We talk a lot about being in His presence because it’s pivotal to everything, but here’s something to consider: He loves your presence, too.
He likes being around you and hearing your voice. He wants to hang out with you so you can carry His peace and know His voice.
You can expect to hear God for yourself. You don’t have to rely on anyone else; He has words for you and He wants to talk to you.
It’s okay if it takes a while to get used to it, and to start recognizing His voice. It’s okay to wonder, “Is that the Lord, or just my own thoughts?” He loves your heart that wants to get it right, that doesn’t just want to hear what it wants, that wants to hear the truth and be set free.
Be willing to be surprised, though. His thoughts are not our thoughts because He is better and more loving than we imagine.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
— Isaiah 55:8-9
He knows that the more you hang out together, the more you will reflect Him — and that’s not a narcissistic desire of His; the more you reflect Him, the happier and stronger you will be.
He gave up Himself so you could have all of Him. He’s not petty and insecure. He wants every bit of you to reflect every bit of Him, so nothing is left that is less than it should be.
And maybe here’s the most surprising thing: He’s not impatient with you or angry with the timing of your progress. He’s not frustrated by your need to grow. He knows you need to grow; He knows it’s a process. He is building character, purity, and strength in you step by step, every time you abide with Him.
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.
— John 15:13-15
If you are feeling a nudge (or a slam) of correction in your life, don’t let pride or stubbornness or immaturity get in the way of it. Don’t let the enemy strip blessing from you by convincing you to ignore it. Choose to grow.
Blessed is the man whom you discipline, O Lord,
and whom you teach out of your law,
to give him rest from days of trouble,
until a pit is dug for the wicked.
For the Lord will not forsake his people;
he will not abandon his heritage;
for justice will return to the righteous,
and all the upright in heart will follow it.
— Psalm 94:12-15
It’s okay to just sit with Him and not have words to say. Waiting in silence and acknowledging His presence are ways we learn to distinguish between God’s thoughts and our own thoughts.
We don’t have to fill in the gaps.
We welcome the Holy Spirit into our space and our silence.
We can rest and refill for a minute, and trust that He is moving the very synapses of our brains to help us receive His words and wisdom for our day.
…assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
— Ephesians 4:21-24
The Lord is still talking to you. If it seems different, it’s because you’ve changed. He doesn’t change, but we do.
It’s not necessarily wrong.
We grow and our routines have to grow, too. Sometimes we grow faster than those habits and routines can keep up, and it takes a while for them to catch up with the change we’re experiencing.
Here’s something to remember: God is not offended by the normal activity of your life. But He is easily pushed out by our indulgence in the comfort zone. A little break here, a little slacking there, and eventually our disciplines are out the window and the fault is squarely on us.
What to do? Repent fast, immediately, as soon as you realize. Do it now. He is near, and shame must not be allowed to separate you further.
Jesus, we’re sorry for straying. Keep our eyes on You. Remind us of Your nearness, Your love for us, Your goodness to us.
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
— 1 John 1:5
He knows who you really are.
Who you’re becoming. Who you’ve been. Who you’re struggling to overcome and who you’re meant to be.
You don’t have to hide from Him. Your progress forward accelerates with honesty and integrity, so be honest with Him about your struggles and desires. Get it out in the open. Lay it all before Him and surrender. He knows anyway, so ditch the pride and let Him love you into wholeness. You will love the you who He wants to make you into.
He is pouring love onto you every morning, giving you a new day to abide and know Him more as you partner with Him.
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
This time last year I was sitting on my bed, tapping out words for the December newsletter, just like I’m doing now. But last year, I was frustrated because December had not gone according to how I had planned. I was stewing and praying and typing, and then Kav came into the room crying because he had crashed while sledding and broke his arm.
And then our December really didn’t go according to plan, because if you’ve been reading since then you know that our world changed that day when medical tyrants tried to hold our son’s emergency care hostage to force our capitulation to illegal pressure and abuse to him and our family.
Long story. Lots of trauma. Super eye-opening, too: We realized that not only was the medical establishment as corrupt as some said, but also that tons of self-proclaimed Christians are okay with that and happy to participate in it. We were even accused of child abuse by some for not simply caving to demands to relinquish our patient and parental rights. It is an upside down world when people somehow think they hold the moral high ground by abdicating both their critical thinking skills and their responsibility to protect their children – and demand that you do, too – in exchange for trusting a disgraced medical regime with every financial incentive to abuse both its authority and the children put in their care. We are not ignorant, unsuspecting, or weak-willed parents, and we will not become so just to make those who are feel better about their own decisions.
