Thoughts on Christmas and Grace.

The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year:

 

About 2,000 years ago, this chick was caught either cheating on her husband, helping someone cheat on their wife, or possibly both. And "caught" doesn't mean people found out about it later. Rather, the most successful people of that time walked in on her and pulled her out into the middle of the streets for everyone to see who she really was and what she had done. The punishment for adultery in that time period was to be stoned. So, all the authorities gathered around her. Seeing Jesus, the authorities decided to include Him in on what was going down. And then this happened:

 

Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger in the dirt. They kept at him, badgering him. He straightened up and said, “The sinless one among you, go first: Throw the stone.” Bending down again, he wrote some more in the dirt.

Hearing that, they walked away, one after another, beginning with the oldest. The woman was left alone. Jesus stood up and spoke to her. “Woman, where are they? Does no one condemn you?”

“No one, Master.”

“Neither do I,” said Jesus. “Go on your way. From now on, don’t sin.”

 

(John 8, MSG)

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Okay, so plot twist.

The woman gives Jesus a confused look, shakes her head, and calls back to the men who had wanted to kill her, "Hey! Where are you going? Come back here! I just committed adultery and so you're supposed to stone me. That's the way we do things."

 

What a dummy. Right?

 

But isn't that what we do?

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We think things have to be "fair" before we get to know Jesus. We have this mind set that because we struggle with a drug addiction or a sex addiction or a lying addiction that we are going to get lit on fire the second we walk into a church. So, we try and try to get to the point where we are "good" so that maybe if we talk to God He will listen.

 

The problem is, we never get "good". 

 

We spend night after night tossing and turning because once again we've fallen to the same sin that has caught us every time. And we think we are going to go crazy, because the second we get to the point where we think, "Okay, things are going good. I'm going to try to pray tonight," we turn around and mess it up again.

 

We can't get clean without Him.  But we don't think we're clean enough to go to Him.

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But think about this.

 

If the women would have gotten rid of her sin her way, she'd be dead.

 

Jesus saw her, and saw there was no way she could have a relationship with Him. If she tried to do it without Him.

 

So He went up, and in the midst of her darkest moment, told her she was forgiven. And the funny thing is, He knew more about her sins than any of the guys ready to stone her. He knew everything. But He didn't care. All He knew was that He loved her so much and wanted her to have the opportunity to know that.

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This is us. This is Christmas.

 

God knows our darkest. He knows our weaknesses. He is familiar with all of our habits and ways. And He knows we are hopeless without Him. And so He sends Jesus.

 

The reason this is the most wonderful time of the year is because it represents what Jesus did when He crouched down and wrote in that dirt. It represents Him coming to the rescue.

 

So, if you are at that point where you feel you are never going to be able to enter a church or pray to God or be good enough, you are absolutely right and absolutely wrong.

 

Truth, you won't be good enough.

Truth, you don't have to be.

 

This Christmas, I challenge you to do what I imagine that woman did. She didn't try to hide from Jesus who she was. She didn't run away, put her clothes back on, and come back and try to pretend to be someone different. She stood in awe of grace that was greater than her worst sin.  And she accepted it. She accepted the fact that she was sinful, and then accepted the fact that Jesus was going to take care of it.

 

If you only know about Jesus, but don't know Him, find someone who can introduce you. Try out a church. Talk to someone who does know Him. Download a Bible app and read Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. Doesn't matter which. I personally like Luke. But they all rock.

 

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A week or two ago I was really thinking about relationships. And I remembered that the best ones I ever had were ones where the communication was just super, super honest. I've had some pretty raw conversations and gone through quite a few tears, but I always preferred the people who would be real and genuine with me than those who tried to hide stuff to seem perfect.

 

 

It was a few nights ago that God whispered to me, "Why would I want anything different?"

 

God loves you. Anything that screams something different is a lie. He's not worried about you being perfect; that's why He sent Jesus. He's more worried about you trying to fix the mess yourself. Because He knows it's not going to get you anywhere. (And probably deep down, you know that too.)

 

So, have hope. Know Christ. Be honest with God. Tell Him your thoughts, your fears, your sins, and your life. Read the Bible and get to know Him. Talk to other Christians and get to know them. And find your life, once you lay down all the goals and failed attempts and pretend crap.

Merry Christmas to all. And to all a good night. 

