Love Conquers All

Do you know that God is for you?  No, really, do you know that nothing that you could do will ever keep God from being on your side? His love is beyond measuring and beyond understanding. Perhaps you have heard that God is love and that God so loved the world that He sent His only Son so that we might possess eternal life.  He loves us so much that He actually wants to spend an eternity with us!  Do you love anyone that much that you would want to spend every minute of eternity with them?  Well, God loves you that much.  The problem is many of us don’t really believe that God loves us. We think that we have crossed the line and are beyond saving.

I remember my earthly father’s struggle with love.  He was fun loving, hard working, and courageous in many ways. He loved to listen and to dance to music. It must be where I get my love for music and dancing. He never met a stranger.  My mom would send him on an errand to get a couple of items at the grocery store, but he would tend to get sidetracked as he got involved in conversations over the produce or in the parking lot with complete strangers.   Where was the struggle you may be asking?  The struggle was not with what or whom he loved but it was with receiving love from others and from God.  That must be where I get that. 

I remember talking with my dad and asking him many times if he had received Christ.  He would always answer yes, but then add, “He could never forgive my sin.”  You see, I believe it was that inability to receive the Father’s love that kept my earthly father bound up in feelings of worthlessness, anger, and addiction.  By the time I was in middle school my dad had turned to alcohol for comfort and was a full- fledged alcoholic. He wasn’t the same fun-loving man I knew as a young child. My dad was brave, as well. I will never forget as a young girl, watching him chase a huge bull around the pasture behind our home.  He wasn’t afraid of that huge animal, yet he had become a man bound up in fear of never being good enough. Where was his bravery now? 

My dad lived most of his life like he was walking a tight rope stretched across the downtown skyscrapers.  He lived in fear that he would fall and that all his efforts would never be good enough.  He was partly correct.  We will never be good enough to earn God’s love.  Now picture the tight rope just inches above a huge, sturdy safety net.  If you slip and fall you won’t be hurt, because your fall will be short and soft.  That is God’s love. His love is always there ready to catch us when we fall.  Nothing to fear, because there is no step we can take that is out of the reach of His love. 

One Sunday morning in a church in Missouri I prayed that God would do whatever it took to open the eyes and heart of my dad to see and accept His love.  Only a few months later, I received a call from my mom informing me that my dad had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.  My mind went to that Sunday morning plea for my dad’s salvation.  Could this be His answer?  I would never pray for anyone to be diagnosed with cancer!  That was not what I prayed. I prayed, “Lord, whatever it takes.”  Within a few weeks after his diagnosis, my dad started going to church. He quit drinking and within days was convinced of God’s love in the midst of his suffering the effects of alcohol withdrawal and cancer treatments.  God’s love had overcome my dad’s fears and feelings of unworthiness.  He was radically saved and his life was a living testimony of what God’s love can overcome.  After he was baptized you couldn’t keep him from sharing his faith.  My mom called one day to tell me some amazing news.  She and my dad had been to visit a friend who was also suffering with cancer.  As they were preparing to leave their friends bedside, my dad asked the friend if he could pray for him.  He proceeded to pray aloud for his friend.  My mom said she just about fainted!  That was the first time in their 43 years of marriage that he had ever prayed aloud with her. My dad had not only been convinced of God’s overcoming love, but he had come to realize that even cancer could not separate him from God’s amazing love. 

If you are struggling today to accept, or be convinced of, God’s love for you take the plunge! Jump off the tight rope of trying to earn God’s love and fall into the arms of the One who loves unconditionally and eternally. May your statement of belief be that of Paul’s in Romans 8:38, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing (not even yourself!), will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”   

In the love conquering Name of Jesus!

Nancy 

Joyful Anticipation

Anticipation (noun) 1. Expectant waiting; the feeling of looking forward, usually excitedly or eagerly, to something that is going to happen.

  

I have lived my life always looking forward to something:  graduation, new job, marriage, children, and now grandchildren.  I believe that God places in us a longing to look forward.  In fact, in Isaiah 43:18-19 the Lord says, “Do not call to mind the former things or ponder things of the past.  Behold, I will do something new. Now it will spring forth; will you not be aware of it?  I will make a roadway in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.”  The Lord wants us to look forward to what He has planned to do in and through our lives. 

The problem is that I lose that excited and eager feeling of anticipation.  I find myself living more in dread that in joyful expectation of what is coming next.  As a fifty-something empty-nester, I have seen my anticipated hopes and dreams come to life through my own graduations, jobs, marriage and children.  I am hanging on to the joyful anticipation of one day becoming a grandparent, but other than that at times my vision of future glories fade.  Last week’s cloud that I wrote about in my last blog posting was partly due to my lack of vision.  I had lost sight of what God might have planned for me in the future and so my “looking forward” had given way to doubts, fears, and regrets. 

