Heavy Rain

Deuteronomy 28 is amazing; it’s about as awesome as Deuteronomy 27 is terrifying.  Check this out:

“If you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God…  The Lord will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands.”

In John chapter 3 we read that “[God] gives the Spirit without measure.”

And yet, how often am I satisfied with scraps from the table of pietistic religiosity and the anemic fruit of moral effort?  How readily have I been satisfied with a good parking spot when all along God has desired to bless all the work of my hands?

And yet, what is required to receive this overflowing abundance is all of me: surrendered in obedience.

 “…the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.  For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.  But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”  (John 3:19-21)

It occurred to me that “wicked things” can also be religious work done in my own effort; strategic plans for good and upright attempts to live well in my own strength are still “the work of darkness” (the evil of pride and self-sufficiency).

Whatever I do that has not been “carried out in God” is not a work of the light.

This surrender to the Light is daily, always-kind-of-stuff, like breathing… when living life in the Spirit, it’s really non-negotiable. Dwelling and abiding in Christ (hearing and obeying God’s voice) opens the treasury of heaven above me: and I begin to hear the rumble of heavy rain in the distance.

Jesus Is Near

We were born on a battlefield, beautifully disguised as ‘earth’.

Yet, if we could see through the hologram of this material world, we would perceive a cosmic war waging over every precious soul, and Jesus there alongside each one of us, waiting to be invited to do the fighting for us.

Jesus is as near as my beating heart.

His love already crushed Hell, yet the enemy would tempt me into believing that, “Victory isn’t such a sure thing.  And Jesus is sort of elusive and unreliable, but look over here!  The world is so shiny, so full of shows and sidetracks; forget the big picture, plant your feet in all this temporal stuff and make yourself at home!” 

And how easily I succumb to the overwhelm, the distraction, the self-pity, and the grief; the fruit of this heaving world.

Here I live, where the battle seems so ‘flesh and blood’, where quotidian urgencies and relational explosives make here-and-now so frustratingly real and gory.  It’s easy to rage at the noise, the chaos, the madness, and the people that surround me, yet it’s all a distraction from that fact that Jesus is near and He’s already won.

Make Me Brave

The deeper I walk into the mysteries of God and the more confidently I embrace them, the more foolish I appear to the world.

Everything is upside down; there is a way that seems right to a man.

My husband took a significant risk at work last week: in a place where the name of Jesus may not be mentioned, he unraveled the whole beautiful story to a person lost in desperate darkness.

He planted hope and it may yet cost him his job.

As we were sharing this story with the kids, one of the little ones asked if Daddy was going to die for his faith.  We laughed in the moment, but really, this call to live in Christ is a call to come and die.

{And we may die for Jesus one day, just as brothers and sisters all over the world are dying in His name even now.  I dare not believe that this façade of peace is here forever; I need to live ready.}

Yet, courage has to build one step at a time as I learn what life really is and what it means to follow a Redeemer-King whose wisdom is folly to the world: it means exchanging my comfort for the cross; replacing worldly wisdom for seemingly-confounding Supernatural Revelation, and swapping personal peace for a Love so wide it leads into eternity.  It also means resting in the shadow of His wings and abandoning ‘it all’ to the one who loves me the most and knows every detail of my life… my times are in His hands.

I have never been more proud of my husband.  Watching him, ready to ‘die’ (lose his reputation/job), because his love for Jesus just won’t be contained any longer is about the most solidly beautiful thing I have seen in my life.

He makes me brave.

It’s been a powerful week as we have walked together, prayed together and pressed into all the perfect promises of Scripture as though our lives depended on it…

…Because they do.

The road to heaven starts here; travel light and risk it all.