True Confessions

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. ...For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it (Romans 7:15-20)

My NaBloPoMo commitment was challenged today, just ten days in. Why? I'm selfish and lazy--at least, that's the short answer.

If you've talked to me at all in the last year, you've heard me say that my greatest challenge during this season of being a homemaker is time management--or lack thereof. Day after day, week after week, month after month...I come to the end of the day and feel discouraged, wondering where the hours went and knowing I didn't accomplish what needed to be done. Morning after morning (or unfortunately, afternoon after afternoon) I come to God again, asking for forgiveness for the same failures, asking Him to make this day different.

Often the end of the week brings unnecessary stress because it's crunch time--there are things that absolutely have to be accomplished by the weekend, and because I squandered so much time early in the week, I have much to do in a short amount of time. Such was the case this week. Today I found myself with an overly ambitious list of to-dos because of all the hours I have wasted so far. I almost didn't have time to post, and probably shouldn't even be taking the time now.

The fact is, I am selfish and lazy. There are plenty of hours in the day for me to accomplish what God sets before me, to minister to others and serve my husband. But I don't make choices that honor Him or Steve. Instead I make shortsighted, instant-gratification decisions. I worship idols of comfort and ease instead of magnifying my Savior. I hate this.

I have asked for grace to change, realizing that I continue to fail when left to my own strength. But for whatever reason, God has so far chosen not to enable me to have a good day. Or if He has given the grace, I have not been able to use it. Why? Jerry Bridges has some insight in his book The Discipline of Grace:

"Sometimes we don't sense that we are experiencing His strength. Instead we experience deep, agonizing failure. ...Why doesn't the Holy Spirit always strengthen us? The answer may be one or more of several reasons. He may be letting us see the sinfulness of our own hearts. or He may be causing us to realize how weak we are in ourselves and how dependent on Him we really are. Perhaps He is curbing a tendency toward spiritual pride and causing us to grow in humility. Whatever the reason, which we may never know, our responsibility is to utterly depend on Him. He sovereignly and with infinite wisdom determines how best to respond to our dependence."

So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? (Romans 7:21-24)

My only hope is the gospel. I dare not trust my own righteousness, my ability to obey. I do not want to claim cheap grace, but when I have failed yet again, all I can do is cling to His promises in Christ: there is no condemnation for me because I am united to Christ. My standing before Him does not depend on my own performance, but on Christ's perfect obedience and sinless, sacrificial death in my place. His mercies are new every morning. And one day I will be forever set free from this body of sin and will serve Him perfectly.

Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:25)

Thankful Thursday, Take 9

Thanking God for...

• my new Christmas CD that arrived this week--LOVING it! go buy one!
• calzones
• sour cream cookies (my grandma's recipe--always think of her when I bake them)
• the incredible gift of marriage (to an incredible man)
• 70 degrees in November! whoo hoo!
• elections are over
• narrowly avoiding a car accident Wednesday night
• toffee nut latte with Rebekah
• fellowship with women from church
• forgiveness from my sin
• His perfect sovereignty
• His infinite wisdom

Your turn...

Fear from Forgiveness

"If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared" (Psalm 130:3-4).

Why fear God? He is holy--if He kept a record of sins, no one would be able to stand. We would all be condemned. Surely that is reason to fear, right? But according to this passage, that's not why we fear Him. We fear Him because He forgives.

How is this so? What does it mean to fear God because we find forgiveness with Him, and not because of His judgment? Perhaps part of it is that we stand in awe of such love and mercy. Fear based on His wrath and judgment would be a terrifying fear, not a comforting fear. But fear based on His forgiveness is a worshipful fear--amazed, speechless, humbled, grateful, adoring. It's a fear that hates the thought of dishonoring or displeasing One who loves me so recklessly, forgives me so completely. It's a fear that falls on its face at the foot of the cross, seeing that Christ knew wrath so that I could fear God because of forgiveness and not wrath. How could I reject Him? Perish the thought! That's the fear God desires from us.

NaBloPoMo

I've accepted a challenge.

Some of you have maybe heard of NaNoWriMo--National Novel Writing Month. The idea is for people who have always wanted to write a novel to spend the month of November doing so--focusing on quantity, not quality, and just making themselves write what's in their heads. I'm terrible at fiction--just ask Dr. Mary Brown--so NaNoWriMo is definitely NOT for me. That's when I heard that someone came up with the alternative NaBloPoMo--National Blog Posting Month (language warning for that link, fyi). It's simple--just write on your blog every day.

