Spiritual Thirst

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.

Destroy People’s Self Esteem To Help Them Feel Better (Eventually) In These 3 Ways

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

“Wait, what are you doing right now?” he asked me.

I was melodramatically pretending to cry as the youth left the party.

“Oh, I’m just pretending I’m sad to see him leave,” I explained. “I made fun of him a lot tonight, and so now I’m building up his self-esteem.” The youth listened, mouth agape, staring at me.

As I’ve said before, my magnetism to youth is remarkable.

But unfortunately, we’re not supposed to make fun of millennials anymore. In fact, we’re not supposed to make fun of anyone anymore. So, at the next party, I tried to conform. 

I stuffed snack after snack into my mouth in an effort not to speak.

The problem is that if we really want to do this self-esteem thing right, we shouldn’t say anything true at all. Millennials, for example, have self-esteem that is 1/4 inch thick. If we accidentally blow the truth in their vicinity, they cry or get upset. “How dare you assault me with the truth?” they retort. “Don’t you know I’m sensitive?”

And so we apologize and cower to the needs of their egos.

“You’re doing great!” we assert, every time they look up from their iPhones or get out of bed.

“I can see you are trying to do some math! You get a star!”

“You ran in a race that you didn’t even train for? You get a medal! Everyone gets a medal!”

And with all of this self-esteem and encouragement, and “Well done!” floating around, you’d think our youth would be boyoed up by all this praise and floating happily on their circumstances in life.

Of course, we all know that youth depression and mental illness are at an all-time high.

So why not try another approach?

What if we tell everyone they’re losers?

It’s counterintuitive (like all my best advice), but we can finally let our stomach fat out and relax! We can stop pretending to be someone we’re not. We can get on with enjoying the party games, popcorn and time together.

“What are you talking about?” you ask.

Well, if we could relax and let our kids relax, I think we’d have a lot more fun. We don’t have to, in fact, shield our kids from the fact that they’re messed up and that we are, too. There is surprising freedom in realizing that we are all losers.

If we are at the bottom of the pit, there’s nowhere to go but up!

Since we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. 

The Message

Hope abounds because things can only get better!

Once we stop showering accolades on each other, and accept that we are all dorks, lost on the ship we call life, the adventure can begin!

Anyone around here seen a Captain? We could certainly use some help getting cleaned up a bit, and figuring out how to work together to get all of our oars on this boat pulling in the same direction.

And so, how do we feel better? 

1. We realize we are a directionless loser.

2. We find someone to help clean us up a bit.

3. We follow this person and therefore, all grow together in the same direction.

He 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

And life gets a little easier!

Spiritual people, for example, those who know that they are losers because they desperately need someone to clean them up, lead them and help them all row in a similar direction, tend to struggle a bit less frequently with their mental health.*

So stop building up people’s self-esteem! Trash them instead, knowing that this is the best way to build them up! They’ll (eventually) feel better!

You’re welcome!

Good luck!

Blogpost Footnotes

*Of course, many people within the church struggle with mental health, and research is based on averages.

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?

Authentic Fruit Is What Happens When Parents Pour Into Kids, Creating Spiritual Desperation

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

After gabbing it up with my teenage daughter as they waited in line that day, the stranger grabbed my arm and whispered, “You did a great job with her. She is so kind. Well done, Mama.”

After I picked my ego up off the floor, where it has been the last two decades, trampled by societal expectations for a productive life (Hint – Homeschooling is not a candidate in this employment contest), I pinned my self-esteem back onto my chest, and thought, “Yes! You are right! She IS amazing!”

But the thing is, she didn’t come out of the womb this way

Even after 10,893,231 conversations in which I turned blue in the face and explained how to fit into society (i.e. NOT by wearing pasta in our hair when in a restaurant), she STILL wasn’t that easy to be around.

The POINT is that homeschooled kids are often well-adjusted because:

(1) Parents KNOW what is going on, in terms of that naughty behaviour we would rather not deal with, but that we have to address because we are spending 10,000 minutes (almost all the time) with them again this week,

(2) Parents can’t ship them off on a bus every morning, even BECAUSE they know what is going on (They would say “Thank God” if they would go on a bus SOMETIMES), and,

(3) Parents are confronted day after day, hour after hour, minute after long minute some days with the FACT that they are spending INORDINATE amounts of time with unsanctified humans.

Worse, parents are confronted with the reality of OUR need for sanctification, and this is humiliating for us. So, we run to God and beg for help on our knees BECAUSE we are ALL such desperate losers. But the sweat and tears of our prayers eventually sanctify our kids BECAUSE they receive this message of grace through our lives, as God sanctifies us.

