Disappointment and the Seeds of Joy

 Disappointment and the Seeds of Joy

8 But what does it say? "THE WORD IS NEAR YOU, IN YOUR MOUTH AND IN YOUR HEART"--that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, 9 that if you confess with your mouth Jesus [as] Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; 10 for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. 11 For the Scripture says, "WHOEVER BELIEVES IN HIM WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED." - Rom 10:8-11 NASB95

The last time I wrote, I wrote about how all the fruit of the spirit is one thing. It is a form of love. Today, I am going to go down a bit of a rabbit trail and talk about disappointment because it is integral to understanding, how love and joy are equated. I pray that you will stick with me for a while as I write these next few installments, but especially today.

As I was out mowing this morning, I was thinking about the recent events in my life. While the Lord has been faithful and He is restoring my body, I had plans for this year, things I wanted to do, people I wanted to spend time with, places I wanted to go. As a result of the stroke, needless to say, my time has become occupied with other things, none of which I had scheduled into my plans. As the year is winding down and I am still struggling to figure out how I am going to bring together everything I need to fulfill my plans for the year, I have faced disappointment. Not only has my health slowed down my ability to go, but it has also caused a drying up of funds. Even if I could safely travel right now. I couldn’t financially do it. This is a first. I cannot remember a time when God did not provide all the funds I needed, when I needed them to go and do the things He put on my heart. As a result, I have learned to buy plane tickets when it was all the funds I had at the moment and He always provided more than abundantly for everything else.

This summer, I really wanted to spend birthdays with 4 of the boys in Guatemala. I really miss them. They are some of my favorite people to spend time with, but God slowed me down. They are right in the middle of some pretty big transitions right now and I wanted to be with them as they go through them. Not only have I now missed 3 of the 4 birthdays, but I spent one of them in the hospital. Disappointment was setting in. As I mowed this morning and was listening to a Tony Evans podcast, the Lord started speaking to me through His message. He was speaking about our hopes and dreams and how often we pin our desires to luck. “Wish me luck.” He pointed me back to the sovereignty of God. There is a plan. God knows what it is.  He created it for us to fulfill our God given dreams and purposes, but He does not consult with us on how to get us there. He pointed us to providence, the hand of God, doing the work of God, in the ways of God, by the means of God in our lives.

I know that God is at work, even in the delays and setbacks but I need to step outside of myself and ask Jesus to show me where He is working in me to accomplish His purposes in me. It is those who trust in Him who will not be put to shame. When I make my plans and they fail, despite my best efforts, I am put to shame. I have made promises I couldn’t keep. My weaknesses and inability are on full display.

God has not put a heart in me for a houseful of young men in Guatemala to let them down or to expose my failures. He has given me a heart for them because His greatest desire is that they know a Father’s heart, one that will never fail them or abandon them. His desire for them is that they would know Him as the perfect Father, who always loves them, is always supporting them. He has a great plan for their lives. I am not saying this in a Joel Osteen sort of way to make God more attractive to the masses. I am saying this from the heart of a Good Father for the Children He greatly loves and desires to have fellowship with.

I believe that the boys in San Lucas can change a nation if they know who they are in Jesus. I do not believe they are only victims of poor family decisions and a broken government system. I believe the Lord has a call on their lives to make Guatemala something much different, much better than the country they are growing up in. I believe that the Lord, in His sovereignty and by His providence has put them in a place where He can speak His identity into them. For that they He does not need me. Holy Spirit can do far more in their lives than I can. I am just blessed enough to have gotten to be one of the instruments He has chosen to regularly remind them that they are loved. He doesn’t need me, but He has privileged me to be able to tell them countless times, and I cannot wait for the day I get to tell them again face to face. My love for them is real, but only because it is rooted in His love for me and for them.

My disappointment has been because I want to live my life in my timing, but the reality is that I know the Lord is moving the chess pieces around the board to bring things together in ways that I could never have planned. I know that when I go next time, He is going to reveal His love in ways I could never have imagined. This though brings me immense joy and great hope for them. They are facing a difficult transition. I have been delayed so I could not been there in my ideal timeframe, but it is all for God’s greater purpose. He loves every boy, young man in that house far more than I ever could and He won’t let me step on His plans for them. The door is still open, and He is still inviting me to walk with Him for His next great act in their lives. I don’t know when He will take me back to San Lucas, but I am going to keep my eyes on Him. The disappointment that comes from following my own plans is too heavy. The joy that comes from seeing His plan come together is too much to miss out on.

