Tag Archives: faith

Old Cars, Achy Backs and Undisciplined Prayer Lives

Posted on by under 2026

I think I’m right in saying that most people who know me would agree I’m a pretty disciplined person. I’m a to-do list girl and methodically, sometimes neurotically, work through a list nearly every day.

And then there are those areas where I am inexplicably, undeniably, and intensely undisciplined. It’s illogical and unhealthy. It’s like there’s some rebellious thing in me refusing to comply. Recently my son informed me that one area in which I am characteristically undisciplined (an area we share) actually has a clinical name: Rebellious Sleep Disorder. It’s like some part of me simply refuses to do that which I should and go to bed. If you wake up in the night and need a friend, you might as well call me because I’m likely still up anyway.

There are other areas too.

I’ve had some problems with my back and hips. In discussing things with my therapist he explains that my body, like a car, is not only getting older but I put quite a few miles on this old thing every day. I even seem to be requiring longer and more demanding efforts from it. And old, overused things need more maintenance. He tells me there’s no reason why I can’t continue to run long into my coming years but I have to learn better maintenance.

So I did what he said and spent time every day stretching appropriately as I’ve been taught. I did a diligent job…until I had gotten through the next few races and hit my little 9 week hiatus. And then I stopped. I could tell you all the “reasons,” aka excuses, for why I have been doing such a poor job of it lately but the truth is that I am just not exhibiting the discipline I need to get it done each day.

Now why might this information be worth your knowing? I actually feel there’s a chance my pain may go away entirely today because I finally saw some deeper truth in it all. Recently at church, the preacher spoke on prayer. Specifically the power of communal prayer and the profound impact it did have on the early church and could/should have on todays Church.

As he spoke I began to see a harsh similarity between what I do with my undisciplined stretch therapy and what I and others do with prayer. I leave the ‘easy’ and passive instructions that lead to guaranteed results undone. I, instead, opt for some new plan of my own design that involves more active elements that require more of me and guarantee no positive results. Or I may just do nothing and assume doing something so inactive and ineffectual as stretching really doesn’t matter anyway. Prayer could well be considered a passive and ineffectual thing; you sit still and quiet, you talk to the ceiling or yourself, you try more than anything just to keep from returning to the grocery list in your head. And communal prayer? Who has time for that and why would someone make the time for it? If I can pray in my car or at my dinner table, why plan some other time to do it just so someone else can be there when I do? Others don’t have time to listen to you talk to Him. Do they really need to hear you pray for them when they know what their needs are better than you do?

Why do we fail to do the easy thing God requires of us when it is so easy to do? Why do we refuse to believe that the results we desire could possibly come about by doing less rather than more? When will we place the highest priority on that which He deems of greatest need? When will we learn that in doing less – surrendering in prayer – we accomplish so immensely more?

What God requires in prayer looks about as busy as me lying on the floor in dead mans pose. And yet He guarantees that is the path of purpose, progress and perfection.

As a people we fail to exhibit the discipline of prayer, specifically corporate or communal prayer, in exchange for a new (as in not the original church model) way that includes more ‘active’ components we believe will, should, could, can demonstrate similar or even better results. Or we simply leave the passive discipline undone, assuming since it’s so inactive it probably isn’t that important or effective anyway.

Rather than laying aside our heavy yokes, we strap on the arduous thing and swear this way is best. And we fall in pitfall after pitfall with that burdensome load for our trouble.

By dismissing the more passive path of prayer in exchange for the more active road of action we challenge and threaten so very much. First, we pose a direct affront to the Gospel. By believing I have to (or can) work actively in order to achieve that over which I refuse to pray I am asserting the idea that I can do…anything. The heartbeat of the Gospel lies in my inability to save myself and my profound and assured need for Another to sacrifice and save me. By dismissing the need to bring all to the Lord in prayer I am taking on the burden of doing things myself–something the Gospel assures me I am unable to do.

