Saturday Devotions: Your Legacy

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How does your house look this very second? Be honest, now. Does everyone have clean underwear and socks in their drawers and a clean towel for bathing tonight? Is dinner planned and you have meat thawing?

Now I have an important question for you. Your answer to this one reveals more about you than whether your children dig their socks out of a huge pile of clean clothes, or retrieve them from a drawer.

Have you opened your Bible since last Sunday's church service?

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Paul’s Charge to Timothy

2 Timothy 3:14-17 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. source

Friend, I know the draw of a clean, orderly house...the draw of free time and a good book. The constant pressures of motherhood overwhelm the best of us.

But think of your last day on this earth. You, at your deathbed, surrounded by your loved ones. It could be next year or after your eightieth birthday. We never know. At that point it's too late to alter your legacy--to reshape it to leave a more pleasing taste in their mouths. Sure, you can apologize for this or that transgression, but the habits and values your lifestyle highlighted, they will shape your children and their children--they will define your legacy--forever.

Make a list of your habits and values. Do your habits line up with your values? If not, what kind of legacy are you forging? One that will give you peace on your deathbed?

The Lord can redeem so much. He makes beauty from ashes. But once you've reached your deathbed, he can't alter your legacy.

Start today with daily habits that will forge a priceless legacy: daily prayer and Bible reading. They will transform you first and then each family member. For your changed heart, your gentleness and self-control, will shine so brightly everyone around you will want what you have. This isn't an ideal, but truth. The Word remakes us. If you read it daily, and pray, you will not be the same person even 30 days from now.

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The Holy Spirit will be your constant companion and you will want to listen to Him. You will have the courage to live contrary to culture.

Nothing will impact you and your family's lives more than a daily chasing after God. Nothing will make you what you want to be--not a diet, an outfit, a title, a bank account balance--nothing. Your heart and soul were created to worship the One, True, Living God. Live out your true destiny.

Forsake that Bible, that prayer, and you'll worship everything but Him. Satan promises.

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Solve Our Children's Book Mystery?

Our local library is having a contest to see who can guess all the featured storybook characters. The tracings are not colored--just the basic shapes traced on black construction paper. All are very popular characters, such as Curious George, Olivia, Paddington Bear, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, The Little Engine That Could, etc.

We are really stumped on one of them. It features two characters together: one that is either a small cat or possibly a mouse with ears on top of the head, shaped more like a cat's ears than mouse ears (triangles on top of the head, close together), and another character, much taller and rounder, who has a weird, large hair-curl or other outgrowth thing sticking out the front of the head--about at forehead level I think? Can you guess which storybook these two characters might be from? Most of the books seem to be preschool or lower elementary age.

Thank you!

Elijah Speaks to Me; Thankful Thursday

I have occasion to preach to myself today over something God requires concerning our neighbors. I thought you might glean something as well....so maybe come along for the ride?

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Elijah and the woman with the oil and flour; 1 Kings 17:7-16

On the way to AWANA I pray for him. And the issues, they're so complicated I don't know where to begin.

I've written of the family before. There are four children ranging in age from 4 to 12 and during the summer they were all babysat by the12-year-old sister.

Recently their van broke down, leaving one economy car for six people and Mom and Dad work in opposite sides of town. Their funds can't cover repairs right now and in our rural area there are no buses. Suddenly, one parent is out of work and possibly both and the mother is sick and had to spend one night in the hospital. It's hard to know the details without being nosy. I ask very little and wait for God to reveal the needs.

The tax levy for the local school district, it didn't pass and no school bus runs through the neighborhood this year. How do you work a job or two on one car, and manage the pick-up and drop-off times for three different schools?

I could get on a soapbox about the well over $9000 a year this district spends per student and how could they have no money for buses? And why are all the school buildings new, when bus money was in jeopardy?

