Thursday Thoughts: The Reality of the Gospel for Everyday Life

I am a pleaser. Sometimes this is a good thing (such as the fact that I work hard and diligently as a result) and sometimes it is a bad thing (because I too easily find my moods and worth in how others value what I do and not in its natural value or what I might assign to it). If I don't feel a project will please, I often don't even start it.

When I feel as if I'm failing, I tend to shy away from the foot of the Cross to which I so readily cling. I try to hide my failure, even from the God who so clearly has seen it all and loves me regardless.

But there is compassion for the taking at Jesus' feet! I love Bethany Dillon's song, "Be Near Me":

All I have ever wanted -
and what men have given their lives for -
is a God who understands my weaknesses, a God that I can love.

I cannot believe You are angry or unjust -
You've done nothing but have compassion on us.
So be near when I've given up. Be near me.

Compassion is what stirs me from my hiding. It is the very heart of God in so many ways! Compassion gives life, and takes us from our hiding in the darkness and brings us into the glorious light of life in the Son of God! It lifts our eyes from our failure and brings an understanding of Christ's heart near to us.

Knowing myself and knowing the incredible depths of folly to which I succumb so readily, it is awe-inspiring and humbling to serve a God who understands my weaknesses and failures without my having to bring them out of the dark cubby where I like to hide them.

He is not angry or unjust. Perhaps one of the greatest misconceptions about Christianity is that God exists as a large Judge in the sky, waiting to rain judgement and dole out apt punishment - but I am so grateful that is not an accurate picture of the God I fail and fall before daily!

It is true that He will act as Righteous Judge - He is holy, righteous in all His ways, and any violation of His character by us deserves eternal punishment. We have to start with God. When we start with ourselves, we always will fail in answering the important questions about life here on this round, rotating rock flying in space.

But He is compassionate! Jesus was not a mistake and is not just a man that people follow and cling to blindly. In His knowledge, God set Jesus as the Lamb Slain on the Altar of God before our world was ever born. Just as a parent anticipates the birth of a child, so God looked forward to our arrival. But He knew our sin against His holy nature could too easily separate us from Him as our Father.

So He sent Jesus, fully man in His limitations and fully God in His glory. And He was sent, from the first, to die for us.

Before we were born, God took those steps to prepare for our arrival and to ensure that we would not be wrested from His grasp by others who would claim us as their own.

Before I was born! I need the reality of this in my heart every day or I try to hide behind all that is already exposed and dealt with in the economy of mercy.

Thursday Thoughts: The Back Door

I haven't been much in the mood to talk these past weeks. As I wrote to one of my best friends in an e-mail, "I've been exceptionally brooding and contemplative lately." It's not necessarily such a bad thing to be there - but it can be to stay there, and so I am attempting to lift a silence that has been partially self-imposed and partially imposed by the requests of others. But, because of this, I've been a bit lapsed and unfaithful in my blogging, and for that I ask your forgiveness.

*****

For almost a year now, we have been praying for some very specific and practical things: a) that God would provide us a way to honor our creditors by repaying our debts, and b) that God would provide me a job, preferably related to my field, so that I could contribute and use what I felt He led me back to school to study with my master's program.

And we have waited, sometimes patiently and sometimes not-so-patiently, for answers to these requests - mostly expecting them to come through the "front door," or to be obvious solutions to such problems.

But, by the grace of God, the answers to these requests have not come in obvious ways. He has shown Himself to be infinitely more gracious and loving in granting answers to these prayers, as well as His complete control over this world, in how He has dealt with us these last 6-8 weeks.

The answer to our first prayer (concerning our debts) came through an unexpected and freak car accident that resulted in our Subaru being totaled. Christopher's interpretation of the whole thing is that God looked at our situation, heard our prayers, recognized that we were too stubborn to sell the car ourselves to get out of debt, and decided to do it for us. In the accident's wake, we have been able to pay off two sources of debt entirely, pay down a third, put aside money for a down payment, and learned that we can live with one car (though it can be a bit tricky, since I work in town and Chris works half an hour south of our home).

Not at all what we would have picked on our own, but incredibly demonstrative of God's grace toward us in our foolishness.

The answer to the second has been a bit more slow to develop. I have been praying specifically that God would have a place for me where I could use my talents and gifting to further the Kingdom or help the little guy (since that's what I felt Him lead me to go back to school for). What's more is that I was hoping to find a part-time job (like, four days a week instead of five), so that I could build in time to work on and complete my thesis (and, consequently, my master's degree).