So anyway, I guess you can see I haven’t really softened my stance on this.
I bring it up though because anniversaries of trauma and pain can be hard to get through. For some reason many of us have almost a superstitious fear about them, as though something else bad might happen around the same time of the year or that we’ll somehow have to relive the ordeal. The memories carry deep pain laced with other feelings like betrayal, confusion, anger, regret, and fear. So much fear. Fear from the event, and fear of the future. We fight fears of repeated pain, or accumulated pain, and we brace ourselves for the next blow.
Right after we went through that last year, we had a major windstorm. Windstorms here aren’t unusual; we had another one just last week, so this time it came the week before Christmas instead of the week after. These were good ones, though, with gusts up to 85 miles an hour, zero degrees plus windchill.
Last week it shook our house and flexed the windows. In the upstairs bathroom during one of the biggest gusts, the mirror on an interior wall wobbled and rattled. The stovepipe, a new addition this year, whistled in varying keys as we sat around the table putting the latest Christmas puzzle together.
And the noise, oh my gosh. As a homeowner all you can think is, Is the roof okay? What is that weird sound? We prayed that none of the trees would fall on the house or the coops, and that nothing would blow into a window.
It was the same kind of anxiety I felt after the 7.2 earthquake a few years ago. We had aftershocks for months and I prayed for our foundation, the walls, and the future. We could see a little damage – we had cracks in our walls like everyone else – but I was more concerned about damage that we might not be able to see.
And isn’t that what trauma really does? Because it’s not just the memories and the pain, but it’s also the fear it creates of what we cannot see in the future. Usually, we didn’t see the trauma coming in the first place, and we worry that there’s more where it came from.
During a day full of aftershocks, the Lord confronted me about it. Hey Love, what if the shaking isn’t damaging the house? He asked. What if it’s actually making it stronger? What if it’s tightening things instead of loosening them?
What if your worrying is doing more damage than anything else?
Huh, I thought. That’s not how I’m used to looking at things; I’m used to expecting things to naturally deteriorate or depreciate. But He reminded me that He is the one who leads us from glory to glory, who led the Israelites through the desert and kept their clothing and shoes from wearing out, who tells us not to be anxious, and commands us repeatedly in the Bible to “fear not.”
His ways are not our ways, and He reminded me of it again during this windstorm. What if the shaking isn’t hurting the roof? What if, instead of picturing in my mind that the wind might be loosening things, I realized the wind might be driving things closer together?
What if, during emotional storms and trauma, the pain that makes us feel like we’re falling apart is actually adding newer, stronger elements to us? What if we believe in God’s goodness so strongly that we know He will take any attack from the enemy and use it for our good, and suddenly we look at the future with hope instead of fear?
You know what fear is? Fear is our willingness to take the weapon out of our enemy’s hand and attack ourselves with it, saving him the trouble.
So what if we stopped falling for it?
The fearless person is completely free. Nothing can threaten them.
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.
– 1 John 4:18
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
We’ve been listening to the wrong teachers and the wrong messages and the wrong thoughts for a long time. We’re used to decay, destruction, the next shoe dropping, the slow and steady unraveling of creation. But that’s not the Word says. If we walk in the attitude of It’s only going to get worse, we haven’t been paying attention to what’s actually in the Bible.
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to grant to those who mourn in Zion— to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified. They shall build up the ancient ruins; they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.
– Isaiah 61:1-4
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, it says. This is the same scripture Jesus read in the temple, declaring it fulfilled. And this is the same Spirit who is in us.
It’s not decay. It’s strength, He says. It’s not breaking down. It’s rebuilding.
It’s not a super easy way to look at things after a lifetime of assuming the worst. But the Lord told us His ways are different from ours, and over and over in the New Testament we read about the work of faith. Unbelief comes easy; falling for lies is easy. But aligning our thoughts and attitudes with God’s truth requires a discipline that we need to start walking in.
We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
– 1 Thessalonians 1:2-3
“But what if…” the enemy hisses. Don’t go there, though. Don’t take the bait. Thinking on those what ifs will never prepare you for anything but more devastation. The enemy is trying to get you to take the weapon and stab yourself with it. He’s holding out poison and hoping you’ll choose to drink it.
When we command our thoughts this way rather than letting them run amok with whatever fears the enemy tries to feed us, we are partnering with God in building up the ancient ruins, and raising up the former devastations.
And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia.