 

 

 

 

  

Let's Be Really Honest. Why Did God Do That?

Man, oh man. I am getting real good at not consistently updating this thing.

For those of you who hadn't heard, this summer I traveled the country like a nomad for 10 weeks, working with an organization who put on Christian summer camps to tell middle school and high school students about Christ. The adventure started May 20th in Alabama and ended about a month ago in New Mexico. Besides meeting some amazing warriors for the Lord, I also learned exactly how horrible altitude sickness can be, where to go to buy a cheap Baja, and just how addicting it is to start saying the word "ya'll!" to everyone you meet.

It was the most memorable summer. And now it is over.

Because I was so busy I sometimes didn't even have time to think, I really wasn't able to document all the things God was teaching me week by week. So now, here I am sitting in my new apartment with literally nothing to do on a Saturday morning (besides looking forward to my shopping trip to Aldi's. Yes, that is how packed my day is.), I decided to take just a few moments to reflect and report what was spiritually going on the past two to three months of my life.

Alrighties. Here we go.

I went into this summer thinking that I trusted God. Pretty good thing for a Christian to believe, I'd say. And I guess I did trust Him, to some extent. I was banking on Him to give me salvation when I die. I was 100% that He heard me when I prayed to Him. Everything I read in the Bible made sense and I understood it and things were good.
It stayed that way for a few weeks. And then it didn't.

Call it spiritual warfare, call it being too busy to have one-on-one with the Lord, or maybe call it God finally opening my eyes to things I wasn't sure I was ready for- but like a classic Alonnah moment, I started struggling with doubt.

Gosh dang it crap.

I hate doubt.

If you know me and my spiritual history at all, you'd get that this is really nothing new. It seems like every year or two there's a few weeks where I start experiencing emotional doubt or logical doubt or some type of thing where I feel off and weird and have to buckle down and pray for a good long time.

So at first I was not worried.

I mean I didn't enjoy it. Who enjoys feeling like everything they believe in may or may not be true? Like your world is rocked and you have no control over what is shifting it? No, I definitely was not happy about this surfacing up into my life, but I was confident that it would fade away like it usually does.

But it didn't. Week one went by. Doubt. Week two. Doubt. Three, four, five. Doubt. Six, seven, eight. Still. Doubt.

And as each week progressed and I still didn't feel complete peace or receive complete answers to my questions, I grew more and more agitated. I was seeking God. Searching for Him with all of my heart. And according to the Bible that meant I was supposed to find Him. But I wasn't.

Most of my doubts were questions that came from why  God would make certain things happen. Why things went down the way they did. I was frustrated because I knew God was called "good" and that's the way I had always seen Him, but the things I saw in the world were not good things. How could He be in complete, sovereign control when this world was a mess?

Take a pause from this for a second.

This summer we had a thing called "Secret Encourager", where everyone got one person from the team who they were supposed to encourage throughout the summer. The last two weeks before the summer was over we had an event called "Christmas", where you got your person a nice gift and revealed who you were. Thankfully for me (who is horrible at giving people gifts) we filled out these cards giving suggestions for what we wanted.

I'd been Facebook messaging a friend from back home who suggested I read the book The Pleasures of God by John Piper. I knew nothing about the book, but really respected this person's opinion and had a lot of respect for John Piper as well, so decided to go ahead and put that down as an item on my Christmas list.

Well, when Christmas rolled around, I not only was super surprised by who my SE was (he did an awesome job!) but was also super stoked to receive The Pleasures of God as one of my Christmas gifts.

The next morning, for reasons I can't understand (ie. God did it) even though we were allowed to sleep in late that day, I woke up at an unfathomably early hour. So I stepped outside, The Pleasures of God in hand, and decided to finally find out what kind of book I'd been given.

I read the first page and a half and was wrecked.

Piper begins by explaining that when you want to see the true character of a person, you look at what they desire. Whether it's comfort, power, acceptance- that desire shows you where their heart is truly at. Yeah, that made logical sense to me.

Then he explained that we can do that with God. Look at what He desires, and then see His heart.

And I lost it.

Finally (thanks to God whispering the connection to me) I saw that I'd been asking the wrong questions all summer. I'd been so focused on the "Whys" and hadn't even looked at the "Who". I wanted to know why God allowed this person to be poor. Why God didn't prevent us from getting ourselves into trouble. Why this. Why that.
I was basing my view of God off of His actions.