22 For those blessed by Him will inherit the land, But those cursed by Him will be cut off. 23 The steps of a man are established by the LORD, And He delights in his way. 24 When he falls, he will not be hurled headlong, Because the LORD is the One who holds his hand. 25 I have been young and now I am old, Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his descendants begging bread. - Psa 37:22-25 NASB95

My prayer is that each of the boys in San Lucas would know the Lord in this way. David started out a lowly shepherd, but He became a rich and powerful king because he knew the Lord and He did not fear His plans. David was not perfect, but He walked with the Lord and God took him way father than a shepherd boy could ever dream. I believe there are Davids, Joshuas, and Daniels living in that house in San Lucas and before my days end here, I am going to tell you their story, of how the Lord took ordinary boys who grew up in difficult circumstances and changed their nation.

The Calendar Is Running Out

 Today, I was able to mow for the first time in three weeks. It felt great to get back to a normal routine and just feel like life is going on, regardless of the incidents a couple weeks ago. As I was mowing, the thought hit me that the last time I mowed could have been the last time I ever did it since I was hospitalized just a couple days later. As happens, one thought led to another and I started thinking about lasts. If I know you, have spent time with you, there will be a last time that we talk in this life. I have no clue as to when that may be, but both of us were born with a limited number of days. Our calendars have been counting our days down since birth. As David said

15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. - Psa 139:15-16 ESV

12 So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. - Psa 90:12 ESV

Before we were born, the Lord planned the length of our life. It will not continue on forever on this earth. It will come to an end, by God's design. Therefore David reminds us to number our days, to live as if tomorrow is not guaranteed. That will cause us to begin to live a bit more wisely in our decisions. Remembering that the ending matters, we will live to make it a good one, a planned departure, not something that catches us off guard. We will be wise in how we leave things in our relationships.

This started for me as a rabbit trail from our Sunday morning group discussion two weeks ago, right after the stroke. We were talking about the fruit of the Spirit. A thought hit me and I have not been able to work through it completely yet, but it is related to this and it comes from two different places. I am hoping to write in much more depth about it soon,

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. - Gal 5:22-23 ESV

1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. - 1Co 13:1-13 ESV

I have always read the Gal 5 verses as  list of fruit, but the first thing I notice now is that it is not a list. It is singular. The fruit of the Spirit is love! All that follows in just a list of synonyms and descriptors for love. If you read these verses side by side with 1 Cor 13, you will see what I mean. The love is verses look very similar to the fruit. What this means to me, is that I have spent a lot of time thinking I was an impatient person and that really messed with me. I prayed for patience, but it didn't seem to come. Today, I am realizing that patience is just a manifestation of love in me and I cannot create, or generate love. I can only receive it and then let what the Lord has put in me come out.

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. - 1Jo 4:7-21 ESV

Love is the fruit of the Spirit and as we position ourselves to receive His love, He freely and gladly pours it in. I realized that I often do not position myself to receive. Love creates vulnerability and it requires trust to receive. I have often kept the Lord at arms length when He wants to fill me with love, because I know that His love will make me more like Him and that moves us into a position of laying our lives down for others. There is not selfishness in love, but I experience selfishness in me plenty of times. I don't need more joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness or self control. I just need to be full of the love of Jesus and every one of those things will begin to show His life and love in me, just as the sap flows through the trunk and nourishes the trees, to produce fruit, His love nourishes us and produces godly fruit in our lives. As we lay down our lives out of love for others, they become the seed of a new generation to grow in the love of Jesus. We prepare the soil of our heart to receive and then Jesus produces life in us. His love is the nourishment that overfills us an spills out to others. It will look like the answer to their need in the moment.

The reality is that I don't need to become anymore of the things that follow love in Gal 5. I just need to allow myself to be loved more freely by Jesus and allow that to become the ground on which all of my relationships are built, Our calendars are getting shorter. Our days are running out. What do you want to be the last thing you  people remember about you. I know I want it to be that I really loved them well and that they saw Jesus through that love. Then, the fruit of the Spirit is truly manifest in me. Then when we part for the last time on this earth, it won't be for the last time. It will just be a pause in our relationship until Jesus reunites us.

Caught Off Guard

Have you been reading the bible for years/Do you get into familiar passages at times and just find yourself skimming over the familiar words rather than slowing down and sitting with them for a bit. After all Jesus said His words were Spirit and life. I don’t know about you, but I can always use some more spirit and life in me. As I read through John 11, a chapter that I feel like I have read hundreds of times, I was really amazed by what I have never noticed before, but carried a great meaning in the moment.

John 11:5-6 (ESV) 5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

Did you see that? I have missed it numerous times. I have known that Jesus waited 2 more days after learning Lazarus was very sick before going to them. What really caught me was that it said “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. He loved them and still He waited to go to them. It is easy when we are going through things to feel forgotten. Sometimes we pray for what we want and the answer does not come immediately. I think we need a new perspective, the one Jesus was bringing to Martha and her family. 

