I Didn't Deserve That

It was about this time eight years ago when I first met my husband.    He was charming and happy-go-lucky.  I was still trying to pick up the pieces of my shattered heart which remained strewn about after a very painful break-up.   It didn’t take long for him to win my heart, and we were married just a few months later.

Having recently celebrated seven years of being very happily married, I was completely caught off guard last night when I was filled with sudden rage toward my ex.   As I laid down to sleep every memory of that painful time came in like a flood threatening to sweep me away in the current of anger, hurt and devastation.   Each thought began with “I didn’t deserve…”    

I didn’t deserve to be lied to.  I didn’t deserve to be told over instant message that he could “no longer be [my] boyfriend, just [my] best friend”, so he could take some time to work things out with God.   I didn’t deserve to be ignored when I called my “best friend”.   I didn’t deserve to be kept on a hook, believing that he still loved me and that we would ultimately get back together (those were his words, after all).  I didn’t deserve to sit in church and watch him cuddle with another woman.   I didn’t deserve to get messages from him telling me how much he loved me while all of this was going on.   I didn’t deserve to have my heart broken with such callousness.  I didn’t deserve….

As these thoughts stirred up every negative emotion I felt choked in the bile called bitterness.   This was surprise number two.   I thought I had worked through all of my pain.  I thought I had already forgiven him.  I thought that the wounds had healed.   I was wrong.   There was another layer sitting dormant, a layer I had not yet released, and it was kept hidden in the “I didn’t deserves”.    

I wrestled with the idea of “deserving”, wondering if I even had the right to say “I didn’t deserve,” and as if my questions were spoken as prayers, I felt the Father say, “You’re right; you didn’t deserve any of that.”    It was so sweetly spoken, and it soothed the red hot rage immediately.  It validated the wound, acknowledged the pain, and answered the questions.    Yet, the richness of the statement invited, no demanded a response.  As the knife was removed from my heart, it was clear that I had to make the choice to forgive….again.

This time, though, it didn’t feel as hard.   It was as if the sweetness of His voice mixed with the lemons of my pain making refreshing lemonade of His grace for this man who had hurt me so badly.   My heart was overwhelmed with a compassion that I couldn’t even explain.   How broken must he have been?  Had he ever known LOVE at all?   Could he even see how he was destroying me, or was he so blinded by his own pain and rejection?  “Oh, Father, please forgive him, he didn’t really know what he was doing,” I cried as my tears of rage transformed into tears of intercession.

I didn’t deserve any of it.  He didn’t deserve my bitterness, anger, and rage.   Neither of us deserves the grace that has covered the multitude of our wrongs, but it’s offered so freely, just waiting for us to take hold of it.

  

“See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled.” ~Hebrews 12:15

Prayer-Worrier or Prayer-Warrior?

I was on my way home from a frustrating rehearsal one night, and I called Paul to talk with him as I made the drive.  As soon as he answered I immediately unleashed my tirade of who said this and who did that and why this is all a bunch of malarkey.  About 15 minutes in I suddenly became aware that this was the first time I had spoken to my husband that entire day, and I hadn’t even said “hello”.    I stopped myself, apologized, said “Hi honey.  I love you most,” and reset the tone of our conversation.    Instead of anxiety and anger ruling the conversation, I was able to share my frustrations in a calm manner and receive his comfort, insight and wisdom in return.

It got me thinking about how I often pray.   Somewhere along the line I picked up that prayer was simply asking God for different things.   Prayer meetings always meant kneeling for an hour at a pew and running down your checklist:  Lord, please bless the pastors; Lord, please help the missionaries; Lord, please be sure our unbelieving friends and family get saved before they die; Lord, please help dad get a good job; Lord, please heal my cat; CRAP, it’s only been 10 minutes, better go through the list again; Lord, please bless that pastors; and so on and so on and so on.  

Outside of prayer meetings, prayer was a crisis hotline.   Whenever anything went wrong I would frantically cry out to God to intervene, and then I would wring my hands worrying until an answer came.   Sometimes it took a while for the answer to come, so I would cry out again and again until I was sure He heard me and the situation was resolved.

