I remember hearing the saying as a child "I love you, but I don't like you," or sometimes more kindly "I love you, but right NOW I don't like you." That softened it a bit, but it still always stuck with me distastefully. I couldn't put my finger on why, so I tucked it away into my library of odd sayings and moved on with my life. But recently I heard it again as an adult and it finally hit me with sudden clarity: I don't like that saying because it's a TERRIBLE thing to say to someone you are espousing to love! Now don't get me wrong, I can intellectually agree with the sentiment. Real life means not always having mushy gushy feeling for the people in your life, no matter how much you love them. Real relationships are studded with misunderstandings and differences of opinion, and real people are all capable of being really really annoying! But that doesn't mean you have to tell them to their face how much you dislike them in that very moment. While that emotion you are feeling may be strong, one can hope that it will also be temporary. Yet unlike that emotion, words can never be unspoken, and the seeds of pain that they plant can never truly be erased. It is also important to note that you can love someone without liking them at all. God says to love our enemies, but never says anything about making them feel liked. The two are not mutually dependent in any way. "But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven." Matthew 5:44-45 Jesus is pretty clear about what love looks like, and also what loving your enemy looks like. Love is patient and kind. Loving my enemy means praying for them, which requires me first to forgive them just like our heavenly Father first forgave us while we were still His enemies (Romans 5:8).
Not liking someone doesn't mean you can't love them, but it does pretty unequivocally mean you don't enjoy being around them. If that is truly the case, then there is nothing stopping you from speaking that truth and letting them know how much you dislike their company. But I can say from experience that once you know someone doesn't like you, you don't exactly try to spend very much time with them either. Psychologically, even if some imaginary time limit such as "right now" is set into place, they will never forget that at one time, under some probably undefined circumstances, their presence had become distasteful to you. Instead of fostering trust and consistency in the future of that relationship, you have now introduced the fear of a possible recurrence or even escalation of whatever thing had at one time driven you to dislike them. No matter how many positive experiences you share after that moment, the memory of once being so rejected will always linger on some level, and the knowledge that your enjoyment of them is conditional upon some likely unknown aspect of their behavior will make it that much harder for them to truly feel comfortable and safe around you. Now I'm not saying we should lie to our loved ones or pretend that certain things don't bother us. Lying is also not a good way to foster genuine relationship. I'm just saying that we need to be careful about how we communicate. I don't think any of us are deluded enough to think that God likes our sin, but somehow that's never stopped Him from enjoying our company when we do enter into His presence. Why? Because who you are is not what you do. And I would venture to say that whatever it is that made you love someone is something much more innate and permanent than whatever temporary (or even habitual) action is currently causing you distress. No matter how habitual our own sins may be, God never stops us at the door by saying "I love you, but right now I just don't like you." He makes it clear that He doesn't like those behaviors, and He also never allows them to come in between His relationship with His children. Like God, I'm not saying we need to pretend that we like every little thing that each other does. It's actually very healthy to express when something hurts our feelings or makes us feel uncomfortable or overwhelmed. In order for us to maintain healthy relationships, we have to stay in healthy, open, and honest communication with one another WITHOUT equating a temporary action to someone's entire personhood. YOU are the sum of your personality, experiences, gifts, talents, strengths, weaknesses, values, perspectives, and most importantly your relationship with God. You are who God says you are. You are NOT your bad habits, addictions, snap judgements, overreactions, or BO. I can love my brother for being sweet, compassionate, protective, and truthful, and still dislike his chronic inability to do his own dishes. It may even drive me completely crazy at times, but doing or not doing dishes is a very poor reflection of who he is as an entire person, so it would be truly unloving of me to allow that to create a rift in our relationship. By addressing the behavior without relating it to his identity, I can help encourage him to step up in his maturity and responsibility without first putting him down or making him feel unwanted. I know from personal experience that being made to feel unwanted has never led to a very healthy or positive growth trajectory. Even if the dishes are being done, the long-term damage of feeling relationally rejected is far too high a cost to pay. Every person is unique, and everyone needs to be disciplined in a way that is productive to who they are and how they are wired to receive constructive feedback. Learn who your loved ones are so you can best deliver that feedback in a way that makes your relationship grow stronger rather than pull apart. While enjoyment is a feeling, love is a choice. And I would posit that perhaps it is loving to choose to enjoy someone for who they truly are without letting temporary things they are doing drive a permanent (even if unseen) wedge between you. There will always be some other way of expressing a need for personal space or reformed behavior that doesn't involve telling someone that you don't like them as a person. Let's learn how to love each other well, even while we are being annoyed, rather than letting a temporary state permanently divert the direction of our long-term relationships.
