As I worked my monotonous (and often dreaded) job of book repair this morning, I was deeply challenged as I listened to Joel Thomas’ sermon titled An Immeasurable Life. These are the thoughts that have been since provoked:
Do you remember being a kid and believing that anything was possible? I do. I believed in Santa Claus until I was probably ten years old--always justifying the seemingly impossible and refusing to lose hope in the "magic of Christmas". I also believed that my dad had the super-human strength to accomplish anything in the world, and that I could be a famous singer (or dolphin trainer, or FBI agent, or ...it really changed by the month). We weren't afraid to dream when we were young because nothing seemed out of reach. Growing up somehow has a way of drawing us back--a way of making us believe we have to manage our desire to want more out of life and making us believe that we must learn to be content. Being content, afterall, is scriptural! ...But is it? We (well, atleast I) always have this desire for more. I don't mean to say that I am greedy and am never satisfied with how much money I have or with how good my relationships are..., but I do mean to say that I never feel like I have reached where I am supposed to be. I think this tension is good, and I think Paul felt it too when he wrote, "Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me." Maybe we feel like there is more, because there IS more. I will never arrive, and therefore I must never settle for comfortable and mediocrity.
Joel said in his message, "Our capacity to produce has limited our capacity to dream." Often times I believe we settle for what we know is possible. We let life take us in accordance to what we know is within our own capabilities and performance, limiting our faith and God-given mission to live life in its fullest.
"Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us..." Ephesians 3:20
Immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine...
Joel prayed, "God, help me to look beyond what I can measure, and to believe that, because of you, immeasurably more is possible for me. "
I want to spend my life chasing after more--more of God. I want more faith, more dreams, more surrendering to His power, more life. I never want to be content, because God always has more.
Monday, December 12, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
JUST BEaring
Confession: Growing up, I always hated hearing about how God's love and grace were free. I mean I literally hated it. I didn't want God to love me just because. How was God's love for me special if he loved everyone else the same way? I wanted to earn His love. I wanted to deserve it. I wanted God to love me for what I could produce. (This also made me quite fearful of failure...). And sometimes, I find myself with the same mindset today.
I suppose that's quite prideful, yes? How could I ever deserve the love of God? How could I ever make myself worthy or "produce" enough? How could I ever reach His standard of holiness?
Though it was preached in February, this year's homecoming theme still speaks to me over and over again.
"Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." -John 15:4-5
All I'm called to do is remain...to be attached to the vine. HE produces fruit. We bear it.
However long it took me to admit it, the truth is that my worth is not found in my performance. It's not based on my G.P.A., my efficiency, or my power of persuasion; nor is my worth depleted by my failures and shortcomings. No, my worth is found in being a child of God...and in being a branch. His grace is sufficient.
God's love simply is. I cannot earn it and I cannot lose it. It is unconditional.
Praise God.
I pray that day by day God will teach me to extend the same kind of love and grace to those around me...a love that is not based on performance or on what I receive in return, but a love that is. ...simply because God's love is.
I suppose that's quite prideful, yes? How could I ever deserve the love of God? How could I ever make myself worthy or "produce" enough? How could I ever reach His standard of holiness?
Though it was preached in February, this year's homecoming theme still speaks to me over and over again.
"Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." -John 15:4-5
All I'm called to do is remain...to be attached to the vine. HE produces fruit. We bear it.
However long it took me to admit it, the truth is that my worth is not found in my performance. It's not based on my G.P.A., my efficiency, or my power of persuasion; nor is my worth depleted by my failures and shortcomings. No, my worth is found in being a child of God...and in being a branch. His grace is sufficient.
God's love simply is. I cannot earn it and I cannot lose it. It is unconditional.
Praise God.
I pray that day by day God will teach me to extend the same kind of love and grace to those around me...a love that is not based on performance or on what I receive in return, but a love that is. ...simply because God's love is.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Letter to Self
For certain reasons I won't bother to explain, I was missing Egypt today. To remedy (or worsen) the feeling, I opened my box of memories from the Middle East and rediscovered this letter I wrote to myself just days before I left to come home to be read months after being back. I have found myself to be encouraging and convicting...ha. Here is an excerpt.
"Dear Danielle,
Time sure goes fast! It has been months since your huge Middle-Eastern adventure. I hope you've been processing, and I hope you've been able to retain and apply what you've learned. Have you maintained your MESP friendships? If you haven't in a while, you need to give a few calls/e-mails. I also hope you've been keeping up with ME news. I know you're busy, but please give time to reading and staying current. Have you contacted your homestay family? DON'T forget about them...
