompetent in so many ways, life suddenly gets much more manageable!

Time to stop trying so hard and embrace your inner loser, too?

You’re welcome!

Good luck!

Blogpost Footnotes

*See this post for a perfectly reasonable answer, thank you very much, okay?!

**Ah! I forgot to say something useful again!

Not Exercising? Try Shifting Identity To The Parent You Never Wanted To Become

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

How do we develop an exercise routine we can stick to as parents?

We must morph into the parents we never dreamed we’d become.

And I mean to become the parent we feared we would become.

I’ll explain.

It all started the day I started sniffing my kid’s butts.

When I was a well-coiffed, austere young woman in my twenties, I wrinkled up my nose at those homesteading women with several children crowding around them as they made cookies and managed a beehive simultaneously. “Isn’t that disgusting?” my sophisticated friends and I whispered, and we looked away in horror when one of these busy moms lifted her toddler, sniffed around their child’s middle for signs of a “Number two” and quickly set them back down on the floor again. This mom then happily continued stirring cookies, unpasteurized honey, or whatever she did all day.

“I would never do that butt-sniffing manoeuvre!”

When my children were toddlers, I gasped my way to a mom and toddler’s event one morning, my hair dishevelled, unmatched dirty clothing thrown over my and my toddler’s forms. I was clinging to a half-drunk coffee for dear life as I sat next to a fellow mom and empathized delightedly with her. We shared similar tales of near survival, of these miniature beings often holding us hostage to their need.

Suddenly, I remembered that I should probably check the older daughter, who was not yet fully toilet trained.

I grabbed my daughter’s arm and yanked her away from her friend. My daughter morphed from playing contentedly to screaming like a fire truck. I nearly lost the battle of the wills but managed to stuff her into the change-room, where I opened her training diaper and

. . . nothing.

There was nothing there.

When I returned to my friend, she was already chatting with another dishevelled woman, and for the rest of that “mom’s time,” my two toddlers had incessant needs again.

So it didn’t take long before I happily lifted my toddlers when they were playing contentedly, smelled their butts, and set them back down again with a wink and a nod.

I continued my coffee and well-deserved amiable chat with other homeschooling parent survivors,

My identity had shifted.

And similarly, what kind of identity shift do we need to become the kind of homeschooling parent who exercises?

1. We realize that if we are going to stay in this game long-haul we’ve got to surrender our pre-conceived ideas of success as defined by this culture, or worse, by our expectations of ourselves.

2. Our identity must be firmly linked to those who are societally undignified. We delight in our identity as children of the king, not as classy members of a specific culture (i.e. of any culture).

 3. We have fun, dancing with joy with our two-year-olds because we finally figured out that when we are happy, our little ones are too.

Throw off your chains, captive daughter . . . ! God says, “You were sold for nothing. You’re being bought back for nothing.”

The Message

And it was this change in perspective, from “culturally respectable” to “daughter of the King,” that led me to be the kind of parent who exercises regularly, as well.

The link between a shift in identity and exercise will be discussed another time.

I promise to say something useful sometime! That is if I remember to finish this blogpost series on exercising when homeschooling. This post was essential to set the foundation for when we will dive into the nitty-gritty of the shift in identity required to exercise while homeschooling young children.

For now, the first step is to stop trying to be “respectable”!

It doesn’t work anyway!

You’re welcome!

Good luck!

Confused About Life? Have You Tried Advice From This Person?

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

When we don’t fit in with the crowd’s way of living life

who can offer relevant advice for the unique challenge we encounter?

When the promises on bolded signs aren’t as enticing as anticipated

who is the one who will deliver more than expected?

When life is confusing

who do we turn to?

Wouldn’t it be amazing if someone we trust could suddenly appear in each of these circumstances, offer us their hand and point us to the best path?

Wouldn’t it be outstanding if that person never tired or gave up on us but offered grace and strength and sometimes even rubbed our aching feet as we rested?

What if this person offered us a cold drink, a healthy snack and a plan to follow?

Wouldn’t it be wondrous if this person was always by our side, could be leaned on when we lacked strength and helped to calm the chaos in our lives?

Any of us would give the world to find someone like this.

The substitute people that we esteem so highly instead, including movie stars, sports heroes, self-help experts and billionaires, eventually fall off their pedestals, and we trample them in our disappointment.

But wait . . .

Before we choose another human we highly esteem to take their place (someone with eventual skeletons in their closet, too), let’s pause and reassess . . . for just a moment.

Is there anyone who can be trusted, admired and in some ways, even followed?

Yep. There is. The grand unveiling reveals

the person your soul most longs to meet

He’s here entwined within the pages of this best-selling book.

Have time for a read?

