Update/Blog Post

It's been SO long since I have had time to write on my blog! The past year and a half has been an absolute whirlwind ... and the best kind! In January 2017 I met the man who I would marry only 5 months later. He's the absolute love of my life! Eight months later we found out we were pregnant :) I'm due on October 1 with a little girl and we couldn't be happier!

In the midst of all that my husband and I have managed to sell 2 houses and buy 1 house; I've learned how to be a dog mom to the sweetest and most handsome 80-pound golden retriever that ever existed; and my husband and I have learned (and continue to learn!) what it's like to be married, which is no small feat! 

Grateful doesn't even begin to describe how I've felt the past year and a half. The Lord has truly done exceedingly abundantly above all that I could have even thought to ask. But with everything going on, I took a break from blogging.

Having said that, I hope to get back into the habit of regularly writing (at least until the baby is born!). So here is my first post in a long time.

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The women’s Bible study I attend at my church is doing a study in the Book of Exodus. And one of the things that has stuck out to me so far is how much I can relate to Moses’ reaction when God tells him to go back to Egypt and demand the release of the Hebrews: “Please, Lord, I have never been eloquent — either in the past or recently or since you have been speaking to your servant — because my mouth and my tongue are sluggish” (Exod. 4:10). 

He makes a pretty good case! Wouldn’t you think the Creator of the universe would send His very best orator to speak to the most powerful ruler in Egypt on His behalf and not a shepherd with what was most likely a stuttering problem? But God responded to Moses, “Who placed a mouth on humans? Who makes a person mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go! I will help you speak and I will teach you what to say” (vv. 11-12), or as the ESV translates verse 12, “Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth.” 

I can’t even imagine the panic Moses must have felt. God was calling him to do the very thing — speak in public — that he felt the least qualified to do. In fact, he had a particular deficiency in that area. Which is why Moses begged, “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else” (v. 13, ESV).

Can anyone else relate to Moses? Has God called you to do the very thing you fear the most, whether it’s singing on your church’s worship team, leading a Bible study, or serving in a particular way you feel less than qualified for?

At one point in my life, I thought I would rather die than speak in public. You’ve probably heard that people fear public speaking more than death, and that was true for me! But God made it clear that there were going to be times when He was calling me to die to self and obey Him. And as I stepped out in obedience, God really did enable me. And, boy, did I die to my own pride and vanity in those instances! But in my weakness, God made Himself known.

Sometimes I think God chooses the weakest people in a certain area and calls them to be leaders in exactly that area just so He can display His power and glory all the more. (Have you ever noticed that in God’s economy it’s not the people clamoring for position that usually get it? It’s the people who don’t want it!) 

A good example of God calling the weak is the 12 disciples Jesus chose to follow Him. Acts 4:13 says, “Now when [the religious council] saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus” (ESV, emphasis added). There was no other explanation for these uneducated fishermen to speak with such wisdom and authority other than they had been with Jesus. He got all the glory.

God isn’t calling us to be perfect before we serve; He’s calling us to be obedient. He’s calling us to lay down our pride and follow Him to those places where we feel the most inadequate. And as we do, He will make Himself known. 

Laying Down Pride

“Lord, my heart is not proud;
my eyes are not haughty.
I do not get involved with things
too great or too difficult for me.

2 Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself
like a little weaned child with its mother;
I am like a little child.

3 Israel, put your hope in the Lord,
both now and forever.”

— Psalm 131

Psalm 131 has only three verses, but they’re so rich in meaning. David sang to the Lord, “My heart is not proud. … Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself like a little weaned child with its mother” (vv. 1-2). The Hebrew word translated as “quieted,” damam, also means “to cause to die” or “to destroy.”

What I love about the word damam is its brutal honesty. When David felt pride rising up in his heart — when he wanted to question God's ways, when he wanted to get angry because he couldn't see what God was doing — he had to put that pride to death. He had to destroy it. And isn’t that what the Christian life is all about? Dying to our need to understand and to control our lives and instead free-falling into a life fully surrendered to God?

The apostle Paul said in Galatians that “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (5:24). Dying to yourself is raw and painful. Sometimes, it takes everything in us to say no to the things our flesh craves. But this is the call of the disciple of Christ. Daily, we have to pick up our cross, deny our flesh, and follow our Lord.