Second, this failure to prioritize prayer over activity promotes pride and inhibits humility. When things go right, it was my actionable works that brought about the good. Third and likewise, it diminishes thanks. When I work to get paid, I’m unlikely to thank my boss for the paycheck. I earned it, he didn’t give it to be nice, he gave it because it’s mine. Likewise, when God does something beautiful but I worked tirelessly in the process of His doing it, I don’t say thanks because in the convoluted mess I’m more inclined to believe I’ve earned it. Another related fourth, it creates a disunity in my relationship with the Lord. When I work tirelessly and things don’t go as I’d intended and hoped, then it’s His fault for derailing all my hard work.

The list goes on. And all these potentialities exist and find there origin in my attempting to do things without first presenting them to the Lord that He might do them…heaven help that He might change, take, morph, or NOT do them.

To state it simply: Am I living with pain and heartbreak, brokenness and discontent, longing and aches simply because I’m refusing to do the submissive and ‘easy’ thing and following the proven example of those who have gone before me? How often and with disciplined regularity do I begin with and prioritize prayer? Am I doing the same thing in my spiritual life that I’m doing in my physical one and refusing like some headstrong child to spend time daily doing the calming, peaceful, ‘passive,’ God-honoring, obedient and guaranteed thing that would actually land me at the point I so long to find myself?

Let us not only take on the lighter yoke, the peaceful path prayer offers. Let us not simply leave the path of frenzied doing. Let us not merely submit in obedience to the demand and example of our Lord.

Let’s do it together. The Lord’s Prayer uses plural pronouns, not singular ones. Let’s create communities that prioritize God’s work over our own.

It’s time to taste and see.

To Think I Could Stand in God’s Way

Posted on by under 2026

Acts chapter 10 tells of two stories that collide to create one directive from the Lord. The chapter begins with a Gentile man named Cornelius seeing a vision of an angel who tells him to send to Joppa for Peter who will come and tell him what he needs to hear. The story then jumps to Peter in Joppa on the following afternoon. This is the famous sheet of unclean animals story. God reveals to Peter in a vision that what God makes clean is clean, not what tradition specifies as such. Enter Cornelius’s messengers.

So Peter is told that what to him had been ultimate and eternal reality was actually tradition that, in Christ, was being clarified, seen in the fullness of its intention. Tradition that in Christ was upended. The very next minute God asks him to go into the house of a Gentile man. The message of the vision wasn’t meant to end with food in the body. God was preparing Peter to see, understand and embrace that what He said was law–not what Peter had been taught, told, or led to understand in his religious tradition.

The stories then merge and Peter enters the home of the Gentile Cornelius and immediately upon hearing the Word, the whole house full of willing spirits received the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Peter returned to Jerusalem in Acts 11 where he caught a ton of flack for entering the home of a Gentile. Peter explained to them: God told me that what He says is clean is clean, what He says is worthy is worthy, what He says is useful is useful, what He says is a housing through whom He can work and move is an appropriate vessel. Because He says so.

After explaining how it all went down Peter ends by saying, “So if God gave them the same gift He gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could stand in God’s way?”

Having heard Peter’s story, they didn’t just reason and begrudgingly vote to allow it or turn a blind eye to it, they praised God for having bigger plans than they had understanding.

The questions that may need to be posed and humbly considered in the coming days are these: Is God challenging religious tradition, attempting to upend errant inclinations that, in Christ, are proving to ‘stand in God’s way’? Is there the seal or evidence of His Presence and ‘way’ being exhibited outside the purview of those traditions He’s challenging?

(I do realize that the use of “traditions” will seem a faulty representation to some. After my own humble consideration of the Word on the issues at hand, I see there may be the need for a preliminary question that must first be addressed: is it tradition or is it biblically valid, clear and unassailable truth? I would simply ask anyone with opposition to my choice of wording to begin with this precursor question. Might my beliefs on these issues, in fact, be more shaped by tradition than biblical reality?)

One more question: If God is giving the same gifts to one subset of humanity as He is to another, who would we presume to be that we would stand in God’s way and disallow their use?