I had to choose to drag myself out of that pit of self-pity and bad vision to a view above the clouds. Matthew 6:22-23 says that “the eye is the lamp of the body; if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light.  But if your eye is bad your whole body will be full of darkness.” I needed a clear vision of my life. It seemed all my dreams had been fulfilled, so what would I be looking forward to in my “growing old” state of mind? 

I went to the gym early on Monday morning in search of a clear new vision.  I found it on the treadmill.  As I walked I asked the Lord to show me a purpose, a new dream to look forward to.  A picture so clearly came to my mind of what He was calling me to.  I saw a vision that was clear, detailed and very real. The Lord gave me a glimpse of what He is calling me to give the rest of my life to!  That vision began with a vision of Him.  The Rend Collective Experiment version of “Be Thou My Vision” came flooding through my earphones and straight to my heart:

You are my vision, oh king of mine heart

Nothing else satisfies, only You, Lord

You are my best thought by day or by night

Waking or sleeping, Your presence, my light.

Are you looking forward to something with joyful anticipation?  If your eyes are bad right now and you can only see the darkness, then get a glimpse of Jesus, our Light, Redeemer, Savior, and soon coming again King!  “For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees?   But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.”  Once you place your life into the hands of Jesus He begins to reveal Himself to you and His plan for you; a plan that includes one day seeing Him face to face and spending an eternity of joyful anticipation in His presence.  Now, there is nothing more satisfying, more exciting, and more joyful than looking forward to that! 

With Joyful Anticipation!

Nancy 

A Reason to Sing

There is a song that All Sons and Daughters sing that keeps going through my mind. The song is titled, “A Reason to Sing.”  It starts out with the cry of a desperate heart confessing,  “I need a reason to sing!”  Sunday morning I awoke in a cloud, a dark cloud.  I forced myself from my bed and out of the cloud long enough to pray and prepare my mind and heart to teach a lesson about the ongoing war within every person.  The war can be stated precisely using the words of the Apostle Paul in Romans 7:15, “For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.”  Once in the classroom the Lord provided me with boldness and with words to communicate His message of grace.  The lesson went well and as we gathered for prayer after class our prayer room filled to capacity.  The prayer time together was sweet and powerfully authentic as the women poured out their hearts to the Lord.  I was on a high as I left church that day! He had given me a reason to sing. 

The cloud that greeted me Sunday morning was back by sundown.  Why was I feeling so down, discouraged and on the verge of despair?  At first I blamed it on just missing my children.  They are so far away and at times I feel so disconnected to the very ones I had given birth to.  I looked around my small condo and wondered if I would ever get it to the place I wanted it to be.   I began to wonder if I had even missed out on what God called me to do?  Boy, my mind was definitely in a thick cloud of self-pity.  Nothing seems right with my world.  But, I didn’t have time to stay there for long.  I had to prepare for Monday, as I was to show up for jury duty!  A sense of dread and fear nipped at my heels as I went to bed with jury duty on my mind.

Monday, I got up early to pray, read through my devotional along with some verses to try and head off that dark cloud that still wanted to engulf me.  Just to be on the safe side I slipped a few of my scripture memory packs in my purse to keep my mind focused.  Twenty-two of us were lined up according to our assigned number and led into a courtroom with men in suits and a woman judge presiding.  The judge spoke to us about what would be expected of us and thanked us for doing our part to see that justice would be carried out.  Then the questioning began!

 The case involved a former prisoner and two prison guards.  The former prisoner was suing the prison guard saying that his civil rights had been violated.  The lawyers were looking for jurors who would be fair and unbiased.  The last question the lawyer asked has been going through my mind over the last few days.  He asked us to tell him the first one or two words that came to our minds when he said the word “prison.” He started with juror number one, which would be me, and went in order all the way to juror number twenty-two.  I answered with the one word, “cell,” as it was the first word that came to my mind.  The jurors who followed me had similar answers such as, locked-up, criminal, scary, and hard.  Finally, the very last juror, number twenty-two, spoke a word that no one expected: “hope!”  A moment of silence fell on the courtroom as everyone pondered what she could’ve possibly meant.  We were then all dismissed for a short break while the lawyers chose who would and would not be on the jury for the trial.