...
I don't know how you're doing spiritually, but I just hope you haven't stopped asking questions. It might be easier to shrug things off, but don't! Wrestle with God, Danielle. Don't be a coward. And don't wear a mask. Set an example of honesty and transparency. Keep having adventures, and most importantly, remember grace! Give grace, Danielle, because you have received an abundance of it. Don't judge peoples' ignorance, because you don't know much yourself.
Anyway, this is your senior year. Enjoy it! Don't regret it. Trust in God--even if you don't understand Him.
<3,
Yourself"
"Dear Danielle,
Time sure goes fast! It has been months since your huge Middle-Eastern adventure. I hope you've been processing, and I hope you've been able to retain and apply what you've learned. Have you maintained your MESP friendships? If you haven't in a while, you need to give a few calls/e-mails. I also hope you've been keeping up with ME news. I know you're busy, but please give time to reading and staying current. Have you contacted your homestay family? DON'T forget about them...
...
I don't know how you're doing spiritually, but I just hope you haven't stopped asking questions. It might be easier to shrug things off, but don't! Wrestle with God, Danielle. Don't be a coward. And don't wear a mask. Set an example of honesty and transparency. Keep having adventures, and most importantly, remember grace! Give grace, Danielle, because you have received an abundance of it. Don't judge peoples' ignorance, because you don't know much yourself.
Anyway, this is your senior year. Enjoy it! Don't regret it. Trust in God--even if you don't understand Him.
<3,
Yourself"
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Monday, October 11, 2010
Faithful
"I do not ask for success; I ask for faithfulness." -Mother Teresa
I began this semester at a peak of anxious thought about my future. If Never Never Land was not an option, what would I find myself doing after May? Where would I go? Who would I go with? It didn't take long before the "just trust God" rhetoric started to become just that--rhetoric.
These past few weeks have been a roller coaster of ideas, dreams,emotions, spiritual lows and spiritual highs. I prayed consistently for direction, clarity and something more than just "trust." I asked this because the way I see it,no matter how much I trust God, there comes a time for decisions.
Somewhere in the midst of it all, differently than I anticipated and even when I believed I was being ignored, God answered that prayer this week. All the crazy, hyper neurons in my brain spouting anxiety just stopped. and breathed. Grace and peace. Praise God for that grace and peace-- the grace that allows for and forgives my foolishness and impulsiveness and the peace that puts life back into perspective and reveals your location nestled safely in the hands of an all-powerful, sovereign God.
As a counseling major, I've come to realize that it often takes three, four, maybe five sessions before things begin to click for a client, the pieces of information come together, and visible progress is able to be made. The beginning sessions are needed for foundation work and information gathering. The things that seem unimportant are vital. I feel that this is very similar to my life. I want to absorb every moment I have right now because God is preparing and stretching me in every step. .As much as I'd love to run off to Turkey this instant, it's not the right time. I still have things to learn and things to do here. I believe a time is coming when the pieces will be put together. For now, I am trusting my "therapist". He knows where he wants me to go even when I am ignorant of the plan. I just need to be faithful. Erwin McManus said, "I'm convinced more of us would like to be known by faith, but resist the tedious journey of faithfulness." How true.
I began this semester at a peak of anxious thought about my future. If Never Never Land was not an option, what would I find myself doing after May? Where would I go? Who would I go with? It didn't take long before the "just trust God" rhetoric started to become just that--rhetoric.
These past few weeks have been a roller coaster of ideas, dreams,emotions, spiritual lows and spiritual highs. I prayed consistently for direction, clarity and something more than just "trust." I asked this because the way I see it,no matter how much I trust God, there comes a time for decisions.
Somewhere in the midst of it all, differently than I anticipated and even when I believed I was being ignored, God answered that prayer this week. All the crazy, hyper neurons in my brain spouting anxiety just stopped. and breathed. Grace and peace. Praise God for that grace and peace-- the grace that allows for and forgives my foolishness and impulsiveness and the peace that puts life back into perspective and reveals your location nestled safely in the hands of an all-powerful, sovereign God.
As a counseling major, I've come to realize that it often takes three, four, maybe five sessions before things begin to click for a client, the pieces of information come together, and visible progress is able to be made. The beginning sessions are needed for foundation work and information gathering. The things that seem unimportant are vital. I feel that this is very similar to my life. I want to absorb every moment I have right now because God is preparing and stretching me in every step. .As much as I'd love to run off to Turkey this instant, it's not the right time. I still have things to learn and things to do here. I believe a time is coming when the pieces will be put together. For now, I am trusting my "therapist". He knows where he wants me to go even when I am ignorant of the plan. I just need to be faithful. Erwin McManus said, "I'm convinced more of us would like to be known by faith, but resist the tedious journey of faithfulness." How true.