But all I found when I started looking were full time positions that were not in any way related to what I ultimately wanted to do, so I shifted back toward admin and office work (which has kind of always been a foolproof fallback for me). I was blessed with four weeks' worth of work in September and October and was scheduled to go back after a two-week break, but the project stalled out - in fact, every job I was put up for between then and the recent past stalled out because no decision was ever reached on who to hire. In January, with my gobs of spare time, I decided I wanted to make my time count and serve the body if at all possible, so I started spending my time with a family that is part of our teen family ministry (their oldest kids are teens - they have seven, and their youngest is 3). It turned into a job that lasted, conveniently enough, through last Thursday, when the family left for a vacation.

I say "conveniently" because God has finally found a place for me, and I started a new position with our church on Tuesday.

And while that is a long story filled with prayers, conversations, and seeking counsel, it boils down to this: At every turn, I kept hearing God speak softly and firmly to my heart to "Move forward in faith."

God may not fulfill all of my dreams, but He continues to fulfill some of them and to satisfy my heart at the greatest of its depths. I may not ever be a biological mother to a baby girl or boy, but that doesn't mean I stall out in the bitterness of that reality. At some point this spring, I realized that I want my life to count. I want to be fruitful. I want to further the Kingdom of God.

I want to march onward, to move forward in faith, in all of the things that God calls us to - regardless of what dreams He may or may not fulfill along the way.

It is certainly a back door. After months of waiting for any position to keep me busy, I am humbled and overwhelmed by God's orchestration of events for my life at this time. When I interviewed for a different position with our church, the one that I'm walking into didn't exist. God didn't just find me a place, He made me one where none existed. And it will require faith, as a lot of it is experimental and filled with transition and unknown - but I'm walking forward in the faith that He has called me to walk in, and I'm looking forward to what He does with our body of believers.

And might I mention that I work four days a week? How 'bout them apples?

So there you have it. Back doors all over the place. Hidden blessings.

How beautiful to be reminded that He has not abandoned us, and He never will.

Thursday Thoughts: The Halfway Point & Thirteen Years of Little Books

This past week, I finished up my latest prayer journal. Closing in on my thirteenth spiritual birthday, I felt led (as I normally do) to start revisiting the last year, its pages, and the pages of some of those that preceded it.

It's incredible to see even the changes that occur between the first pages and the last pages of such a record. I started the last book after the death of my second grandfather (see "Completion," from 2007), only months into my marriage and a job that would cultivate my heart for God's church and its mission.

I was learning how to be a wife, a leader for a college ministry small group, to resurrect relationships that had been broken by distance and hard things, to figure out what it meant to follow Jesus in the workplace, and so many, many other things. Life was opening before me.

But so was depression. Since starting its pages in 2007, I battled two full rounds of depression: One centered on the death of my grandfather that first fall and continued by some family issues the following spring, and the second centered on the very quick failing and death of the first of my grandmothers just before I began my graduate work. As I've mentioned in previous posts, depression is a war that has been waged in the depths of my soul for more years than I am proud of (see "A different kind of happy," from 2010), and I finally emerged from this last round in a much different place - ready to fight to the end of myself to not find my life in its grasp ever again.

In the midst of this, we were witness to many weddings, several years of family celebrations, a few lovable oddball roommates, the addition of one and then two precious pups to our home, an insane amount of new babies in both our blood and church families, injuries, new jobs, answered prayers, times of intense waiting, a new home and, most recently, struggles with infertility.

Life has changed a lot, but there is one thing that remains: The God who rescued me that lonely night in April thirteen years ago, who loved me in spite of my depravity and raised me up in the promise of salvation - He still remains the same. This reality is lasting. It does change things. I am proof of that.

And now I'm feeling a bit old, I suppose. Thirteen is not a small number. I remember writing for saLt about my fifth spiritual birthday and thinking it was a huge deal ("Six," from 2005 is an updated version of that; and if you don't know what saLt was, I'm sorry you missed that piece of my life, though I do wonder sometimes if Laura and I both just had the same vivid dream for a year).

Thirteen! That's half of my age!

Yet, it's starting to make sense that this is my life. The last vestiges that I had hidden away from the blinding and purifying light of Christ's grace have finally been brought into the open to be sifted through - and the incredibly breathtaking thing is that, for the first time, I think I'm finally understanding what it means for Christ to satisfy every deep-seated desire of my heart.

From here on out, my life has not been mine in the majority - what a good and glorious thing! That means I can look back on this growing collection of these crazy little books I began writing in so many years ago and see my life mostly marked by the grace and leading of an incredible Savior.

And in those pages, I find hope to move forward. At every step, at every juncture, Christ has met me, challenged me to be sanctified, and answered my prayers. In one way or another, every prayer I have ever put before His feet in these books has been set before me - and the most beautiful ones were the ones that didn't turn out in the least as I expected.