Instead of His motives.

And the reason that was so dangerous is because God sees it all, and I don't. So when He does something out of love, that doesn't look like love from my human standpoint, I can't look at the action and say, "You are not loving!" Because I don't have enough wisdom to see if it's actually loving or not. Because I'm human.

But if I look at the character of God, and read through the Bible the things which He desires, I can see that every action He takes is one of love.

It's like if I went to the store and bought twenty pairs of shoes because they were on sale. Someone might look at me and say, "What a greedy shopaholic." But if I was taking those shoes to donate them to the needy, the opinion that I was greedy would be totally incorrect.

We are so quick to judge as humans. Quick to judge one another. And very, very shamefully quick to judge our Creator. Which is totally backwards, but it's true.

We can't solely look at what God does to see His heart. Sometimes we see Him through actions. (1 John 3:16). But because we haven't been given wisdom to know the outcome of every situation, we can't base our beliefs of God off of those.

So I sat there, in Glorieta, New Mexico, stunned. Literally speechless. Finally, after weeks of wondering and waiting and looking for all the wrong answers, God gently showed me I'd been asking the wrong questions. Instead of looking for the logic behind why He did what, I just needed to be looking for Him.

"And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart." -Jeremiah 29:13

I wish I could say it ended there, but it hasn't. I've been waiting for that "aha" moment when all my questions were taken away and I felt satisfied again. But I don't think that's going to happen. And that's okay. I overheard one of the worship leaders this summer mention something to a student and God really tattooed it in my mind:

"Sometimes we can let knowledge become an idol."

And that's what I was doing before I left for the summer, during the summer, and still struggle with now. I love logic, when things make sense. I like trusting in what I know.

But that's not faith.

And I believe wisdom is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. And it can become a bad thing when we get frustrated with God for not answering our questions, instead of resting in peaceful submission to the questions He's answered today.

I was reading the Jesus Calling devotional for August 7th, and it crushed me (in a good way).

"Understanding will never bring you Peace. That's why I have instructed you to trust in Me, not in your understanding. Human beings have a voracious appetite for trying to figure things out in order to gain a sense of mastery over their lives. But the world presents you with an endless series of problems. As soon as you master one set, another pops us to challenge you. The relief you had anticipated is short-lived."

We will not get all of our questions answered this side of eternity. Paul tells us that plainly in 1 Corinthians 13:12, "Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely."

I've been doing a study through the app She Reads Truth about the Gospel. One of my favorite quotes from it so far:
"The Gospel is so plain a child can see it clearly, yet so mysterious the most educated theologians will always have more to learn...But let's not misunderstand: the mystery of the Gospel does nothing to negate its truth."

I think it's going to be a slow process, and I think that's because God knows slow is what I need. To grow my dependence on Him. To grow my faith.

I've never struggled with doubt this long or this hard before. But I know beauty is coming out of it. Why? Because He is good. Eccelsiastes 3:11 keeps popping up, so I'll go ahead and share that one too:

 "Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end."

We are created to want to know the Whys, but God isn't offering all of those up yet. So we search Him and trust Him and grow.

I don't know who this Everwood guy is, but here's a quote I found on Pinterest. He's probably not talking about God here, but I'd like to take these words and apply them to my walk with Christ. Especially the end, when he says, "Retrace your steps and go back to the purest place in your heart... where your hope lives."
Psalm 62:5, "Let all that I am wait quietly before God, for my hope is in Him."

Like I said, I still have questions. I still have confusion. But I remain confident in this: I will see the goodness of the Lord. (Psalm 27:13-14).

Peace out, cub scout.

