Procrastination

I have been doing everything in my power in order to procrastinate for my THREE exams that are coming up this week. I have baked, I have watched football, I have watched movies, I have played the piano, I have spent time with friends. I have done so many things to avoid studying and I am now doing another one. Yes I should probably be reading about Karl Marx or Max Weber or Russian alcoholism, but true to nature, I will put it all off until the last minute. In doing this I just spent some much needed, quality time on the piano in our living room. I sit here now with happiness even with an epic disaster of a week looming over me. There are a few reasons why-and you know I'm about to tell you so just get ready.

Tonight I went to a worship night that the BCM Impact Band led (and they did a fabulous job by the way). It was an amazing night spent just worshipping and drawing near to the Lord and in return having Him draw near to me. And as I spent time worshipping, the Lord placed on my mind several thoughts. The first was how blessed we are to have a God that draws near to us, that IS with us, that dwells among us. Sometimes I think we unconsciously take for granted the thought that we have a LIVING God. One that is active in our lives-even in the smallest things. I heard a message last Sunday that was centered around 1 Samuel 9 and how God is a God of details. In this chapter, Saul has left to go find his father's lost donkeys. Now this may seem pointless, weird, ordinary whatever but just think about. At the end of this journey, Saul runs into Samuel who knows that THIS is the man that the Lord has appointed to become the leader of Israel. Just one big coincidence right. Yeah no. The question that the man giving this message asked that really resonated with me was this-"Who let the donkeys out anyway?". And think about it. The donkeys had to run at the PERFECT speed to avoid Saul catching them, they had to run a particular route so that Saul would end up in the right city, and I don't know about you, but I don't think that donkeys would be smart enough to orchestrate all of that. Even we as humans, who think critically and sometimes logically, would not be able to plan out everything so perfectly to end with the exact results that we want-something would go wrong even if it was just that one of the donkeys left a trail making it easier for Saul to find them. So after hearing this message and then the Lord's whispers in worship tonight, I was left with the thought, who are we that the God of creation would be so involved in our lives to distinctly plan out each detail that all together point us to a greater purpose. Sheesh-(mind blown). It's amazing to know, truly know, that we serve a God who responds, who cares, who loves us, but above all who is sovereign and just. Not just an idol. Not something that can't reciprocate all of the love that we have, but we serve a God who GIVES us this love. 1 John tells us that we love because God is love and if we don't know the Lord then we don't know love and vice versa. We love God because He loves us. We serve God because Christ served us. We don't serve a man who was a great teacher, we don't serve someone that was well known and loved because he never offended anyone. We serve a God who is just and right and through everything wants His name to be glorified and has chosen US to help do that. (Mind blown again). 

My second thought came as a friend of mine was speaking. He was talking about heaven and how it will be a completely different place. That there will be no notion of sickness, no pain, no heartaches, or sufferings. I had a talk with another friend about this later and my mind was stuck on the thought of no sickness or pain but there will be no sin or temptation either. There will just be unhindered joy. Our lives will finally be made complete in seeing and truly knowing the Father. The thought that keeps running circles around my pea sized brain is that there will be no pain, temptation or sin because our minds won't be there. In this time the flesh will be defeated and we will be living eternity out with our Father who has been faithful and gracious to us, healing our hearts and redeeming us from lives of brokenness that we could not redeem ourselves from. The things of this world that we put so much stock into, and I am honestly the worst one, will not matter in comparison to spending eternity with the God who CREATED US and not just us, but universes. 

I mentioned playing the piano earlier and I mentioned it because I want to put some lyrics to some old hymns in here. I love hymns. Sometimes though, the words are so worn that we don't stop and think about them. So I just want to write them here in hopes that they come across in a new way to you. 

1. In that old rugged cross, stained with blood so divine,
   A wondrous beauty I see,
   For ’twas on that old cross Jesus suffered and died,
   To pardon and sanctify me.
2. To the old rugged cross I will ever be true;
   Its shame and reproach gladly bear;
   Then He’ll call me some day to my home far away,
   Where His glory forever I’ll share.