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Last summer I had the phenomenal opportunity to study at the Florence Academy of Art in the City of Florence, Italy. It was only a brief summer course, but it was still some of the best art instruction I've ever received, and in one of the coolest cities I've ever gotten to go to! I'm sad to say that I totally failed to blog about how INCREDIBLE it was at the time, but here I am a year later with some very cool, very unexpected news... I'm going back!! Not quite yet, and not back to Florence, but back to Italy. Last summer was one of the most fun I've ever had, but there was something about it that appealed to me far beyond the fun of European travel. I unexpectedly fell in love with the country and the culture, and God began to give me a heart for the Italian people. I prayed that I would get to return someday, and I began to teach myself Italian but had no idea how soon I would get to use it. Flash forward to earlier this year, when God led me through a long season of prayer and fasting which culminated in a journey of blind faith back to the island I used to call home - Kona, Hawaii. I showed up on the island without any plans or place to stay, and God showed me such mind blowing faithfulness at every single turn!! I got to be prayed for by Todd White, I got to make a wonderful new friend who happened to need a roommate for the exact amount of time I would be on the island, and I also had a number of meaningful divine appointments during my time there. The most pivotal of these divine appointments was with a couple working at the YWAM Ships base who just so happen to be working towards planting a new YWAM base in Pissa, Italy! We hit it off right away and we all took some time to pray about the prospect of me joining their team next year. I'm still totally terrified by how big of a change this will be, but I actually have complete and total peace about joining them and the rest of their team. <3 <3 I'M MOVING TO ITALY!!! <3 <3 Of course, I won't be going anywhere right away. I still have a commitment to my current job (that I totally love and am deeply sad to be leaving) through this calendar year, so I won't be joining them until 2020. At first, the 9-12 of us will all begin by working at the YWAM Ships base in Kona to get to know each other better and get a solid game plan in place. I will most likely take charge of the accounting for our new base, so the first chunk of my time in Kona will be spent working with their accounting team to get up to speed with their systems. Our Pissa team will also be investing a lot of energy into art ministries since that is such a major inroad to Italian culture. I'm so excited by the prospect of using my skills and my passion for art to create works of beauty as well as to introduce people to the loving heart of Yeshuah the Messiah. I believe that art is a powerful way to communicate experiences and emotions beyond words, and I've long known that I was meant to use it as a tool to help mend broken hearts and bring hope into an increasingly pessimistic world. I hope to be able to use my abilities to help teach our future students how to use their own unique gifts to reach out to others, and I also hope that I will be able to take time to further learn from the masters that have shaped centuries of breathtaking Italian art. Just living and breathing in a country with such rich history is such a gift!! It's a whole new adventure that feels tailor made for the artist God has made me to be, and the funniest part about it all is that I totally never saw it coming. =) I am currently saving everything I can so I can go into this new season with a little bit of savings behind me, but I still have no idea how God intends to provide for this new venture. While we haven't made a concrete budget yet, I'm estimating that I'll need something around $2,000/month in order to cover all of my travel, housing, food, and ministry costs. I have complete faith that what He has called me to, He will provide for in one way or another - perhaps by monthly church support or by a part time job on the side if I can find one. Please pray with me to have patience and wisdom in this process of preparation and fund raising that lies before me. I know and trust that God is good, and that He has a plan in mind on my behalf. While it's not much, I am currently selling copies of my art prints in an effort to raise funds. Every piece I've ever drawn or painted can be turned into gliche prints in varying sizes, so if you have had you eye on one, now would be the time to hit me up! ;-) I'm also looking for other ways to raise funds in the midst of working full time, so if you have any creative ideas, let me know!! As I’ve been revisiting my relationship with YWAM (Youth with a Mission) and evaluating what it looks like to represent a missional mindset in all the different spheres of my life, I’ve had it on my heart to take a closer look at the great commission. Most commonly referenced from the end of Matthew 28, the Great Commission is a mandate given by Jesus before His ascension, that has driven all evangelistic and missionary efforts for the last two thousand years. “And Yeshua came up to them and spoke to them, saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, immersing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Ruach ha-Kodesh, teaching them to observe all I have commanded you. And remember! I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”” This is a powerful passage that gets referenced and taught on a lot, but there are still some implications here that continue to blow my mind every time I take a deeper look. Jesus starts by assuring his disciples that all authority has been given to Him. Not to them, even though they are the ones He is sending out. As someone who knows how stressful it can be to try to do things my own way and in my own power, this is deeply relieving. Jesus is sending them out to be His representatives, which carries power whenever they are in His will and wherever His authority is recognized - which is now everywhere! It would mean very little for the governor of Montana to send people out to administrate a law he declared over the Canadian province of Victoria, but we are assured that we will never find ourselves in that awkward position. We are not being asked to go anywhere where His name is not known and respected by the local spiritual government, so to speak. We are like FBI agents being dispatched from DC, and that means ALL local sheriffs have to respect the badge we carry whether they like it or not. Ok, enough