I really don’t want to step into a hot debate about who should do what under what title and within the interpreted definition of “function.” I cannot emphasize enough: I do not want to and am not offering myself up to. And so I believe God isn’t here asking me to do that at all. He is, most assuredly, asking me to do something, but what that is isn’t debate or fight or argue or coerce. God doesn’t generally like people who’s words are their weapons of choice. He tends to be a God attuned to action.

So rather than theologically debate or exegetically defend, I will only attempt to reveal. What made the way clear for Peter and the council in Jerusalem was evidence. Was God the One calling, using, sanctifying, saving, gifting, equipping, ushering into HIS BODY those others who had not previously been deemed the right people for that distinction? It was the fact that the Holy Spirit showed up that signified God was in the movement. So, as a female Bible teacher, is there evidence of God being in the room when I expound on God’s Word?

I was in Kenya. We were doing a women’s conference. I was the leader of our team that included males and females. Upon arrival, the eldest male in our group was invited into the pastors office to chat and eat breakfast. The pastor never actually spoke to or acknowledged me. Before beginning I asked him if he would be willing to be my translator so that the female translator who had worked the other elements of the morning could sit and simply partake of the lesson time. He agreed. And I literally felt the Spirit seize and surprise him beside me. He thought he was just acquiescing as a generous gift so someone else could enjoy some teaching. He had no idea from that first sentence that he was about to feel the consuming Presence of the Holy Spirit in that place. It was one of the most powerful and overwhelming encounters with the Holy Spirit I have ever had the privilege of being a part of. He was humble. He was passionate. He was kind and he, like Peter, seemed to have the understanding that what God was doing–not just in the women of his congregation, but in him–was of the Lord’s design and who was he to say God shouldn’t do that.

I had an adult male in my Sunday Bible class a year or so ago. He was in class regularly for a number of months before moving for his job. I didn’t know about his move and reached out to tell him we’d missed him in class. He responded. He was so gracious and kind, and on fire for the Lord. He told me that hadn’t been customary for him and his greatest aim in his new home city was to find a church home and someone to teach him the Word like I had. Under my teaching he had discovered passion for Scripture and a love for the Lord that was far more real than he’d ever known it could or should be.

It’s not just me. I have an older female friend who a handful of years ago heard the voice of the Lord more clearly than she ever had in her long and faithful life. He told her of a ministry He intended to see come to fruition. She immediately and actively set out to discover what man God intended to have bring the ministry into existence. After much prayer, many refusals and endless frustrating confusion, her prayer partner asked her whether or not God might have given the idea to her because she was the one He wanted to do it. She was challenged to her core but the notion that God might call a woman to such a high and noble thing as to lead a ministry of His design. I recently emcee’d the group’s anniversary gathering and I sat in awe of the Lord and the work He was doing, the passions He was igniting through the work of this sweet ministry. And while my friend made it clear she wanted no recognition that night, man after man after woman and man told their stories and then turned to her and said thank you for being the leader and vessel through whom this ministry was born and sustained.

I could go on. If God is putting the Seal of His Spirit approval on something, who would I have to be to stand in God’s way?

I have a Boss. He makes the rules.

I used to tell my kids when they got into trouble that even though they had not done the job God gave them to do of obeying their mom, that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to do the job God gave me to do of showing them the need to. God tells me what my job is. God equips, calls, empowers and directs me in the auspices of my job. Whether any other does or doesn’t do their job, I will, in obedience to the Boss who governs me, do mine.

Mixed In With The Old Stuff

Posted on by under 2026

So I’ve been writing the Bible. It takes quite a bit longer than you might imagine. I’ve been doing it for about 10 months and I’m hoping to finish Leviticus in the next week or so. Anyway, sidebar. So today I was writing in Leviticus 16 and for some reason these middle chapters have taken me much longer than anything has up to this point. I had decided to finish that chapter last night but ended up leaving the last few paragraphs for this morning. So glad I did because I think I would have missed this beautiful word in this beautiful Word if I had done it on a tired brain just looking to check off a to-do item.

