The difference between Marys and Marthas

A question that I heard at church the other day was, "where is a place in your heart that you are experiencing tension?" Because the conviction of the Holy Spirit creates some tension in our spirit.

Today, I asked myself this question and this was my answer: I realize that the tension I am feeling is whether or not I am going to be more of a Mary or a Martha (Luke 10:38-42), especially as it pertains to our approach to ministry. The Martha spirit (in ministry) is marked by:

• wanting to feel in control
• tackling the to do list before sitting at Jesus' feet (or sitting at Jesus' feet only to get something from Him, like direction on what to do at bible study in my case)
• wanting to have a neat and tidy plan, to have clear cut goals and programs and curriculums
• "serving" the Lord by doing so many things for Him, but not sitting at his feet first and more, or not asking Him if He even wants you to be doing all of those things.
• trying to get the Mary's to get off their butts and help us already! We have to DO something.
• not genuinely to the core wanting to depend recklessly on the Holy Spirit. That is hard and scary and outside of the comfort zone.

FROM SOLITUDE TO COMMUNITY TO MINISTRY

By Henri Nouwen

The word discipleship and the word discipline are the same word -- that has always fascinated me. Once you have made the choice to say, "Yes, I want to follow Jesus," the question is, "What disciplines will help me remain faithful to that choice?" If we want to be disciples of Jesus, we have to live a disciplined life.

By discipline, I do not mean control. If I know the discipline of psychology or of economics, I have a certain control over a body of knowledge. If I discipline my children, I want to have a little control over them.

But in the spiritual life, the word discipline means "the effort to create some space in which God can act." Discipline means to prevent everything in your life from being filled up. Discipline means that somewhere you're not occupied, and certainly not preoccupied. In the spiritual life, discipline means to create that space in which something can happen that you hadn't planned or counted on.

I think three disciplines are important for us to remain faithful, so we not only become disciples, but also remain disciples. These disciplines are contained in one passage from Scripture with which we're familiar, but one that we may be surprised to find speaks about discipline.

True Power and the Way of the Cross

Below are some awesome quotes by Graham Tomlin taken out of a lecture he gave on the way of the cross and true power in God's Kingdom. Very encouraging and convicting!

Martin Luther suggests to us that the cross is actually the key to understanding the way God works.

God achieves his purposes through suffering, pain, and anxiety. Yet of course, these are not the things in which you expect to find God, and as a result most people do not recognize this is God's work, because they expect God only to be revealed in glory and grandeur and splendor. The way God works confounds human expectations. And so, faith is needed to see past the appearance of things to their true reality.

A person (all of us) has to be brought to a point where he realizes that his actions, goodness, religiosity, actually count for nothing before God, and he, in a sense, has to be made powerless before God. The sinner can only approach God with empty hands, not full hands. Not hands that are full of “virtues” and things that we can offer God and say, “look, you really ought to be pleased with me because of these things I have.” No, they have to be empty. God needs to strip us away from the things that we think are important, virtuous, worthy, etc. Like in the Psalms when God brings them to a point of crying out to God because they have nothing left. The psalmist begins to see that maybe this experience of despair that I'm feeling about myself is actually not a barrier to my acceptance before God, but it's actually the very qualification for it! The very thing I need is this profound sense that I have nothing to offer. As long as I think I have something to offer, there's not a lot that God can do for me.

I hope

I hope

I hope that I truly listen to others and in this way, “consider others as better than myself.” (Philippians 2:3)

I hope that I truly view myself and others as a small but important and absolutely indispensable part of the body. I hope that I don’t expect others or myself to be all things to all people, or that I don’t get frustrated by differences bc this would be like being frustrated that my whole body isn’t an eye.

I hope I am as committed or more committed to helping others become who they were made to be as I am to reaching my full potential in life. I hope that I can truly say that I desire for others to outshine and be more used of God than myself.

I hope that I really want to know the truth about God, myself, and this world rather than things that I just like to believe or that make me feel good

I hope that I don’t just honor God with my lips while my heart is far from Him or do my acts of righteousness before men just to be seen. I hope that my heart really changes because my eternal treasures and rewards are going to be based on the things done from a pure heart of love for God and love for others.