of the law enforcement analogy lol... The point is that we have a lot more authority to go, say, and do than we think we do. We don’t need to tread lightly and constantly ask for permission to walk into an area that we already have a warrant for. We can enter into any situation with the boldness of the One who’s sent us. So now that begs the question, what is it we have been given authority to do? “Go and make disciples of all nations...” The modern church has taken the “all nations” part of that statement very seriously, and it’s beautiful to see every remote corner of the earth being systematically exposed to the love of the Father. Awesome!! But is it discipleship we are bringing into these corners, or just information? Are we exemplifying what it looks like to walk in the footsteps of the Master, or are we simply handing out pamphlets and hoping that written words will be enough to transform an entire lifetime of pain and brokenness? (Nothing against pamphlets, I’m just using that as an example. I actually do believe that the Holy Spirit can move POWERFULLY through the most simple introductions such as these!) I ask these questions not to be accusatory to those who have laid down everything to carry the gospel out to the nations - far from it! I simply want to encourage deeper thought and analysis of our efforts and the results we expect to gain from them. The concept of discipleship is key to the life and ministry of Yeshuah. And since it’s a concept we don’t have a very direct modern equivalent of, that’s usually a good reason to take a closer look. “The 12 disciples” were actually a close subgroup chosen by Yeshuah out of a much larger number of disciples who were quite literally following His career. (I like puns, don’t hate) In ancient times, a disciple was a student who was chosen by a Rabbi to spend years of their life following, studying, and emulating that teacher in every way possible. To be a disciple was not necessarily a position of prestige, and it required a very high level of commitment and personal sacrifice, but it did become a very big part of your resume. In fact all the credentials you needed were to cite whose disciple you were, because it was implied that you had been imparted all of their knowledge, wisdom, and insights on the interpretation of scripture. For example, Paul was held in high regard amongst the Jewish leaders of the day because he had been a dedicated disciple of Rabbi Gamaliel, a well known and highly respected teacher of the day. Paul’s reputation was based on Gamaliel’s reputation. It opened doors for him and qualified him amongst both his peers and his elders because of nothing he himself had done except to choose a teacher worth following. That is the implication of being a disciple, and the cultural understanding that Yeshuah was referencing. (This is an excellent article that goes much more in depth into the biblical meaning and understanding of discipleship, I highly recommend you check it out if you’re at all interested —> https://bible.org/article/being-first-century-disciple) Our mandate, then, is to be students of Yeshuah in every aspect of life, striving to emulate Him and His teachings in everything we do. In Hebrew society, everyone had the responsibility to know the scriptures, but it was the role of the Rabbis to help interpret the meaning of those scriptures to answer the questions of everyday life. When we let Jesus become our Rabbi, we are coming under His authority to teach us not only what the Bible says, but more importantly what it means in each of our everyday lives. And when we go out to create disciples, it’s to show what a life under His discipleship looks like so that they will want to learn from Him too! Our greatest witness is in how the integrity and consistency of our lives reflects the truth of His word. In the Hebraic mindset, belief was a concept that went far beyond a mental acquiescence of fact. You could only come to say that you believed something if it was actively reflected in the way you lived your life. That’s why James writes that “faith without works is dead.” (James 2:17) In other words, preaching is great, but it carries no validity if people don’t see you living what you preach. If we are to truly believe the words of God in any way that matters, it MUST be reflected in the way we live our lives and love others. And what does that reflection look like? That’s what each of us must walk personally with Jesus to find out. ““I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, so also you must love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”” They will know we are His disciples if we love as Jesus loves. Everything in our lives - our words, our behaviors, our attitudes, our service - all boil down to how well we love. Do we emulate the heart of Christ in our daily lives, even when no one is looking? If “out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks,” then who we are in the privacy of our own heart becomes the very basis of our public ministry. (Matthew 12:34) So then if we cannot genuinely love our brothers and sisters in our very heart of hearts, then the love we attempt to live by will be nothing.
And sadly many in the world today have a false concept of Christ’s love because they have observed “Christians” without that true love. Men have gone out bearing the name of our Lord, but who didn’t carry His heart because they didn’t take the time to get to know Him first. That is the danger of calling yourself a disciple but not actually being disciplined. It’s also the danger of trying to have a ministry before you’ve spent that quality time with God, allowing Him to teach and instruct you inside and out. It’s a millennia-old lie that has systematically and effectively created a bitter taste to those who don’t know the difference, and that we must daily strive to replace with Truth. The Truth in love is the Truth of love, because Love is a man and His name is Jesus! Discipleship is a slow, intentional process that’s meant to take the entirety of our lives to complete and to become so appealing to onlookers that they can’t help but join us. I think that’s what makes it the Greatest Commission we could ever receive. God has recently brought me back to a place that I love very dearly, and He’s been speaking to me a lot about the meaning and purpose of me being here - aside from the fact that I love it so much. Today I had the incredible opportunity to join a ministry session held by a very well known and highly respected spiritual leader. It was a total surprise to me, and was definitely a gift from God!
