Battle Cry

Until yesterday, I had not had a real, meaty quiet time since my last post on March 21. (see below) Honestly, I’ve been afraid to hear what God has to say to me. So I’ve floated on the surface, reading the devotionals in Open Windows, but never really diving in.

A few days ago, I woke up with an old Boy George song playing in my head. “I know you miss me, I know you miss me…” What on earth? Then I had to smile. It was God, inviting me back. He has to use extreme measures with me sometimes. (!) I mean, come on… if you have to use Boy George to get my attention, I am really tuned out! (Sorry, George! I really did like your stuff in the 80s!)

So, after Boy George and an awesome experience in Sunday School (more on that later), and a fresh surge of Spirit, I was ready to open my Bible again.

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” James 1:2-4

Oh, great. “Here we go again,” I thought. But God stopped me and asked, “What is a trial?”

I thought of a courtroom. There is an issue to be proven. Witnesses are called. Testimony is received. It does not seem like a fun time to me. Yet a trial is essential to prove that something is true.

In this trial, this hard time of my life, God is so abundantly gentle and unconventional. He does not begin by asking me to prove myself: instead, I see God proving Himself to me! He calls witnesses to my mind and their testimony reminds me of His truth and proves His faithfulness and His provision. How amazing is that? And somehow along the way, in God’s gloriously un-mathematical, logic-defying process, my own faith is proven. I persevere (sometimes after a rest!) and I mature a little more.

I must come to the conclusion that I will never be able to figure God out. I think I see Him taking me one place, but instead He shows me a road I’ve never known or expected to be there. Indeed, His ways are above mine. He is my Captain. I will follow.

Today, in my heart and soul, a fresh battle cry rings out: onward!

Things Unseen

I don’t like what I am reading today. Everything I have turned to in my quiet time has struck me too hard. I say I want to hear from God, and then I don’t want to hear what He has to say.

It’s about my eyesight. This whole neurological episode/journey of the last month has pretty much cleared up except for the visual disturbance. I am glad for that, really and truly, but at the same time I am distraught about the loss of peripheral vision and the inability of my brain to process light when it comes in at certain angles. It’s like seeing a glare on a computer or TV screen except that it is inside my eye. I am (not so patiently) waiting for word from my eye doctor about the optic nerve tests I took on Wednesday.

So here I am this morning, opening God’s word, seeking Him. It’s what I am supposed to do, what I want to do, what I am driven to my knees to do. I open the book I’ve been studying in my quiet time (He Speaks to Me, by Priscilla Shirer). The chapter has been talking about being submissive to the Lord’s assignment for our lives. Priscilla references II Corinthians 5:1-9. Curious about what caught her attention in that passage, I look it up.

What I find is certainly timely: it is Paul’s exhortation to remember that our bodies are just a temporary tent. We’re supposed to long for our permanent, heavenly home. We’re not supposed to feel at home, satisfied, in this body. As long as we are at home in this body, we are away from the Lord. Then verse 7, the kicker: “We live by faith, not by sight.”

That’s a hard verse for someone struggling with the prospect of blindness. My eyes flood with tears and I sob. I am exposed, brought into touch with another Achilles heel, another weakness. I want my sight. How else will I be able to function? How will I be able to see the beauty around me?

And God says, “Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”

Not what I want to hear. So I run. I head for the little Open Windows devotional I keep over by the computer. I turn to today’s entry. The story is about blindness and darkness. This is more than I can handle. God, what are you saying to me?

So then, I hear God. He says, “Lisa, can you see me?”

Of course I can’t see You.

“Am I important to you?”

You’re the most important thing in my life! I live for you!

“OK, then, what are you worried about? If you can’t physically see me and yet you live for me, how important can it really be to see anything else?”

I am silent. He’s got me there. I am quiet, but my eyes fill again. It’s Good Friday. We all know Jesus’ example. But it’s really, really hard to say, “Not my will, but thine.”

Camellias... and other burning bushes

I was just now reading Priscilla Shirer’s book, “He Speaks to Me”. It was a line on page 84 that stopped me: “He’s looking for a people who are serious about hearing His word and obeying it. Is the Holy Spirit bringing to your mind an area of life in which you have refused to obey God? If so, don’t ignore it. Acknowledge it and confess it so you can get on with the business of creating an intimate relationship with the Father.”

I stopped reading and thought about how He has called me to be “One Who Shines” (a name He showed me on a beautifully embroidered tapestry in a dream about 12 years ago), and how He has called me (about two years ago) to become a speaker to encourage and spur on women in the faith. And here I am, no further along in developing my speeches/topics than I was six months ago. And I ask myself, “Why is that?” And my heart immediately answers, “Because I am afraid!” And before I even realize it, I have spoken aloud, blurting out, “I am!!!”

