Crazy, Abundant Love

"You are good, You are good, when there's nothing good in me" - "Forever Reign" Hillsong

The lyrics to this song keep circling around in my brain this morning. I have been overwhelmed these past couple of days by the love and goodness of God. It is no secret, blogosphere, that I have been dwelling in discouragement for the last couple of weeks. My efforts, my striving, my attempts to live a happy and fulfilled life were coming up short. I was dissatisfied, disappointed, discouraged.

Then something amazing happened! God began to reveal His love to me.

Blame it on my childhood, my insecurity or the a-a-a-a-alcohol, but I have always had a difficult time grasping that God loves me. God. loves. me? Maybe it is having grown up in church and the fact that the first song that I learned was "Jesus Loves Me", but at some point in my life the enormous love of God became dulled and routine for me.

At some point I stopped simply accepting that God loved me and believed that I needed to work for it. The more unsatisfied I became with myself, the more I figured He was unsatisfied with me. I tried with all my strength to be perfect in order to earn God's love. I would force myself to be kind and patient and compassionate because surely then I would be able to be loved by God. Surely then He would look on me and be pleased. I am an 'A' student and I was stressing myself out trying to earn an 'A' from God. The trouble was that I always failed. I strived to be kind and loving, but I just wasn't so much of the time. And then I beat myself up about it.

Somehow.....in all of my years in youth group, at Bible college, in reading the Bible over and over again.............I missed the most fundamental piece of my faith.

"But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8 NIV).

I had heard that verse so many times that it had honestly lost its punch. I glossed over it, lacking full understanding.

When I am at my worst, God loves me. When I am full of pride, anger, insecurity, fear, God loves me. He doesn't wait until I am perfect and 'ready' to love me. He just does it anyway. It is like if I had a date with this amazing, handsome, kind, loving, flawless man........and I am rushing around trying to be perfect for him - I go buy an amazing dress and fix myself up to look as good as I possibly can. But then before our date I get sick and puke all over myself. My dress is stained, my hair is a hot mess, and I've got a little bit of vomit on my face. The last thing I want is for this perfect man to see me like this!! I must be perfect for him as he is for me!

But he arrives for our date, sees me in my disarray, and loves me at my absolute worst. He cleans me up and then spends the evening nursing me, waiting on me in my sickness, and holding me.

That's what God's love is like. He isn't waiting around for us to be flawless. "He knows that we are dust" (Psalms 103:14 NIV). He loves us in our sickness. He is with us in our sickness, right by our sides, helping us get better.

As we prepare for Easter this weekend, I find myself meditating on the crazy, abundant love of God. And I am tempted to fall into my old pattern of self-shame: "I am so stupid for not meditating on it more! I am such a failure". Well, yeah, I'm a failure. But that's why Jesus came in the first place - to take away that failure and replace it with grace. "Yes, the Word was made flesh. I chose to enter your broken world and limp through life with you" (Ragamuffin Gospel).

God doesn't love any more this week as I sit here typing this blog than He did last week when I was dwelling in discouragement.

I don't have to be perfect because He is. I just have to accept Him.

Simple Things

Sometimes I get tired of dealing with the same things in myself over and over again. It seems as though there are just certain personality traits in each of us that no matter how much we would like to kick them to the curb, they just keep popping up over and over again - like one of those carnival games where you have to bop the gophers that keep sticking their heads up.






That is what I feel like today. Discouraged. Tired. Impatient with myself. This cold and drizzly day matches my mood very well!


This week started off wonderfully! Which makes the discouragement of today seem all that much.............more annoying. 


What choice do I have other than to pick myself up, brush it off and re-commit myself to seeking a better point of view? 

As I was hanging out with Finn this morning and listening to music, this song popped up on my Ipod shuffle:

And I found it to be the reminder that I needed that things don't always need to be perfect.......nor do I always need to feel like I am on top of things..........or that my little corner of the world is blissful........or that life is rosy and kind all the time. The simple things.......that is where we spend most of our time anyway. We don't dwell on the mountaintop of a good mood or the valley of a depressed spirit. Rather most days, for most people, consist of some kind of in-between spot. And it is in the simple things that we most often find our encouragement to keep on truckin'. 

I don't want to be frustrated in my in-between spot that God has me in for today. So I choose to redirect my gaze to Him.......looking to Him to satisfy and maintain me. He will! If I don't believe that, then I don't really know Him. 

Some encouraging thoughts to end with today (pulled from the dregs of my quote book!!)

"Do not be surprised if in your fear and weakness He challenges you to get up and be strong. For the same God who has come to heal you will also lead you back into the battle" - Edwin McManus

"My child, the troubles and temptations of your life are beginning and may be many, but you can overcome and outlive them all; if you learn to feel the strength and tenderness of your Heavenly Father as you do that of your earthly one. The more you love and trust Him, the nearer you will feel to Him and the less you will depend on human power and wisdom. His love and care never tire or change, can never be taken from you, but may become the source of lifelong peace, happiness and strength. Believe this heartily and go to God with all your little cares, and hopes, and sins, and sorrows, as freely and confidingly as you come to your mother" - Marmee Little Women

"It is not my ability, but my response to God's ability that counts" - Corrie Ten Boom

"There is no easy way to walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires" - Nelson Mandela

Skywriting Isn't Always Positive

Just because I needed the laugh:

"One time when I was in high school a guy's mom called me and broke up with me for him.