It’s no wonder that when someone who was praying for me said that I had the gift of intercession I asked if I could exchange it for something that I would actually use.  I had been convinced that prayer was good for “intercessors”, but for those of us who weren’t “gifted” it was more of a request line to Jesus.   I always believed that there were people whose prayers were “always” answered, and I was not one of those people.  Therefore, praying could not be my gift. 

Then I met some really cool people who loved to pray and they were always happy while doing it.   This was completely foreign to me, so I had to learn more.   These men and women taught me that prayer is simply asking for God’s perspective and then setting my agreement with Him.   This is based on “The Lord’s Prayer”, found in Matt 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4, where Jesus teaches His disciples to pray, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”     Since we have been raised with Christ, and are seated with Him in heavenly places, we can get His perspective, His will, His plans rather than getting lost in the storm of the current situations (Col 3:1-3). 

 

It’s a little like flying in a thunderstorm.   There is always a little turbulence as you take off through the rain, and the plane shakes as you ascend, but when you reach cruising altitude, it’s bright, sunny, and completely calm.   My first experience with this made me very anxious, grasping the armrests until my knuckles were white.   The man next to me just laughed and told me it would be alright when we got above the clouds.    It was more than “alright” when we got above the clouds, it was beautiful!  There is something spectacular about seeing the red and orange hues of the sun shine bright about the fluffy clouds that are as white as snow, a stark contrast to the foreboding charcoal color of the clouds below.   And there is peace. 

How does this relate to prayer?   James gives us some insight in chapter 4, verse 3 when he says, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives…” 

When we stay in the storm, our tendency is to pray about how the storm is making us feel.  For example, when I am in the midst of a hard day at work, I might pray that God will give me a new boss or open the door for me to leave or remove the pain in my &%*(# that has been driving me nuts for the last month.   All the while, I will remain in a state of agitation, frustration, discouragement and all around bleh.   Often these circumstances and resulting emotions cause us to question the goodness and kindness of God.  We hear that little voice whispering in our ears, “If God really loved you, you wouldn’t be stuck in this job you hate,” or worse, “It will never get better than this, so you’d better just learn to live with it,” and we are soaked to the skin by the lying rain of the enemy.   

But (isn’t that a great word? It means there is good news around the corner), then came Jesus!   With His death and resurrection, we are now hidden with Him, seated in heavenly places.   We get to come to Him in all the craziness and emotion of life, lay it out before Him, and talk to Him about what He’s doing. Often He uses the very storm that we’re in to call us higher so that He can reveal a part of Himself we’ve never seen before.    He is good, and His plans are always good.  He is perfect love, and His ways are always bigger than we can fully understand.   He is sovereign, and nothing takes Him by surprise.   Think about that for a minute…NOTHING takes Him by surprise.   He knows every minute of every day, and He has a strategy for expanding His kingdom through every circumstance, and we get to be a part of it!

The Word tells us, “The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results” (James 5:16 NLT).   Righteousness is “right-standing with God”.  Since God is heavenly places, doesn’t it make sense that “right-standing” with Him would mean standing with Him in heavenly places?   Since we are hidden with Christ in God, and we are seated with Him in heavenly places, we have been made righteous, which means prayer is for all of us, not just for the “gifted”!  

Storms will always happen, that’s just part of life, but we have the choice of perspective.   We can stay on the ground worrying about the storm soaked by the rain, or we can make the choice to put up with the turbulence of our emotions rising above the storm and cruising in His peace and in His power.  When you choose to trust Him, you get to fly with Him, and He is a master pilot, and HE ALWAYS brings us to a new place in Him!   

The Father offers each one of us an invitation to embark on a new journey of discovery, excitement, and relationship with Him.     Will we be prayer-worriers, grounded in fear and anxiety begging Him to meet our needs, or will we be prayer-warriors, soaring with Him above the storms to new destinations in His kingdom, trusting that He has every provision for every need already prepared?

“…an eagle knows when a storm is approaching long before it breaks. The eagle will fly to some high spot and wait for the winds to come. When the storm hits, it sets its wings so that the wind will pick it up and lift it above the storm. While the storm rages below, the eagle is soaring above it. The eagle does not escape the storm. It simply uses the storm to lift it higher. It rises on the winds that bring the storm.”         (From “Eagles in A Storm”, author unknown)

Scavenger Hunt, Big Bang Style

There is something thrilling about scavenger hunts.  Working with a partner or a team to decipher clues that lead you to your next clue and then the next until you finally make it to the prize is exhilarating, and sometimes frustrating (depending on your team or the quality of the clues).   When I was a little girl, my parents switched from hiding Easter eggs to hiding the Easter basket with clues.  I loved it so much more, because there was a feeling of achievement when I solved each clue, and the sense of victory when I finally held that Easter basket in my hands was overwhelming.  

