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I recently watched one of the videos from Beth Moore’s series on Esther. I was arrested by this quote:

“If you’re called upon to die in such a way that requires great courage, that is part of your destiny.”

In my notes I added a similar quote:

“If you’re called upon to live in such a way that requires great courage, that is part of your destiny.”

I immediately thought about my mom who has been called upon to live with great courage in the face of significant paralysis for more than a decade. What an honor she has to live out her destiny and how well she does it!

If I have to make a choice, I want to live God’s destiny for me, not my dreams for me. Yes, they are often one and the same, but they are not always the same. It was never mom’s dream to live a life dependent on others. And yet, what a blessing she has been to so many staff and residents of the nursing homes she’s lived in, not to mention doctors and nurses and EMT staff who have assisted her. I don’t think mom sees herself as living out her destiny, but that is what she is doing. Again I say: What an honor she has to live out her destiny!

Lord, may I follow in my mother’s footsteps, to live out the destiny you have for me with humility and grace.

Note: you can purchase each of the books discussed in this blog simply by clicking on the name of the book.

Having graduated with my masters a few weeks ago, I have been thinking a lot about “what’s next?” I want to pursue more speaking and writing, but I don’t think that’s the whole picture and I don’t have many answers to that question. I am, comfortable resting in God as He unfolds things before me, yet “what’s next?” keeps reverberating in my mind. It’s created in me a more watchful state about opportunities that might appear on the horizon (at right in front of my nose).

It’s also had me thinking very specifically about what I’d like my life to be. I am regularly and eagerly praying “Lord, Your will, not mine – where can You best use me in Your kingdom,” but I am also thinking through what I would like to do in this next phase of my life and asking God to fulfill those dreams.

With that as a backdrop and having been released from “required reading,” I’ve read three fiction books in the past month (!). Interestingly, each has lent its perspective to the process and has made a strong impression on me. Curiously, I didn’t choose any of these books:

• My husband, Phil, picked the first book – one that had been sitting in our library for quite some time and neither of us had read yet. It didn’t appeal to me at first, so I laid beside my bed and it stayed there several days – until I was leaving for an appointment and wanted to something to read should I have to wait. I quickly grabbed the book and was out the door.
• A few days after finishing that book, I picked up another book at the retreat house I stayed at for a couple of nights. Having read Scripture and a devotional book, meditated, prayed and worshipped, I felt ready for something lighter and found a basket of books. I picked up the one by an author I had read a book by almost thirty years ago.
• Finally, two weeks ago, Phil stopped at a discount store and for only $1.99 they had a copy of the first book in a six-book series by my favorite fiction authors. Who could resist such a bargain! Being side-lined a bit after my knee surgery, I’ve had plenty of time to read it.

I’ve provided this detail because it’s so interesting to me that I truly had little to do with choosing the books I read, and each has challenged me in the same way, while weaving stories across three continents and sixty years.

Can you say “God speaks?” One of the way God speaks to us is by the repetition of a theme – it comes up in a conversation with a friend, then we read an article that touches on the same topic, then our Scripture reading that day reinforces the message…or perhaps we just read three books in a row with the same message. Clearly, God is speaking.

Each of these books has made me very aware of the blessed life I lead and even more aware of how warped my definitions of a “blessed life” and “success” are. But I’ll get to that. First, a little about the books I’ve read:

Safely Home, by Randy Alcorn, was the first book I read. It is a story about a Chinese man, educated in the United States and on the fast track to becoming a professor and famous thinker of his time. He is also a Christian and upon returning home, he finds all opportunities closed to him…except that of a lock maker. He becomes the best lock maker, living a life that challenges the reader to make sense of the world in which we live and the purposes of God in one man’s life. “Is this the day I die?” the lead character asks every day as he lives for eternity instead of for himself.

Secret Believers: What Happens when Muslims Believe in Christ, by Brother Andrew and Al Janssen, is the fictionalized account of real people who live in Muslim countries and come to faith in Christ. How are the people in the story to fulfill their calling to strengthen the Church when it is illegal for the Church to exist? It is a story about how believers live, struggle, and glorify God when the place to which they are called is hostile toward them and their faith.
    
    

Jerusalem Vigil, by Bodie & Brock Thoene. The Thoenes are masterful authors of historical Christian fiction. Jerusalem Vigil is the first book in the Zion Legacy series and begins with the creation of Israel is a nation. Jews and Christians attempt to make their home in the war-torn city of Jerusalem as neighbors on all side seek to destroy the nation before it has a chance to live. It is a gripping novel about the lives of those transplanted from safety to a place requiring all they have to give and more – all the compassion, all the strength, all the love, and most importantly all the faith.

