Scars

Every morning as I perform my morning routine, a scar reminds me of cancer.  The scar won’t disappear.  It will always be there as mute evidence to the struggle of life and death, to earthly terrors that can devastate your life. I see it and immediately the enemy comes to remind me that it could come back.  Before he can get a moment into his attempt to turn me aside the Holy Spirit steps in with positive reinforcement in the form of a song or a verse of Scripture.  You see, while the scare may be a reminder of cancer it is also a testimony to the healing power of Christ, though I know not everyone will see it that way.

Every morning I praise God for a new day and his healing power in my life.  I ask him to continue his work in my life with good health so that I can continue to work for him in his Kingdom, even if my part in his work is small.  Every task in the Kingdom is important, and while mine is such a small part, if I can touch just one life for Christ during my daily routine, it will be worth the doing.  Boring as my daily life must seem to others, to me it is one more opportunity to serve Christ.

I am surprised daily by God’s small miracles – like the mist over the pond on a neighbor’s property, or the brilliance of the sun as it rises over the mountains.  His gift of life to me is no small gift and I would honor him in any way I can.  I used to think that I had to do something big, something really important, to be used of God for his Kingdom’s purposes.  It didn’t occur to me that living your life daily is just as useful. So, while I am not called to preach, and I’m not a great gospel singer of any kind, whatever small work I can do will be enough.

Scars, I’m told, tell us where we’ve been.  They do not dictate where we are going.  And as a coworker reminds me, they do not dictate who we are.  They are reminders but not indicators.  I may have a few scars, both physical and emotional, but they are only scars, healed by the blood of Christ.  Scars tell us what God has brought us through, what he lifted us up out of.  These days the scars remind me that I am a blood-bought daughter of the only Living King.

But for some the scars of life are difficult to overcome.  The enemy reminds them daily that no one cares about them, that they are doomed to a life of difficulty, that they will never go anywhere or do anything, and that all their dreams will be broken and scattered like so much dust over the deserts of the world.  The enemy feeds their loneliness and laughs at their inability to pull themselves out of the depression that sets in when they feel trapped, overwhelmed, and oh so very alone.

In today’s world there are a lot of reasons to be depressed and overwhelmed to the point of desperation.  Recent weather events give you cause to know Christ’s return is imminent.  Where I live unemployment reigns and families are broken.  I imagine it is the same in other areas of the country.  Hope seems to be illusive, almost imaginary, for some people.  They are not simply glum, they are downright gloomy. They seem to plod through life working just to pay the rent and other bills piling up around them, cold, hurt, and beaten down.

How sad their lives are. There seems to be little enough to find joy in and even less reason to rejoice. They don’t smile much.  They seem to be going through the motions like little robots.  They are in survival mode, and they don’t seem to know how to get out of the seemingly endless black hole their lives have become.  I think about all the scars they are accumulating and I wonder if they even guess there is still hope for them.  Do they know Christ is the answer?  Do they know that he can bring peace and hope to their lives?

Someone, maybe me, or another blood-bought sister chick, must take the time to extend a hand to help them up out of that pit.  These hurting people need someone to notice they are hurting – someone who will show them the path to the Balm of Gilead.  We are Christ’s messengers, workers in his Kingdom and it is part of what we are here to do. According to Matthew, it is our calling, our purpose,  and our mission.

Recently I've begun to sense the winds of change.  I know God is going to do something magnificent.  I hope I will follow his leading, take hold of his promises, and continue the great work of the Kingdom at his beckoning and at his leading. Jesus is coming soon!

Trust and Faith

I recently went to dinner with a friend who I realized I hadn’t talked to for a while.  It’s difficult during tax season to catch up.  Work wears you out and by the time you get home the last thing you want to do is get on the phone or stare at a computer screen.  Keeping communications alive with friends you love and care about gets tough, especially when you work the kind of crazy schedules we do.  From one week to the next I may be working a different schedule, making it hard to stay connected.