There was another time when I was on a date and I tripped and broke my kneecap, and then the guy said he wasn't feeling it, so he left and I waited for an ambulance.

One time I was dating this guy for awhile, and then he got down on one knee and he begged me to never call him again.

 One guy broke up with me while we were in the shower together.

Skywriting isn't always positive. 

Another time a guy invited me to a beautiful picnic with wine and flowers. And then when I tried to sit down, he said, 'Don't eat anything. Rebecca's coming.' And then he broke up with me" - Leslie Knope. Love her. 

Dichotomy

God has been using The Ragamuffin Gospel to confirm a couple of different things to me...

First: 

Last week during a church leadership meeting, we were asked to describe ourselves in one word. Immediately the word "dichotomy" leaped to my brain and I knew that it was pretty accurate. When it came to my turn to tell my adjective and reasoning for why I chose it, I explained that for the greater part of my adult life I have felt like a strange combination of extremes: 

• Sweet, yet bratty
• Introverted, yet outgoing
• Believing, yet anxious
• Passionate, yet apathetic
• Surrendered, yet selfish
• Cynical, yet compassionate
• Shy, yet bold

This has at times made me feel like I am pulled between two forces and that there will never be a happy medium resolution. But I had to laugh yesterday when I was reading and came across:

"When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer."

Does everyone feel this way at some point - that they just don't make any sense at all? Does it really matter? "But if you're content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself" (Luke 14:11 MSG). Analyzing our intricacies has its place, I suppose......but becoming who we were meant to be is completed through resting in God and being at rest with ourselves.

 I am kind of thinking out loud as I go here....this is so scattered! Finding comfort in this as a reminder of what is really important: "He'll show us the way he works so we can live the way we're made" (Isaiah 2:3 MSG). 

Okay, phew, 

Second:

Last week I posted a blog about how I had spent too much time scouring others' personal blogs for thoughts and musings that would encourage me.....but that ultimately I had missed the point that I needed to be seeking God on my own in addition to the encouragement of others. Brennan Manning sums it up more succinctly than me (big shocker!): "We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of knowing Jesus Christ personally and directly. When the religious views of others interpose between us and the primary experience of Jesus as the Christ, we become unconvicted and unpersuasive travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited." 

I just thought that was cool and reminded me that God's revelations are relevant and timely! 

Signing off with the thoughts I am focusing on today: "'You are accepted. You are accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything, do not perform anything, do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted.' If that happens to us, we experience grace"

Indeed, "Say the welcoming word to God-'Jesus is my Master'-embracing, body and soul, God's work of doing in us what he did in raising Jesus from the dead. That's it. You're not 'doing' anything: you're simply calling out to God, trusting Him to do it for you. That's salvation. With your whole being you embrace God setting things right, and then you say it, right out loud: "God has set everything right between Him and me!" (Romans 10:9-12 MSG)

I am accepted, just as I am.....and I accept God. Now to just rest in that. 

Healing is in Your Hands

Video share time! I can't get enough of this song right now. God's love is entire and infinite and I just can't wrap my head around it. Am I supposed to? Or do I just need to accept it?

Ragamuffin

I began reading The Ragamuffin Gospel today and I could tell by its foreword that I was going to like it:

"This book is not for the super-spiritual.
It is not for muscular Christians who have made John Wayne and not Jesus their hero. 
It is not for academicians who would imprison Jesus in the ivory tower of exegesis.
It is not for noisy, feel-good folks who manipulate Christianity into a naked appeal of emotion. 
It is not for hooded mystics who want magic in their religion. 
It is not for Alleluia Christians who live only on the mountaintop and have never visited the valley of desolation. 
It is not for the fearless and tearless. 
It is not for red-hot zealots who boast with the rich young ruler of the gospels: 'All these commandments I have kept from my youth.'
It is not for the complacent, hoisting over their shoulder a tote-bag of honors, diplomas, and good works actually believing they have it made. 
It is not for legalists who would rather surrender control of their souls to rules than run the risk of living in union with Jesus. 
If anyone is still reading along, The Ragamuffin Gospel was written for the bedraggled, beat-up and burnt-out. 
It is for the sorely burdened who are still shifting the heavy suitcase from one hand to the other. 
It is for the wobbly and weak-kneed who know they don't have it altogether and are too proud to accept the handout of amazing grace. 
It is for the inconsistent, unsteady disciples whose cheese is falling off their cracker. 
It is for the poor, weak, sinful men and women with hereditary faults and limited talents. 
It is for the earthen vessels who shuffle along on feet of clay. 
It is for the bent and the bruised who feel that their lives are a grave disappointment to God. 
It is for smart people who know they are stupid and honest disciples who admit they are scalawags. 
The Ragamuffin Gospel is a book I wrote for myself and anyone who has grown weary and discouraged along the way."

It really caught me on the line, "It is for the inconsistent, unsteady disciples whose cheese is falling off their cracker." I had to go back and re-read that several times.