And here is where God taps on the window of my heart and whispers gently to my spirit, “The confession and the answer are one”.

I have confessed that I am afraid: “I am!!!”
And God reminds me: “I AM!”

God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” Genesis 3:14 NIV

Do not misinterpret: I do not claim to be Moses! But I know God has sent me just the same. He uses scripture to reinforce, to remind me of His calling on my life. I have no burning bush! But when God tapped on the window of my heart a moment ago, He also drew my attention out the window of my kitchen, where I do my quiet times. I see a camellia bush. It has captured my attention because it is different than anything else in my yard. It is not in flame, but it is in bloom. In a drought. In February.

The remarkable thing about a camellia is that it blooms in the dead of winter. Mine is a deep pink. And now my attention is drawn to the shirt I am wearing. Deep pink also. Hmmm. Interesting. I also find it interesting that the camellia was named after a missionary who found it on the island of Luzon. Luz means “light” in several Latin-based languages. (The Latin root word for “light” is “lux”.) Hmm. “One who shines”.

Perhaps my lesson today is to be like the camellia. In a world of dormant lives and among the spiritually dead, I am to bloom. Despite the drought, I am to bloom. I am to be different, to stand out, to attract attention for my Gardener, the I AM.

And I am not to be afraid!

Hope and the Rock

This morning, I was reminded of something a little 6-year-old girl recently said to me: "Hope is the most beautiful word!"

What makes that such a touching statement is that she was a participant in a program at our church for children of divorce. (It's an amazing ministry of healing and hope called DC4K, and it's nationwide- http://www.dc4k.com/.)

She wasn't talking about hope as if it were a present that she'd asked for but wasn't sure she'd get. We were talking about the hope of the New Testament. It is more like “confidence” or “eager expectation” than "unfounded optimism". The Greek word is “elpis”, the root of which is “elpo”: “to anticipate with pleasure”.

One set of notes I read called “hope” a “blessed assurance”. That, of course, got me singing. I found an old hymnal and looked up “Blessed Assurance”. The lyricist, Fanny Crosby, was, in effect, saying, “Hey, listen up! This is my story! I have inherited salvation because I am now God’s child! He has redeemed me! I have been born again and washed in His blood. Jesus is mine! What a blessed assurance! I have been given a taste of God’s glory! My soul is at rest and I am singing with joy!”

What incredible words! And to think I had sung that song a hundred times without ever really hearing and understanding it. I hungered for more, wondering what other songs might open to me. I turned back one page in the hymnal and there was “My Hope is Built”. The refrain is, “On Christ the solid rock I stand; All other ground is sinking sand, All other ground is sinking sand.”

Immediately, I envisioned a sea in which there were hundreds of people. I looked around me at their faces, because all that was visible above the water were their heads. They looked so frightened and exhausted, and I realized they were treading water. I, however, did not feel such strain and I realized it was because I was standing on a rock. I called to the woman closest to me, “Just relax and put your feet down!” She cried back, “I tried to, but it’s quicksand and it will pull me under!” And then I realized that I had something she did not. And I told her that my feet were secure and I called her to come to The Rock.

The third verse to “My Hope is Built” says that His oath, covenant and blood “support me in the whelming flood” and that when everything around my soul “gives way”, He is then “all my hope and stay”.

I am reminded that I am called to stand firm on that Rock and be a lighthouse. I am to be a beacon of hope, of confidence, of blessed assurance. I am to call out to the drowning, to share what I have found: “Here is safety! Here is rest! Come! It is for you, too!”

Finding My Voice

Whom Do You Choose?

That’s a phrase my voice teacher, Karla, uses for warm ups. We sing, “Whom … Do… You… Choose…”, listening to the resonance of each note, focusing on the color of the sound, egg-shaping the interior of our mouths as we descend the four notes of the arpeggio. I have to concentrate. I have to pay attention. It does not come easily.

Voice lessons are not like singing to the radio. This is work. These are exercises for the voice and abdomen. It is training and repetition and focus.

I always thought singers just opened up their mouths and let it out. And I still believe the best ones do just that. But it isn’t as if they have not prepared. It’s just that they finally get to that point where it has become second nature.

Getting to “second nature” has turned out to be a rather lengthy process for me. “First” nature is to be fearful, to be anxious, to be shy, to lack confidence. Yet, in Christ, I am a new creation. Why does the old nature linger?

Whom do I choose?

What are my choices?