As soon as we sat down and began to talk I realized that she had completely lost faith in people, and more importantly, anyone connected with “the church.”  People had let her down time and again, in one way or another, and many of her dreams slid away unrealized.  Sadly, while she believed God existed, she didn’t believe he had any real part in her day-to-day life.  She seemed lost in the desperate hole of the disenfranchised.  She finally seemed to have bought the great lie called Why Bother – they don’t see your potential or are scared by it, they don’t like you and are against you, it’s just a job or just a lousy life, and if you want anything you’ll have to get it on your own.  No one is going to help you – not your friends, not your supervisors, not anyone who says they are a Christian, not the church, and certainly not God.

She has been “turned off” by those who profess Christianity in front of the boss but who curse and tell ugly jokes with the best of them as soon as the boss leaves the room.  They know how to praise God and spout Bible verses they’ve memorized but their belief is only a façade, part of the game they play to make others believe the lie.  They are part of the lie, part of the enemy’s plant to turn us away from God.  They are the false prophets whose job it is to convince us that following God is the wrong choice.

I want her to know this is not the God I know, nor the church I know.  My God never fails; he always works things out for my good, even when I don’t understand how he plans to do that or how he can find good in the situation – like battling cancer.  How can he see good in that?  How can he see good in letting your husband die so young, or a child commit suicide because that’s what all the kids are doing on a Friday night – playing the choking game and dying for want of love.  God uses the situations in our lives in his fight to get us to see that without him there is no good.  He fights to get us to see through the lies and find the truth in him and in his Word. 

People will always fail you but God never will.  If we fail it is because we did not trust him to do what he says he will do. Our fear drives us into unbelief and distrust. I would like my friend to understand that everything depends on believing God and trusting him without regret – and without trying to control the situation ourselves.  Trust, Pastor G says, demands commitment – we cannot trust that to which we are not committed.  I am committed to God and his Word.  There is nothing man can offer that matches God, his Word, his Truth.

But I don’t think my friend can hear me.  She’s bought into Satan’s lie – that God and his church are worthless when it comes to her life and its path.  I don’t know what to do other than to keep loving her, keep praying for her, and keep showing her that God is the truth, the way, and the light.  I want so much for her to know that God (and God alone) can take care of anything you find yourself caught in. I want her to know that God has a place for everyone in his Kingdom, even those of us who are female, are not married, and do not have any kids.

Isaiah 54:1-5 says:

 “Sing, barren woman,
   you who never bore a child;
burst into song, shout for joy,
   you who were never in labor;
because more are the children of the desolate woman
   than of her who has a husband,”
            says the LORD.
“Enlarge the place of your tent,
   stretch your tent curtains wide,
   do not hold back;
lengthen your cords,
   strengthen your stakes.

 For you will spread out to the right and to the left;
   your descendants will dispossess nations
   and settle in their desolate cities.

  “Do not be afraid; you will not be put to shame.
   Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated.
You will forget the shame of your youth
   and remember no more the reproach of your widowhood.
For your Maker is your husband—
   the LORD Almighty is his name—
the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer;
   he is called the God of all the earth. 

I consider myself married to Christ, so why would I worry about hunting down some poor man to marry?  Christ is all I need.  If God thinks I need a husband to do his work, I’m sure he’ll put one in my path.  Until then I will keep on walking and believing God for all the things in my life, including cancer and the loneliness of being single in a world that is only made for couples.

I wish my friend could see the peace that is in Christ.  I wish she could know how safe it is to be held in his hands, to be guided by his Spirit, to find comfort and healing in his Word.  Whenever the enemy has come crawling back with his lies, I always find peace in the Word of God.  The Sword of Truth is my weapon of choice.  His Spirit refreshes my soul and keeps me moving forward on the path he has set for my life.

I would like my friend to experience the Living Water that never runs dry.  I want her to experience the beauty and joy in Christ.  I want her to place her hands over her heart and surrender to a God who will never leave her, never forsake her, and whose love will last for all eternity.

Doorways

I’ve made up my mind that the only truth that exists is God’s truth.  I am determined to believe God and that he has a plan for my life.  He promised me so in Jeremiah 29:11 – For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.  Who am I to dispute what God says in his Word?

Believing God’s promises means that I have to build a door in my wall and then go out it.  Fear would have me believe that the door will bring bad stuff my way, but hope and faith in God says that he does all things for my good, so out the door I must go, no matter what it looks like when I open it.  Appearances can be deceiving and it may look like a dismal choice (most people would say opening that door to cancer certainly is).  But I have to make a choice – either give in to fear or walk in the power of the peace of God.  I choose God.