Spiritually Asleep Again? How To Wake Up And See

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

I woke up one morning and realized with a start that I was also alive spiritually. I poked myself to be sure I was awake. I was the same on the outside.

What had caused this inner transformation?

My circumstances were the same. I lived in the exact physical location as many years ago. But undoubtedly, something had shifted recently.

Like all births, the growth had begun unnoticed in the hidden places long before.

My story of waking up is a long story of twisting paths, walking in circles, and many falls.

Just like your spiritual story.

And I’m still walking.

(You? That’s good. Very good.)

This morning, my rear felt particularly sore from all the falls recently. Jesus held his hand to me again today, offering to help me get up.

I’ll start there.

I woke this morning in a cyclical funk created by my discouragement. I was spiralling down, ready to flush the new thing God had been stirring in my heart down the toilet of my despair again. Then I heard a quiet thought encouraging me.

You are in the fight of your life.

(Would I jump into the battle or claim immediate defeat, like usual, keeping my soul asleep?)

I was in a fight for God’s whisperings to be brought forth like a new babe into the world. But I had to surrender my half-eaten lunch. Would I obey?

God had been whispering, waking, urging my soul towards the new life he wanted to see sprouting in my heart.

Would I throw away my hope that God can grow something beautiful through the dry depleted soil of my life again today?

Would my discouragement win?

The question is not how big is our faith. The question is, how big is our God? I shrunk God, again, into my image.

And so I was asleep.

I awoke when reminded in a time of prayer this morning of this truth:

The impossible thing He whisperers that he wants to bring forth in our lives is easy for Him.

How exactly this discouragement transformed into hope is a story for another time.

But for now, suffice it to say that I was reminded that God made an amaryllis bloom after twenty years or more of bareness.

And He made a lilac bloom after ten years or more of barrenness.

And so He can make our lives bloom after seasons of bareness, too.

We begin to wake spiritually every day by opening our spiritual eyes.

Here’s how:

  1. We fix our spiritual eyes on God, the master gardener of hope, instead of keeping our eyes closed by focusing on our bareness.
  2. We open our eyes to the fact that harvest will come for every field, including that unwatered corner of our hearts if we allow the Master Gardener to work His ways within.
  3. We wait, not passively, but prayerfully, with anticipation, like a farmer planting seed in fertile soil.

This subtle shift in my thinking helped me soar on the wind of hope I found this morning. I picked up the hope. I carried it next to my heart.

For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think.

Just as rain and snow descend from the skies and don’t go back until they’ve watered the earth, doing their work of making things grow and blossom, producing seed for farmers and food for the hungry, so will the words that come out of my mouth not come back empty-handed.

They’ll do the work I sent them to do, they’ll complete the assignment I gave them.

The Message

God is standing next to us with seeds, a shovel and a watering can. He wants to dig deep, exposing old roots to create room for new growth. I want to get out of the way to allow Him to do his work.

You?

While waiting for life to sprout, consider praying along to this song.

This song begins like the prayer of a person who doesn’t honestly believe what they’re praying (like many of many prayers over the years):

You make beautiful things out of the dust.

The song ends in a loud declaration of the exact words, daring the soul to believe.

Time for a battle for you, too, as you pray along to this song?

What is He saying to you through the pages of His book, asking you to have faith to believe?

May your eyes be opened, your soul awake.

How To Avoid Humiliation (Or Worse – Missing Out On God!)

/ Lori Lawe / 4 Comments

Our neighbour at the lake was working on his house.

He told us the story of running out of roofing screws. Now, where we live, we can’t walk or even drive 10 minutes to the hardware store to buy supplies. We must wait until the intense storm on the lake has passed (insert dramatic music here) before attempting to dodge large waves in a small boat to get to the other side.

(It’s not that bad most of the time – It could be a lovely kayak in sunny weather, but you get my point).

Anyway, THEN, you have to pay money to park your boat, or get the trailer and take it out of the water. Then there’s the 20-minute drive to civilization. Picking up supplies is a significant hassle. Being lake people, we share stuff.

So, I offered to share.

“Well, anytime you want a screw, just come on over,” I offered helpfully, smiling.

(Yep. True story. Anyway, back to the tale.)

The man and his grown son burst into laughter. My husband turned and walked away. The wife stared at me with her head cocked to one side, trying to discern if I had always had a significant head injury.

But the most facinitating part of this story was my inability to see.

I literally meant roofing screws, of course. And I rationalized all of the hints that I had said something askew. When the man and his son burst into laughter, I reasoned, “Must be an inside joke.”

When my husband suddenly left, I blamed him by assuming he was in a bad mood. When the wife stared at me, I internally rationalized that too. “An interesting bird behind me?” I reasoned, also looking over my shoulder.