Lately, my stones of remembrance have been placed a bit closer together. Life has been hard. My dependence upon God for the daily stuff has been critical. The first half of this last journal was written over the span of roughly three and a half years, while the second was composed in little more than a year. My need for grace is growing, especially as I continue to be more aware of the daily battle to keep my life free from the bonds of depression - something that can so easily be physically, emotionally, and spiritually emptying of all that is inside me.

So the tipping point is starting somewhere different. For the first time, I am abiding in the love and provision of Christ - mostly because I can look back and see it in these little books, these little books that urge me to move forward in the knowledge that He will continue to love and be faithful in what is to come next.

I wrote "Sweet Dependency" nearly seven years ago, just a week after my sixth spiritual birthday and two days after my dear husband suffered my then-rejection of his pursuit of my heart. This last year, it has become the anthem of my heart, as I re-wrote it on the piano (including a different bridge, from "Out of my bondage, sorrow, and night" by William Sleeper) and have sought to understand its meaning in a much different time.

The chorus is what gets me, though. I think I understood then something that it has taken me seven years to come back around to - the truth that only God has a right to claim my life, He who bought it with His own blood, and who offers me redemption and newness of life:

May I be brought to my knees, in sweet dependency in You alone.
For at the end of this time, if I still think that I’m mine,
Please break me and bring me back home.
("Sweet Dependency," ©2005/2011 A. Kate Grinstead/A. Kate Reynolds)

Growing Pains

Does anyone else still struggle to figure out what life is supposed to look like?

I personally have no clue. Factor in the fact that, somehow, in some way, Christ is meant to be at the center of it all, and I find myself floundering even when it comes down to deciding what to do with my life. Should I be an organizational communication consultant? A musician? A mother and homemaker? A professional gift wrapper (still holding out for this one to be remotely possible)? A writer? An artist? A seamstress? All of the above (laugh all you want, but I do try to make it all work in my head sometimes)?

By now, I do know that I can't have it all. On my best days, two of the above seem improbable, if not impossible. Perhaps I have too many interests or perhaps I think I do just so that I can avoid making a decision as to what to do with my time and energy and talents. Perhaps I'm just scared that what I have to offer the world isn't good enough. Really scared.

But there's the crux of the whole issue right there, isn't it? I'm not good enough.

I've spent a lifetime trying to skirt by on my own virtues and successes, in spite of the fact that it is God's supreme sovereignty and grace that has gifted me with everything that I have and am.

Currently, I'm finding my way through Water into Wine: Hope for the Miraculous in the Struggle of the Mundane by Kelly Minter. She is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors, for many reasons, but this particular book concerns the miracle of Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana (from John 2).

One of the most indelible things she has hit thus far has been the perspective of the servants. Her point is that they likely served guests and their masters day after day, year after year, with little variation in the routine - until Jesus showed up and asked them to draw water, which they drew and, somehow in the transfer, it became the best of wines.

But I love what Minter has to say:

What is it all for? Another day of work, another day of showing up, another concert, another wedding, another stone jar of water, another order from yet another person: "Fill the jars with water... Take them to the master of the banquet." The servants had probably been doing this for years. Feast after feast, they served people who were wealthier and higher in status. It was the same rote activity with no shadow of turning.

"Would you care for another hors d'oeuvre?"
"May I recommend the salmon puffs?"
"May I take your plate?"
"Can I get you a refill?"

Day after day. Water in... water out. Routine. Predictable. Monotonous. Mundane. Regimented.
What in the world is it all for?

I don't think I'm stretching things by suggesting that this may have been the servants' dilemma, because it seems to me that this is everyone's dilemma: We all go 'round and 'round, attempting to make life work just so we can get up the next day to make it work again. Whether we act on Broadway or deliver newspapers for a living, life doesn't seem to make much sense or have much value without the conviction that God is divinely involved, able and eager to reach down at any moment and turn the everyday stuff of life into something divine, something that counts for eternity, something that is beyond ourselves.

Beyond myself. I so rarely think in those terms. It's either "I can do this" or "I can't." There doesn't seem to be a fuzzy gray area in between where I discover that "I can't, but God can." I'm not bringing Him my water jars "filled to the brim" and expecting Him to do something bewilderingly amazing with them - such as turning them into wine.

I find every excuse not to fill my water jars. At all. I complain about the water being the wrong temperature, requiring a filter, or splashing all over what I'm wearing - I don't simply obey in offering all that I am and all that God made me to be (which is the same thing, really) for Him to use.

Not every day will be extraordinary. The servants at Cana likely waited a really long time before that one incredible day that Jesus was there. But I need to expect that God both can and will provide in miraculous ways for my life here and there. I need to expect that He can and will divinely speak into my life about what it should look like, where I should work, how I should serve those that I love (and some that I struggle to), and when to simply rest.