– 1 Thessalonians 1:6-7
How do we receive with joy in the midst of affliction? Maybe that’s the real question. We can’t deny the pain and pretend what happened didn’t matter. But we can change what we believe about it and thus change the power we give it. We can do the work of faith, agreeing with God that He is building, not destroying, no matter what the enemy throws at us. We can labor in the love that casts out fear, trusting Him, steadfast in hope knowing that He is good and is working things out for good on our behalf.
I’m thinking about this as we work on the huge 2000 piece puzzle late into the evening. I joke to my family that this is where we solve all the world’s problems, but it’s true: I complain about a piece having nowhere to go, but then realize I’ve been holding it upside down the whole time. I was trying to put it in the wrong way. So what happens when we set our pieces – our thoughts, that is – right again and start looking at things from God’s perspective of truth, power, and victory, instead of our traditional mindset of defeat and decay?
In many ways, we’ve been going about it all wrong. We’ve thought things were delayed when we were early. We’ve mislabeled things as breaking when they were actually just beginning. We’ve accused God of being slow when He is actually patient.
The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
– 2 Peter 3:9
The stretching hurts and we wonder why things are not working out, why everything is fitting so badly. But this one shift might be the nudge that shows how the pieces were misaligned – we were close, we had the right pieces all along, but we were putting the wrong ones together.
It looks like the Church is breaking in a lot of areas. But the truth is, it’s reviving. The wound and bacteria have to be cleaned out before it can heal. The Lord has been teaching His people how to walk in His ways, and even though we’ve watered them down so they reflect our ways more than His in many areas, He is calling us to reexamine how we think about things so we can walk in holiness and wholeness, realigning our thoughts with truth instead of just tradition.
We see corruption in so many areas, and here’s the good news: We’re not seeing something new. It’s been there all along, hidden, and is now being exposed. It can’t hide in the dark any longer; it must be dealt with. The eucatastrophe is coming.
The pain we went through a year ago wasn’t a blow dealt to our family. It was a blow to the enemy. Evil agendas were exposed. Lazy, fake Christianity came out of the wood works. The winds shook and the rains fell and the attacks came, but we are stronger and louder because of it, grounded and founded on the rock.
The physical and emotional storm didn’t take anything away from us. As we keep our eyes on Jesus, every wave that tries to bowl us over only adds more strength to our foundation. The enemy always loses, and we always win. The only possible way we can lose is if we fall for his lies, and we know better.
We hold these pieces in our hand and we don’t have to know exactly what to do with them. We know they go somewhere, and we keep asking Him for eyes that see answers.
Often, His answers are beyond our expectations, and better than we ever could have imagined.
No, wait, we think, this piece can’t possibly fit there, I don’t even know what direction it goes.
Try, the Lord is saying. So you do. And even though it stretches you to reach all the way across the table, to believe for what seems impossible, you find that the other pieces are already there in place, shaped perfectly, ready to receive it.
I’m not sure what the total snowfall is in our area yet, but at one point the snow was three feet deep in our driveway, and some forecasts are calling for anywhere from 6 to 13 more inches in the next 24 hours. But what do they know.
Our snowy days have outnumbered our non-snowy days in the past couple weeks. The paths in the yard are lined with walls of snow that are getting higher and higher, and the chickens stayed in their coops for days. We are all hunkering, waiting for the next storm that is promised for tonight and tomorrow.
We broke out the puzzle table last night. I’m not sure why it took us so long this year; normally by now we’d have completed one or two puzzles already. But we also forgot to schedule our annual movie night with friends (how do you forget to do something that’s annual?) and I’m not sure where the time has gone.
Well, I do, sort of. We have poultry now, so that’s been a new routine to get used to. And like I said, we’ve had a ton of weather. Plus family from out of town. And some big kid situations.
So the weeks have flown by and it’s almost the middle of December already and my birthday is in a couple days and we have another birthday right after that, and I don’t really know what we have planned for either of those days and – and –
Deep breath.
Still the frenzy. Focus on the Father. Wait for the music to get back in tune, because it will.
The girls are practicing Christmas carols, and it’s magical: The Christmas lights, the voices I love, the notes on the piano intricate, mysterious, and penetrating.
But later I’m on the phone in the middle of a hard conversation while one kid practices piano and her toddler brother “helps” her with as many dissonant chords as he can fit into four measures of music. I quick-walk to the other side of the house so I can hear the person on the other end of the line.
The piano is neutral; it can make music or mayhem. The snow is neutral, too: It can make things beautiful or dangerous. Sometimes both.
On the way to town yesterday I was almost hit by someone pulling out onto the highway right in front of me. My headlights were on, and he couldn’t have missed seeing me. So, cars are neutral, too – they can safely move us from place to place, or, driven by someone who thinks their superpower is the ability to drive through oncoming traffic, they can be mechanized weapons of destruction.
