Wednesday in His Word | Transform

Welcome, Wednesday.  The midpoint of this week.  Upon its arrival, may we see progress towards our goals as well as the promise of rest from our labors.

But Wednesday is also the farthest point of time from our sacred Sunday stillness. Does the sermon still ring in our ears?  Or has the message been lost, drowned out by secular sidetracks?

I don't know about you, but by Wednesday I need a faith-filled refresher.  I need a deep dose of God's word.

And so, a new weekly installment in this part of Bloggyland appears.  Wednesday in His Word.  Stop by each week to digest Scripture slowly, savoring a passage and its portent for our daily lives.  I'll share a gem from my recent Bible reading.  Or I'll explore a verse of your choosing (just note it in the comments section on any given Wednesday).  Together we will unwrap God's message and unwind in his grace.

So if you have a week that wants to beat your down, or you want to lift up on wings like eagles, stay here a minute.  Let's read, reflect, and pray together.  Let's rest together in God's word.  Let's simply be, together, tended by our Lord.

Time to Transform

free printable from framedinfaith.blogspot.com

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy,

Paul encourages each and every one of us to take a good, long look at God's mercy. By his love and grace, we are accepted, loved, and forgiven.  Just as we are.  Not because of who we are.  But because of whose we are.  God's children.  His kiddos. Adopted little ragamuffins, and he loves the fuzz off of us.  Like the story of the boy and his Velveteen Rabbit, God's love makes us real.  God's love makes eternity real for us.

to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God —

So, we are loved — deep and true and lasting — by our Heavenly Father.  What next? When we are loved, we can't help but reflect that love back.  And the best way to respond to God's love is to dedicate our lives on this earth to pleasing him.

This is where my mind starts to wander and worry.  Does that mean God can put me anywhere he wants?  A rural town?  An Asian village?  Antarctica?  Does that mean I'll have to give up my loved ones?  My comforts?  My life that I've carefully established?  Will I have to drop my figurative fishing nets and follow Jesus, leaving everything behind?

The more I learn about God, the less I believe those worries to hold any worth.  Let's go back to step one.  God loves us. God wants the very best for us.  He's not going to ask us to ditch our life-giving relationships, our meaningful work, or true joys and abiding passions.  He's going to use those things that are nearest and dearest to our hearts as a way for us to minister to others.

this is your true and proper worship.

Worship is more than a Sunday activity.  Yes, this communal, physical, and spiritual gathering with our brothers and sisters in Christ is key.  But it is just the beginning. True worship is filling our souls up in the sanctuary, then carrying that holiness in our bodies and out into the world.  Proper worship is finding ways — quiet and small or big and bold — to glorify God by the way we live.  It is where we use our passions and pursuits to point to our living Lord.

Do not conform to the pattern of this world,

When I think about living out my faith in ways that point others to God, I feel a bit bashful.  It feels right and comfortable in the church.  But talking to my neighbors? Shopping at the grocery store?  Collaborating at a committee meeting?  That's when the patterns of this world push me to put my faith back in the Sunday box, to keep quiet about Christ.

But if we are true to our faith, we can puncture the cultural patterns — like rushing or  shushing dissenting voices, like complaining or keeping up with the Joneses — by consistently exhibiting love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control  (Galatians 5:22-23).  Oh, yeah, that sounds easy.  NOT!  Oops.  There goes that conforming voice of this world.  Hey, Conformity, we've got news for you.  We don't have to conjure up these qualities on our own.  When we worship God, we receive the fruit of the Spirit.  When we walk alongside God, he fills us up and raises us up to more heavenly patterns.

but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

This is where my hope grows huge.  Walking alongside God, getting filled up with the Spirit, setting my mind on those heavenly habits — these are not things I have to accomplish on my own.  God will plant new and better thoughts in my mind.  God will change my heart.  God will transform my ways.  And all for the better.  All I need to do is surrender.  Surrender my need to blend in so I can shine forth. Surrender my need to conform so I can proclaim God's grace.  Surrender my doubts and old habits so I can live, freely and truly, by Christ's example.  It's a daily practice, and one I won't perfect, but I can lean into God and trust in the process.

Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing and perfect will.

By committing to this practice of opening our minds, hearts, and lives for God's transformation, we learn what God wants for us.  We see his plan for how we can be his presence in the world.  We understand how we can please him by loving and serving others.  Our will aligns with God's will.  Our paths merge into God's higher road, and we walk alongside our Lord, experiencing the fullness of Christ.