I tend to write in spurts. I find myself with lots to say one week, having to save posts for several days so as not to overwhelm you. Then the next week I have nothing interesting to write about and the blog is largely silent except for links to other people. For the month of November I'm trying to even things out--a post a day, all month long. Sorry I didn't get around to posting about it sooner--maybe some of y'all would have joined me!

Anyway, we'll see how this little experiment goes. Eight days in, so far, so good. If you have any topic ideas, feel free to send those my way :)

Note to Self::Time Travel Version

Tony Myles asked an interesting question a couple of weeks ago:

imagine that you could send a note via time travel to yourself five years ago. If there was enough space to write five short sentences, what would it say?

One commenter had some good practical advice to his past self: "invest in Google." :) Reading through all the comments struck me as a kind of poetry. Five (or less) simple lines--vague and fascinating glimpses into others' lives. What would yours say? What would mine say? What wisdom would I love to impart to my college-sophomore self?

I've been pondering it for the last several days, and I think my answer is: I wouldn't.

Five years ago I was on-again, off-again in love with Steve (completely unbeknownst to him). Would I tell myself "be patient, he'll come around" or something to that effect? Certainly I begged God more than once to tell me--so that I could either "get over him and move on" or "relax in knowing it would happen eventually" (yeah right). But if I had known we would eventually be together, I am certain I would have screwed it up somehow, taking matters into my own hands in a Sarah-esque kind of way. Plus, as much as those months and years before Steve came around, and those early months when we first started dating, were awkward and confusing and scary (did I mention awkward?), they were wonderfully so. I wouldn't trade the exciting journey-into-the-unknown with Steve for anything. So no, I don't think I'd tell myself anything along those lines.

Then I thought, maybe I'd give myself a five-year head start on this cross centered life journey--direct myself to read a certain book or article that has helped me so much this last year, or listen to a sermon series, or tell myself to "run to the cross." But you know what? I think Tony is spot-on when he muses, "What's interesting is whether or not we would understand our notes to ourselves five years ago in the context of experience we write from today."

God knew exactly what experiences I needed to go through, both wonderful and painful, and in which order, for me to learn what He's teaching me now. I can look back and see how He has orchestrated these lessons so beautifully--how He has arranged events and relationships and resources in the ways He knew would best drive His truth deep into my heart. And so the growth He has produced in me in the last five years could not have been jump-started. I wouldn't have been able to learn these lessons in 2001 because He hadn't perfectly prepared me for them at that point.

In the end, all this pondering leads me to praise God for His sovereignty and His infinite wisdom. It leads me, strangely enough, to thank Him for not revealing the future to me. And it prompts me to trust Him to direct my growth for the next five years (and beyond) because I can see how perfectly He has done so over the last five.

Giving What You Have Received

The main sessions of our retreat were on Philippians 2. I was struck by Kay Arthur's unpacking of verses 1 and 2--she explained that we are to take possession of and give to others what we have received from the Lord. She drew parallels I'd never thought of before. The first verse describes four blessings He has given us; the second verse identifies how we can live out those blessings and pass them on to others. The idea here is that God does not ask us to do anything which He has not already done Himself.

1 - If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ... (v. 1)
The Greek word for "encouragement" here is "paraklesis"--related to the Greek word for the Holy Spirit ("paraclete"). It is a comfort beyond mere soothing; it is an encouragement which makes you strong. It is the reassurance of Matthew 12:20--Christ will not break you when you are bruised or snuff out your smoldering flame.
...being of the same mind (v. 2)
He is gentle with us--so we should be gentle with others. We extend to others the patience and encouragement we have received from Christ.

2 - if there is any consolation of love... (v. 1)
The Greek for "consolation" is "paramuthion"--it has the sense here of coming alongside and speaking tender things to you. God speaks His love to us in His Word.
...maintaining the same love (v. 2)
In the same way, we are called to speak the truth in love to others--to come alongside them and exhort them with God's Word.