As I observed the young students enjoying the experience with me, an alarm was raised in my heart that many of them are defining their relationship with God by high-contact moments like these. This was something I have no doubt they would consider an “encounter” with God, but truly encountering God is not the same thing as having a “mountaintop experience.” The term is usually used in reference to some powerful evening of worship where the Holy Spirit falls and people are weeping on the floor. Limbs flail, catchers stand at the ready, prophecies get thrown left and right, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with feeling the presence of the Holy Spirit in this context! But that does not necessarily make it an encounter. To encounter the living and holy presence of God, you must first spend time getting to know Him. Relationships are built on trust, and while His Spirit will love us unconditionally without hesitation or question, that doesn’t mean that we have gained His TRUST. Trust is built over time and through consistency. It is the fruit of two hearts being equally committed to working through life’s trials in such a way that benefits and honors both sides of said relationship. This is true no matter what type of relationship you are approaching, so why would we ever presume to approach God without the same reverence and care?! That night at the conference when the speaker was on fire and so was your heart was definitely amazing! But if that was the first time you felt that presence of God meet you, it wasn’t an encounter - it was an introduction. I say this because it is impossible to truly encounter the living God without being permanently changed, but many people walk away from these introductions without it ever impacting their life in the long term. Sadly I have seen and known many people to jump from introduction to introduction with long periods of silence in between. Many Christians live their lives chasing the high of the “mountain top experience” without actually taking the time to steward the presence of God for themselves in the quiet and real moments of life. That isn’t a friendship you’re building, it’s an addiction. Chasing a high for the happy tingling feeling it gives you is no more intimate than lighting up a joint in a parking lot. Yet still, in God’s infinite grace and mercy, He never stops introducing Himself to us. Just because we misunderstand the purpose of that meeting, doesn’t make Him any less hopeful that someday we’ll come back for something more than that. Maybe a coffee date or a simple walk in the park. Building relationship really doesn’t have to be complicated at all! It just takes intentionality and time. God is the definition of an eternal optimist. He will give us a million and one chances to know Him because He knows that any one of them might someday become the beginning of something more. Only He knows what it will take for each of our hearts to cry out and hunger for something true - something real. Something, if I dare say it, far more real than having your palms tingle when the preacher prayed for you in the fire tunnel. (Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE fire tunnels! That’s not the point I’m trying to make here.) Our relationship with God is not defined by how high we can get or how many of those conferences we can go to. It’s defined by who we are with God when no one else is looking. When things are hard and don’t make sense. When it feels like He is giving you promises without answers or bringing you into a wilderness and then going silent. Relationship is tested and defined by how we react in those situations when the chips are down and life genuinely sucks. Learning to trust God is crucial, but once you’ve gone through enough of those tests and hard seasons, you’ll suddenly find yourself in a place where God trusts you back too. That’s when you actually have a relationship, and that’s when you get to see the true depth and richness of His love at work in your life - true encounter. That’s when a fit of uncontrollable giggles goes from a supernatural ab workout to a personal and intimate moment of shared joy. It carries the sweetness of knowing and being known, tied to concrete memories and examples of how His goodness has met you in both your highest and lowest places. It’s the difference between the butterflies of a first date and the depth of love between a married couple that has gone through hell and back together. There’s nothing wrong with butterflies and first dates! But you miss out on so much if you spend your life flitting from first date to first date. At some point you have to settle in and commit if you want to share the fruit of a lifelong walk together. I started a new job a couple of weeks ago and even though I had no idea what to expect going into it, I can already say that I totally love it!! I love being challenged to apply my skill set to a totally new sphere, and I love that I'm helping rebuild my city and restore people's homes to them after the fires of 2017, but more than that I love the people I get to work with every single day.
I've worked for some lovely Christians before and had very nice coworkers in other contexts, but this group is undoubtedly different than any other I've ever experienced. This is the first time that I've gotten to work in an environment where the entire atmosphere is in line with God's word and His heart for restoration. I'd never even imagined how awesome it would be to take time out of a busy afternoon to pray through something with my coworkers, or to have them care more about my well-being than my productivity... at first I didn't even know how to handle it, and now I don't know that I'll ever be able to go back to anything else, lol. One of the most impactful differences that I've been processing is the difference between the spirit of poverty and the spirit of radical generosity. Our society's norms fall so far into the spirit of poverty that it seeps into our mindsets towards nearly everything around us. It feeds into consumerism and the idea that we need to look out for ourselves before we look out for others. Living out of a poverty mindset makes us count the pennies, the minutes, and every single you-owe-me we can possibly find. It's the spirit that leads to the idea that our employees can't take five minutes off to chat while they're still on the clock, or that we need to buy the cheaper doohickey right now while it's