Written on My Heart

Becoming a Woman of Grace

2014-04-29T07:20:00.000-07:00

It NEVER feels good when the Lord is showing you things about yourself you don’t want to see. It just plain hurts. But, when you get on the other side of it and out of the pit----you realize that God truly loves you, and as the familiar verse talks about in James, your “…trials produce perseverance….[and ....wait for it....]…..let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete and not lack anything.” (James 1:2-4) When you realize the God of the Universe is talking to you, that He is doing this to grow you, so you lack nothing----you can’t believe how much He loves you and cares for you. You just want to fall down and worship.

It’s not an accident in the last six months that I’ve been studying two books in tandem. One is the book of Romans (a book of the Law), and the other is Becoming A Woman of Grace, by Cynthia Heald. At first, I kept wondering why God was showing me so much about the law, the law, the law. Okay, Lord, I get it – the law is good, you came to fulfill the Law!!! Can we talk about grace now?

And then I heard it, a gentle quiet familiar knock on my heart. “You won’t understand grace unless you understand the law.” What you do mean? I countered: I get the law. But God showed me that perhaps I got it TOO much. I didn’t even see it, but as I kept reading about the Pharisees and teachers of the law, the sacrifices they made to Him, I saw something I didn’t even want to see: I saw myself in them.

Under the law, we are graded by how perfectly we obey it. Under the law, we look at others and see if they measure up. Under the law, we grow cynical finding fault with other’s theologies, and see the rules and not the person. Under the law, we begin to divide the lines from who is sold out for Jesus to who is just coming to Sunday sermons. Under the law, there is no unity. Under the law, there becomes a death to grace, and a death to mercy. Because mercy would be like “selling out” and although you love the idea of mercy---really, it's limited to when and whom it’s offered to. I loved the law the way the Pharisees loved it.

Oh, I need Jesus.

One day the disciples were walking through a field on the Sabbath and they were starving. They plucked heads of grain, husked them, and ate. The Pharisees expected Jesus to put a stop to this because it was a clear violation of the Sabbath law. When I read this, I thought the Pharisees made sense. Had I been there, I probably would have said, “Hey it’s just a few more hours until the Sabbath, you need to wait and then you can eat all you want. You won’t die or starve to death. It’s the right thing to uphold the law.”

Except the problem with that is Jesus didn’t agree. He looked at the people as his focus. They were starving. Here’s where it hit home for me: God’s priority was always mercy before sacrifice. Put a little differently, God said it was a gift to make lives better, to show mercy and love, rather than passing a test--- to see how much I would be willing to give up for God.

And there it was….my pharisaical heart.

God showed me in my own upbringing how I was raised in an environment where rules mattered, and where approval was earned, and what other people thought of your reputation defined your worth. I grew up in a Cambodian home, where in Asian culture; those values are placed on you at an early age. A young Cambodian girl would be praised for her beauty, her family was blessed by such fortune, but no one ever praised her heart. I grew up with questions like: What will you accomplish and become? Will you obtain great wealth? How hard will you work? Your performance determined your approval. The goal was not the family, the goal was to make the family known.

Praise God that He showed me where this came from. It was a gift to me to be able to go back and see the source of my stronghold and present me with a clear truth: in His family, in His economy, everything is different. I am already approved. It’s all about Him. The goal is make HIM known.

These last few months God has tested me in so many ways as it relates to this. He was refining me with fire (1 Peter 1:7), and there were days I got back in bed under the covers to hide my face from the shame of my ugly heart. Truly, I did not want to look in the mirror! I write this not only as a record of what He is bringing me through, but also as a way of encouraging someone else who may be specifically going through this. I was bound and I am becoming free!

Oh, how I held on longer than I should to a grudge. Instead of holding a grudge, I had to choose to look at the mirror. Go to the cross, and grasp the gravity of my own sin. There’s one truth I never saw more simply: Jesus came to forgive sinners. It’s the THING that he did! This should be my #1 life app. Forgive. That was his mantra. Um, shouldn’t this be mine?
Instead of leading a team to the goal of excellence, was I seeing them? What was going on in their lives, did I bother to take a look at their hearts? I had the goal all wrong, and I needed to focus my energy and my time to give to them, to serve them. A deeper thing I saw was that I kept going around Jesus who was standing right in front of me and telling him to please step aside so that I can accomplish things for Him. Boy, did I miss that one.
Instead of being upset at why people weren’t committed to coming, and fight back the urge to condemn, fight back the urge to raise the bar to keep the riff-raff out----instead God showed me that I needed to fight for the opposite: the unlovables, the sinners that Jesus liked to hang around, even the bench-warmers, the consumers----and that love casts out a wide net asking everyone to come and receive.
Instead of holding on to MY rights as it relates to the weaker brother, will I sacrifice this freedom, and choose to put their needs above my own? I act like I had to give up something I fought for that was mine, in truth it was His and He gave up His life for it. Really, I am going to gripe about not having sangria?? Stupid.
Instead of a heightened contempt for the repeated sin of others, I chose mercy over and over again and realized how many times I sinned against God and His attitude was never ever condemning.
Instead of justifying a cut and paste theology that emphasizes Jesus’s hard sayings, His justice, His consequences. I looked further and didn’t ignore the verses that speak of His mercy, and His humility, and His grace. In studying the scriptures, mercy always trumped sacrifice.