I can choose to remain as I am, to nurse the old nature. To give in. To beat myself up. To stagnate. And when I have wallowed enough, to search alone for self-confidence.

Or I can choose to believe in the promise of God that I am a new creation. (2Cor 5:17) That He has not given me a spirit of timidity, but one of power, love and self-discipline. (2Tim 1:7) That my confidence is not in myself, but in Him. (Jer 17:7)

Whom do I choose?

I choose my Lord. Daily. Sometimes minute by minute. I must hide His word in my heart and fight the old, self-centered, self-empowered nature. Little by little, lesson by lesson, God separates the wheat (the fruit) from the chaff (the husk that obscures it). Jesus lifts my hands and the Spirit blows away the residue. And, like any good training, we repeat the process over and again. Threshing. Winnowing. Threshing.

“Whom… Do… You… Choose…?” Again, “Whom… Do… You… Choose…?” I sing down the keyboard, lower and lower, until my voice is on its knees. And when my heart finally joins it, the notes sing for themselves.

Whom do you choose?

Blind

Is it really stepping out blindly if God sees where I'm going?

Are His eyes not perfect?

I am legally blind without corrective lenses. But after an examination and a prescription and a fitting, and I can see.

I remember my first pair of glasses. It was in the winter of my third grade year. I stepped out of the optometrist's office onto a snowy sidewalk on Main Street in a little Kansas town. And when I looked down the street, it was as if a whole new world had been unveiled. Even at that young age, I was already legally blind, but no one had known. Not my parents. Not me. I was very, very nearsighted, lacking the ability to see distance. Suddenly, in the literal blink of an eye, I gained perspective.

I could see all the way down the street, blocks and blocks ahead, to the point artists call "the vanishing point", where left and right converge in the middle, where all angles meet at the horizon. It was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen! It changed my life forever because it caused me to pick up pencil and paper and begin drawing. I could see! I needed to document it!

And here I sit, documenting even now.

It's time for a re-exam. God is about to change my prescription and give me a fresh perspective. I can feel it. There's nothing to fear. There's something I've been missing, and now I will see.

God examines the eyes of my heart. He understands exactly what I need. He has prescribed the perfect lens. Now I sit here, ready to be fitted.

Awake

It's 3a.m. What on earth am I doing awake? I haven't had my requisite 8 or 9 hours of sleep! But here I am, in a bathrobe, sitting in a cold room, writing.

I woke with my brain trying to write. Why? I evidently forgot to shut off my brain before bed. Can one really turn off one's mind? Mine seems to be missing a switch. It's as if it gets to the overflow mark and the release valve kicks in... and out this stuff pours.

What is there to write about at 3a.m.? Usually, I find that when I wake in the night, that's God's "special" time for me. It's His "Lisa, we need to talk" time. So I obediently (albeit somewhat hesitantly at times) get up and get out pen and paper and start writing.

So, hey, God. What's up tonight?

New Year. Resolutions. Make time. Get up.

Ouch.

Did I leave God out of my planning again? Did I forget to seek Him and His advice prior to making a life step? No, but I came close.

This is a reminder.

I need to make time with Him a priority. THE priority.

You don't need as much sleep as you think you need. (Grin) The daily quiet time needs to be a commitment... "break-fast". Not a snack. Get in that Bible. Read. Pray. Listen. Write. This is the Year of Shining. This is the year to be inwardly reflective and then to shine outwardly. It's time to polish the mirror. It's time to feed the fire. It's time to come out from under the bushel and shine. Be a lighthouse.

This blog is not just the musings of a 44-year-old empty-nester. It's a way to practice openness. Publicly. Allow others in. Provoke thought. Stimulate.

A natural stimulant. Sounds like Milk of Magnesia! Spiritual M.O.M. Flush out the toxins, restore regularity. That's what 3a.m. is about.

OK, God. I'm listening.

"Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well."

Seeking implies action. Research. His kingdom? His kingship? His people? What is His righteousness? What is righteousness in the first place? And what things will be added? Ah, I think He just gave me what to study in my next few quiet times.

I need to put God where He's supposed to be, on the throne of my heart. My Lord. The One I serve. Does He call me at 3a.m.? Get up and serve. Submit. His is not a heavy burden. Why resist? Why question? Does He not love me? Does He not protect me? Did He not give His very life for me?

How does one show gratitude? By serving with love. By being attentive. Trusting.

How does one demonstrate trust? Is it really stepping out blindly if God sees where I am going? More on that later.

I'm a blogger!

It's 2008. It's time for something new. It is time to become. This, my friends, is step one in my new year journey. More later!