After our break we were led once again into the courtroom where we would learn our fate.  The Judge began to read the names of those who were chosen. I held my breath as I listened.  My name was not called and I was free to go!  The cloud that greeted me on Sunday was still following me around.  I had been released from jury duty, my husband was home after a week away, and I should have been celebrating! Instead I could only focus on all that I hadn’t accomplished because of having to sit around a courthouse for four hours!  Where was my head?

The cloud did not lift until this morning!  I went for my daily treadmill walk with my scripture memory cards in hand and my earphones on my head and the Son began to shine.  I focused on one of my memory verses, “But David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.”  (1 Samuel 30:6b)  I listened to the words play in my ears, “I need a reason to sing.  I need a reason to believe you still hold the whole world in your hands. . . Your peace is the melody you sing it over me now.”  That is the reason for juror twenty-two’s answer of hope!  The music continued, “I will sing to my God and King for you’ve been good always.”

I had been in the prison cell of self-absorption, focusing only on what I lacked.  It was only when I soaked my mind and heart in the truth of God’s Word that I was able to break out of that prison of despair through the Door of hope!  Another scripture verse came flooding into my mind, “But as for me, I will watch expectantly for the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation.  My God will hear me. Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy.  Though I fall I will rise; though I dwell in darkness, the Lord is a light for me.” (Micah 7:7-8) After teaching a lesson about our on going war within I was blindsided by the enemy’s song of discouragement.  In my cell of self I could only see the dark and hear the song of gloom.  I am so glad I kept asking the Lord to show me the way out of my self-made cell.  “Why are you in despair, O my soul?  And why have you become disturbed within me?  Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God.”  (Psalm 42:11) 

If you find yourself in a self-made prison cell of self-pity today let me remind you of what the God of hope sings over you, “The Lord your God is in your midst, a victorious warrior.  He will exult over you with joy, He will be quiet in His love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.”   If you have never experienced the peace of Christ or the hope of God I invite you today to enter through the Door, Jesus.  He stands ready to break you out of the prison of self and lead you to His wide opened spaces of extravagant grace, unending peace and a future filled with hope.  (Romans 15:13)

Singing a song of hope,

Nancy 

Not Guilty!

This past week my daughter, who is a first year criminal defense lawyer in Los Angeles, tried her first case before a jury.  After a day of deliberation the jury came back with a “not guilty” verdict.  My husband and I had prayed her through the trial and were beyond excited to hear that she had won her first jury trial!  Obviously we were not alone in our excitement because she had 122 Facebook friend “likes” after she posted “NOT GUILTY on my first jury trial!!!” My daughter’s client rejoiced when he heard the verdict and she had to restrain his outburst of joy!  Whether falsely accused or rightly charged whenever anyone is found to be not guilty there comes an exhaling of all the stress, shame and anxiety that has filled the accused. 

The Lord kept bringing to my mind the words “not guilty” this week as I listened and waited for His whisper and His lesson.  My mind often goes back to my college years when I knew the Lord, yet did not know what it meant to walk with Him in an intimate relationship.  I tried so many ways to find acceptance from others and happiness for myself, but all my attempts ended alone in my dorm room or apartment crying out to God in shame and guilt for seeking acceptance and happiness in all the wrong places.   I was in a cycle of doing things I knew where wrong, feeling guilt and shame, confessing them to the Lord and then returning to the same old cycle once more.  I hadn’t grasped the life changing truth of the gospel of grace. 

One day as I walked through the doors of a college Bible study I entered into a place of grace, where I found acceptance and real joy.  It was there that I finally took ownership of my Christianity.  I came to the realization that Jesus wasn’t just the One I confessed my sins to every night in my bedroom, but He was the One who would empower me to walk out of the cycle of guilt and shame into a “not guilty” grace-filled life.  Jesus accepted me just as I was, but loved me too much to let me stay in such bondage!   Now some thirty years later, the Lord continues to transform my life by His grace and His powerful presence. 

People love to hear about a victory, especially the victory of an underdog, like a budding new lawyer!  It spurs us on to think that we too can experience such victory.  It would be interesting to see how many "likes" we would receive if we posted on Facebook  our victories over sin. A friend of mine often says, “God loves bad odds!” God loves the underdog. He cheers on the one who is less likely to succeed, the meek and the weak.   Are you in need of a victory today?  Are you tired of the struggle?  Then enter into a place of grace where you will find forgiveness, acceptance and joy unspeakable!  It says in scripture that when one person repents from a life of death and destruction and turns to the Lord there is a chorus of angels in heaven praising the Lord for His victory!  “But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  1 Corinthians 15:57   

Here's to Victory!

Nancy