Lord, may I find joy and contentedness in my journey of faithfulness.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
A New Season
Here I am back in East Tennessee with the mountains, the humidity, the crazy drivers and the UT orange. Though it appears that some things never change, I’m beginning to realize that everything does.
A speaker in chapel last week said, “God is a God of progress.” Isn’t that true? Time is always going; it never takes a breather. The earth is always rotating, the seasons are always changing, and I’m finding that I myself seem to be constantly growing. I feel like a book that after trying and failing for too long to write itself into a best-seller, finally gave in to a much more experienced revisionist--God.
I am not who I was a year ago. To give you just one example, I remember sitting in the library with my cousin last Fall and saying that I sometimes seemed to lack the emotion and sympathy I felt I should have—that all too often I felt like my heart didn’t break for what broke God’s. How was it that I could listen to stories of horrible tragedies and not shed a tear? Yesterday I found myself saying, “Why am I always so emotional? How is it that I can’t listen to one story or sing one song without crying?”
I’ve been reading about Mother Teresa lately and have been inspired by her love for people. She loved people with great intensity. She viewed each person in need as though he was Jesus Christ himself. “He is the hungry one. He is the naked one. He is the thirsty one. Each is Jesus in a distressing disguise.” She believed that people hunger for love more than for bread, and that love was the greatest gift we could give to people. It’s not always easy to love, but I believe God is more than willing to transform our hearts and fill us with an unworldly desire to put others above ourselves. If it’s not from God, then our love seems to have selfish motives. We only love with agenda and with hopes of gaining something in return.
Mother Teresa said, “The success of love is in the loving-it is not in the result of loving. Of course it is natural in love to want the best for the other person, but whether it turns out that way or not does not determine the value of what we have done.”
I am no Mother Teresa, but I feel like my heart is undergoing surgery where there are blockages being removed in order that I might love without restraint. It might be a very long, tedious surgery.
Last semester changed me. I am still changing. It will be a life-long process of change. But I suppose that if God is a God of progress, then a stagnant life would be no life for a Christian. So here is to change, growth, and new season.
A speaker in chapel last week said, “God is a God of progress.” Isn’t that true? Time is always going; it never takes a breather. The earth is always rotating, the seasons are always changing, and I’m finding that I myself seem to be constantly growing. I feel like a book that after trying and failing for too long to write itself into a best-seller, finally gave in to a much more experienced revisionist--God.
I am not who I was a year ago. To give you just one example, I remember sitting in the library with my cousin last Fall and saying that I sometimes seemed to lack the emotion and sympathy I felt I should have—that all too often I felt like my heart didn’t break for what broke God’s. How was it that I could listen to stories of horrible tragedies and not shed a tear? Yesterday I found myself saying, “Why am I always so emotional? How is it that I can’t listen to one story or sing one song without crying?”
I’ve been reading about Mother Teresa lately and have been inspired by her love for people. She loved people with great intensity. She viewed each person in need as though he was Jesus Christ himself. “He is the hungry one. He is the naked one. He is the thirsty one. Each is Jesus in a distressing disguise.” She believed that people hunger for love more than for bread, and that love was the greatest gift we could give to people. It’s not always easy to love, but I believe God is more than willing to transform our hearts and fill us with an unworldly desire to put others above ourselves. If it’s not from God, then our love seems to have selfish motives. We only love with agenda and with hopes of gaining something in return.
Mother Teresa said, “The success of love is in the loving-it is not in the result of loving. Of course it is natural in love to want the best for the other person, but whether it turns out that way or not does not determine the value of what we have done.”
I am no Mother Teresa, but I feel like my heart is undergoing surgery where there are blockages being removed in order that I might love without restraint. It might be a very long, tedious surgery.
Last semester changed me. I am still changing. It will be a life-long process of change. But I suppose that if God is a God of progress, then a stagnant life would be no life for a Christian. So here is to change, growth, and new season.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
More than philosophy and theology
I've been writing a lot of posts lately and then deleting them. I think it's because I'm having trouble communicating what I want to. I'm not sure this one will be much better, but it's worth a shot.