At first I wondered, "What does he mean? Cheese? Cracker? Huh?"

And then I think I got it, at least in a way that is applicable to me........at that moment.

If the cracker is me, or my mind/intellect/general grasp on things.........and God is my cheese, "The Big Cheese" so to speak.........

Then I really understood what Brennan Manning was saying.

I try to keep my knowledge and how I understand things steady in order to keep my God-cheese in place, which gives me a phantom feeling as though I actually have a grasp on the world around me. If I shift my cracker too much one way or another, my God-cheese slides right off. And the truth is that cheese just will NOT stay in place! What I know of God is not steady or static. It is ever-changing and evolving and deepening as I learn more and more about Him. Just when I think I've got it figured out - bringing the cheese-covered cracker to my mouth to digest - something happens that throws me off kilter and the cheese. slides. off.

My God-cheese will not be contained. It is uncontainable.

As I have been reading and praying today, I have been asking God to speak to me. And the only thing He has revealed so far is that I am not even close to figuring Him out. He is beyond my knowing.

The question left to ask myself is, does that comfort me or totally freak me out?

However I respond to that is how I respond to God. Either I trust in His infinite goodness and rest in the not knowing...or I scramble around restlessly trying to keep my cheese on the stinking cracker.

Today I say, "Slide off cheese! It keeps me on my toes and I need that."

Wait

What do you do when you get discouraged?

There is a menagerie of ways that I deal with it. Sometimes I pray and read my Bible. Sometimes I dissect it with those I am close with. Sometimes I listen to music. Sometimes I shut myself away and wallow in it.


I have been discouraged this week. I have found myself grappling with an all too familiar problem that I thought was behind me. This week, instead of "taking it like a man", or you know, an adult, I have indulged my human nature and have wallowed. Blame it on laziness or apathy or all out self-pity, I wallowed. I'm a good wallower. My family used to call it pouting. I was the queen of pouting - in order to get my way, nurse my hurt feelings, or to just try to be seen and heard when I wanted to be seen and heard. 


I have spent a lot of energy in my adult life trying to reverse that stigma. I don't want to be a wallowing pouter. Or pouting wallower.  


In my best efforts to seek encouragement this week I have been scouting others' blogs, searching for anything that would edify me and knock me off my perpetual track of wallowing. And I have found a wealth of anecdotes and vessels of wisdom that have uplifted me...momentarily. I truly believe that God can use blogs and the musings of others to help encourage us. It is a relief to know of someone who has had similar experiences, doubts, thoughts. However, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was piggy-backing on the rewarded insights of someone else's battle. 


There is definitely something that can be learned from the struggles of others, but there is always going to be a piece that is lost in translation. When God reveals something to a person, it speaks directly to that moment in time and is precisely what needed to be heard. You can know when it is whispered by God when a peace descends wholly on what was once troubling. To share that revelation with others is what God desires us to do because it gives Him glory. But if we begin to depend upon the revelations of others and cut them up and piece them back together to match what we are going through, we risk losing some of the original intent. When I seek what God reveals to others instead of God Himself, I cripple myself by accepting leftovers when God desires to offer me a first class meal.


Encouragement and words from others are intended to supplement, not replace, what we hear from God.


So I tell myself to get over my laziness and seek God for myself. I give Him again His proper place at the center of my heart and mind and ask Him what He wants to speak to me today. And then I wait.


I wait because I believe He will speak. I wait because it might not come right away or in the way that I expect it to. I wait because I know it will be exactly what I need - tailored specifically for me and my situation.


I often seek God and ask Him to reveal His ways to me, whether it be His plan for my day or the reasoning for something going on in my life. However, I falter when I "ADHD it" and bee-bop along with my plans, forgetting that I am to be on the lookout for His response.


I acknowledge my discouragement and allow myself to feel its impact; I recognize my wallowing and then choose to denounce it; I ask God to speak and then I wait upon His sovereign timing and believe that He will.


"Living in true beauty can require much waiting, much time, much tenacity of spirit. We must constantly direct our gazes toward the face of God, even in the presence of longing and sorrow. It is in the waiting that our hearts are enlarged. The waiting does not diminish us. As a pregnant woman is enlarged in her waiting, so are our hearts. God does not always rescue us out of a painful season. you know that He does not always give to us what we so desperately want when we want it. He is after something much more valuable than our happiness. Much more substantive than our health. He is restoring and growing in us an eternal weight of glory. And sometimes...it hurts" (Stasi Eldredge, "Captivating")

"God, the Master, The Holy of Israel has this solemn counsel:

Your salvation requires you to turn back to me

and stop your silly efforts to save yourselves.

Your strength will come from settling down

in complete dependence on me -

The very thing you've been unwilling to do.

But God's not finished. He's waiting around to be gracious to you.

He's gathering strength to show mercy to you.

God takes the time to do everything right - everything.

Those who wait around for Him are the lucky ones (Isaiah 30:15, 18 MSG)

Waiting, especially in discouragement, isn't easy. But it's worth it.

"But those who wait on God will receive fresh strength" (Isaiah 40:31 MSG)