And so I pray for Aidan who shares the back seat of our van. He asks us to keep his AWANA materials at our house because at his house they would get lost or the "babies" (his 4- and 5-year-old siblings) would ruin them. And I think about all the families who are so stressed by their poverty, they can't maintain a modicum of organization. Could there really be no place at all to put important papers and does homework ever get done in that house and why are the kids sick (or truant) so often?

And why should I even ask that, when gas money itself is an obstacle? An important bit of information, this, straight out of Aidan's mouth.

And I wonder if I should give them a ten dollar bill for gas money? And should I offer to take the kindergartner and fourth grader to the elementary school every day, even though by 8:25 I rarely have my shower and breakfast is only in the works, not consumed, by then?

Our own van at over 230,000 miles could stop at any moment...and our 25-year-old car, it could as well. And gas money isn't plentiful here either. If we only had more to give! The less I have, the more I see physical need all around me.

Before, I just didn't see.

As I wonder if I should pay for Aidan's AWANA book when our own AWANA books are stretching us, and should I hand over gas money--all the while wondering if it might be used for cigarettes, do you know the story the Holy Spirit puts in my head just then? The woman with the little bit of flour and oil.

1 Kings 17:7-24

Some time later the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land. Then the word of the Lord came to him: “Go at once to Zarephath in the region of Sidon and stay there. I have directed a widow there to supply you with food.” So he went to Zarephath. When he came to the town gate, a widow was there gathering sticks. He called to her and asked, “Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink?” As she was going to get it, he called, “And bring me, please, a piece of bread.”

“As surely as the Lord your God lives,” she replied, “I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.”

Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the land.’”

She went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the Lord spoken by Elijah.

Scripture seems to say, yes, I should give gas money and offer rides and buy an AWANA book, not concerning myself with whether I have enough for my family. What does obedience and charity require, when you don't live in abundance yourself? 

Just this: Faith

And what is faith, exactly? Have I not seen what God does to provide? Have we not been helped ourselves just in the nick of time? Have we not experienced the despair and hopelessness poverty brings? Do we not understand the layers and layers of issues complicating that all encompassing word:  poverty? 

The good news is that God doesn't squeeze faith out of dry raisins. He builds our faith, plumping us up with provision and sustenance, grace and love. 

This I have learned: Everything he requires from us, he puts into us. He only asks that we let it flow out generously, as he let it flow in. 

And don't ask questions. Did the woman ask Elijah questions?  No. "She went away and did as Elijah told her."

What is God asking you to give today? If you see a need around you--and you will if you look--remember this: We're not parched as raisins. He has filled us and if we abide in Him, he'll fill us some more.

For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the Lord spoken by Elijah.

Feeling thankful on Thursday.

Dear Lord, thank you for these gifts:

~ I know where the AWANA books are in this house and we open them and our Bibles, and we value scripture...all by His grace alone is this true. 

~ Beautiful fall days with sunny skies.

~ For the first time ever, we invited someone to church and they said yes!

~ When Mary woke up from a dream...thinking there were ants all over her bed, I was able to comfort her. What a privilege to love.

~ His kisses and hard work.

~ Hearing 13 preschoolers whisper it at AWANA Cubbies: "God loved us and sent His Son."

~ Zinnias still blooming beauty

~ The eyes to see.

~ Having just enough. That's more blessing than any of us realize.

~ Prayer

~ Stories that teach

~ Reading Sid Fleischman's Gold Rush adventure alongside the boys: By the Great Horn Spoon

Dear God

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Dear God,

I love you. You are the Holy One, the Messiah. The Almighty Living God. The great I AM.

Fifteen years ago you took over my heart and soul and I no longer resemble that woman of 31 years. The woman who remembers saying one day to a coworker: Adam and Eve are just a story, not truth. And the next day? I believed! You who are Truth put truth in me.

And my Lord? My Jesus? I can never thank you enough. I can never express my soul's relief over the divine rescue provided by your grace. I shudder at those wayward days of blindness and do you know? I wish I could kiss the very holes the nails put in you. I would and someday I will.