Fear’s greatest purpose, I’ve learned, is to make me lose my faith.  Losing my faith would be absolutely debilitating.  It robs me of all forward movement, keeping me in the same place, doing the same old things, going nowhere at all.  Next thing I know there’ll be a really deep hole where I’m standing and it will be filling in with swamp water.  Now, it’s not the swamp water I have to worry about – it’s the alligators waiting to devour me that have me shaking in my boots.

There are lots of things that steal our peace – stupid little things that aggravate and annoy us, tiny little actions by others we think are unnecessary or rude, and all that road rage on the way to work.  We let them come in and rob us of our God-given peace.  Oh, doesn’t the enemy know how to sneak in and try to lead us off-course!

Funny things is, Pastor G says, is that God wants to move us into a places that require his peace.  I know what he means; cancer is that kind of place.  Stepping out in faith and trusting God for my healing is difficult by the world’s standard, easy when God’s leading the way.  It’s a daily leading because I’m only human, but God is faithful in always bringing me a song or a word of Scripture to keep me walking in faith.

Pastor G also said that where there is fear there is also unbelief.  How did he know to say that?  Because the Holy Spirit was guiding his words – that I firmly believe.  We choose not to believe because we fear God won’t do what he says he will do.  I think that part of the problem is that we expect him to do it our way, forgetting that God’s way is not ours and cannot be judged in human terms.

Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid, God says.  The most important battle we face is what we allow to destroy our peace, our faith in God.  I know exactly what that means – I can’t count the number of times I’ve allowed someone cracking their gum to get on my nerves, or the sound of someone clearing their throat to nearly make me physically ill.  Stupid little things that don’t matter at all, yet I let them destroy my peace.  Like Pastor G says, I go to pieces instead of going to peace.  Point taken.

Christ is my deliverance from fear.  He heals, delivers, sets free, and forgets.  I don’t know any human being who can do all those things and do them so effortlessly. And when God opens a door, there’s not a soul, including the enemy, who can close it.  Oh, they may try, but they will not succeed.  God (as Pastor G says) will blow right past them and open the door anyway.  He’s that kind of God – the one and only true God.  He is our doorkeeper.

Since God is our doorkeeper, not only can he open doors but he can also close them.  Sometimes he moves them so that those things which once had access no longer do.  God can say ACCESS DENIED to all those things not of his making and that may harm us.  There’s not a hacker in the world who can get past God’s security software.  I suppose they will try but they’ve never met a firewall like God!

One analogy that I loved from Pastor G’s sermon was that Satan cannot cross the bloodline on our doorway.  Once we are Christ’s he cannot cross and God closes the door on things that once tied us up into intricate knots.  I remember in the Old Testament when the Israelites put blood on the doors to send the spirit of death away; it could not cross. Pharaoh, on the other hand, wasn’t covered by the blood, and so he lost his first-born son.  Pharaoh, you should have listened when God spoke through Moses.

Man is not my doorkeeper, nor are my circumstances.  God is my doorkeeper.  God opens and closes doors on my behalf.  It’s in the hallway between doors where I have to be careful.  I have a tendency to want to hurry and go through a door, literally kicking it down, before considering whether or not that’s the door God wants me to go through. God says it’s his door – so if I’m trying to kick it down and he wants it closed, all I’m going to come away with is a broken leg.

Sometimes God’s doorway is for privacy.  In our private closet is where he speaks to us, heals us, teaches us.  It’s here that he heals our hidden past and hides our dirty laundry away from the rest of the world, laundry that no one else needs to see and that God has already forgotten. God doesn’t expose us.  Instead he shuts the door on all our “stuff,” heals us, forgives us, and opens doors to use us. And doors that God shuts remain shut.  No man can open them again. 

Remember when they rolled a stone in front of the tomb?  How silly!  Who did they think they would stop?  A holy God of unfathomable strength?  The Christ who rose from the dead?  Crazy, crazy. He caused the stone to roll away and the stone the builders rejected walked out, a risen and glorified Savior.