But God doesn’t call us to die just to die. He knows that with each choice we make to put to death our flesh, we become more alive to God in Christ Jesus (see Romans 6:11). And life in Christ is far, far better than the counterfeits this world offers us.

Are you struggling today with pride that demands to understand? Like David, choose the path of trust instead. Quiet yourself before the Lord, putting to death your desire to control circumstances that are weighing you down.

Will you trust God even if He doesn't explain what He's doing, knowing He's good and loving and faithful?

God's Merciful No

Have you ever prayed and prayed and prayed for something but God’s answer was a consistent No? In the midst of the praying and the hoping and the waiting God’s refusal can seem cruel, can’t it? But what if His refusal is actually a mercy?

Elisabeth Elliot wrote, “God never withholds from His child that which His love and wisdom call good. God’s refusals are always merciful — ‘severe mercies’ at times but mercies all the same. God never denies us our hearts desire except to give us something better.” God’s refusals always lead to a better plan, His better plan.

Those of us who have prayed only to hear a No from God are in good company. Jesus Himself didn’t get the answer He wanted when He prayed in the garden of Gethsemane, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me” (Matthew 26:39). The Son of God knew that unimaginable suffering lay ahead of Him. Was it wrong for Him to ask the Father to spare Him? Of course not. But God had a greater purpose in mind for the world, and so He answered Jesus’ prayer with a No.

Christ going to the cross was the greatest mercy of all for you and I. However, at the time, God’s refusal to spare His Son’s life could’ve looked like He didn’t love Jesus, that He didn’t have His (and the whole world’s) best interest at heart. (The disciples were certainly confused. They thought their Messiah would help them overthrow the Roman government, not willingly march to His death.) But God’s ways are so much higher than our own, which Jesus’ resurrection proves. Thus, we only cause ourselves great frustration when we question them.

Jesus knew His Father's ways were higher and better, which is why He went on to pray, “Yet not as I will, but as you will” (v. 39), a prayer of complete trust in His good Father.

If God has said no to something you’ve been praying for, don’t get bitter. Instead, respond like Jesus did — with a heart of trust and surrender. Perhaps one day, in this lifetime, you’ll see how God’s no was a great mercy. 

The Greater the Joy

“Those who sow in tears will reap with shouts of joy.”

— Psalm 126:5

Last spring I went to a book club with some women at my church. It had been a very difficult season and I was looking for some encouragement. At the beginning, the leader asked for prayer requests, and it didn't take long for me to break down in tears and start sharing what was on my heart.

A sweet older woman named Betsy, whom I haven't seen since then, said something that encouraged me so deeply, and now I'm living its truth. After sharing some of the deep heartache she's lived through, she said, "Emily, one thing I've learned is that the greater the suffering, the greater the joy."

It had never occurred to me that there was a correlation between the depth of our suffering and the extent of God's restoration of that suffering, although it may seem fairly obvious to others. With Betsy's words on my mind, I read Psalm 126: "Those who plant in tears will harvest with shouts of joy. They weep as they go to plant their seed, but they sing as they return with the harvest" (vv. 5-6).

As any farmer will tell you, the harvest depends on how much seed was sown. In the same way, as we sow our tears in the midst of pain and suffering (Tim Keller has a great sermon on this), we can expect to reap a harvest of joy that's equal to, or even greater than, what we've sown. One thing is for sure: we can't out-give God. As we give Him our tears, He'll take them and transform them and do immeasurably more with them than we can even think or imagine. And the end result will be our joy.

If you find yourself in a seemingly never-ending season of suffering and waiting, take heart — it will end. In the meantime, do the important work of sowing your tears. Take your pain to the Father, who bottles each and every one of your tears and stores them (Psalm 56:8). Not one of them goes unnoticed.

And then wait with anticipation for your harvest of joy.

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Mustard Seed Faith

I hear myself in the disciples’ cry to Jesus, “Increase our faith” (Luke 17:5, CSB). Jesus had just told the disciples to do what felt impossible to them — forgive a brother or sister as many times as they asked for it. The disciples knew that was a lofty call, and they felt they needed more faith than they already had to do it.

Jesus’ response to His disciples is one that is familiar to us but actually means something different than we think. In the Greek, it’s clear that Jesus responded with a tone of rebuke when He said, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can say to the mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you” (v. 6, CSB). Jesus rebuked His disciples because they thought they needed more faith in order to obey. But they already had what they needed.