So here’s what I saw: Chapter 16 is about the Day of Atonement. It’s told to Moses from the perspective of what Aaron or the high priest was supposed to do on that day. It has a very do this then do that sort of feel to it. We’re told what clothes he should put on and take off when and who should bathe with water after doing what things.

Once the day has been thoroughly mapped out by the Lord we read in verse 29 that on this day you are to “deny yourselves and not do any work.” Now we know that to “not do any work” in levitical terms was to not do much of anything, do only that which could never be deemed ‘work.’ So they were told to do nothing. On that day, you do nothing.

Why was it so important that the people do nothing on this day, you might ask. Well, let’s read on and find out more.

Because on this day atonement will be made for you, to cleanse you. Then, before the Lord, you will be clean from all your sins. Leviticus 16:30

We do nothing. We can do nothing. We are powerless to save ourselves, to “cleanse” ourselves.

BUT, on that day! Without any work on my part, atonement was made for me! I was made clean–while I do nothing and Another did all.

And now, before the Lord, I stand clean from all my sin.

Prior to this astounding picture of grace, sweet grace we are told of the scapegoat. While two goats were brought in for this momentous day only one was killed. The other took the sins of the people and ran as far as the east is to the west and separated those sins from their sinners.

It took two goats to show what my One Savior did: He paid the price for my sin with His blood (Romans 6:23: the ‘wages’ of sin is death) and by doing so He took my sin and sent it as far as the east is from the west.

So you read about the mold and the bodily discharge and the parts of the bulls burned or eaten and you might just miss that this amazing Word isn’t old stuff. These aren’t old rules that told people who aren’t us what they were and weren’t allowed to do. This too is living. This old Word too is active and penetrating and beautiful and life-giving and pertinent to me in this very moment. In the moments when I feel I surely have to ‘work’ just a little. For the moments when that old sin feels so close I can still smell the stink of it on my skin. In that day when it’s simply too hard to believe that I am a dearly loved child invited into the presence of a God who sees me as clean.

Mixed in with all this old stuff is the most eternity altering truth ever told.

And it’s there in pictures and stories, in metaphors and allegory. It’s there waiting to feed your soul and expand your faith.

Lord, don’t let us miss all the greatness of encountering you simply because it’s mixed in with the old stuff.

Raging Waters

Posted on by under 2025

A person can drown in an inch of water.

While we may adhere to some cosmic hierarchy of valid storms of life – cancer, murder, death of a child, these may top the charts of acceptably honorific life struggles – the reality is that whatever storm you face has the potential of being one under which you just might succumb.

One of the reasons I failed to grasp the beauty of the Psalms for most of my life is because it didn’t fit into any category of emotional balance I’d ever been taught. I’d seen only a few reactions to troubles like the psalmists so often seemed to face: you rage and vent and regale the world with details of your tragic affair or you sweep the whole thing under the rug and plaster that ‘happy’ face right on top of your pretty little smocked collar.

What I see in the Psalms is neither of those reactions. The psalmists very often draw attention to the fact that there were storms and troubles, but rarely wax ad nauseam on the details. And while they do indeed express emotions that seem completely unfettered, there are never accounts of their having acted on or in their rage.

I taut control. I have often prided myself (unrighteously) on my command of my emotions – as if to have them at all is weakness. I, therefore, naturally lean toward the “sweep it under the rug” reaction. Psalms doesn’t seem to advocate that. Vent in surrender. Rage in prayer. The psalm writers aren’t the only ones to voice complaints in Scripture. Prophets, priests, saints, and sinners bring their brokenness to the Father in words of anguish and emotions in crisis.

Your storms are real. They are valid. And while your storm may consist of the most fierce of one inch waves, they can still feel like they are bringing you to an inch of your life.

If God cares about the mold in your house or the condition of your earthenware vessels or how many years a tree produces fruit before you pick from it (all of which He discusses in the Word), then He cares about your one inch storm as well as your tsunami and every detail of life besides.