Building with gold, silver, and precious stones

1 Corinthians 3:11-15:

"For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames."

What does Scripture say it means to build upon the foundation of Jesus with gold, silver, and precious stones, rather than wood, hay, and straw? Ie. what does it look like to live an eternally significant life that lines up with God's values so that on the Day of judgement when everything is shown for what it really is in God's eyes, it will stand the test and last? No small question, ha:)

Others May, You Cannot--by G.D. Watson

This article that Zac Poonen read last night at Sandeep's house rocked Trent and my hearts last night:

OTHERS MAY: YOU CANNOT--by G. D. Watson (1845-1924).

If God has called you to be really like Jesus He will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility, and put upon you such demands of obedience, that you will not be able to follow other people, or measure yourself by other Christians, and in many ways He will seem to let other people do
things which He will not let you do.

Other Christians and ministers who seem very religious and useful, may push themselves, pull wires, and work schemes to carry out their plans, but you cannot do it, and if you attempt it, you will meet with such failure and rebuke from the Lord as to make you sorely penitent.

Living in God's love

A cool quote from Blue Like Jazz:

"Rick says that I will love God because He first loved me. I will obey God because I love God. But if I cannot accept God’s love, I cannot love Him in return, and I cannot obey Him. Self-discipline will never make us feel righteous or clean; accepting God’s love will. The ability to accept God’s unconditional grace and ferocious love is all the fuel we need to obey Him in return. Accepting God’s kindness and free love is something the devil does not want us to do. If we hear, in our inner ear, a voice saying we are failures, we are losers, we will never amount to anything, this is the voice of Satan trying to convince the bride that the groom does not love her. This is not the voice of God. God woos us with kindness, He changes our character with the passion of His love."

Strong motivators to flee from sin

It is abundantly clear to me that we need strong motivators to flee from sin because temptation can be so strong, and the things of this world can be so enticing and deceitful. I talk so much to students about these motivators. God has done a mighty work in my heart surrounding this topic, giving me a new perspective and faith of how wonderful it is to flee from sin and idolatry. I thought it would be good for me to process some of these thoughts and write them down.

First and foremost, the far greatest motivator to flee from sin is that God is better. Period. He is infinitely more satisfying and beautiful than anything else, and if sin stands in the way of us seeing God's glory, communing with Him, and attaining the true riches (which I once heard someone define as intimacy with Jesus, anointing for ministry, and being filled with the Holy Spirit) then I am wise to ruthlessly seek to eliminate it. This is a no brainer for me when I am staying right near the Father, and when I am constantly catching a glimpse in my soul of just how beautiful and holy God is. I am filled with a love, fear, and awe for Him that makes sin look detestable.

I could stop right here because that is the number one motivator by far! But there a few other things that help me too.

What is the good life? Who is the truly blessed person?

Something I shared at senior night and that God has ever increasingly been showing me:

One of the most common questions of senior year of college is, "what are you going to do next year and with the rest of your life?" I encouraged the seniors to realize that God is so much more concerned about who we are becoming and the person we truly are in our hearts than about what we do (and authentic, lasting fruit flows from a transformed heart. As Jesus said: "You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.") Because our culture most strongly defines us by what we do, it is easy for us to play (and try to win) the game of life according to the rules of our culture rather than according to the Word of God.

God moves towards our brokenness

I have noticed that we have a strong tendency to move away from brokenness and what the world deems ugly, unfavorable, and "un-glorious" (I don't think un-glorious is actually a word:). It struck me recently how unchecked this tendency goes in myself, even though I claim I want to become more like Jesus. Jesus did the opposite. He was drawn like a magnet to the sick, the unrighteous sinners, the people most detested in the culture like tax collectors and prostitutes, the poor, the lame, the ugly, the down and out. He crossed social boundaries and broke social rules so much so that he was delivered into the hands of the authorities to be crucified. He announced good news to these people: His Kingdom was for people like them. People who were in need of a Savior. People who had been forgiven much so that they would love much. People who were poor in spirit. People who would receive Him and His Kingdom like trusting, joyous little children.