Like the disciples, I often think that if Jesus would just give me a little more faith, then I could be faithful to do the big, impossible things (like forgive) that He has called me to do with ease. I don’t want the struggle! But in reality, Jesus has given me the faith I need to forgive today. And as I continue to rely on Him day-to-day, He’ll continue to give me what I need in order to obey Him.

In order to demonstrate the daily faithfulness and obedience required of His disciples, Jesus told a parable. He told His disciples to imagine that they were slave owners: If their slave came in after a long day in the field, would they invite the slave to sit down and dine with them? Of course not. They would instead expect the slave to make dinner for them, which was his duty. And when he did, they wouldn’t thank him for simply doing his job. Then Jesus said, “In the same way, when you have done all that you were commanded, you should say, ‘We are worthless servants; we’ve only done our duty’” (v. 10, CSB).

I glean two things from this passage: first, faith reveals itself in daily obedience. Obedience isn’t a glamorous word, but Jesus didn’t make it look glamorous in the parable He told His disciples. What they wanted was big faith to uproot mulberry trees and plant them in the ocean! But what God had given them was enough faith to walk in obedience one day at a time. Contrary to what we might feel, we don’t need more faith than what God has already given us in order to obey Him. Sometimes, all we need to do is to will ourselves to obey.

Second, my obedience doesn’t earn me any leverage with God. I cringe at how many times I've said something to this affect: But God, I'm toeing the line here! Why did you bless her with that and not me? I deserve it! Whenever I find myself bargaining with God, thinking I've earned political capital because of my obedience, I have to ask myself, Do I obey God so that I can get things from Him? Do I think He owes me something for my obedience and service?

Faith acted out is a day in, day out choice to obey the Father, expecting nothing in return, and grateful that He has already given us more than we can ever repay in Jesus Christ.
Today, ask yourself: Am I delaying obedience in a certain area of my life because I don’t think I have the faith it takes to obey? When I obey in really difficult areas, am I expecting some sort of reward for it?

Wanting God More than His Gifts

“1 Lord, my heart is not proud;
my eyes are not haughty.
I don’t concern myself with matters too great
or too awesome for me to grasp.

2 Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself,
like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk.
Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me.

3 O Israel, put your hope in the Lord—
now and always.”

— Psalm 131, NLT

I've read this psalm dozens of times before, but I never quite understood what it meant until just recently. I was reading Tim Keller's devotional "The Songs of Jesus," and Psalm 131 was the passage for the day. Keller wrote in response to the psalm, "A nursing child, held by its mother, is highly aware of the milk she can offer and will squirm and cry if denied. A child who has been 'weaned' (verse 2), however, and no longer nurses, is content to just be with its mother, enjoying her closeness and love without wanting anything else."

Keller goes on to write, "We so often approach God only for what he can give, rather than simply to rest in his presence."

I'm so guilty of this. In seasons when I'm anxiously waiting for an answer to prayer, I bring my need before the Lord daily, sometimes even multiple times in a day. And that's not wrong — God tells us to bring our requests to Him: "Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need" (Phil. 4:6). But it's easy for me to become so focused on God meeting my need that I view Him as a Genie who's supposed to grant my wishes and not as my Father who wants a relationship with me.

One of the biggest signs that my relationship with God is no longer a priority, and instead getting His gifts is, is when my attitude shifts from trust to resentment. When I'm resting in my Father's loving heart toward me, I can more easily trust Him with the details of my situation. Then, with a trusting heart, I can enjoy His presence in perfect peace, knowing that He's working in ways I can't see. But when I focus on that unanswered prayer, on what I think I'm "owed," I grow fearful, resentful, entitled, and angry that He hasn't given me what I want. I read the Bible less, pray less, and spend less time talking to Him throughout the day. I go from wanting Him to wanting what He can give me.

In Psalm 73, the psalmist moaned and groaned about the prosperity of the wicked, how the wicked had everything and yet he, a believer in God, couldn't catch a break. But his tune completely changed when he entered the presence of the Lord and contemplated God's eternal promises. He said, "I desire you more than anything on earth. ... How good it is to be near God!" (vv. 25, 28).

How good it is to be near God! He is the reward, not what He gives us. And as we spend time with Him just because of who He is, we'll notice our hearts and our attitudes start to change. And when God finally does come through with that long-awaited answer to prayer, we won't feel like it was owed us, but instead we'll know that our good Father loves us enough to give us far more than we deserve.

