He takes what is used!

 

He takes what is used

masked and well hidden

binds every chord

and nail deeply drive.

stanza taken from "It was no mistake" by Paula Warkentin

 

 

What happens when we don't see the fruit of our faithful prayers?  When the loved ones we so desparately pray for, seem so distant and far off?  When our minds go to "whats the use anyway?'

 

Our hearts become cold and indifferent and its now easy to turn our blame toward God and insist that He just hasn't done it to our satisfaction nor our liking.  Why is it so difficult?  Why isn't God answering?  WHY GOD WHY?

 

To be honest, I don't have the answer.  I'd like to think that no one has the answer, or at least not a pat answer to make someone who is in the place feel better.  I ponder this though, because I see prayers not answered all the time, or at least not the way we want them answered. 

 

God in his sovereignty is in control of everything.  He is the most powerful Creator that has ever existed and who will ever exist...for all eternity.  If we believe this, we can also believe that because of his sovereignty that everything passes through his hands.  Be it the good, bad and ugly.  Does it mean he is indifferent or uncaring?  Does it mean that he turns his eyes when bad things happen or when people make choices that are not the best ones to make? 

 

We all are a product of the fall.  We are born into sin.  So right from the beginning that is our inherent struggle.  Not so that we can make light of sin or blame something or someone else, but rather it's important to understand that to some degree, this is our human heritage.  Our flesh wages war with the spirit.  We do the things we don't want to do and we don't do the things we want to do.  Simple yet so complex in many ways.

 

Couple this with the cultural influences and the spirits and authorities that also wage war on our souls, we are fighting a bigger fight than maybe we even realize.  We fight this war in our own lives and for those we pray and fast for.  When our prayers seemingly do not go answered, the enemy can have a party with our mind and heart.  Bringing doubts that nothing is happening, that we are ineffective, that there must be something wrong with us, that God is silent and disinterested in our prayers or our loved one.  Our hearts can grow bitter, cold, angry toward God.

 

In reality...GOD IS NOT SILENT.  Everything passes through God's hands and so everything is purposeful...even the bad, horrible things that happen.  If he knows the number of stars, the amount of hair on our heads.  If he imagined us even before our parents ever did, do you not think he cares?  He is a just God who allows us to walk in the freedom of choice and free will, not wanting us to be robots or puppets in his hand, he gives us that freedom with hopes that when we reach maturity that we are sold out for his purposes in our lives and we serve him whole heartedly for the rest of our lives. 

 

Sound idealistic?  Euphoric even?  Maybe too good to be true?  For many of us, we struggle with emotioanal and relational deficits in our lives that  cause us to grow up with deep needs still unmet.  If we are not given the opportunity for God to come in and heal and fill those areas we will fill them ourselves.  With many things that are good for us, and many things that aren't.  If God isn't the center of that deficit, we miss the mark.    It's not so much that God is silent, rather we have taken our neediness into our own hands, numbing our emotions so that we have a very hard time hearing God and that still small voice speaking to us.

 

I can look at the many ways I silenced that voice in my life, the voice of my heavenly Father calling me, speaking to me, telling me truth about who I was as his son and my value and worth to him.  Rather than listen, I listened to myself, I listened to the enemy of my soul, the one who comes to kill and destroy, the one who prowls around like a hungry lion, waiting for someone to devour.  I got eaten, chewed up, and spit out...but I wasn't dead?  I felt dead, I acted dead, but I wasn't.  God was still speaking...and many people continued to pray...long and hard for me, not giving up, even though they may have felt like it.  I eventually heard his voice and he is now cleaning me up from years of yuck, grim and lies that were fed to me and ones I believed.

 

I continue to pray for friends, family and even those to whom I have never met who are caught up in identities and actions that are far from the best for them.  Who have been lied to, cheated, and robbed, not by God, but rather by an enemy who hates them.  I pray without ceasing and long for the day when one, two, three...and many more come to know who they truly are, loved sons and daughters of the most high King, the creator of everything.  That they know that nothing has been wasted and that God will and does use everything the enemy meant for harm...for HIS GOOD and for HIS GLORY.

 

Let's remember to keep praying, to keep fasting and keep believing God's promises are true, that He does answer prayer and that through Jesus, He does redeem lives.

 

James 5:16 (NLT)

Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.  The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.

 

 



Deficits?

Deficits?

If we stopped and took inventory what would we find?  In the physical, the material world, I can look and see that we own a home (well the bank owns most of it), a bit of money in the bank, clothes, furniture, art, toys, books, electronics, gardening supplies, decorating supplies, food, photos and odds and ends that encapsulate our life as individuals and as a couple and family.

We can look closer and see the deficits.  The lack of retirement savings due in part to poor investment planning and lifestyle choices prior to our marriage and choosing to be in full time ministry (raising our own support) and my wife staying home to look after our daughter doesn't help in the worldly standard of savings.  We can view this as a deficit.  We can look at our financial debts and our desire to get rid of them as huge obstacles.  We can also compare ourselves to the infamous Jones, and if focused on keeping up with them, we would fail miserably.