If you’re in the raging waters today, God has a word for you. If you are enjoying the peaceful tides of calmer waters, God has a word for you too. To the former, hold tight to the truths of clearer days. To the latter, grow in the truths of these clear days that when the skies darken you will be prepared to glorify your Maker in the coming storm.

Truth to cling to: if you are looking to God to help you, you have much to be thankful for. You have been granted a window into the eternal and the God of all creation calls your name and desires that you would be His own. This powerful and inconceivably great God desires and delights in favoring you, blessing you, loving on you. And while what you are walking through might not feel at all like an act of love, He has spent all human existence impressing upon the hearts of man and the intricacies of creation a knowledge of the depths of His love for His children. In His sovereign and infinite wisdom He has a long history of being trustworthy to take us to places we want to go – even when the path we must take to arrive there isn’t one we delight in traveling.

Quiet your soul with knowledge of this: though He seems distant, as far as the sun and as unreachable as the same, He has chosen to draw near to you. Train your eyes upon the glimpses of Him found in the Word, in your own story, in the lives of others who know Him, and watch expectant for your King to rescue.

Like a watchman I wait expectant for the mercies of the Lord to dispel the raging waters that threaten (though are unable) to engulf me.

Socks? Off.

Posted on by under 2025

I discovered some years ago that my innermost motivation for doing much of what I invest my life in is not just what the surface level would suggest. Missions? I love evangelism and the Church and culture and travel and that instant bond between brothers and sisters in Christ. But. Teaching? I love diving into the Word and spending my days at the Teacher’s feet and feeling the flaming of that indwelling Spirit surging with passion and willingness to move any marionette willing to hand over the strings. But. Mentoring? I love the deep swim in their lives, motivations, and impediments that have too long hindered them from a full awareness of what and who they were made to be. But.

The thrill that ignites so much of what I come back to again and again? Watching the light in someone’s eyes spark with an awareness that God is bigger than they ever realized before. That mind blown, box shattered, head exploding, imagination expanding, heart enlarging, socks blown half across the globe, world altering moment when the fetters fall and God escapes the genie bottle of our limited and limiting faith. Ahh, nothing better than to watch that explosion happen and the shackles that held true faith captive come crashing into a whole new belief system.

That moment when a woman with little knowledge of the world outside of her limited purview comes face to face with the reality that the God she often doubts lives outside her local church walls (maybe not even as far out as even the parking lot) is the same God showing up in a tent church with a beach ball hung like a chandelier in the center to a poverty stricken people who have no indoor plumbing. And He seems to be showing up to them a bit more powerfully than He ever has to her.

That instant when the guy gets smacked in the face with an awareness that God really is able to deliver the undeliverable. That money comes from nowhere he’s ever known existed. That word was spoken so aptly by someone he will never see again. That message reaches his ears from the lips of a preacher on the other side of the world or a walmart shopper he doesn’t know but who lives in the same town. Or maybe he just hears an imperceptible whisper he knows didn’t come from his own mind. God has been listening? God went to the trouble? God knows? God delivers? God is able?

The silent sound of sobbing from the corner as a woman so far lost and hopeless realizes the God she’s been running from loved her enough to bring a new friend from the other side of the world to make sure she knew she was still loved, wanted, known, and valuable.

Yep. And the socks blow off.

I’ve had the amazing privilege of seeing that look many times. There’s a shock then a sort of brokenness and then a sheer surrender and delight. There are often tears and just when you think your heart will break open the laughter starts to roll inside your very soul. Like Manoah. Samson’s dad thought surely no one could see God and live to tell of the day–that fearsome brokenness when you know that you know He’s been there all along. Followed by the realization that though He’s been watching it all, He’s still there loving on you. That’s the smile, the laugh, the impossibility of it all. And then the excitement. If He is there, if He can do this, if He’s all the way over here, if He …. Then He may be bigger than I realized.

And I may too.