The world is a beautiful and dangerous place. It is still snowing and we are still unburying, and it’s a picture of the stress some of us are dealing with currently, yes? We barely have time to clear one area — or even realize it’s demanding our attention — before another foot of snow drops. The situations take turns bobbing to the surface because everything can’t be processed at once: destructive behaviors, systemic corruption, difficult conversations, unexpected responsibilities, future certainties that are wreathed in unknowns.
I was worshiping when I was almost hit by that car. The radio was off and I was rehearsing a word the Lord had given me to hold onto; I was repeating the words aloud so I would remember them. I saw that car up ahead to my right start spinning its tires and moving forward into the highway, and I kept repeating the words aloud but in my head I thought, Surely that guy is going to turn right into the lane next to me. Surely he’s not trying to cross the entire highway.
But the guy clearly was trying to cross the entire highway, and I was still repeating the words as he started to enter my lane, perpendicular to traffic flow. I swerved in passing, somehow avoided colliding with his front bumper, and fishtailed to recover. And I’m so glad I prayed before I left the driveway, and was worshiping down the highway.
Would it have been different otherwise? No doubt. Worship is never neutral; it either destroys or brings life. The target of our worship is what makes the difference.
We talked recently about how we know how to tell things where to go, but what we didn’t mention is how often we move things unintentionally with our voices. Sound is just movement, vibrations going through matter. Our words are waves of movement through the air. The sound waves make an object vibrate, and the air expands, and then compresses. Things in the unseen move.
A friend told me years ago that worship is our war ship, and we know that much of the battle takes place in our minds. Will we focus on fear, or will we advance in faith? Will we worship the Lord, or will we bow to our own vanity and comfort? The answers to these questions determine which side of the battle we’re really on.
There are high notes of movement where people are fighting for truth in the spotlight for all to see. There are quiet, steady, low notes of behind the scenes movement in every home where people are pursuing forgiveness, teaching their children, stewarding the land, and praying without ceasing.
Even in our overwhelm, we contribute to the music every time we refuse to cave to despair. Even in the onslaught of storm warnings and stressors, we choose to be in tune and aligned with His word and will for us: We will not bow to fear. We will be aggressive in our joy, confident and hope-filled for our future, because we know the Father loves us and in Him there is no darkness at all.
You are not silent, unseen, unnoticed, or unpowerful; you have a role in the harmony that is sometimes in the background but also has moments of loud prominence in conjunction with others around you. There are no big names leading this, no solo efforts. Moreover, no one gets to sit on the bench and wait for the big hitters to do all the work and get all the applause. This isn’t a recreational sport; this is an anthem and we all need to sing.
We don’t worship God into a room, we worship to open ourselves into His reality.
The walls bow outward, then cave inward. Light shifts, and air particles move. You may not see it but you know something is happening. If you listen, you can hear the key change.
For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.
– 2 Corinthians 10:3-5
The good news is that you don’t always have to be making noise to be part of the song. There are pauses and fermatas; we must selah and breathe. There are days when the feelings are too much, the pain is too sharp, the lungs are too tight and breathing is a work in itself. Sometimes the enemy throws some wrong notes onto someone’s music stand and they play them anyway, creating dissonance and anger; the sound is too loud and the colors are too bright, and we have to step away from our chair for a minute to get our own breath in the right rhythm again before adding to the discord.
Breathe in, and then out. Grieve in, and then out. Give the oxygen time to replenish and do the work until the pulse pounding gets quieter and you can think clearer thoughts again.
Wounding doesn’t disqualify or diminish you. It doesn’t make you inferior. That’s the enemy’s lie because he doesn’t want you to know that the wounding, stewarded well, helps you rise higher – the warrior must know wounding and pain to lead others in compassion and wisdom. This is how your range expands, how you hit notes you never could before.
God gives us a mantle, not of entitlement, but of strength and authority every time we conquer through pain. This is the power of meekness: forgiving and overcoming, being broken and then healing in a way that makes you stronger than before. You are gentle but uncompromising as you come out on the other side. It is Gandalf defeating the Balrog; it is Jesus defeating death. We die to self in big and small ways, and if we can still manage to worship, we come out brighter than before.
Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.
– Philippians 2:14-16
Every time truth is spoken the light gets brighter, the darkness is pressed back and the cacophony diminishes. The movement aligns and the music grows into a tighter, fuller euphony. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.
The dissonance recedes. The chords strengthen; the harmonies come into focus. Notes emerge that are high and strong, sailing over like a banner of triumph.