Thankfully, we've come to a place of reconciling ourselves to know that our Father will supply us our every need.  Do not be anxious of anything, but in all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your steps.

This has been important for me this summer as everything started to break down in our home.  It seemed every time we got ahead financially, we'd be hit with an emergency repair or a bill or something that would set us back.  My secret thought that usually doesn't come out of my head was this "what have I done or not done that displeases God...because this must be his punishment to me?"  Interesting that this was my first and linger thought. 

Then I felt as if God prompted me to go to Philippians 4:6 and I was reminded again "Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done."

I began to see what was even more important.  All that he has done for me, for my wife and for so many other people that we know.

The most important thing that God did was that he made a way for me.  He made a way so that my debt would be erased.  Wiped clean.  He took all my gender insecurities, sexual sin, deviancy, lies, unfaithfulness, lack of trust and countless other things and he sent his son Jesus to bear everything, to carry the weight of it all and it cost Jesus EVERYTHING.  All my debt gone?  Maybe not in the physical, but in the spiritual realm, it is totally gone.  I am free of shame and guilt and able to walk in the grace, love and mercy of a loving and just Father.  Who could compare to him?  Nobody.  I am thankful even when we are in lack. 

At the moment we are car-less.  In this place I am called to be thankful.  That doesn't mean I have an easy time with not having a car, especially with all that God asks of us, but He makes a way and he knows our need.  He knew it even before we had the need.  I know the plans he has for us, to give us a hope and a future.  I know that He will supply our every need...even a vehicle to drive.  I keep seeing that God wants me to take my hands off trying to find one, trying to get one...and wait and see what only He can do.  For it isn't about me or us, it is rather about him and His glory being made manifest in and through our lives.  Every part of our lives. 

To the world, this attitude is foolish, but to the Lord it is wise and rich.  We truly are God's blessed children!

New Shoes

New Shoes - previously published in Christian Courier

The Lord spoke a profound word to me this past month, through a very innocent act done by my 2 ½ year old.  As I was getting ready to go out for a meeting my daughter brought me a pair of shoes.  She proudly carried them to my feet and promptly put them down right in front of me and said, “Daddy’s shoes?”

I looked down and didn’t see my shoes but the shoes of my wife.  Red wedges, definitely not mine.  Phoebe waited there patiently for me to put them on.  I told her that these shoes would not fit Daddy and that they weren’t mine but that they were Mommy’s.  She didn’t move.  I showed her as I slipped my bare feet into them that my feet were too big.  My toes fit, but my heels hung a good 3 inches off the back.  She stood smiling as I showed her that these were not a good fit.  Sure, I could walk in them and get around in them but they were not mine. 

I took them off, put them in the closet and grabbed my shoes and put them on, showing her that they fit my feet perfectly and that these were in fact Daddy’s shoes.  Little did Phoebe or I know the significance of her innocent action or what God would again remind me of later that week?  I left it at that and went to my meeting not thinking twice about those shoes or Phoebe’s insistence that those red wedges were Daddy’s. 

That week in Church I was playing the piano for the worship team and as we were singing I got a picture of those red wedges and my feet in them.  I was taken back a bit and kept playing but then felt the Lord say to me that He has given me new shoes, ones that fit my feet perfectly and that in these shoes I could stand upright, strong, a man capable of being a husband, father, brother and son.  I was reminded of the time when I used to wear shoes like that.  When my masculinity was so broken and my identity marred due to circumstances in my childhood.  I had always secretly hoped that I could eventually become a woman.  I was reminded of the times I used to wear my mom’s shoes, pretending to be just like her.  I wished that I could wear shoes like that without shame or fear of being ridiculed and called names.  I had always felt odd in my skin, in my gender and even though at the time I was comfortable being gay, my secret longing was that I could eventually have gender reassignment surgery and that would be the final answer for this empty feeling inside. 

God met me in a profound way which stopped that process from ever happening.  My masculinity and sense of gender healed through submitting my life over to God and for him to set things in order so that I could stand secure in whom I was clearly designed to be.  I am grateful to God as I look at my life and all that He has done and blessed me with.  To know that without him my life could have looked very different than what it is today.

Those shoes reminded me of my past, but the greater reminder was God saying that he has given me new shoes, a new identity, one that he had intended from the beginning when he knit me together in my mother’s womb.  These new shoes fit and the other ones never did.  No matter what I could do those red wedges would always be shoes that would never quite match the DNA of my feet.  I felt like God was speaking this as a reminder to me but also to all of us.  I walked many years in the wrong shoes, even though God had something better for me, but he has the same gift for all of us.  He calls each one of us to take off the shoes that don’t fit and allow Him to fit us with those perfect fitting shoes.  New shoes, ready for us to walk in the fullness of who we were created to be all along.  Are you ready to take off your shoes?  Because God, your Father who knew you before anyone else did is ready to fit you with ones that fit you perfectly.