3 - if there is any fellowship of the Spirit... (v. 1)
The Greek here is "koinonia"--"to share in common." God has given us His Holy Spirit to make us one with Him. Through Christ's sacrifice, and through the gift of the Holy Spirit to dwell within us, we have fellowship with God. And He has given that same Spirit to every one of His children.
...united in spirit (v. 2)
If all of us who are in Christ have the same Spirit, that unites us. We must not grieve or quench the Spirit--that has fellowship/unity implications. What does the Holy Spirit want to do? Among other things, He wants to love and minister to people--through me. If I resist that--if I do not rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn; if I do not come alongside my brothers and sisters and exhort and encourage them--I am grieving and quenching the Spirit in me.

4 - if any affection and compassion... (v. 1)
The Greek here is "bowels of mercy"--a sympathy and compassion felt deep in your gut. This is the kind of mercy God has shown us--the same Greek word is used of Jesus in Mark 1:41. He has deep compassion for our helplessness and brokenness--a compassion that took Him to the cross to rescue us. His mercy is new every morning--He never says, "that's it, you're done" to us.
...and of one mind (v. 2)
The Greek here has the sense of having the same sentiment, being similarly disposed, interesting yourself in, setting the affection on. We must extend to others the mercy we receive from God. How often we are like the unmerciful servant who was forgiven a great debt, but demanded payment from someone who owed him a paltry sum. Instead we are to show others the compassion and mercy that God shows us.

Through this study, I loved seeing yet again how God doesn't expect anything of us that He hasn't already modeled. He shows us, perfectly, how to do these things. He fills us with His encouragement, His mercy, His Spirit so that we can pour into others. And He died so that we would receive and understand and be able to live out this grace! How great is our God!

"I Want the Things You Just Can't Give Me"

Remember the free Derek Webb CD I blogged about a few weeks ago? Tony Myles created a video for one of the songs, "Rich Young Ruler." It speaks of Jesus wanting the things it would be hardest for us to give Him--as with the title character. The lyrics are challenging--and this video is compelling. Check it out.

Praise Him in Glad Adoration

[Thought I would write, for those of you who are interested, about what music I used for the women's retreat and why...]

Friday night, I started with "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty"--the version on Passion: Hymns Ancient and Modern (LOVE that CD). First because all we ever sing at church is hymns straight out of the hymnal. Which are great, but I wanted to change it up a little for the retreat. This worked well because it was still a familiar hymn, so the ladies weren't given all new songs, yet it's a little more modern/updated and fun to sing. Plus, it gave me an easy way to start since it was just singing along with a CD :) I also chose this because of what several of you said about stress/problems fading when you focus on the mightiness of Christ. I agree!

To bring out the idea of combatting stress by trusting Christ instead of ourselves, we then sang "Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus"* a cappella, from the hymnal. As a side note, I have really lost my upper range since I don't sing daily anymore/don't sing soprano anymore. I hate singing anything above a B (as in, B below third-space C!)--and really, what average worshipper likes to sing high anyway, especially when it's a cappella and you feel really exposed? The nice thing about singing a cappella is that you can choose your key. I took each hymn down at least a step and a half from the hymnal--would have gone even lower except the altos would have been singing in the basement :)

I finished Friday night by teaching a simple song that was new to them. It's an old Brooklyn Tab song, I believe, which I learned in chorale when Todd Syswerda was our conductor. Those of you who were in chorale that year...remember how we would sometimes open rehearsal with Todd at the piano and us just singing our guts out? We sang three very simple choruses that year that I have rarely/never heard anywhere else: "More than Enough," "I Want to be Like Jesus" and "Jesus, We Crown You with Praise." How I LOVED those times of worship!

I used "More than Enough" for the retreat for several reasons. First, it's short and simple to learn (and I happened to have the sheet music--it pays to be a packrat). Second, many of the ladies (including me) are involved in a Bible study at church which is going through studying the names of God--and that's the focus of this song. And third, it went along with the theme of Christ's sufficiency. Whatever we are facing, whatever our circumstances, He is More Than Enough to meet our needs. Here are the lyrics:

Jehovah Jireh, my Provider
You are more than enough for me
Jehovah Rapha, You're my Healer
By Your stripes I am set free
Jehovah Shammah, You are with me
You supply all my needs
You're more than enough
More than enough
More than enough for me

In keeping with that theme about who God is, I finished with a solo--Nichole Nordeman's "I Am." It's a beautiful song that emphasizes God's sufficiency for every season of our lives. I didn't expect to make people cry, but several of the ladies had never heard the song before. It has long been one of my favorites!