Oh, I need Jesus. Oh how I need Him. Every hour I need Him.

It is excruciating to go through some of this, I feel almost raw and weak and exposed -- but at the same time, I feel such an urge to just fall on my knees and worship with an unspeakable gratitude that He would not leave me the way I was. That He’s all about His glory in me. That He wants to fix my wrongful thinking so that He can actually do work in me, and be magnified.

I just love Jesus. I do, I do.

I get Paul now when he says, “And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly therefore, I will boast about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. (2 Corinthians 12:9)

Thank you God, that you help me to understand new facets of grace and I can experience this freedom, that I can extend this to others day by day, moment by moment. That you use me to bring about glory in YOU.

But Lord, I don't know how to be STEADY!

2014-03-03T11:00:00.000-08:00

"Create in me a pure heart and renew a steadfast spirit within me."

Psalm 51:10

We were taking communion yesterday and I sat there quietly asking God to speak to me. The Lord gently laid this verse on my heart:

"Create in me a pure heart and renew a steadfast spirit within me."

Psalm 51:10

Through a quiet whisper to my spirit, the word "steadfast" popped into my thoughts. As I was confessing and asking God for forgiveness, for a pure heart---He gently showed me what also comes in creating a pure heart ---a heart that is faithful, reliable, unwavering, true--- is a steadfast spirit. Could they go hand in hand?

Really, Lord? Steadfast. When I thought about it some more, I realized that God was asking me to go somewhere new with Him. Don't you love God? I'm always asking Him to take me to new places, but in order to go there, I need to leave the place where I am.

So, where was I in my spiritual walk? In a word---all over the place. Okay, that was four words. As I examined the nature of my walk, I would say that it's turbulent. It's painful to admit, but I can be the passionate zealot or I can go quickly to the discouraged defeatist. I can thrive when I see God at work and then I turn the corner and I just wither when He seems to have forgotten about a situation.

When my spirit flourishes, I come alive and I'm drawn to virtue and putting off sin. But if you leave me there long enough, I may just languish and feel discontentment and then quickly anesthetize pain by watching garbage on TV and focus on my many distractions.

Why can't I be more steadfast?

When did my walk with the Lord become determined by my feelings and my circumstances? My daily issues swerve left and right, and I'm right there with it, being taken for the ride. If my children were behaving poorly, than I was having a bad day. If my husband said something hurtful, my spirit would seem to go up and down with the latest emotional high or low. It was either I was having a mountaintop experience, or I fell into the ditch of a deep valley.

I saw something else interesting: The closest times I felt to God was when was I in the valleys. I wish I could say it was because of some tragic ordeal, but the valley experiences were usually characterized by sin with guilt (the low) and then recognizing the depth of my depravity and understanding His grace covers (the high). The roller coaster feels like even in the pit, I've been lavished by love knowing that nothing I can do could separate me from Him. When I'm in this raw place, I cling to the bible and the words in scripture come to life or my worship is so heartfelt that I'm brimming with tears and I wind up a sobbing mess. It's at those times when I'm crying out to God thanking Him for His grace that I feel close. I feel that HIGH that comes with a surrendered heart. Oddly, the times I am actually steadfast, I would feel like He was far away. I would tell friends I'm in a funk and they would fire away questions like, "Are you doing anything different?" And my answer was always no. I was seeking after Him.

So, how can this be? The question that is slowing surfacing is: Do I subconsciously choose the valley experiences so that I can feel closer to God? Or I am addicted to the guilty high? Is that why I go up and down like a roller coaster?

Perhaps maybe God is asking me to change my methodology. I don't need to be in the valleys to draw near. He is always near. Haven't I already experienced that nothing could separate His love from me? (Romans 8:38-30) If I can measure my spiritual walk not by my desperate-for-God to come through-ometer, or by the ups and downs, but rather---I can focus on two questions that could indicate if my spiritual growth is more steadfast:

"Am I growing more easily discouraged these days?"
"Am I growing more easily irritated these days?"

At the core of a steadfast spirit, I am increasingly trusting in the love of God, and the peace of God. If peace is growing, I am less easily discouraged. I will have less hills and valley experiences. Life can be a roller coaster, but perhaps becoming steadfast is to go on fewer and fewer rides. And knowing that if I have to be on this ride, that I can trust in my steady driver, and trust in the guardrails He put up around me so that I can keep from getting off track.

Steadfast. I am a little excited to go to this new place with God. I looked up the word just to see where God was going to take me....

stead·fast

ˈstedˌfast/

resolutely or dutifully firm and unwavering.

"steadfast loyalty"

loyal, faithful, committed, devoted, dedicated, dependable, reliable, steady, true, constant, staunch, solid, trust "a steadfast friend"

firm, determined, resolute, relentless, implacable, single-minded;

unchanging, unwavering, unhesitating, unfaltering, unswerving, unyielding, unflinching, uncompromising

"a steadfast policy"

Unwavering. Solid. Resolute. Those are great words that I'd like to describe my spiritual walk, and start shaping my identity in Him. How would you like to define your spiritual life? Lord, help me to keep my eyes fixed on you, and to trust you with all things. Teach me not to sway back and forth, but to be firm on the one thing that is always constant - You. Give me faith to trust you in all circumstances that I may learn to be unwavering and steadfast.