Too few know this look. Too few have had it. We don’t go to the uncomfortable unknown. We don’t talk to the stranger. We don’t commit to the unachievable. We don’t dream. We don’t attempt those things which we couldn’t alone complete if and when He fails on the follow-through. We don’t let Him out of the box. We keep our tidy God in His little church sized box and–for our own selfish, sinful sakes–hem Him in to that which is known, safe, controlled, and familiar. Socks? Firmly on.

He will blow you away with His abilities and delights, blessings and provisions, appearings and sweetness. Day after day the gifts sit under the tree of true union. Day after day He waits for the child in us all to run, fall to our knees, and expectantly reach for gifts–lives!–that will leave us coming back for more, blown away by the wonder of being the King’s kids.

In Every Season

Posted on by under 2025

Many years ago now the Lord rearranged my life. After coming home to work on my own time and schedule, God took that opportunity to switch up not just my job but every aspect of my life. He quite literally nixed my whole calendar. He had me cut nearly every single thing that I had spent my life doing–job, board memberships, service work, friendships, hobbies, everything. Once He had it pared down to about nothing, I became settled with looking … vacant. I eventually stopped trying to hide the fact that my calendar wasn’t full. I stopped wondering if neighbors thought me lazy or assumed I was napping in those moments when I wasn’t but was praying instead. I finally conceded to His perplexing will.

Once I gave up the fight, He started putting pieces back together. Where He had made cuts, He now filled gaps. Where He had cleared my schedule, He now filled it.

And I came to realize that only those things that He wanted on the calendar needed to be there at all.

In the years since that core deep cut, He has taken me through seasons of great fullness and minimal workload. He’s added some things for a while and some for the long haul. And I’ve attempted to let Him be the One to order my days.

So here I find myself again. I wonder what doors will open and how many closed ones I’ll never see the other side of. How many hours I’ll spend wondering how I should spend that hour and how many I’ll wonder how I’ll get it all done in. What will this season hold?

I’ve seen Him do it before – take me out of an old to shape me for a new. But letting go is hard enough. Trusting in the greatness of what’s to come is another story entirely. Empty classrooms and dying loves. Quiet rooms and lidded boxes. Great replacements and unneeded availabilities. Where is my place now?

May we all enjoy the restful Sabbaths the Lord walks us into and through. May we all, likewise, enjoy the frantic Monday’s of kingdom usefulness. May we all attend valiantly to the voice of our Maker telling us which one we’re stepping into next.

Glory Glow

Posted on by under 2025

As housings of the great God of the universe, we get the inconceivable distinction of radiating His renown to all who might encounter us. We get to trade in our tainted name and sullied stories for His almighty name and His eternally grand story. We get to move from objects of shame to objects of His desire. We get to enjoy a transformation from dirt, dust, ashes, and grime to beauty, splendor, riches, and perfection. We get to trade in our filthy rags for the bridal attire of the truly holy. We get to watch the cleansing miracle of stained black sin turning righteous pure white. God comes to dwell and brings all His glorious splendor with Him.

And unlike Moses with his veil of sadness–not attempting to hide the glow of his face but the sad reality that the glow didn’t last (2 Corinthians 3:13)–we get to see God light a flame with His tongue of fire and set this holy housing ablaze forever. And unlike Moses we aren’t meant to hide it anyway. We are His calling card. We are the ambassadors through whom God calls all man unto Himself. We have a Maker, we have a Saviour, we have an Owner, Master, and King and He has written His name on my forehead to claim me as His own. As His child I bear that name as a reflection of the One who wrote it upon my life.

The glow of His great glory–like an inferno sized tea light within the clear glass candle that is this fleshly abode–radiates through my life, love, and demeanor. I hold both the privilege and the responsibility of stoking that fire, of putting it on a stand amid the rooms that make up my days, of lighting the world in which I wander. It is His greatness I bear. It is His name I represent. It is His esteem, reputation, and honor my life is called to uphold and magnify.

His glory glow on my face. His renown on my lips. His praise on my tongue. His grandeur on the pages of my rewritten story.