With this in mind, you can imagine how much I laughed when The Big Bang Theory dedicated an entire episode to a scavenger hunt amongst the primary characters.  For those of you who might not be familiar with The Big Bang Theory, it’s a television sitcom in the United States based on the lives and relationships of 4 physicists and their wannabe actress neighbor.   The primary characters are: Sheldon, a genius with little to no social skills; Leonard, your average nerd who is always trying to fit in with “normal” people; Howard, the scientist who “only” has a Masters degree, lives with his mother, and is a little creepy; Raj, the physicist from India who is the self-described metro-sexual who longs for a relationship with a woman, but is scared to talk to them unless he’s drunk; and Penny, the wannabe actress who lives next door to Sheldon and Leonard and is the stereotypical blonde waitress waiting for her big break.     

While, it’s much funnier to watch in person (which I highly encourage), I want to give a quick overview of the episode.   I promise, I really do have a point in all of this!

Raj is known for putting together “fun” evenings for the group, including dinner mysteries and the like, which all turn out to be giant flops.   In the “Scavenger Vortex” (Season 7, Episode 3), the group had all ditched Raj’s last planned event, so he decided to put together a scavenger hunt for them, reminiscent of their college days.    The primary characters, along with a couple of their girlfriends (Amy, a socially awkward neuroscientist, and Bernadette, a short and sweet microbiologist), are sitting in the apartment waiting to decide teams and get their first clues.   

It was initially determined that teams should be by couples, however, no one wanted Penny on their team, because she was considered a “liability” (even by her boyfriend, Leonard).  After some discussion, they decide to draw names from the hat, and the teams are linked as follows, as the hunt begins:
                                                                   Sheldon - Penny
                                                                   Leonard – Bernadette
                                                                   Howard – Amy

Sheldon, the genius, is initially upset about being paired with Penny, who throughout the course of the game continues to get more of the clues faster than he does, though he ignores her each time having to solve the riddle himself.   

Leonard discovers that Bernadette is nowhere near as sweet as she has appeared to be as she barks at him the entire time, criticizing his driving, yelling at him to move faster, telling him he’s nothing but a big girl.  

Howard and Amy start with awkward silence but then discover a mutual passion for Neil Diamond, ending up completely distracted and not even finishing the “race”.   

In the end, Penny ditches Sheldon and makes it to the “prize” (a golden coin) first, immediately followed by Leonard and Bernadette.   The three are furiously tearing the couch apart looking for the coin when Raj comes out with a cigar and a smile and tells them to look in their pockets.  They find that they each had the gold coin in their pocket the entire time.   At that point, Sheldon walks in with a big smile on his face, saying “Look, I won!”   Amy and Howard are nowhere to be seen.   Because the hunt had been full of arguing, criticism, strife and drama, the participants were angry with Raj, saying that this was the “stupidest game ever”, but Raj responded that he just wanted everyone to have fun and be together as he pulls out his own gold coin.  “See, I won too,” he said.  

There are so many “life lessons” that can be drawn from this episode, including the value of good partnerships, how we treat each other in the pursuit of a goal, enjoying the game without getting sucked into the competition, or how we treat those who aren’t the “same” as us (not as smart, nothing in common, etc).   But, for the sake of this particular post, I want to focus on the hunt itself.  

It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out. ~ Prov. 25:2

Recently, I’ve been meditating on this proverb.  Initially, I thought that it wasn’t really very glorious or even very nice for God to hide things, but as I watched that Big Bang episode and reminisced on Easters past, I started to see it a little bit differently.  