In all cases, the main characters lived with great fear and sadness. In all cases, the main characters redefined for me the phrase “blessed life” and the concept of “success.” Both have little to do with circumstances and everything to do with perspective. I am blessed to serve God in my circumstances. Success is a life lived for God with integrity and purpose…regardless of whether that life is lived out in a place my “dreams” would never take me, or exactly in the place my dreams would take me.

I’m reminded of what Paul said:

²⁰For I live in eager expectation and hope that I will never do anything that causes me shame, but that I will always be bold for Christ, as I have been in the past, and that my life will always honor Christ, whether I live or I die. ²¹For to me, living is for Christ, and dying is even better.
          Philippians 1:20-21 (NLT)

²⁰I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. ²¹For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. 
          Philippians 1:20-21 (NIV)

As I recall, there is also that phrase in the Bible about sharing in Christ’s sufferings:

¹⁷Now if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
          Romans 8:17 (NIV)

Wow…we are His children IF we share in His sufferings. And sharing in those sufferings is living for Christ, seeing Him exalted in our bodies. Somehow I think that message gets lost in American Christianity. Lord, forgive us.

Can you pray this simple prayer with me?

Lord, continue to shape and mold my understanding of success and blessing. I submit to Your will for my life…where ever it leads.

On Monday, a blog about destiny…..hmmm, I see a theme here!

This blog is the next in our “Heart of a Worshipper” series (HWS). You can find all of the blogs that have been published in this series listed here.

A Transparent Heart is…A Vulnerable Heart (Part 2)

Yesterday’s blog focused on the vulnerability that results from having a transparent heart and why that is so very scary. We only dealt with half the equation, though – that is, being vulnerable before God. Today we’ll look at being vulnerable in our relationship with other people.

Vulnerable Toward Others – Christ is Our Example

Having a vulnerable heart doesn’t apply only to our attitude toward God. If Christ is our example, we see that He chose to be vulnerable here on earth. He chose to love first. And it led to His death. To become Christ-like, then, we would also choose to love first and to die to self. We shouldn’t in any way deceive ourselves into thinking that the process of transformation is an easy one. Changing us into the likeness of Christ means methodically killing our flesh and our fleshly desires.

I heard one speaker describe it this way: God and Satan have one goal in common: They both want us dead – Scripture tells us that Satan comes to steal, kill and destroy; it also teaches that one of the Holy Spirit’s primary functions in our lives is to kill our flesh.

Being transformed means being reshaped and remolded; it means changing and most of us kind of like things the way they are. Remember the phrase from William Temple’s definition of worship: Worship is many things, all “gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore [worship is] the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.”

Worship, by its very essence, attacks our selfishness and self-centeredness, working the transformation process in our hearts, making it easier to work the transformation in our actions. Can the transformation happen without worship? Perhaps. But worship makes the transformation so much easier because it changes our heart, making it easier for us to work with the Holy Spirit to change our actions.

In his book A Divine Confrontation, Graham Cooke reminds us that God is not seeking a powerful people to represent Him. Rather, He looks for all those who are weak, foolish, despised, and written off; and He inhabits them with His own strength. He has not come to give strength, but to be strength to us as we relate to Him in weakness. If we do all that we can to NOT be vulnerable (which is our natural response), we quickly disqualify ourselves as people God can use. Keeping a transparent heart in worship allows us to remain vulnerable to God and He teaches and enables us to be vulnerable to others.

We must understand the difference between vulnerability and insecurity. All God’s dealings with us are to create maximum dependence upon Him. He calls us to do the impossible. He demands that we see what is invisible. He thrusts us into situations that overwhelm us. It could be rescuing more than a million people from bondage to the most cruel, occult, and oppressive regime of the day. (Moses managed to do it.) Or it could be…living a Godly life in an ungodly work environment. Either way it requires that we be vulnerable to God and to others.

When we are vulnerable, we see our inadequacies in the light of God’s sovereignty and power, and we discover hope and faith. Like Paul, we rejoice in our weaknesses that the power of Christ may rest upon us (see 2 Cor. 12:9-10). The whole point of vulnerability is to bring us to a place of restful dependence in a powerful and overcoming God. Vulnerability is knowing that God is happy to send us out as lambs amongst wolves because He is hugely confident in His own ability to watch over us and work through our weaknesses.

Graham Cooke concludes his short discussion with this sentence: “Vulnerability is given by God to release His presence, which builds self-esteem and confidence in God’s sovereignty.” Again, we see transformation in worship.

Lord, grant us vulnerability in worship. Give us transparent hearts. Grace us with a confidence in Your sovereignty and ability to use us in our weaknesses.