Martha did everything right. She sent word to Jesus. She expressed her fears and the need. She did exactly what we are supposed to do in a crisis. Still, Jesus let them feel the pain of death. He suffered with them. He didn’t let them suffer alone We see Jesus weeping on His way to the grave. Death always hurts but Jesus was showing them it isn’t the end. The more important message was that the resurrection is a person. They needed to know this before Jesus was crucified. They need to know that there is life after the grave and it is Jesus. He was preparing the way for them to be where He is. 

It is the lesson Isaiah had to learn. Ezekiel 37:1-7 (ESV) 1 The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out in the Spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones. 2 And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. 3 And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord GOD, you know.” 4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. 5 Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 6 And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the LORD.” 7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone.

When it feels like the Lord is not answering us, we need to remind ourselves of these two stories. Jesus is at work. He is bringing life. He has not forgotten us. He has a plan and He is bringing it to fruition in our lives. If we will submit to Him and praise Him in the midst of the trial, He will reveal His life to us and in us through the thing we must go through. There is no pointless trials in the Kingdom. They all serve to fulfill the Lord’s purpose in our lives. It is when we learn to quickly submit to Him on whatever path He leads us down that we can walk in peace and prosper in every way that He has for us. He is not just leading us into places of suffering. He is going ahead of us, preparing the way. He is leading us down a sometimes dark, and apparently dangerous path so we can see Him in the midst of live’s trials. He is teaching us to abide in Him, regardless of what we see.

The real question is are we going to trust Him when the way isn’t clear and the obstacles seem insurmountable.?

The purposes of God

 I wrote yesterday about having a stroke but now I want to share about God’s work in my life. For the last few weeks, you may have sensed that I have been feeling a bit of discontent with my Christian walk. The Lord has been making it clear to me that there are areas of my life that He has been actively working on changing and I have been resistant to change. He has shown me areas where I lack basic trust in His goodness to bring the transformation that He desires. This has hindered relationships with Him and the people in my life. That is probably the biggest reason for everything that is happening.

In frustration a few days ago, I finally prayed what I knew the Lord had been prompting me to pray all along. I asked that He would do whatever was necessary in my life to make me a clear reflection of Jesus to those around me. I know that many times there has been too much of me clouding what He wants to reveal of Himself through me. Our short earthly lives are too important to waste on building our own kingdoms and on accumulating the praise of people. This life will end and we cannot take anything with us except those  who come to know Jesus through the way we represent Him. My prayer is that everything of me that clouds the picture would be laid down at the cross.

Now I do not believe the Lord caused me to have a stroke, but I believe He allowed me to ask that whatever it takes to purify my heart and actions could take place. I believe this whole thing began with Him allowing me to feel the discontentment with a life with one foot anchored in the security of feeling at home in this world. He allowed this to help me realize that everything in the world is fleeting. There will come a day I can no longer build a kingdom centered around me so it might as well end now,

The reality is that there is a house full of boys in Guatemala that I love more than my own life. They have had many rough times, not because of their own choosing, but because other people have made bad life choices that have done great harm to them. I started to realize than any area in me that isn’t sanctified fully cannot clearly reveal the love of Jesus to them. My own insecurities would eventually cause them more pain and harm. That would crush me, to know all the love of Jesus available for them and then to misrepresent him in a way that made it harder for them to receive that love. Many of them have summer birthdays and I have already missed a couple. It is heartbreaking to not be able to celebrate with them. But, I know the Lord is a master builder and whatever He is doing in me will benefit them and in His timing, it will bring more good for them than if I were there right now.

I would not have chosen to have a stroke, but I am celebrating the work the Lord is doing in me so I can reflect Him better, to become the example He wants me to be to draw people to Himself through my life. I realize it is not all about me but about the work Jesus is doing to make me a fully useable instrument in His hands. Through this, my biggest prayer is that  houseful of young men in Guatemala would come to know the full depths of the love of Jesus for them and to know that He is for them no matter what the world has thrown at them that has brought them harm. He is purifying my ability to let His perfect love flow through me without picking up the pollution that  has  so often colored my love for them and everyone in my life.

As for the stroke, I learned years ago that God has a purpose for our lives. Cancer didn’t kill me 15 years ago when a doctor I really like thought I wouldn’t make it past 51. 10 years later I still have a purpose for being here and the stroke can’t stop or change His purpose or plan, if anything it can only bring clarity and move me closer to the fulfillment of God’s purposes in and through me. I don’t fear my long term prognosis. My days were numbered before I was born. I am praying that as long as I am breathing, I would be a useful instrument to point people to the love and goodness of Jesus. I must decrease and His work in me must increase.

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