I don’t remember exactly who said it (I think it was Bill Johnson), but I believe this is true: “God doesn’t hide things from us, He hides things FOR us.” He’s not trying to keep us from knowing Him, understanding Him and His ways, but He is wooing us into a “game” of sorts, to go deeper in our relationship with Him.    The word “glory” in this passage means “glory, honor, abundance, riches, dignity”, and there is so much more than we can even begin to imagine!   He is anxious to share His glory, riches, abundance with anyone who will go after Him.   The amazing thing is that He doesn’t just wait on the other side for us to find Him, but He plays the game with us, helping us decipher each clue, rejoicing with us in each step, encouraging us with every frustration.  

I know that there may be some out there who will get their panties into a bit of a twist when they hear me likening our walk with the Lord to a silly game, and I’d like to be sorry about that, but I just can’t be.  You see, there is such joy in discovering the secret treasures of His heart.  There is so much delight in pursuing Him and finding Him in the most unexpected places.   It is so much fun to partner with Him each and every day.   This is why we were created, to walk with Him, to be His kid!  

When I was a baby, my daddy played “peek-a-boo” with me.   He was always there, and easy to find!  As I grew, the game changed to hide-and-seek.   And I would count to 10 and run to find him, and I always did find him.   As I became a young adult, the games changed to more strategy type games, including Monopoly and Risk.  To be successful in these games, you need to understand your opponent’s though process, and it’s a little trickier.   I cannot even begin to remember who won or lost, because those times were never even really about the game.  It was about spending time together, growing together, and building our relationship.

As a Father, God is always inviting us into a deeper relationship with Him.   He wants us to know Him, understand how He thinks, how He works.   And as we grow in our walk, sometimes the game gets a little trickier.   Sometimes it’s harder to know what He’s thinking, or catch His heartbeat regarding a certain matter.  Sometimes there is a lot of yelling, crying, frustration and distraction.   But, we’re always together, and we always “win”.   Remember, that when things are hidden, they are hidden FOR you, not from you, and it is your Father’s delight for you to discover all that He has for you. Like Raj said, the winning is in the playing the game together!      

You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.  ~ Jer 29:13

Famished and Full

The man displayed the patience of Job as his three-year old daughter read “The Cat in the Hat” from cover to cover, just to start it over again and again.  This went on the entire commute to the office, while walking into the office, while conducting business at the office and all the way home.   He smiled at her, encouraged her, and cheered her on as she had finally learned how to read.   

It was that day in sunny San Diego that I developed my passion for reading.   As a young girl, the highlight of my week was going to the library.   I devoured every book I could get my hands on, from mystery novels to cheesy romances to the classics.   My mom had to limit my weekly checkout count to 20, and it was not uncommon for me to finish all 20 books in the first 4 days of the week, leaving me anxious for the next trip to the library.   

I was 10 when I first read the thousand pages of Gone With the Wind, often staying up all night and being found huddled next to my lamp, eyes glued to the pages when my dad woke up for work the next morning, much to his chagrin.   I was the “nerd” who loved school, everything about learning, studying, and reading.   I even liked homework (most of the time), and would check out Algebra books from the library during the summer to work on the problems.   

When I was in college, I always took the most classes I could take, even auditing a couple, just so that I could get the information being presented.   After graduating, I moved to Phoenix, where I enrolled in a Bible college associated with my church, quickly earning another couple of degrees.   My personal library continued to grow, through book clubs, book stores, book tables at conferences.   I just could never get enough.

As a young professional, I started building my business leadership library, often reading and recommending books to my colleagues and managers.    One of those books was called “Strengths Finder 2.0”, a book that helps you to discover what your personal strengths are, and how to utilize them in your career.   I’m sure you will not be surprised to discover that one of my top strengths is “Learner”, one who is passionate about learning, reading, growing in knowledge.  

It’s no wonder that one of the first items on my to-do list when moving to a new town is to get a library card.  My heart still skips a beat when I visit the library.   I walk down each and every aisle, touching the books, lamenting that there is just not enough time to read every book and learn everything that is contained within the pages.   While I do have an e-Reader as well with hundreds of unread books loaded on it, it just cannot compare to the smell of an old book, the feel of pages turning in my hands, and the joy (and sorrow) of coming to the end of a riveting story.