Translation: We ADMIT we parents are losers, and then we gently reveal the truth to our child that she, too, did the wrong thing again when she smacked that kid on the head with her firetruck because she wanted HIS cupcake too.

But this grace in our lives, this deep understanding of our need for forgiveness, softens our speech a little.

do not provoke your children . . . by the way you treat them

Ancient Text

And this broccoli seasoned with the melted cheese of our own desperate need for forgiveness becomes a food our kids can swallow.

And we both grow a little more today, our plant’s roots grasping a little more of the water that truly satisfies, and so fruit in our lives and our kid’s lives will begin to grow.

It’s a law of nature.

So let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don’t give up, or quit.

The Message

And when they compliment you again for having kind kids?

You can sit back, relax, take a sip of a cold summer drink and know that the path of life you chose was a good one, which is bearing fruit in your life, too.

Pick some fruit from the tree of your life and enjoy it today.

Well done, Mom and Dad.

God sees your investment in your kids. His praise that you followed His lead is the food that truly satisfies. Nothing good comes without sweat and handing over our fears to God.

How are you choosing to invest your life?

Despairing? Unlikely People Sometimes Carry Startling Crumbs Of Hope

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

Why does it always have to start with trust?

Was that a whisper or a nudge from God as we live our lives in the mundane ordinary? Will we listen? He speaks, and it can seem so small and easy to ignore.

Will we obey?

The Father trusts those with big things to those who have been faithful in the small stuff.

Make some for yourself, too, God seemed to whisper to me that day several years ago. God had been nudging me to make fleece pants with my kids and their friends. Now, he seemed to be nudging to make fleece pants for me, too.

So, I was online ordering fleece fabric.

A particular type of fabric seemed to stand out to me as joy bubbled from the inside. I bought the fabric with the golden retrievers stamped all over them (true story). I made my pants.

And now, I will try to convey something challenging to articulate.

These doggy fleece pants are like a key opening a door between another culture and me. Once, someone exclaimed jubilantly that she loved my pants and then recounted a surprising quantity of her life story as I stood listening, stunned and speechless, my to-go coffee cup waiting in my hand mid-air for her to finish. This kind of thing happens often.

It happened today.

The teenage guy working at Tim Horton’s spent five minutes before he took my order telling me he loved my pants, told me a story about his dog, and then spoke with the lady next to him about whether she liked dogs or cats better.

I listened mutely and smiled.

My table was laden with crumbs, so I asked for a napkin to clean it. The young man leaned in to confide that they are understaffed but insisted on cleaning the table for me. As he wiped, he said, “People really surprise me sometimes.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

He was quiet, so I offered, “You mean how people are always making messes?”

He nodded.

I wondered what I could say in the several seconds left of our interaction that could be like a crumb to feed him just a little. “Well, it’s a good thing that God forgives us after we create our messes.” I looked innocently away, waiting for the metaphor to nourish his soul.

The crumb nourished, and his hunger pangs caused him to sputter forcefully.

“I can’t believe people don’t know I’m a Christian,” he exclaimed. “I don’t smoke.” My brain was overheating as I was trying to deduce the connection between not smoking and being a Christian.

He was in his own world, however, and felt the need, for some reason, to be honest with me, a perfect stranger.

“Well, I do smoke weed.”

Where do we go from here, God? Clearly, he was being nourished, somehow, by the crumbs from Your table. What do I say in the 30 nanoseconds before he departs?

I settled on, “Well, if we can truly understand that God loves us, that’s the important part, right?”

He stared at me, fumbled, and then dropped his cleaning cloth. His hat fell off as he bent over to pick up the fabric. He stared at me a moment before picking that up, too.

He was deep in thought.

Eye contact one more time before he walked away.

Was there a nanosecond of redemption, a glimpse of light lit for a moment, so that You redeemed this ordinary day for the clerk at Tim Horton’s, God? May this generation find messy tables wherever they go, we pray. And may the crumbs somehow, by your grace, be multiplied to nourish the soul.

There is more, there is more, there is more, He is saying to the teenage boy working at Tim Hortons.

I’ll continue this story another time.

Homeschoolers Heal Us By Modelling How To Shake Fear And Blossom

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

We were discussing the more profound things of life, unearthing the cultural assumptions that keep us in bondage.

And this is what she said: “Homeschooling gave me the confidence to try new things.”

She said it matter-of-factly, confidently, as if she believed it. She was homeschooled, and then homeschooled her kids. So she had many years to mull over homeschooling.