I was seeking evidence that fit my worldview.

The point is that I couldn’t see the clues. I wouldn’t see the clues. How often I do that in other areas of life is the question that keeps me up at night.

Jesus said, “If you were really blind, you would be blameless, but since you claim to see everything so well, you’re accountable for every fault and failure.”

The Message

How else are we blind?

How are we worse than blind and UNWILLING to see the truth?

To avoid humiliating ourselves again, or worse, to avoid missing out on God showing up in our lives, consider three ways to prevent willful blindness:

  1. Notice the clues. Why did everyone behave strangely (a clue!) after my comment? Similarly, could God speak through the clues of another’s spiritual experience?
  2. Ask for help. My husband gave me the key that opened the door to a more nuanced understanding of my comment. Similarly, others sometimes hold the key to our spiritual growth.
  3. Expect the unexpected. Did I, the caricature of Ned Flanders from the Simpsons, speak with sexual innuendo to a random neighbour? Of course! Did God speak to you? Of course!

Holy Spirit, remove the blinders we construct, carefully keeping You out of our lives. Help us to BE WILLING to see the obvious, we pray. As I finally saw the truth of my speech faux pas, Jesus, help us finally see, with fresh insight, how You are at work in our lives today, we pray.

After a moment of quiet, considering asking God, “How am I blind?”

The One Valuable Ingredient To Find God And Lose Weight

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

I was shocked when the notification blared its announcement.

I was in the top 3% of users of a new nutrition app I was using.

The TOP 3%.

Everyone else (or 97% of people – whatever! – stay with me!) had already given up.

Now, I have to back up a bit to explain.

As you know, and have been forever changed by, I wrote a riveting blog post series last fall on weight loss. (To my editor: Why DIDN’T anyone read those posts, anyway?)

I have been (more or less) within the healthy weight range (basically – okay!) for my entire life, which has been no small feat.

However, when following my advice failed me, I decided to switch it up and buy a nutrition app. Truthfully, I am constantly trying new approaches and programs and learning a bit more about implementing healthy habits, which is the point of this post. But I’m not talking about that right now.

I’m talking about the notification that startled me.

I thought I was the ultimate failure in using this nutrition app. Check this out. The photo below is an actual graph of my progress over two months, showing NO improvement in achieving my ideal weight.

None.

There are normal fluctuations, but the graph of this line is flat.

Same, same, samers.

I immediately unsubscribed to the “encouragement” texts accompanying this app because so many people complained in a way I could not comprehend.

“I only lost 5 pounds this month!” they would complain.

Huh?

I hadn’t lost anything, so I could not relate.

But I kept going with the program.

And the results EVENTUALLY paid off. EVENTUALLY. I lost 10 pounds recently and feel a lot better.

And I believe the results would have also paid off for many, many other app users.

If only they kept trying.

And now, we’ll switch gears to talk about God, but it’s not changing gears, because the concept is the same.

MOST PEOPLE GIVE UP TOO SOON IN THEIR SEARCH FOR GOD

Is it annoying people that keep you away from your search for God? Get over them! (Get over yourself too, but that’s for when you are MUCH more spiritually sanctified and you realize that you are a loser too!)

Is God distant, just out of reach? You’re on the right path. God hides Himself as a critical component of his character.

God delights in concealing things

The Message

Why, you ask?

He is not a dictator, shouting orders and wanting us to go off somewhere and obey every minute detail of his complicated directives. He longs to walk WITH us on this journey we call life. He wants us to WANT to want Him.

And so, right now, He is bending down low but right next to you. Will you reach out, tag his back, and say, “Gotcha!”

Will you seek Him?

If we don’t give up, even though most people do, and keep walking forward, following where we last saw his footsteps and carving out time in our busy day to sit with Him, unhurried, if we read his word, and ask others what it means even when we don’t understand it, then we will find God.

He’s waiting for you right now, holding out His hand to you.

And so, what is the one valuable ingredient to lose weight and find God?

Perseverance.

There’s more to come . . . keeping us alert for whatever God will do next.

The Message

Keep walking, friend.

Hunger for Jesus attracts the manifest (felt) presence of His Spirit. Does your hunger for God outweigh your discouragement? He’ll help you up, point you in a new direction, lighten the weight on your feet, help you soar.

Don’t give up just before your breakthrough, friend.

Feel Empty? Surprisingly, God’s Strange Reward For Winter Is Spring

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

That time when I was discouraged, when I sensed God calling me into something new, something that made my knees quake, she said she saw a picture of something in her mind whenever she prayed for me.

It was a picture of a dead plant.

The dead plant was me.