So this is what being grown-up feels like, huh? Still working to fork over to God the things that are already rightfully His... and praying that I might occasionally, by His grace, be able to do so.

Excerpt from Water into Wine: Hope for the Miraculous in the Struggle of the Mundane by Kelly Minter. Minter also wrote No Other Gods: Confronting our Modern Day Idols, which I read earlier this year and which was an instrument God used to reveal idolatry that had/has made a home in my own heart; and The Fitting Room: Putting on the Character of Christ, which just came out in April and which I will be starting as soon as I finish Water into Wine.

Like I said, one of my newest favorite authors. See kellyminter.com for more.

Take This (Simple)

In 2006, I wrote a song and recorded it in the span of about 24 hours - it was my first experience with such a fast-paced process. Over the years, I've gone back to it time and again, grateful for the heart with which it was composed and a little bashful over the production value.

Tonight, the themes of the song still resonate deeply with me. Perhaps it is just that God has led me back into a similar season or that I still have not grown out of my abiding desire to hold perfection and control within my own grasp.

I wish this were simple -

This falling down and getting up again.

It would be easier if I wasn't so frustrated by bruised shins.

I get so frustrated. Not many people see that side of me. It's not that I get frustrated with life all that often (although that hasn't necessarily been the case in the last few months - an anomaly, I assure you), I get frustrated with how I react to life. My depressive, defeatist side comes easily out of the woodwork when things are brewing around me. Things like bruised shins hurt, but they heal if given the time. Unfortunately, I don't like how allowing time for such things to heal creates delays in "the plan."

But every fall is dangerous,

I've made an idol of control and, in doing so, lost it all.

It amazes me how the bruises of life and our desire to keep ourselves from them at any cost results in a continued effort to fix things on our own. Each trip and injury I sustain is dangerous because my pride makes me think I can fix anything that comes my way. And when I can't, I'm miserable, frustrated, and I've lost the most important hope that I have - that of Christ reigning over me.

Supposedly, it's simple - 

This getting up and falling down again.

It would be easier if I weren't so daunted by the distance.

Have you noticed that almost everything we desire seems to be so far off? When I originally penned the lyrics for this song, Chris and I were dating and eagerly waiting to be engaged - at which point we would still be waiting, then just eagerly waiting to be married. 

Waiting! I feel like so much of my life is filled with just longing and waiting to be somewhere else, someone else, and doing something else. 

I find it difficult to trust God for the things that I've always considered "far off." Music is a great example. There have been seasons where God has opened my heart and my time to pour into creating music that I'm still proud of and desire to share with others, but those times have been few and far between. Granted, He has had many things for me in the "rests," the musical pauses between measures, but I've always been daunted by the scale of what I've desired to do with music. It's terrifying in so many ways to me, especially now that I am married and looking to a future in the workforce and eventually (hopefully) having a family - how does music begin to fit into that framework?

But every rise is dangerous - 

I've made a mess of success, taking glory that is not mine.

And, yet, I wonder - am I still not in a position where I can fully give God back the glory that I so easily stole from Him in high school and in college and, heck, recently in thinking that I could do all of this myself? I so easily steal His glory and fail to realize that I have none whatsoever on my own.

How foolish our rises in pride are! How dangerous! I do not understand what I do - Lord God, have mercy on my soul!

I get into the perfect place for Satan to make me utterly useless - that place where I fear doing anything for fear of rising or falling too far from where God desires me to be. That place where I fail to surrender anything at all at the feet of the only One who can fashion all I bring into things of use for the kingdom. So much more often than it is, my prayer needs to (honestly and earnestly) be:

Take this away from me - 

Take this fear of failing, this urge to hold all that's holding me;

Take this need for normalcy, these attempts to grab and keep.

Take this like of being liked, this view that I am holding everything;

Take this mind that believes perfection is right within its reach.

Take this from me.

Are you ever at peace within yourself? I think there have been times that I was, but they (as so many other things) are few and far between. I never know the meaning of "enough" - even if the sufficiency comes from Christ - and that is a problem. I am:

Never satisfied -

Always not quite right;

Never pleased with stumbles;

Afraid of every fumble.

But You're right here and You never steer me wrong.

It is to You that I belong.

I cannot even begin to understand the root concept that I belong to Christ and only Christ. It certainly is not reflected in my daily life as I waddle around in the mire I've created trying to serve too many masters. I too easily forget I can cling to the wonderful and mysterious beauty of the Word made flesh and made an atonement for my every sin. 

That is the Hope of Easter. It is what my soul desperately needs every moment.

[["Take This (Simple)," ©2006 Alyssa Kate Grinstead; All rights reserved.]]