It is sometimes easy for me to move away from brokenness in myself and others, especially in others when it rubs up against me and annoys me or negatively affects me. I want to be like Jesus in this area. I want to move towards brokenness and not be afraid of it or intimidated by it. I want to love people in their brokenness, especially the brokenness in others that I would be prone to judge, write off, or dislike. I have a glimpse in my heart of what that would be like and it is beautiful.

something that is moving from my head to my heart

Something that is moving from my head to my heart: That God is 100% in control of my life, of Elliana's life, of Trent's life, and of the lives of all the people I love the most. He is trustworthy. This earth is not our home. There is so much freedom in trusting Him completely and holding it all with an open hand. That is SO hard sometimes. He has been working on my heart on that this week. I am very far from where I want to be as evidenced by some of the deep fear and worry I have felt this week for relatively small things pertaining to Ellie.

This thought is nothing so profound on a head level, but ridiculously profound on a heart level.

Jesus the famous one looking at me

I think we all struggle with wanting to be special and important. We all have an innate desire to be something or someone special. To stand out. To be significant and important and valuable and lovely. We often hear and know on a head level that we are significant and important because we are God's child and He loves us, but that doesn't seem to really stop us from looking for significance and importance in other places. When you really observe our lives, we are frantically and desperately looking for significance in the ways we perform in sports or school or our job or whatever role we happen to find ourselves in. We love compliments way too much and often find that our mood and sense of well being is determined by how well we are performing, how well we are liked, and how important or significant others think we are.

two of the greatest disparities in the world

1. How insignificant we actually are but how significant and narcissistic we think we are. (We usually think and live like we are the center of the universe, and this could not be further from the truth.)

2. How much we deserved to be crucified for our sin and how much Jesus did NOT deserve to be crucified

I heard a quote months after I wrote this post the first time that captured this disparity:

Sin is man substituting himself to be God. Salvation is God substituting himself to be man.

Cool!

Learning to use our spiritual faculties and senses

"You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."-CS Lewis

Before I heard this quote today, I had titled this entry "learning to use our spiritual faculties and senses" because I wanted to talk about how we are so familiar and trusting of our physical senses, while we are often untrained and unaware of how to use our spiritual faculties to interact with God and the spiritual realm. I love this quote because it shows how backwards we think from reality. We live and act and think as if we are primarily physical bodies with a soul and that this physical reality is the ultimate, pre-eminent reality while the spiritual reality is less real and less important. We understand and use our bodies a lot more than our souls.

But the reality is that the heavenly, spiritual realm is way more REAL than this physical reality. Paul says to the Corinthians: "What I mean, brothers, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they had none; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away," (1 Corinthians 7:29-31).

the narrow road depicted

I wish I could take credit for these incredible paintings:) But they were done by a child prodigy artist named Akiane who came to know God through dreams and visions at a very young age. She has some ridiculously prophetic and beautiful art that you should check out at www.artakiane.com/gallery.html

I had the idea one day that I wanted a picture to capture the things I wrote in my previous post about how we cannot come to God just any way that we want. We must align ourselves to the WAY that He tells us we must come to Him. I LOVE these pictures because they both depict a pathway into the heart of God and to the tree of life (the first painting is called "tree of life" and the second is called "firey heart of God") but there are other smaller or fractured pathways surrounding the main pathway. As Matthew 7:13-14 says, "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." I want to be on the narrow road that is leading to God and eternal life (which is defined as knowing God in John).

upside down thinking

I have been talking to quite a few people recently about how we might truly come to know God more intimately and how we might seek and find Him. Several of these people have also been struggling with doubts and wondering how to get through these doubts. These conversations have revealed to me that we so easily fall into the trap of trying to find God and know God in our own wisdom and strength. It does not work. The key verse for this is 1 Corinthians 1:21: "God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never know him through human wisdom." The larger context of this verse is also telling and important:

to calibrate

Definition of calibrate: to standardize by determining the deviation from a standard so as to ascertain the proper correction factors; to adjust precisely for a particular function; to measure against a standard

Spiritual calibration: to learn how to live well by determining the deviations I have made from God so as to make the proper corrections in my life; to surrender to the Spirit in order to become like Him and not waste my life; to measure my life up against the Word

I'm excited to start writing and processing things that I am learning or that I feel God is teaching me.