“Well, there is a bit more,” she explained. The plant was in the winter season. All that could be seen were a few branches poking above the ground.

Sounded like my life at that moment.

“But spring is coming,” she encouraged me. I picked up my discouragement and continued walking on this ill-marked path that it seemed God was leading me down, wondering if, in the future, sometime, there would be fruit.

Come here every morning, God seemed to whisper.

So I sat each day in my office chair, which seemed to be on fire because it was so uncomfortable to sit in. You want me to write, I clarified? I don’t see myself the way God sees me.

How do you want to work within my life, Jesus?

It seemed I had to follow Him to find out.

But I was learning to walk in obedience, even if I was blind to where we were going. I sat with Him each day long enough for my discouragement to be appeased by a God who knows who I was created to be. Could I learn to trust that if he can use other losers He can use my tattered, edited pages, too?

God can do anything, you know – far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it . . . by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.

The Message

He seemed to say enough, sometimes after only one letter, one word typed, bidding me to dance in joy with Him.

And so, to return to the start of this post, “A winter season,” she had suggested that day.

And then a few people read these blog posts. (Yes! Accidental clicks count!) And I still write boring things and even you read them!

And so I rejoice this spring with one amaryllis blooming and one lilac blooming after a decade or more of relative death for each.

I look back in awe at where He has been leading me. People from 23 countries so far have read the neurotic ramblings of a spiritually intense person, walking in circles but seeking God and falling and getting up again. And since people from so many countries are reading this blog, this is how we can know my life has meaning!

But He does take our pathetic gardening efforts and redeem them to give strength to each other.

God saw to it that I was equipped, but you can be sure it had nothing to do with my natural abilities. And so here I am . . . writing about things that are way over my head . . .

The Message

And he reminds us that spring, the season of blooming and life, follows winter, the season of rest, as we work with the master gardener to see life bloom as He leads.

Where is He leading you, friend?

May you soar on the wind as He leads you deeper into the wormhole of His purposes that always lead to life, growth and joy as we take one tentative step and another in the direction He is travelling, holding his hand as we go.

God, help each of us to see further than we could before, using your glasses.

While listening to the song below, consider quieting your heart, being thankful, and asking God, “What is one next step you are asking me to take that will eventually lead to blooming in my life?”

May you find the strength to follow.

An Unremarkable Event Instructs Us In Hope – Need Some?

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

I was startled when I saw it yesterday.

It was a mundane circumstance for those without eyes to appreciate it.

But my heart quickened many beats. God whispered, calling me to see something more profound than this mundane object. Would I have ears to hear? Did I have time to listen? Was I too busy to notice?

Here’s what happened.

At least ten years ago, I decided to plant two lilac bushes.

My husband encouraged me to plant the lilac bushes in our yard because they are my favourite flower. I love lilacs because they confidently fill the air with their scent. You can smell them from a distance.

Because of Christ, we give off a sweet scent rising to God

The Message

They are the only flowers I have planted in our twelve years of living in this house.

Unfortunately, I made a classic mistake when I planted them. I planted them at the edge of our lawn, where two lovely bare spots were in the grass. I found out later that these two spots were bare because our automatic sprinklers didn’t reach that far.

I watered these plants by hand once or twice and then forgot about them.

Every spring, I (perhaps pathetically) mourned these lilacs, thinking I wish I would have loved on them, poured into them and helped them get established. When I drove past our neighbour’s wall of  lilac bushes this spring, I was startled at their beauty and again mourned that my  lilac bushes had died. I didn’t get around to buying more lilac bushes and planting them again.

And then last week I saw it.

One little lilac blooming in the exact place where I had planted that lilac bush over a decade ago. 

God seemed to whisper that we are like this lilac blooming.

Huh?

I stared at the lilac, trying to figure out if God was speaking and what he could possibly be saying through the life of this flower.

My mind wandered a bit as I stood staring at the lilac, waiting. I found myself impatient for next year. “This small flower, on an established plant, ushers in hope for more flowers next year and even more the year after that!” I found myself thinking.

And this is what I am saying to you, God seemed to whisper.

Where I had thought there was death, God was silently, patiently growing life. And my pathetic, misguided gardening efforts were enough for the master gardener to redeem. The lilac’s foliage blended with the background foliage of the nearby leaves, so I hadn’t noticed the bush was still alive.

Do you feel hope rising?

How is God growing hope in you?

What do you need hope for? How may God be offering you hope? Can we use the hidden winter season to store hope deep in our roots, waiting for spring to blossom?

That was God’s message to me last season.

He had asked me to plant, and to establish a habit in my life that would eventually bear fruit.

I’ll explain next time.

But today, my arm is outstretched to you. Here’s some hope, friend. What step of faith is God asking you to take?