on sale rather than save up for the quality one later on. It can also twist itself into the spirit that holds onto the record of wrongs, aka the ways in which I wasn't treated the way I should have been. The spirit of poverty tells us that our futures are not secure, and therefore we need to hold onto everything just in case someone tries to take it away from us. Frankly, it exhausting. And it's also toxic to any relationships we allow it to influence. I've struggled with this mindset over the years and had varying success in separating it from my thoughts and attitudes, but at the end of the day the only way to truly separate yourself from it is to replace it with something else. The spirit of poverty is toxic and infectious, but what makes it the most dangerous is that it's also very logical *if* you are operating apart from a genuine understanding of God and His kingdom economy. God's economy is one that defies the wisdom of this world and operates on the principal of radical generosity. Instead of looking for what will most help me get ahead, generosity looks for the ways in which I can most help you succeed. Generosity sees the value in pausing what I'm doing in order to help you when you need it (without any expectation of reciprocation in the future). A true understanding of God's generosity sees that all of my needs are already taken care of by Him, so that frees me up to look for ways to help others. Even when I don't yet see how His provision will cover my needs, I can know that He looks out for me because I am living in the shadow of His wings. Instead of trusting in my own power to provide for myself, generosity trusts in God's power to take better care of me than I ever could. While generosity is something I believe we all need a better understand of, and that I could talk about at length, the mindbomb God gave me this week actually went another step further: God doesn't love us out of a spirit of poverty. I know that this concept probably doesn't sound surprising at face value, but the ramifications of it are massive. Our images of God are directly based on how we've experienced the world. Our picture of God as a good heavenly father means very little if we did not first have a good earthly father to build that pattern off of. We can only love as well as we've experienced being loved by others, which is why we so often see emotional wounds get passed on through multiple generations of a family before someone is finally able to rise about their upbringing and break the cycle of brokenness. In the same way, we are born into the natural disadvantage of not being able to even conceive of the magnitude of God's love because no other human being is physically capable of showing us that same kind of love. This is what makes a personal and redeeming walk with God so critically important to spiritual growth throughout our lives. He must systematically re-write and re-define our past emotional experiences in order for us to even begin to understand how much He loves us. But because our beginning template with which to understand God is based off of how we understand man, we begin assuming things about His character that are simply not true. Many people often view God as a harsh taskmaster or as someone who will be disappointed by our failures. These are ideas that essentially boil down - once again - to the assumption of a poverty mindset. If God is upset by my inability to become perfect overnight, it's probably because He wants to maximize my utility as His servant. If He has pre-written my life and the things I am supposed to accomplish, then every moment I spend backsliding, or even just enjoying my youth, is a moment I'm stealing from His "greater plan." Even though these statements sound rather exaggerated and ridiculous once they're written on paper, I have to admit that I've operated with these assumptions for years now and often felt guilty for not doing more or being better than I already am. The truth of God's heart for us goes so far beyond this! In fact, it stopped me in my tracks when He planted this in my heart on Thursday. Yes, I believe He knows the strengths He has given each of us and how we can best serve His kingdom with them, but He also knows our weaknesses and He doesn't begrudge us for them. In fact, they are also a part of his plan for us. It's our weaknesses that drive us to need Him so much, and He is the one who want us to take time to sit and rest on a consistent basis so we don't overwork ourselves or burn out. God's value isn't productivity, it's relationship. This makes no sense from a poverty mindset, but it makes every bit of sense from the perspective of radical generosity. Generosity is patient and will go to any necessary length to make sure that the best result is ultimately achieved. If that means picking you up after you fall for the 700th time, He's ready for it. And He's also excited to get to be the one who picks you up for the first 699 times. He doesn't care about how long it takes you to get the hang of it, just so long as the journey leads you to understand how crazy He is about you. And why would He do that?? Because we can only love as well as we've experienced being loved. We can only extend grace to others as far as we've been shown grace ourselves. We can only reflect God's image as well as we can see it for ourselves. Our being refined into His image is the best witness we could ever be to this world, and that is far more valuable to Him than any number of volunteer days or Bible studies. I would even go so far as to say that it means more to him that us bringing others to salvation. Don't get me wrong, He rejoices with every individual soul that comes to know Him, and that is one of the most precious ways in which we can partner with His heart for restoration. But I don't think the impetus for their salvation is ultimately on our shoulders. God is big enough to be able to introduce Himself - He doesn't need us to play matchmaker for Him. And if we take more time to bring others to Him without even knowing Him well for ourselves, then we are only replicating an unsustainable and lifeless model. Last year I gave myself the goal to read the entire Bible in one year. Seeing as how it's nearly February, I think it's safe to say that I didn't meet my deadline, but that still won't stop me from completing it! I'm down to Nehemiah and Revelation (yes, I know that's a pretty random order but don't worry about it).
