Living Life for Christ Alone

"What do I do?" I wondered as we drove home. The sun was setting far below the horizon, and streetlights flickered in the onset of darkness. I tried confessing whatever sin I knew to confess in silent prayer, but it didn't fix what was actually bothering me: I felt like such a huge mess.  My emotions had been all over the place.  I felt so much shame, fear, doubt... How had I gotten here? I wasn't sure... Besides, what good would it do to know? I couldn't fix it. I had spent many hours trying. It seemed that the more I tried, the messier it got. And it felt as though the very fabric of who I was had been torn apart. The Spirit within me nudged me to bring the mess to God.  "God, here is my mess... I bring it to You. Can you fix it?" I prayed silently, looking out the window into the dark night. Suddenly, I saw in my mind's eye the nail-pierced hands of Jesus. "I already did," His answer broke through my doubts and fears.  And then He looked...

  "Do not stay so far from me, for trouble is near, and no one else can help me." (Psalm 22:11) "...No one else can help me." No hope anywhere but in Him. No help unless He helps. No joy unless He supplies it. No endurance, no patience, no peace, no goodness... unless it comes from His hand. No joy, no faith, no purpose in challenges unless He Himself gives it to us. The process to get to this place is arduous. It's one we don't ask for, but as Christians we need.  You see, when trouble is near, and we find that our resources are running out, we have whatever veiled our vision of Him removed so we can really see Him. He IS all -we just don't tend to see Him that way. He is our soul's answer -but we usually just have Him in our minds as a plan B. It's usually something else and  Him we depend on -not just Him. The Christian life is a process of growing in exclusive dependence on the One who is all we need. (Read John 15 for more on this.) And some...

 "Come and talk with Me." The whisper of the Father echoes in the mundane. It rustles through the soul in the chaotic.       As I wash dishes...       As I clean up messes...       As I wipe tears over and over...       As I start yet another load of laundry...       As I ponder the things about my children that perplex me...       As I long to go away and be alone...       As I force myself to get up off the couch (after having just sat down) to meet yet another need or to clean up another mess....       As I wonder how to point my children in the right direction...       As I take my daughter to the potty again after just doing it 15 minutes before.       As things I try to get done constantly get interrupted. "Come," He says, "tell me all." But I don't hear. "This doesn't matter very much to Him," I say, "I'm just a mom doing mom t...

"No, Lord, not them..."  There has been a truth that God has been bringing me back to over and over in the course of this past year, and it's simple:  Yes, them.  Let me explain. Sometimes I wonder why it is that we who are in Christ struggle to feel God's love for us...  Could it be in part because we are not willing to be His hands and feet of love to the unlovable? In motherhood, I have tasted God's love in laying down my sleep, my own nourishment, my own emotional stability, and almost every other basic need, for the needs of a baby. Could it be that in laying down our lives for the people we don't want to love, we will discover more depths to God's love than we ever dreamed possible? It is our human tendency to love to a limit, but no farther. Believe me, motherhood helps me discover my own limits fast. But what if God's desire were to give us a taste of the limitlessness of His love by calling us beyond our comfort zones and set boundaries?   Wha...