On Saturday we sang "More Than Enough" again since it was new. Then we sang "Count Your Blessings" from the hymnal, because one way to battle stress is to focus on our blessings instead of our problems. Looking back at God's past faithfulness always helps give you perspective and faith for His future grace. And of course, the greatest blessing He has given us is the cross--paying the price for our sins so we could be reconciled to Him. That's the blessing we can place our trust in and rest in. So we sang "On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand" from the hymnal.

If I didn't choose one of your suggestions, it isn't because I didn't think it was a great one! I was limited by time, what I had access to, and what I thought the ladies would know. There are so many great songs I wanted to share with them--but I thought it was best not to teach more than one new song, and not to spend a lot of time teaching a harder song. I don't mind learning new songs if they're great, cross-centered songs--but I know a lot of people have a hard time worshipping if they don't know the songs, so I wanted to try and respect that.

Anyway, I enjoyed preparing and leading all this, and I loved hearing the voices of women lifting their praises to God, and I pray that He was glorified. Thanks again for your helpful suggestions!



*Can I just say how annoying I find it that every one of the major hymn archive websites starts playing obnoxious MIDI files of the song as soon as the page loads, and you can't stop the music? (*cough*CyberHymnal.org*cough*) I purposely chose websites that won't do that to you--some may play obnoxious music but all of the ones linked above at least have a stop button. Also, can I just say how annoying it is that most websites with song lyrics have four hundred popups that somehow make it through my popup blocker?

Did You Know...

...a 24-year-old body doesn't bounce back from three hours of sleep nearly so well as a junior high body does? I'm getting old...

Had a great time on the retreat. Thanks if you prayed for me! I think the music went pretty well--the ladies seemed to appreciate the songs I had chosen (thanks to those of you who gave me input on that). It was fun spending extended time with women from our church and studying the Word together; Kay Arthur's messages on Philippians 2 were beneficial. I'll try to share a little more about what she taught soon. And then after the session Friday night, a bunch of us who were spending the night at the retreat center laughed really hard through rousing games of Catchphrase and Cranium. Six of us were up until 3 am or so, talking and laughing...needless to say, I came home and crashed and am minimally functional right now :)

Before choosing music for the retreat, I tried to think about stress from a gospel perspective. I think that at its root, stress comes from trusting ourselves. We have been trusting in our own ability--and we become stressed and anxious when suddenly we realize that our strength is insufficient. We can't accomplish or handle what needs to be done. So I think part of the answer to stress is to humble ourselves, to acknowledge that we ARE helpless. We ARE inadequate for the tasks/trials/etc before us. When we look at the cross, we can see what our best efforts amount to. But we serve a sufficient Savior. He completed the work God gave Him to do--He alone accomplished the awesome feat of reconciling us to our Heavenly Father. We trust Him, not ourselves. And, if we live dependent on Him, instead of in our own strength, He is the one who gets the glory!

I'll save my specific song choices for another post. (I often wonder how long my readers' attention spans are...do you read all the way through my long posts?)

TGIF

I'm off to the women's retreat...if you think of it, pray for me as I lead music tonight and tomorrow morning!

Have a blessed weekend, everyone!

Found

When we tore out the vanity, we found small, strange letters stamped on the wall behind it. It almost looked like Russian to me. Fascinated, I snapped a picture. After uploading to the computer, I rotated the picture and discovered that it actually says "ON THIS RESEALABLE BAG"--upside-down and backwards.

On what resealable bag? What goes on the bag? Mystifying.

I submitted it to Found Magazine.

Thankful Thursday, Take 8

I'm thanking God this week for...

• blessing us with financial stability so that having to buy a new vanity and plumbing parts is inconvenient, but not a crisis
• my husband who knows how to do all these home repair things
• my super-soft turtleneck sweater, made even more enjoyable by the knowledge that though it's 100% cashmere, it only cost $19 because I bought it at an outlet in June a couple of years ago
• caramel apple suckers
• opportunities to meet neighbors
• my GEMS girls and the joy and privilege of working with them each week
• His LIFE-giving Spirit, IN ME
• Christ's death on the cross in my place
• technology and creativity that enable people to make brilliant things like this
• the gift of music, and the ability to sing...how sad I think it would be to be one of those people who's absolutely tone-deaf
• our church's upcoming women's retreat
• date night with my hubby tonight
• the security that comes with knowing that although troubles and pain are unavoidable in this world, I have hope and can take heart because Christ has already defeated satan and sin

What are you thankful for?