I've been missing Egypt a lot in the last week. I've been flooded with memories of people and their faces. Just last night I dreamed about my favorite little boy at the orphanage. I wish I could go back and hold those little ones just one more time. I find myself constantly thinking about my family in Embaba and imagine all the preparations they are surely making for my sister's engagement party and my other sister's wedding. I also think about the nut man and the fruit man and even the bread man (whose funny, incoherent call is my current ringtone). But I also think about the faces I encountered on travel component in Turkey and in Syria and in Israel and in Bethlehem. I've been extremely emotional lately about politics--specifically Middle-Eastern politics. I've cried on more than one occasion (today included) just from watching talk shows/new reports that seem to so easily dehumanize others. We believe in love and peace and some might even go so far as to believe Jesus' radical teaching of loving the enemy, but it's hard to begin to love someone without understanding them.
Some on the right believe that they have everything figured out and some on the left believe that they have everything figured out. Then each side begins to grow a hate that is only reinforced by choice media. How quick we are to feel ourselves superior and forget that "they" are no further from God's grace than "we" are.
I think I get emotional because I now have faces that I can pair with "stories".
I'm currently reading a book by Ted Dekker called Tea With Hezbollah in which he records interviews held with many men that are often referred to as "terrorists" and "enemies". What I find so intriguing is that instead of asking "What is your philosophy on..." or "What is your political view on..." or even "What theology motivates you on...", Dekker asks questions like "What makes you laugh? What makes you cry? What is your favorite joke? What is your family like?"
Because a man is more than philosophy and theology. All men are created in the image of God and his love is as deep for each one as if he were the only one ever created.
I do believe that evil exists in this world and that men are capable of detestable, evil acts. Terrorism is real and people are killed every day. But terrorism that is fueled by hate cannot be defeated by more hate. I'm not sure I can believe that there is never a time for violence. This is a fallen world. But if I truly believe that Jesus conquered death and sin and evil in his death and resurrection...then I must believe that he is able to restore the things most broken and the hearts most wayward. We cannot do this, even with all the forces in the world.
I don't know that there can ever be peace until Jesus comes back, but I do believe that peace and harmony can be restored one heart at a time (beginning with my own) and that it can be spread one heart at a time.
Quite honestly, I don't give a care about politics these days. It's theory, manipulation and agenda. I want something real. I want the love of Jesus.
I've been missing Egypt a lot in the last week. I've been flooded with memories of people and their faces. Just last night I dreamed about my favorite little boy at the orphanage. I wish I could go back and hold those little ones just one more time. I find myself constantly thinking about my family in Embaba and imagine all the preparations they are surely making for my sister's engagement party and my other sister's wedding. I also think about the nut man and the fruit man and even the bread man (whose funny, incoherent call is my current ringtone). But I also think about the faces I encountered on travel component in Turkey and in Syria and in Israel and in Bethlehem. I've been extremely emotional lately about politics--specifically Middle-Eastern politics. I've cried on more than one occasion (today included) just from watching talk shows/new reports that seem to so easily dehumanize others. We believe in love and peace and some might even go so far as to believe Jesus' radical teaching of loving the enemy, but it's hard to begin to love someone without understanding them.
Some on the right believe that they have everything figured out and some on the left believe that they have everything figured out. Then each side begins to grow a hate that is only reinforced by choice media. How quick we are to feel ourselves superior and forget that "they" are no further from God's grace than "we" are.
I think I get emotional because I now have faces that I can pair with "stories".
I'm currently reading a book by Ted Dekker called Tea With Hezbollah in which he records interviews held with many men that are often referred to as "terrorists" and "enemies". What I find so intriguing is that instead of asking "What is your philosophy on..." or "What is your political view on..." or even "What theology motivates you on...", Dekker asks questions like "What makes you laugh? What makes you cry? What is your favorite joke? What is your family like?"
Because a man is more than philosophy and theology. All men are created in the image of God and his love is as deep for each one as if he were the only one ever created.
I do believe that evil exists in this world and that men are capable of detestable, evil acts. Terrorism is real and people are killed every day. But terrorism that is fueled by hate cannot be defeated by more hate. I'm not sure I can believe that there is never a time for violence. This is a fallen world. But if I truly believe that Jesus conquered death and sin and evil in his death and resurrection...then I must believe that he is able to restore the things most broken and the hearts most wayward. We cannot do this, even with all the forces in the world.
I don't know that there can ever be peace until Jesus comes back, but I do believe that peace and harmony can be restored one heart at a time (beginning with my own) and that it can be spread one heart at a time.
Quite honestly, I don't give a care about politics these days. It's theory, manipulation and agenda. I want something real. I want the love of Jesus.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)