One way that I like to absorb the word is to have it playing in the background while I do menial tasks such as cooking or folding laundry. This allows me to get some chores done while also being in the Word. It also gives my brain the chance to process the content differently. My brain is very visual, and yet sometimes I find that reading is not a good way for me to take in the full story as it unfolds. Reading allows me to pick up minute details and re-read the same sentence a few times over if it didn't make sense the first time, but it can also far too easily switch over to autopilot (kind of like when reading a textbook for school, let's be honest - in one eye and out the other). Anyways, I was listening to the first few chapters of Nehemiah while my pasta boiled, and then an unexpected connection hit me... The narrator had just launched into one of those trademark Old Testament lists of names and their sons and the sections of rebuilding they were responsible for, etc. Most of the time these lists are the spot where people tune out or skip ahead, but because I was multitasking it wasn't so hard to just listen to him go on and on in the background. That's when the unique thing about this particular list stood out to me: it was a summary of all the builders who were working together to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem after it had been destroyed by the Babylonians. Many of the exiles had returned to the land of their ancestors, and there had actually been multiple attempts at rebuilding already. Nehemiah came to the city with the blessing and resources of the king, and he began his work by inspiring the people to return to God and to His Word. Rebuilding the city was actually a task far greater than the Jews there were equipped to handle, yet their love for their land was more than enough to draw them all together to the task. Each priest, official, and man of means was assigned to rebuild the portion of the wall directly outside their own homes. The city walls were there to protect all occupants equally, but each individual section was done by that specific person who was closest to it (and his sons or servants). I guess this makes some sense logistically, but it also flies in the face of the way we normally approach a team project. There was no foreman or engineer handing out blueprints, nor were any of the necessary tools or materials supplied for them. In order for the project to work at all, there couldn't be a single flaw or inferior section, lest it be breached, rendering the rest of the wall ineffective. Everyone needed to trust each other to do their part of the work well, and I assume many of them ended up helping each other where help was needed. Not everyone can be a master builder or stone mason, so those who were the most able probably ended up helping those who were less able. It also stood out to me that each man was responsible for building up the area that protected his home and his family. It was his job to secure his own family's safety, which is why it was important for him to do the very best job he could. What better way to motivate excellence?! Yet his family's well being was also out of his hands because it relied on both the quality of his work and that of those to either side of him. As a community, we can sometimes become myopic in seeing only what's "our responsibility" and none other. We can also come to believe that we are safe because we already took care of our own problems. It can be hard to admit when my weakness is affecting those around me, but it's also deeply irresponsible of me to let that continue tearing others down without me taking steps to grow up in those places of immaturity. Or even if my sin isn't directly affecting you, maybe you're currently struggling with something I had to deal with in my past. My section of the wall may be tall and well fortified, but if I do nothing to help my neighbor who is struggling, then my fortune will only last for as long as we are both living in a time of peace. We need each other. And not in the sense that we need to be sticking our noses in each others' business to judge what type of righteousness is really the best - that's tearing another down, not building them up. Building up is done in love, with compassion and kindness. Building up is done by seeing where my surplus can be used to bless another who has a deficit, as well as having the humility to accept help from those who have something that I may need. This can be done both physically and spiritually. I've been blessed to live in a country of wealth and prosperity, and it's my honor to be able to financially support those I know working for the kingdom in much harder and poorer parts of the world. I can also help those in my own local community who do not have the same means and opportunity that I have. But building up doesn't just stop at physical needs. Maybe I'm really good at having faith for God's provision, while you're really good at prioritizing time to be with God every morning. Instead of feeling like we're failing because we're not both good at both things, we can help model our own healthy behaviors and encourage each other as we grow in spiritual maturity together. That way when troubles come, we will have spent time nurturing and building those healthy habits that may not have come naturally to us. We will also have developed trust in a friendship that we can lean on when times do get hard and that growth is put to the test. That's what the body of Christ is supposed to be about. It's something the Jews understood as they struggled to stay alive in a physically dangerous world, and it's something that we still need today in a world full of distraction and idolatry. We each have to be wholehearted in our own pursuit of righteousness, and we must also stand together in community so that our aggregate strength can become a shield around both the strong and the weak among us. That is how we will become stronger and healthier as a whole. That is how the Bride of Christ will be made to shine. I’m sorry, this isn’t going to be a very Christmas-y post, but it’s been on my heart a lot recently and so this is what I’m writing about today... God showing His love through discipline.