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought! 
 My sin, not in part but the whole, 
 is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more, 
 praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul! 

And, Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight, 
 the clouds be rolled back as a scroll; 
 the trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend, 
 even so, it is well with my soul. 

When Christ shall come,
With shouts of acclamation,
And take me home,
What joy shall fill my heart!
Then I shall bow
In humble adoration
And there proclaim,
"My God, how great Thou art!" 


Now I want to share a passage of scripture that is so exciting and meaningful to me. It comes from Ephesians and I think that this scripture really sums up God's grace towards us. 


"In the past you were spiritually dead because of your sins and the things you did against God. Yes, in the past you lived the way the world lives, following the ruler of the evil powers that are above the earth. That same spirit is now working in those who refuse to obey God. In the past all of us lived like them, trying to please our sinful selves and doing all the things our bodies and minds wanted. We should have suffered God's anger because we were sinful by nature. We were the same as all other people. BUT God's mercy is great, and He loved us very much. Though we were spiritually dead because of the things we did against God, He gave us new life with Christ. You have been saved by God's grace. And He raised us up with Christ and gave us a seat with Him in the heavens. He did this for those in Christ Jesus so that for all future time he could show the very great riches of His grace by being kind to us in Christ Jesus. I mean that you have been saved by grace through believing. You did not save yourselves: it was a gift from God. It was not the result of your own efforts, so you cannot brag about it. God has made us what we are in Christ Jesus. God made us to do good works, which God planned in advance for us to live our lives doing." 
Ephesians 2:1-10

Topsy-Turvydom

I'm going to be blunt here. This post is going to be one of the longest and possibly most transparent ones I've ever written. It won't be poetic, because let's be honest, none of my posts are. It won't be beautifully pieced together. But hopefully it will be real and applicable to someone out there. I've titled this post topsy-turvydom because that is a word I've used to describe my life for the past three years. Topsy-turvydom simply means "a state of extreme confusion and disorder". The word that shouts out at me in this definition is EXTREME. This weekend has been full of EXTREME revelation and I'm leaving here tomorrow with a little more understanding and acceptance than I had before I came. For you to really understand this though, I have to start at the beginning. I hope that you will bear with me long enough to get to what the Lord has shown me this weekend.

I came to college thinking I had it all together. I thought that I knew who I was in Christ. I thought that my faith was real. I thought that my faith was completely founded in Him and nothing could shake me. I thought that I could take on the world. Wrong. You see, I thought all of those things but none of those things had any foundation, any piece of truth to them. I THOUGHT that things in life had made me strong and my faith in the Lord strong but in reality, my faith was supported by a thread and I was holding on to quickly unraveling strands. To give me a stronger rope, the Lord had to set me on a faith full of struggles and pain.

I can describe my life in the past three years with three words-funerals, hospitals, tears. Thanksgiving break of my Freshmen year of college, my aunt, one of the godliest women that I knew, unexpectedly passed away. She was such a staple in my life. I once wrote a paper about how I admired her most for all that she had been through and still somehow had such a strong faith in the Lord. It was heartbreaking to see the pain that this death caused my dad and my cousins, and my grandparents. Three weeks to the day, during my first set of finals, my grandmother-my aunt's mother- passed away. We hadn't even really gotten over the shocking death of my aunt and we have to begin learning to accept the death of my grandmother as well. Needless to say, the holidays that year were not a very joyous occasion. My grandfather spent a lot of that next summer in the hospital battling one thing after the next-illnesses to confusion to depression. I spent that summer trying to be strong for my dad, because that's who I was-the one who kept composure.

Sophomore year brought a set of different problems. Smaller, family issues always rose to the surface. I pride myself in having broken three cars in a two months' time. I was leaving for summer missions and I didn't have any form of transportation, but the Lord provided. That summer was difficult as there were many changes in my family. Just weeks before I was to leave for the summer, my grandfather had to be placed in a psychiatric hospital for his dementia. It was one of the most terrifying situations I have ever been a part of. Sometimes that place still gives me nightmares. Then comes Junior year with the craziest mix up of things yet.