I had questions for you these last few years. Poverty like I'd never seen flashed before my eyes and I couldn't stop crying. And I couldn't stop asking: Why do some live in decayed dwellings the size of my king bed, and bathe in muddied, contaminated waters? Why do some have raw sewage running by their front doors? That's what I asked you, the Almighty Living God. The great I AM.

And you showed me the hearts of the redeemed poor. You showed me their total reliance on you and how you are enough for them. And you showed me our distracted, privileged culture. Our blind culture that looks everywhere and spends everything, searching for that very concept:  enough.

And my heart changed and I sought after you like never before. Nothing fulfills me like you do. Oh, how my heart savors your very name! I love you, Lord. I love you! You are vastly more than enough. Everything you give? It is enough. It is the perfect amount. My soul? It was made for worship, not consumption.

Make me your instrument, Lord. You have shown me that physical hunger, abject poverty, exist not because the privileged are evil, necessarily, but because they are hungry! Hungry for you and they don't even know it. The faithful and the lost, both. Neither gets enough of you.

And if they did, Father? If they did get enough of you? They would share...this I know. Sharing comes from a thankful heart. A heart so filled up with you that the gifts overflow onto others, cheerfully.

Use my words here, Lord. Use my heart. Use all of me to share the news that Jesus is waiting to love you to overflowing, to satisfy your inner-most longings. He wants to overflow your cup so you can be the blessing, not consume it.

Use me Lord, for your glory. For them.

My Heart Beats for You,

Christine

When Marriage is Hard

How do you stay in the game when everyone's enjoying it more than you? Surely something's wrong when it's this hard, right?

That's what I'm asking this morning, not because my own marriage is in trouble, but because three marriages we know are either crumbling or crippled.

Not that ours is stellar right now. My husband is discouraged about the amount of time children take away from marriage. When can we count on them to stay asleep, he wonders? What will guarantee they'll fall asleep when the clock says they should? When will someone watch them so we can go out...for the first time in two years?

And I wonder how you live happily with someone who counts hardships rather than blessings? How do you live with a glass half-empty person and not grow weary?

Two of the three marriages around us struggle with the same thing...a glass half-empty person sabotaging the positive flow the other spouse desires, and finds second nature. It's not uncommon for God to pair up opposite personalities who have similar values. The differences mold us and the similarities ensure we're both going in the same direction. 

When one person is higher maintenance for whatever reason, how does the other spouse consistently give more--and still regard the marriage as a blessing rather than a constant drain? 

Lord, I want to know how to pray for other marriages, and how to flourish in my own. What are the issues you want to speak into my heart? What wisdom from you will help marriages everywhere?

1. Let God Do the Loving

1 John 4:19 We love because He first loved us. 

Don't try to love in your human strength. You'll fail and Satan will win. Pray that God will love your spouse through you. Pray to become God's instrument of love. Knowing your own brokenness will help you remember to love in His strength, not your own. Satan wants you to love in your own strength because he knows this means failure.

2. Draw Strength from Scripture

Isaiah 40:28-31 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.

If your marriage is in trouble, or if you're struggling for any reason, don't forsake God. You need Him and if you don't go to Him, Satan wins. Better yet, abide in Him all the time and ward off trouble before it starts. Set a timer and pick up your Bible or kneel to pray at regular intervals. 

If you don't know the Bible well, Google your particular spiritual need and read the verses suggested. For example, if you need strength or encouragement, Google "encouraging Bible verses". Or "Bible verses for strength". Or "Bible verses about Christian marriage". Also, develop a Bible reading plan which includes the Old and New Testaments. We can't mature in our faith if we only read the Bible in fits and starts. To really know God's heart and His plan for mankind, read the Word from cover to cover.

3. Be Humble

Romans 12:18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.

How do we live at peace with everyone? How is this possible, when the world is full of difficult people?  Mentally ill people, even, with no conscience or boundaries. The Lord knows it isn't always possible, so he asks one thing of us. Just do your part. Let me worry about the outcome.