One very important lesson I’ve had to keep coming back to is that God only disciplines those He loves. Yes, in the Bible He also punishes His enemies and avenges His servants, but that’s not the same thing. Being disciplined is how we are refined into His image - it’s intentional and always productive (though rarely comfortable). And it’s also important to note that it’s a process He only puts His children through. The Bible is filled with stories of God sending countless warnings to the Israelites and them rarely heeding those warnings. And every time they had finally gone too far from His presence and had seemed to reject His ways completely, He withdrew His hand of protection over them so they could feel the true weight of their sin and return to Him. Israel’s disobedience was no different than the sins of the other nations around them, except for the fact that they knew better. The direct repercussions of their sin was only as heavy as it was because He expected more from them than the other nations. And why was Israel blessed with such high standards? It was their inheritance. From the very beginning, they had entered into covenants with God and received His promises and His precepts with open and willing hearts. They knowingly accepted relationship with God along with all of the perks and exceptions that came with it, creating an eternal bond between them that no amount of future disobedience or defiance could break. He had promised to do what was best for them, and He is ALWAYS faithful to His promises - even to the point of letting them be hurt so that they might return to Him when they needed to. All of the destruction He brought them through was only ever out of love for them and out of a desire to bring them back to a place of life over death. In my own life I have eagerly entered into relationship with Elohim, and therefore have come under his hand of covering for both protection from death as well as from my own folly. Like Israel, He loves me far too much to let me slip away from His plans and His goodness - at least, not without a serious fight! Even when I’m at my worst and I wince at the pain, I can know that every good thing comes from my Heavenly Father. He will not let me go through any attack alone, and He will not discipline me beyond what I can handle when I stand in His love. He is my rock and my shelter, and the provider of all my needs. What kind of God would He be if He also let me walk away from that love without trying to stop me? One of the stories I keep coming back to this year is the life of Jonah. Jonah was a prophet of the Lord - someone who had dedicated his life to God and who walked with Him intimately enough to know His voice well. Everyone knows Jonah by the discipline he received, but I think we rarely look at it through the lens of God’s mercy and love towards Jonah. Without a shadow of a doubt, Jonah messed up and deserved whatever punishment God would have decided to give him, but the worst punishment (what he truly deserved) would have been to let him go on his own way and depart from God’s presence entirely. Anything less was already an act of mercy. Even though Jonah was being stubborn and rebellious, God loved him too much to let him go off on a temper tantrum. So instead of letting Jonah sail to Tarshish and live out the rest of his days ignoring God, He orchestrated the wind and seas just so that Jonah would be forced to face his own sin and its consequences here in this life. He sent a fish to protect Jonah from death, and He kept him there until Jonah repented. Jonah still wasn’t perfect and he still had a bad attitude, but he also got to partner with God in bringing mercy to people living in darkness. God didn’t need a man’s help in order to accomplish His heavenly agenda, but He still wanted His friend to be a part of what He was doing. People tend to get scared or intimidated by the “Old Testament” because they don’t understand that it’s all a story about a Father and His children - a family matter from beginning to end. If you are not in His family, then neither His blessings nor His laws will apply to you - only the absence of them. But if you have truly become His child, then it has also become your family story and of the utmost applicability. Please don’t let a misunderstanding of God’s heart to protect His disobedient children drive you away from His heart of love towards you. ❤️ And likewise don’t get discouraged when walking with God isn’t always fun and easy. Sometimes we need to be given the opportunity to grow through trials in order to better understand the hope that we’re called to live in. If you ever want to talk with me about this more, please leave me a message in the comments. Merry Christmas!! I believe that everyone deserves grace... Or more like none of us deserve it, which is why we can receive it equally. It’s the only fair thing about the universe...
We have all messed up and brought God pain and sorrow, yet He still loves and forgives us unconditionally no matter how hard we’ve fallen or how far we’ve run. Nothing you have done could ever be any worse than anything I’ve done, so neither of us needs to live in fear of our mistakes ever being too big for His love to forgive. I believe this for myself and for others, but I find it interesting how much easier it is to extend this outwardly than it is to grant it internally. No matter what you’ve done, I can see God’s grace covering you. I can see His loving heart towards you and I can see His beaming smile over you when you finally come back home - that’s easy for me, and quite often a joy to watch. Yet as soon as I realize my own sin, I feel so dirty and ashamed... Like somehow I should have known better, so it’s a little harder to forgive my mistakes. Why is that??? Is it just because I know my own faults deeper than I know yours? Is it because I know how many times I’ve already had to learn this lesson and yet here we are again? While that may be true, I don’t think that’s the root of it. I think I hold myself to a higher and more critical standard than I hold others. Somehow my heart thinks that I should be the exception - the person who gets it right the first time. So then where did the grace go? It exists as a hypothetical, but it’s hard to remember when it’s actually needed. It’s important to remember that I am human too. I’m not capable of fixing myself and I’m not capable of perfection. I’m on my way towards it as I pursue relationship with my creator, but He knows how long that journey is going to take and He isn’t surprised by the hiccups that come up along the way. He is still completing the work He began in me (Philippians 1:6) - that inherently means that it’s not done yet. So if God can be patient with this lump of clay, so should I. I don’t know what struggles and battles are yet to come, and I don’t yet see what lessons I will need to learn from them. I can’t waste time beating myself up over my latest failure if I ever want to be able to get to the next one. Our lives and our successes only mean anything because of our failures. Yes, they sting and they cause damage we wish we could undo, but they are also our benchmarks; they show us the changes we can’t see along the way. They are here to allow me to appreciate how much farther I got this time since the last flop. Like a baby learning how to walk, the excitement comes from how much farther you got this time. The fact that you fell is neither surprising nor disappointing. In fact, it’s often the fall that is met with celebration because until then we were still waiting to see how far you’d make it. I have a feeling God looks at us a lot more like that than how we look at ourselves. Let’s start giving ourselves grace out of joy, not obligation. Let’s start seeing those failures as an opportunity to celebrate all the success leading up to them. Let’s see it as nothing more than the next starting point for an even better run than before. Let’s consider these trials as joys and focus on the miracle of life that God brings forth from our natural imperfections. I think then we will be able to see His heart much clearer and to enjoy the process that He sees growing inside each of us. And who knows... I might even get to a place someday where I can hear Him say “well done, good a faithful servant” and actually believe Him. I had a very interesting experience as a woman visiting Italy last month. I absolutely love traveling and I always observe a number of fascinating cultural differences whenever I go to a new place, but this one caught me off guard. And before I explain why, please don’t think I’m fishing for compliments. I know that I’m beautiful in my own way - I try to know my strengths as well as my flaws and I’m still in the process of mastering them.