With all this passion for knowledge and reading, you might think that studying the Bible has come naturally to me, but you would be sadly mistaken.   Growing up, I read through the Bible almost every year as part of church contests and programs, but it was a checklist.   There were stories that I had heard in Sunday School, and then there were the parts that I just could not understand (Ezekiel, anyone?).   Reading the Bible was always just something that “good Christians” did, so I tried to read it regularly.  There were seasons where it was dry and of minimal priority as I was “busy” doing other things, and other seasons where it felt alive and I didn’t mind it as much.   But when I would hear about men and women who loved the Word, and passionately devoured it, I couldn’t comprehend what that really meant.   Oh, I loved participating in Bible Studies, getting into the Greek and Hebrew, but for my own personal study, I fought with the “want to”.   I 

really wanted to want to, and I would read because I needed to, but it still felt forced.  

And then everything changed.   A few months ago, my husband and I left the comfort of a rich home church, an environment where everyone basically believed in the Lord, and spiritual nourishment was as abundant as an all-you-can-eat buffet, and we moved to one of the most un-churched cities in the most atheistic state in America.   We went from buffet to virtual famine in the blink of an eye, where even those who are in church appear to be just barely surviving.    I went from having nutrient rich food handed to me, to becoming a hunter for anything remotely edible, and suddenly I started to understand what it meant to be spiritually famished.

Every sermon challenged everything I had ever heard and believed in.  Neighbors began challenging my theology.  I was overwhelmed with questions without answers, and I was hungry for hope.   I had to know who Jesus really is, who His Father is, who the Holy Spirit is; I had to know what salvation really means; I had to find out what He had to say about x, y, z, and what how to apply that to my life here and now.    I started reading Matthew, and I couldn’t stop.   Then I started seeing how it correlated with Romans, and Psalms, and how there is so much depth interwoven between each chapter.  I started sneaking my phone under my blanket at 1am, and reading through entire books of the Bible in different versions.  I wake up and I can’t wait to read and study more to discover the riches of every word, and I am finding myself disappointed when I have to put it down for silly things like making dinner or doing laundry.

The more I read, the more I find that I don’t know, and I want to know everything (remember, I’m a Learner).   I still get frustrated when there are things I don’t understand (which happens at least 2-3 times a day), and I get frustrated that some of the resources to help us understand are themselves difficult to understand.   But, it makes me go deeper.   It has become like a treasure hunt, and instead of being satisfied with the gold flake on top of the mountain, I have to keep digging and digging and digging.   It’s here that I have discovered that there is so much more than just “gold” in these mountains, there are diamonds, rubies, sapphires and gems of every variety.  

More than anything, I have discovered that God has so much that He wants to tell us, that He is waiting to show us, if we will be still and dig in to His love letter to us.   I am learning that it’s not a sprint, but a leisurely stroll as with a friend on the beach, stopping to pick up seashells, driftwood and pretty rocks.   It’s okay to be “stuck” on just a couple verses, meditating on them, studying them, digging in to them, to hear what He has to say.   It’s actually more than “okay”, it’s where hunger is both ignited and satiated at the same time.  And this is exactly the place He loves to meet us, this place where we are both famished and full.

An Illustrated Story

There once was a girl who was shattered, scarred, broken, and ashamed.   She hated herself, even to the point of considering suicide sure that it was the only way to be freed from her wretchedness. 
 

One day, she saw a man hanging, bleeding, dying on a cross.  When He looked at her, love shot from her eyes into the deepest part of her soul.  She was so ashamed of her tattered appearance, she ran to change her clothes, taking time to iron, scrub, clean every spot.

She quickly returned, keenly aware that her best effort to look good for this Man was not enough to hide the scars, blackness, and broken heart of stone that defined her.   She ducked her head in shame, defeated yet again.    But then something amazing happened.   The Man came down off the cross, completely healed and very alive.  The same love that radiated from His eyes soothed her as He spoke.

The Man said, "Come to Me, and I will make you brand new.  Come, exchange your broken life for mine."   It sounded too good to be true, but something drew me closer.   She stepped up, then stepped away.   "I don't have anything to offer Him," she thought.  "Even my clothes can't cover up the ugly in me".    Again, He said to her, "Come."

So, with determination, she walked closer.  With every step she realized that her old life was completely gone.  He had completely consumed her, and she was now alive in His very existence.  Everything He was became who she was .  "No one would even recognize me," she smiled to herself, "I don't even recognize myself."    All because of one Man, hanging on a cross with love in His eyes.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.  All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself...For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

2 Cor. 5:17-18, 21