Doing our part involves having a humble heart. We can't give 150% without a strong sense of humility. Satan works to puff up our egos. Scripture reminds us of our depravity and our total dependence on God. Prayer does the same. You can't spend time in the presence of God on a regular basis and have an ego problem. And the opposite is true: If you don't spend time with God on a regular basis, you will have an ego problem.

Meditate on the verses below to understand how God feels about humility:

2 Chronicles 12:12 And when he humbled himself the wrath of the LORD turned from him, so as not to make a complete destruction. Moreover, conditions were good in Judah.

Job 22:29 For when they are humbled you say, ‘It is because of pride’; but he saves the lowly.

Psalms 18:27 For you save a humble people, but the haughty eyes you bring down.

Psalms 149:4 For the LORD takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with salvation. 

Proverbs 11:2 When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom.

4. Respond to the Holy Spirit

As you pray, the Holy Spirit will give you tangible direction, even if it's to remain still and wait. Follow His directions. 

For example, my task is to have the children mostly ready for bed when my husband arrives home at 7:00 PM. We've been having family meals despite his long working hours, but now it's time to save dessert for 7:00 PM and eat earlier without Daddy. The children can still sit at the table with Daddy while he eats dinner, and we can still talk about intimate things together, with Daddy still guiding us spiritually.

If one spouse is feeling neglected--whether that seems reasonable or not--it's time to mix things up and find more time. 

Children require a lot of time and energy and I can't make that go away; I love being a mother. When poison ivy itches in the middle of the night, a child needs attention. When dreams become too much, a child needs attention. When the dark is too dark, a child cries out. 

But I have to make sure I'm giving just as much energy to my marriage. Men with quality time as their primary love language will have the most trouble during the child-rearing years, even if they love being fathers. None of us chooses our love language, any more than we choose our personality. It isn't my husband's fault that he needs more of my time.

That's important to remember no matter what the issues in your marriage are. Your spouse didn't choose to be critical, or negative, or nervous, or serious, or overly-driven. If it's his personality you have trouble with, don't hold it against him. He probably dislikes the negatives in his personality as much as you do and if he could change them, he would. And the opposite is also true. We would change what we hate about our own personality, if we could. 

The Holy Spirit will help sort out the issues. He'll put the right information in our laps and the right attitude in our hearts. We must be receptive and obedient and spend quiet time with God, so we can listen. We can pray all we want, but if we don't also get quiet and listen, change won't happen.

5. View Your Spouse as Jesus Does; Live the Gospel

Jesus died for your husband. You may wonder at times if your spouse is worth all the effort, but Jesus doesn't question this. Your spouse is dearly loved and Jesus sees him as a sinner in need of grace.  Look through the eyes of Jesus and be ready to extend that grace. Be ready to express undeserved love. The grace and love you also need.

6. Be Thankful

If you haven't already started your blessing list, start now. It'll give you a whole new perspective and sometimes that's all we need to thrive in our marriages. Perspective.

1 Thessalonians 5:18
Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

7. Be Obedient to God Concerning Divorce

If your spouse is faithful, stay married to him. If he's strayed in the past and has repented and asked for forgiveness, stay married to him. Only in cases of adultery, or abandonment by an unbelieving spouse, is a Christian permitted to divorce.

If you're in an abusive marriage--either serious emotional manipulation or physical abuse--move out but don't divorce. Chances are you're an enabler--a condition which attracted you to an abuser in the first place. Both of you need help and staying under the same roof together will only prolong the abuse and dysfunction. 

Remove yourself and get help and ask that your spouse get help. Even if your spouse never gets help, at least you've taken responsibility for your own emotional health. Your children depend on you for a picture of a healthy marriage. If you maintain an abusive marriage your child may marry an abuser, or become one. So remove yourself and let God redeem the brokenness. Easier said than done, but nothing is too big for God. Remain romantically unattached. Wait on God to heal your spouse.

Philippians 4:13

I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.