This Old House: Always Something

In the process of working on one of the windows in our bedroom over the weekend (all the windows in our house are painted shut...so we spent Saturday finally tackling the first one, which involved removing the storm window and the bottom window, stripping paint and sanding, removing broken panes of glass, weatherstripping, etc...have I mentioned how glad I am that my husband knows how to do all this stuff?), we discovered a leak in our basement. Unlike all the other water in our basement coming from outside, this was coming from underneath our bathroom. Steve investigated upstairs and couldn't figure out exactly where the leak was coming from.

Monday night, the leak was getting worse, so he decided to move the vanity and dig a little deeper to see if the sink was the culprit. In the process, he discovered that a) the drain pipe was so corroded that when he tried to detach it, the pipe tore; b) the bottom of the vanity was rotted out; and c) the leak wasn't coming from the sink anyway.

Lovely. So he unexpectedly spent the rest of the evening tearing things apart and hauling the vanity in pieces out to the trash. We plan to completely redo this bathroom as one of the higher-priority projects on our list, but are definitely not ready to tackle that right now--among other reasons, it is our only bathroom in the house, so we would like to put in at least a working toilet and shower upstairs before we remove the only working toilet and shower in the house.

At any rate, we figured that if we bought a small vanity now, we can still use it for the as-yet-nonexistent upstairs bathroom after the downstairs bathroom gets redone. So we headed to our favorite place (riiiight...never mind the terrible customer service that we're dealing there with related to our originally-ordered-August-5-but-still-not-here basement door) and bought a new vanity and faucet. A box fan is going 24/7 to dry out the bathroom (even the wood lath is soaked at the bottom of the wall) and we are using the kitchen sink for all sink needs until further notice. The leak seems to becoming from the shower, as water was running along a nice channel where the shower wall wasn't well-attached to the tub and trickling down the side. Steve caulked it but that didn't seem to fix the problem...more troubleshooting and home repair to come.

Ah the life of a homeowner in a 70-year-old house...once again I'm soooo thankful for my handyman husband :)

John Piper is Bad

Details here.

(HT: An Infant in a Cradle)

Home Repair and Halloween

I didn't think to liveblog Halloween. But if I had, it would have looked something like this:

5:15ish: Five boys are the first trick-or-treaters. They knock on the storm door, then open it and knock on the big wooden door, then discover the knocker and try that. All in the 20 seconds it takes me to jump off the couch and walk to the door. Four of them are not even wearing costumes, which I think is completely lame and hardly deserves candy, but their parents are waiting on the sidewalk and I'm not mean enough to give them more of a hard time than saying, "C'mon, where are your costumes?" as I dump Kit-Kat bars into their pillowcases.

5:20ish: Steve begins unexpected demolition in our bathroom.

6:15ish: We sit down to taco salads. Yum.

6:30ish: One little girl trick-or-treating. Also delightedly discovers the big, loud knocker on our door.

6:40ish: Steve gets into the candy BEFORE I DO. Shocking, I know.

8:00: We give up on the trick-or-treaters and each grab a caramel apple sucker, then head to Lowe's to buy a new vanity, a new faucet, and some plumbing gadgets to repair the drain under the bathroom sink.

10:00ish: I discover how the length of my bathroom routine gets multiplied when I am making seventeen trips back and forth from the bathroom (where all my stuff is) to the kitchen (where the only sink in the house is).

This is the second year in a row that we have had a pathetic number of trick-or-treaters, leaving bags of candy lying around our house. Not good. We live in a densely populated area...I really don't understand what the deal is. Last year at the apartment we had the same issue, but I thought being in a house in the middle of town would make a difference. I guess the neighbor kids behind us, as well as my GEMS girls tonight, are going to hit the jackpot with a bunch of candy so I don't eat it all myself.

More on the bathroom repair, with pictures, later. You know you just can't wait.