I was struck by her confidence and creativity to try new things, but she brushed me off, attributing these traits to being homeschooled. For example, she is a self-taught photographer and took these photos of our daughter, assuring us that her red dress would “pop” in the pictures at this location. She was right.

She explained her homeschooling philosophy to me as her camera clicked, “When you are homeschooled, there aren’t as many kids hovering over you, making fun of you for trying something different. So I felt free to try new things.”

She painted her family’s camping trailer with flowers and a mountain scene and then was commissioned by her city to paint a mural.

“I’m mostly self-taught,” she explains, but she’s having fun, exploring the talents God endowed her with, instead of burying them in fear, as so many of us accidentally do.

“I was afraid I might disappoint you . . .”

(Jesus) was furious. ‘That’s a terrible way to live!”

The Message

But we’d rarely seen another way.

She reminds me of my kids, who are also homeschooled.

For example, today, our family is in Salt Lake City, Utah, attending a “Reborn” doll conference.

Our 15-year-old daughter had the confidence and time to explore the God-given gifts endowed to her, too

Last week, she sold one of her dolls overseas for over $400.

“I didn’t know you could do that!” I exclaimed from my public-schooled worldview.

She didn’t know either.

But she’s not afraid to try.

Our other daughter wrote and self-published a novel by the time she was 15 years old.

What would we do if we weren’t afraid to try?

I would keep writing even though you may laugh at me. How is God calling you to awaken? What do you imagine the next step is on the life adventure He has mapped out for you?

Ready to take another step, friend?

Let’s hold hands because I’m afraid, too.

I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me. He freed me from all my fears.

Ancient Text

The definition of courage is NOT “Not being afraid” but “Doing it anyway.”

What is God whispering to you?

What’s the next step?

Let’s go!

He’s waiting.

The Eye-Opening Way To Soar Like A Bird Over The Desert Of A Wasted Life

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

I was flying one day, soaring like a bird. I could see for miles around. I could hear God whisper, even though I doubted I heard correctly or well.

He said He was pleased with me.

I had a life the world scrunched up like used paper, ready to toss in the garbage.

But God saw a world of possibilities on the horizon of my life as we soared that day above the clouds.

I had invested my life. I had spent my life, out of the world’s horizon of possibilities, in one tiny area. I had invested most of my health and youthful vitality into two small children.

Homeschool them, He had whispered that day.

And through my tears, and hopes, I obeyed, never imagining how far into the horizon of my life this journey would take me.

And again, He said, year after year.

And when I look back now, with my hurting back of older age and the gray hairs that crown my face, it was a worthless life, one the world throws away.

“Heaven always recognizes the fathers and the mothers who pay the price and create momentum for following generations. Fathers and mothers, in eternity, always receive benefits (if you will) from what their investment provided in future generations . . .

Be willing to be the first in your family to break into something.

Be willing to pay the price to get a breakthrough that the rest of your descendants will benefit from because heaven applauds those whose . . . anointing is less, but they created the momentum so that another generation could inherit it and take it to a place they never had time to go.”

Bill Johnson in The Test For Promotion

“She threw away her talents!” they exclaim. My national government, the university and others had thrown money at me in my youth. “Study and take this valued position,” they offered.

And I did, for a while.

And then I homeschooled my kids for many, many years.

Why?

I don’t know.

I’m following my Saviour, and this is where He led me.

He seems to be leading some others there, too.

I am not a chess player, but only one of His pieces.

I must trust that my life, rightly lived, opens the door to the wind of the spirit of His work in the world.

And where is He leading me next?

It doesn’t matter.

Because in His arms, I can place the stewardship of my life. I feel alive there. I pray for you, too, to be set free from the snares of the approval our society offers, entangled by the search for ever more wealth, when we have enough food for today.

I pray for the strength to invest in little people if He calls you to set aside time for this.

And not everyone is called to homeschool, of course.

But wherever He calls you, I pray you follow.

And in each season of our lives, may we lay down how we thought life would be and pick up the strange reality of His life at work through a group of people ready to join the adventure.

Where is He leading you in this season?

Need some water for the journey? I hold out my canteen to you. And come on, let’s rest in this cabin we stumbled across before we start again, journeying tomorrow.

A little rest will do us good.

“Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest . . . Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

The Message

Have any food to share?

And may you have the strength to journey on again tomorrow, friend.

May the food God sends you be enough for today.

God then told Elijah . . . “You can drink fresh water from the brook; I’ve ordered the ravens to feed you.”

The Message

God, may we be awakened to see with Your eyes we pray.