Lord,

You are the epitome of love and mercy.  Thank you for naming and claiming me as your child, understood, accepted, and forgiven.  Help me to live my life in true worship to you, following in Christ's example of loving and serving others, of glorifying you.  And when this world pressures me to conform, help me to remember your better way.  Fill me with the fruit of the Holy Spirit.  Transform my habits and my attitude.  Show me, clearly and undeniably, your good and pleasing and perfect path.  Then give me the faith and the courage to follow it.

Amen

7 | Surrendering in the Stillness

After I published yesterday's piece about "When Being Still Is Hard," it got a lot harder.

I set out on an easy three-mile run.  (I've learned over the years that the weekly or bi-weekly short run is all my body can take.)  Just as I'm coasting into that two-mile autopilot, no-effort mode, it happened.

Uneven sidewalk.  Lunging dog.  Tight hamstring.  Tear.  Treacherous tumble.

Twenty minutes of praise-filled prayer, of lead-me-Lord listening, torn out from under me.  Flat on my fanny, I pulled out my phone to call for a ride.  The spiraling dots were dialing down to a dead battery.

Talk about feeling disconnected.  Nevermind the fact that this week I have no access to either of my work emails from two different organizations for mysterious, Poltergeisty reasons.  Nevermind that the two aged laptops we own are wheezing and freezing, and the wifi needs unplugging and replugging on a daily basis. Disconnected.  Minding the gaps — physical, technological, social — minding them very much, indeed.

The mile walk home was a downward spiral from "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" to a bitter pity party.  My spiritual battery was dying, too.  I was mad at God for the recent sequence of events on top of years of problematic patterns.  All the wounded disconnections stormed up into a cold silence by the time I walked the last blocks home.  "I can do all things" subsided to a whimpering "why even try?"

That whole mile I wanted to by physically still, but I needed to get home.  That whole afternoon I wanted to deliver a spiritual silent treatment to God, not enjoy any spiritual stillness.  But God kept pointing me to his home of love and grace.

Geri Madera Photography

Fastforward four hours to the MRI lab.  Thirty-six minutes of forced stillness. Preceded by worries about potential surgery and twitching legs and loud robotic bleats and bursts.  Yet those thirty-six minutes turned out to be pure gift.  Pure gift of prayer that went from self-pity to petitions for friends who are in much more dire straits than myself.  I became engrossed in lifting up Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and throat cysts and deep grief and cancerous brain spots.  Amidst the robotic machinations of the MRI, my prayers melted from robotic supplications to heartfelt lifting of friends on pallets, lowering them through the roof to Jesus' healing presence.  My prayers melted from "Why me?" to "Can you?" to "You promise, and I believe."

Confession: I don't normally pray with that kind of passion and trust.

I don't know how to do it without feeling skeptical or just plain weird.  But I do know it happened yesterday, by the grace of God.  Literally.  In the moment where I surrendered my worries, accepted my current state, and whispered (without moving a muscle) for help, God entered my prayers and filled them with all the faith I didn't have.  It was a stillness that was situationally forced and spiritually freeing.  All I had to do was let go.  That, and fall in a clumsy, crazy, contorted way.

ibibleverses.christianpost.com

Interpretation:  God is still working in me to get better at this Being Still thing.

Just when I think I've figured out what he wants me to do, to say, to share, God brings me back to doing things in his time and in his way.  Being still is not for me to think my way through, to figure out on my own.  It's not just, as I wrote yesterday, me inviting God into my moment of slow.  Being still is God's invitation for me to come to a full stop — to trust and to surrender, so he can fill and overflow.  Because what God brings to the stillness is so much more powerful than anything I can ever offer.

Philippians 2:13 from VersifyLife.com

And with that, I'm going to just shut up for today.  But not before I leave you with this prayer.

Lord,  

My ideas for what is possible in my relationship with you are so humanly limited.  

I pray that you blow wide open the realm of possibility for our time together.  Where I seek space, I ask you to create your own peaceful dwelling place.  Where I seek silence, I ask you to fill it with your living word.  Where I seek sanctuary in the midst of busy, I ask you to make my business all about being a living, breathing, walking, talking sanctuary that glorifies you.   

And where I try to keep hold of the reins, I implore you to take them from my controlling clutches, take them under your divine direction, and teach me to surrender to your serenity. 

Amen.