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Joseph's Bones and God's Faithfulness

All of us have probably questioned God's faithfulness at some point in our lives, thinking, God came through for me that time, but will He come through for me this time?

That's why I love the story of Joseph's bones.

Even though Joseph spent the majority of his life as a ruler in the foreign land of Egypt, he never forgot God's promise to his ancestors, nor did he doubt it. At 110 years old, Joseph told his brothers on his deathbed in Egypt, "I am about to die, but God will certainly come to your aid and bring you up from this land to the land He promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. ... When God comes to your aid, you are to carry my bones up from here” (50:24-25, emphasis added).

Joseph died, and the Book of Genesis ends. Then we open the Book of Exodus to find that, more than 400 years later, God's people were enslaved to the Egyptians. Joseph's bones were still in Egypt, waiting to be buried in the promised land, but the promised land looked nowhere in sight. Even after God sent Moses to the Hebrew people to tell them of their coming deliverance, "they did not listen to him because of their broken spirit and hard labor" (Exod. 6:9).

We've all had broken spirits. We try to faithfully wait on the Lord with hope-filled expectation, but when our promised land is nowhere in sight and the hits just keep on coming, we're tempted to give up believing. We can't imagine hoping for restoration when disappointment looms at ever corner.

But a broken spirit is never the end of our story, just as it wasn't the end of the Israelites' story.

God was faithful to keep His promise and deliver His people out of Egypt. And as they started their journey out of slavery, "Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, because Joseph had made the Israelites swear a solemn oath, saying, 'God will certainly come to your aid; then you must take my bones with you from this place'" (Exod. 13:19). Joseph was certain God would be faithful to keep His promise, and hundreds of years later, Joseph's bones served as a reminder of that promise as the Hebrews left Egypt on their way to the promised land..

Joseph's bones traveled with the Hebrews through the Red Sea and wandered with them for 40 years in the wilderness. Over and over again in their wanderings the people felt dejected: would God really keep His promise to give them their own land? We can all identify with this — the waiting can be difficult at times and feel never ending. But it always ends.

The day finally came when God's people claimed their promised inheritance. The waiting, the doubting, and the frustration were over. God was true to His word.

And here's the best part: "As for the bones of Joseph, which the people of Israel brought up from Egypt, they buried them at Shechem, in the piece of land that Jacob bought from the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for a hundred pieces of money. It became an inheritance of the descendants of Joseph" (Joshua 24:32). Joseph's bones being buried in the land God swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob marks the faithfulness of an eternally-faithful Promise Keeper. God got it right, down to the last detail.

Joseph's bones are symbolic of the promises of God for our lives. We carry them with us when our spirits are broken because of unrelenting difficulties, when we feel like we're trapped in an impossible situation with no way out, and when we're wandering seemingly aimlessly through the dry and barren wilderness. And yet, because of God's promises, we can know that none of these seasons is the end. God will be faithful because it's who He is. He can't be unfaithful. As Paul reminds us, "Even if we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself" (2 Timothy 2:13).

Cling to God's promises over your life today, and know that in His perfect timing each one of them will be fulfilled in the best way possible. Because God is faithful and He always gets it right, down to the last detail.

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Itchy Ears

“They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear.”

— 2 Timothy 4:3, NLT

I read an article the other day by a reputable and experienced doctor about how bad cheese is for a person’s overall health. Apparently, it’s one of the worst things we can eat. Well, I love cheese, so in a matter of seconds, I was online searching for articles that would tell me what I wanted to hear — i.e., cheese actually isn’t that bad. Of course, I found such articles, but they weren’t written by reputable, well-studied doctors or nutritionists. They were likely written by people like me, who wanted an excuse to keep eating cheese. I was itching to hear what I wanted to hear, not what was true.

In Paul’s second letter to Timothy, he admonished the young pastor to boldly proclaim the gospel message “whether convenient or not” (v. 2), because a time was coming when people “will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear” (v. 3, NLT).

As Solomon once said, there's nothing new under the sun! Our society is filled with people who have itchy ears, ears that only want to hear what will feed into and justify their own sinful and selfish desires. And the scary thing is, it’s so easy to find people — even people who say they're Christians — teaching these sorts of messages.