October 2, I will never forget that date, we had spent the whole morning doing local missions projects around Athens and we were enjoying pumpkin chocolate chip muffins and a marathon of Boy Meets World when I get a random text message from my brother that said "know that I love you". Getting a text from my brother isn't really a random occurrence but the way he phrased things caused me to worry. A minute late, my older sister called and I knew something was wrong. My father had had a heart attack. That situation in itself is still amazing to look at because the Lord truly had His hand on everything. The artery that was blocked is what they call "the widow maker". (There's a bayer aspirin commercial about it now). They call it that for a reason. Usually when "the widow maker" is blocked, you don't realize it until it is too late-hence the name. Did I mention that my father lives about 30 minutes from the nearest hospital. As he recovered, I began to fall into a downward spiral increased by the fact that there was more to come. A few weeks later, I got into a car accident and totaled my car. Come December, I found myself again in the hospital with my great grandmother. After spending a few days with her in ICU, she passed away. I never got around to visiting her in the nursing home. I still regret that. The day after her funeral, my grandfather is back in the hospital and he has no clue where he is or even of what year it is. Come back to Athens in January and a few days later my uncle, again on my dad's sign, is diagnosed with multi organ cancer and the outlook isn't very bright. We thought he had six months to a year, but as I'm in New Orleans with the most amazing family that the Lord could have surrounded me with, I get a call that says he might not even make it through the night. He did, but only a few weeks after that. Come June, I think things have calmed down and my father ends up back in the hospital with his heart again.

That's the last three years in a quick recap. Now to the part that matters. I was bitter. I didn't think I was. I thought I dealt with each situation as it approached and I thought I had conquered this whole "suffering" thing. There I going thinking again and of course, once again I was WRONG. I had really just been sweeping it under the rug, awaiting that chance to unleash my anger and fury out at the Lord. Tonight, the speaker told us the story of Lazarus in a different light than I had ever heard it. It was amazing and eye opening. The thing that he said that resonated with me the most, was that yes God loves us, but it's not about us and He doesn't love us more than His glory. So yes suffering isn't fun, but it's not about what it does to us, it's about how He is glorified through each situation. Christ wept with Mary as all of her anger and sadness erupted as she knelt at the Lord's feet. His tears weren't because He felt helpless, they were because He loved her yet He KNEW that HIS FATHER'S glory was more important than her suffering. The Lord sees the bigger picture. He can see 5 frames to our 1. Sometimes that's comforting and other times it's frustrating. Tonight, I found myself kneeling as Mary did full of bitterness, anger, sadness, completely speechless and just weeping. No, I didn't have Christ physically with me weeping, but I felt in that moment that it wasn't about me. All of this pain, wasn't about me and how I handled it. It was about the Lord and how HE was glorified in it. As I sat there, a song began playing in my head and I only remember these lines from it. It says "God is with us. He will go before us. He will never leave us. He will never leave us."
Tonight, the Lord showed me that He had been using all of these heartaches to take those strands that I called my faith when I came to college, and turn them into thick layers. I THOUGHT my faith was strong before. I THOUGHT  I could make it through anything before. Now I KNOW that my faith is solid in Christ and firm in His Word. Now I KNOW that I can make it through any heartache or trump with the Lord holding my hand and taking each step with me. It's not about me. It's not about my suffering. The Lord suffered a whole lot more FOR me when He took my place on that cross. It's about the Father's glory. But that doesn't mean that the Lord wants us to suffer alone. He gives us His Word, His Spirit, and encouragement through family and friends. I write all of this because I wasn't bitter. I wasn't upset. Or at least I didn't think I was. I honestly felt fine coming into this conference and in was through other people's stories that I realized I wasn't fine and that I had been holding all of this back. I want to leave you with the challenge to be still, listen, and respond as God speaks to you in whatever way that may be and also with a piece of scripture that I have found extremely encouraging-"You have given me many troubles and bad times, but You will give me life again. When I am almost dead, You will keep me alive. You will make me greater than ever, and You will comfort me again."  Psalm 71:20-21


Take comfort in that-but know it's not about you or your suffering, but what the Lord is doing to glorify Himself.