In this series, “The Heart of a Worshipper” (HWS) I’ve written about the need for our hearts to be hungry for God. The hungry heart gives birth to the pursuing heart, causing us to pursue God more diligently. Pursuing God is the first step toward becoming changed people. We then looked at the transparent or unveiled heart. When we pursue God whole heartedly, we open our heart to Him and others. That unveiled heart leads to a vulnerable heart, which is the topic of today’s blog.

A Transparent Heart is…A Vulnerable Heart (Part 1)

In the last blog in this series, I wrote:

“A transparent heart…One that allows the Light of Life (Jesus) to shine through it so that He can reveal to us what is hidden in its deepest, darkest corners.”

That’s vulnerability! Perhaps as you read that statement your reaction was similar to mine when I wrote it…”OK, NOW I’m scared.” Becoming that vulnerable almost evokes a “fight or flight” response. I want to go on the offensive or run away (and sometimes I can’t decide which). But why am I so afraid?

Why Am I Afraid?
I’m afraid because I know there are things hidden in my heart that I’m ashamed for my Lord to see. I must be forgetting 1 Chronicles 28:9b which says:

“for the LORD searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts.”
          1 Chronicles 28:9b

Or perhaps I’m overlooking Psalm 139 which beautifully describes how intimately the Lord knows us:

¹      O LORD, you have searched me and you know me.
²      You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
³      You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
⁴      Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD.
¹³     For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁵     My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.
      When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
¹⁶     your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me
      were written in your book before one of them came to be.
               Psalm 139: 1-4, 13, 15-16

One of the exciting things about being in Christ is that He already knows our thoughts (even the very worst ones), and He STILL loves us! It’s not like He died for our sins, and then really realized what they were! The scripture that affected me the most before coming to Christ was Romans 5:8:

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
          Romans 5:8

He knew I was a sinner when He died for me and He still did it. He didn’t wait for me to clean up my act before He demonstrated that He loved me.

I’m afraid because of the punishment I imagine He might think is appropriate. Hebrews 12 deals with this:

And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons: “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when He rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those He loves, and He punishes everyone He accepts as a son.”

Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons…Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in His holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
          Hebrews 12:6-12

When I keep my eye on the prize – being conformed to the image of Christ, discipline has a sweet aftertaste to it that balances the bitter experience. Divine discipline produces the Christ-like qualities that I so desire. But if I don’t allow Christ to discipline me (by shielding my heart from Him), I remain unruly in my thoughts and deeds. (Please don’t interpret this to mean that I control the Lord’s disciplining of me. I do not. God can choose to discipline me whenever and wherever He wants. Keeping a vulnerable heart toward Him, however, invites His discipline of me.)

Even still, I might be afraid sometimes of how He might discipline me. In those times, I remind myself of God’s goodness. Lamentations 3 encourages me that “The LORD is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him;” (v. 25). Psalm 145:9 reminds me that “The LORD is good to all; He has compassion on all he has made.”

It is healthy and appropriate to fear the Lord. It is also healthy and appropriate to understand that our God is a loving and compassionate God. If your fear of the Lord outweighs your understanding of His great love for you, ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you the merciful and compassionate God that can be found in the pages of your Bible. Start by doing a search on the words mercy and compassion.

Finally, I’m afraid because when I let down the guard that is around my heart, I give another the power to hurt me. While this is true, the opposite is also true…when I let down the guard that is around my heart, I give another the power to bring healing. Christ cannot bring healing until you allow Him to open the wounds of your heart. Some of the deep, dark secrets in our hearts stem from sins that have been committed against us. Sometimes those sins are root causes that have led to our own sins; often they are painful experiences or memories that we’ve allowed to change our behavior…and usually that change isn’t in the direction of Christ-likeness.

When I was 14, we moved away from the city we had lived in for as long as I could remember. How painful it had been to leave friends! With all the emotional passion of a young teenage girl, I vowed never to make close friends again because it hurt too much to lose them. And so I lived that way through high school, college and my first few years out of college. “Why should I make friends?” I would ask. “I’m just going to move away soon and I’ll never see these people again.” I refused to become vulnerable because I didn’t want to be hurt again. It wasn’t until I found Christ and became surrounded by loving men and women of God that I began to realize the foolishness of my approach to living without pain.

At 22 I was a very selfish, uncaring, uncompassionate woman of God. At 53, I’m a little less selfish and a little more caring and compassionate…but I still have a long way to go. Because the Christian walk is one of constant growth (change) if we stay vulnerable to the Spirit of God as He transforms us (changes us) into the image of Christ.

More on the vulnerable heart tomorrow!