Over Preview, First Three Pages

Chapter 1

I am so sorry.
          Is that an okay way to start a book? I've thought about the different words I could use to grab your attention or snag your interest. I know there are probably better first sentence starters, but I also understand that sometimes when you are in pain those cute and overused phrases aren't all that entertaining or appreciated. And I know many of you are in pain because break-ups hurt. They suck.
          So I'll say it again, I'm sorry. I am so, so sorry you are going through this.
          Sometimes people make us feel like being hurt over a guy is a wimpy thing. With so many struggles going on in the world having some boy not like you anymore should be the least of your worries, right? You're embarrassed when people ask what you'd like prayer for- because you know there are those out there with far more severe requests. But just like God sees all sinners as needing a Savior, I think He sees all those in pain as needing a Comforter. Try to forget what married people always say about "time healing everything" and "you'll be thankful it didn't work out someday." It is fine to feel sad. Own up to the fact that you really cared about that relationship.
          I think we as girls go too far in either one direction or the other. There is no middle ground. It seems like if we want people to know we are hurting we post 4 Facebook statuses, 10 tweets, and who knows how many depressing Pinterest quotes. We talk about it any chance we get, let our mascara stay on our cheeks after a good cry, and keep a woebegone look on our face to make sure everyone knows we are in a rough spot. That seems to be one tactic for the overdramatic. And I do speak from experience.
          So it seems like we either do that or we swing in the opposite direction. We go blank. No one is allowed to know about our suffering- we're too strong for that. We use sarcasm, humor, fake giggles, and filters to mask the fact that we didn't get what we were hoping for.
          We don't need to down play it, but we don't need to up play it either. What we need to do is realize that we are feeling pain and that is okay. In fact, it's kind of expected. It is rumored that Williams Shakespeare once said, "Expectation is the root of all heartache." So if you were hoping for the relationship to last and it didn't, heartache makes a little bit of sense.
          It's not cliché, unless you think being an actual human being with feelings is cliché. It's not wimpy. It's not shameful. You are allowed to be hurting.

 

The Profile of a Sufferer 
I think another lie society has pumped into our veins is the reason on why we suffer. So often we think to ourselves, "If I had only been smarter. If I could have seen it coming." That is ridiculous. Being smart doesn't keep you from pain. Jesus saw His crucifixion coming- and He sure suffered during that.
          Maybe you're thinking, "No, I just really am stupid. He said this and I believed him. He said that and I took it to heart." You know what? You took someone at their word. That is not your fault.
          Sometimes we think we're suffering because of sin. Or because God is mad at us. While sin does lead to suffering, that is certainly not where all suffering comes from. Sometimes it's from outside sources. Like when Joseph was sold into slavery. It wasn't because he had done anything sinful, it was because his brothers were jealous of him. Or when David was being pursued by Saul, who was trying to kill him. It wasn't because David had done anything wrong- all David had been doing was obeying God. But he had to go through suffering because of Saul's actions. Grief comes from a multitude of reasons. Some we can pinpoint and others we cannot. It is nice to think back and see why we had to endure certain things, to remember previous pain and say, "That's why that happened!" But we aren't always guaranteed an answer to every time we have to go through things that hurt us. There are a lot of times our trials leave us confused. There is no black and white answer on the causes and purposes of hardships. Really, the only thing we know about trials is that God is able to use them. No matter what they are.
          I went through this period of time when I thought the reason bad things were happening to me was because I wasn't following God diligently enough. I had figured that since God was so protective and powerful if I stayed close enough to Him I couldn't get hurt. So when life seemed to be out to get me I felt like it was my fault for not spending more time with God.  Or because I hadn't been a faithful enough Christian. I thought that I was doing something sinful and receiving my punishment.
          Oh, Alonnah. You were so wrong.
          In John 16:33 Jesus tells us that in this world we will have trials. In James 1:2 we're told to see trials as an opportunity to grow us. These are things written to Christians. Not specifically to dumb Christians or smart Christians, not addressed only to weak Christians or strong ones. Just Christians in general. No one gets a pass on this. James doesn't say, "If you are dumb and fall into a trial..." He says "when". Because it's going to happen and it's going to happen to everyone.
          But we want to pretend that we are different. Maybe it's because Hollywood glorifies the "unbreakable" girl. The one who isn't hurt by anyone. She walks around with a tough exterior, not caring who or what walks out of her life. And sometimes we desire to be like that. But the only problem with the "unbreakable" girl is that usually to become unbreakable you have to keep yourself from ever being genuine with others. C.S. Lewis explains it in this quote:

 

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."

 

So if we start pegging ourselves as, "I don't care about him. I don't give a crap that it's over," what we are really doing is trying to train ourselves to become unbreakable- training ourselves to not love those around us.
          Be real with yourself. You are allowed to feel pain. You are allowed to need comfort. If you didn't, God would not call Himself Comforter. But He does, and He does it because He knows "Comforter" is something we need in this painful, broken world.