In fact, I think that is the largest reason why it caught me off guard. Knowing that I’m beautiful and feeling beautiful are acutely different things. I have no shortage of people in my life who know and love me and who wouldn’t hesitate to compliment me if they ever knew I felt fat or frumpy, but some kind of reason would normally have to exist for such a comment to be made. This led to my being so *happily* shocked by what I found in Italy. It felt like I must have received more compliments in just the first week of being in Florence than I had in the last decade up till then. Imagine that! But it wasn’t the fact that I was being noticed that made me feel pretty (Ok, it didn’t hurt)... I found that it had a lot to do with my own attitude too. In America we are constantly surrounded by advertisements and images of idealized beauty. Whether or not we agree with or even mean to look at them, the constant bombardment of billboards, magazines, and commercials becomes a part of our subliminal mindset. It informs how we perceive each other and ourselves, and it affects both men and women equally. So once all those things are gone and the only standards of beauty you are surrounded by are ancient sculptures (portraying women of all sorts of body types - yes, usually curvy) it changes the mentality of the society as a whole. I no longer felt like I was being constantly compared to something else. I was seen as beautiful simply because I am a beautiful woman. And so were all the other women. The positive feedback loop was created as I also stopped comparing myself to those unspoken impossible standards. I started looking in the mirror and liking the curves and lumps that I saw - not because they had become any different, but because suddenly they were no longer a roadblock in between me and my perceived value. It’s sad to realize in hindsight that the reason I’ve hated my lumps while in America was only because I subliminally thought they were standing in the way of me being truly accepted and loved. It was also amazing to see how incredibly fast that changed the instant I was no longer surrounded by that environment of comparison. Comparison is toxic!! And it goes way beyond appearances. Comparing any benchmark, achievement, or feature about yourself to someone else immediately poisons your own ability to grow because you’re only looking for ways to put one person over another instead of looking for ways to bring all people up. It immediately creates the dichotomy of a winner and a loser instead of choosing to see the equal value in both. Once you lose the ability to see value in yourself, you also lose your ability to receive God’s best for you. You consider Him a liar because you reject His most fundamental truth: that you are worth loving and being sacrificed for. Likewise when you lose the ability to see the value in others you lose the ability to love them. You lose God’s heart for them and take on the world’s heart instead, which is far more fickle, biased, and destructive. It begins to tear you both down instead of building you both up. It’s therefore no surprise to me that in a society that worships comparison we find it so difficult to love one another without judgement or bias. In order for us to love one another as Jesus loves us and to live in peace with one another, we must first make an intentional effort to set all comparison aside. I’ve fallen deeply into that trap at different times in my life and it would appear that it was still affecting me even when I didn’t think I was struggling with it. I know how hard it is to truly maintain God’s perspective while we remain surrounded by the world and all its trappings, but it’s a challenge worth taking on and worth helping keep each other accountable of as well. I have had a couple absolutely perfect days this week!! I've gotten to connect with fellow believers and share encouragement as well as be encouraged by them. I've gotten to watch the World Cup and enjoy the excitement of the sport with friends and strangers alike. I've gotten to lounge with my sketchbook on the warm riverbank of the Arno on a lazy Sunday afternoon without a care in the world. I've gotten to reconnect with pieces of my heart that had been silent for so long I wondered if they were gone forever. God has opened up special moments, special doors, and special relationships in the most unexpected times and places for no other reason than to bless my heart. There is nothing more humbling. I am so grateful for where I am, who I am, and what God has brought me to right here and right now. I'm excited to see where the future takes me and I'm also apprehensive about the pains I know it will hold, but I don't want either of those things to distract me from enjoying these moments. Moments of peace and sweetness. Moments one can spend a lifetime dreaming about and that are worth remembering for years to come. Moments that are both passive and defining.
Nothing in these last few days has radically shaped my life. I am still the same person with the same perspectives and opinions, heading in the same general direction, and yet the fact that I've had them makes me so much more whole as a person. These memories won't protect me from having bad days in the future, nor will they be enough to even carry me through those bad days, but they will add a special flavor to the way that I see and approach my days to come. Having a good day doesn't invalidate the bad days, and having bad days should never prevent my ability to fully enjoy the good ones. If anything, it should only make them that much sweeter and more worth holding onto when they do come along. Each one simply becomes a new, unique thread added to the tapestry that is being woven - the fabric of who I am. |
ErikaJeremiah 29:11 Archives
March 2023
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