We live in a culture that doesn't promote absolute Truth but instead tells people to "do what makes them happy" or "feels right" to them. The problem is, obedience has very little to do with "feeling" right. Instead, those of us who are children of God obey because we know that, while obedience may not feel good at the time, it will always, always, always result in freedom and blessing and joy. God doesn't give us guidelines to abide by in order to stifle us or ruin our fun; instead, He does so in order that we might experience the abundant life He longs to give us, and as our Creator He knows exactly what that takes!

Our itchy ears can find justification for just about anything, but as Christian women, we need to constantly go back to the Word of God, which never changes. We must be careful not to be swayed by the trendy teachings of today’s world; instead, we must ground ourselves on Scripture no matter what culture throws our way, fulfilling Paul’s admonishment to “be serious about everything, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, [and] fulfill your ministry” (2 Timothy 4:5).

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Clarity Versus Trust

"Lord, give me clarity. What am I supposed to do here? This doesn't make any sense. Help me see!"

That sums up a lot of my prayers lately. And the Lord has been faithful to answer, but not in the way I'd like. Instead of giving me clarity to see what's coming down the pike, He simply responds, "Trust Me."

I love the story of Mother Teresa and John Kavanaugh as told by Brennan Manning in his book Ruthless Trust:

“When the brilliant ethicist John Kavanaugh went to work for three months at ‘the house of the dying’ in Calcutta, he was seeking a clear answer as to how best to spend the rest of his life. On the first morning there he met Mother Teresa. She asked, ‘And what can I do for you?’ Kavanaugh asked her to pray for him.

‘What do you want me to pray for?’ she asked. He voiced the request that he had borne thousands of miles from the United States: ‘Pray that I have clarity.’

She said firmly, ‘No, I will not do that.’ When he asked her why, she said, ‘Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.’ When Kavanaugh commented that she always seemed to have the clarity he longed for, she laughed and said, ‘I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.’”

Trusting God requires that we walk by faith, not by sight. That we learn how to bear with uncertainty, knowing we are secure in everlasting arms. That we surrender our plans, believing that what He has in mind is far above what we can even think to ask or imagine.

Today, instead of asking the Lord for clarity, ask Him to help you trust Him. He'll be faithful to do what He's promised.

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Deferred Hope

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life.”

— Proverbs 13:12, NLT

Anyone over the age of 25 has likely experienced deferred hope. We wait and wait and wait on that “thing” we so desperately desire, and with each passing day that it doesn’t come, our hearts grow sick with disappointment.

The job search, singleness, getting pregnant, praying for an unsaved family member to know the Lord ... these are just a few of the more common experiences we share that require us to wait, to pray, and to continue to hope. But hope can get tough when year after year our family member remains unsaved, or month after month we still can't find a job.

I love what Job — that Old Testament man of sorrows — said: “What strength do I have that I should continue to hope? What is my future, that I should be patient? ... Since I cannot help myself, the hope for success has been banished from me” (6:11,13, emphasis added). Doesn’t Job hit the nail on the head here? We tend to lose hope when we see that we can’t help ourselves in our current situation, when we realize we have absolutely no control.

The realization that we have so very little control in attaining the things we desire most can be frightening, but it can also be freeing. Instead of hoping in what we can do for ourselves, we can put all of our hope in the sovereign God of the universe, who is abounding in goodness and faithfulness. He doesn’t need human means to accomplish His purpose. So while He works and does the impossible, we can be still and know that He is God and we are not.

We’re promised that when we put our hope in God, we won’t be disappointed (Isaiah 49:23). This doesn’t mean we won’t ever experience disappointment — we know we will; hope deferred is a reality we all have to face. But hope deferred is just that — deferred. It’s not permanent. Even if God doesn’t give us the outcome we think we want, He does give us what’s absolutely best. As Elisabeth Elliot said, “The will of God is never exactly what you expect it to be. It may seem to be much worse, but in the end it’s going to be a lot better and a lot bigger.”

I think God often makes us wait for those things we're just certain we can't live without so we learn that they ultimately can’t satisfy us — only He can. In the waiting, He teaches us that He alone is enough. 

If you're in what feels like an unrelenting seasons of waiting, don't lose heart. "[Our] Father is always working" (John 5:17, NLT).

Father, You know that in this season of waiting my heart can grow sick with deferred hope. Help me to shift my focus off of my own helplessness and on to Your faithfulness.

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