ApprehendingGrace.com

Happy Thanksgiving!

I have so much to be thankful for – and serving a God who is wildly, passionately in love with me is at the top of the list. My list is long, and I’m hoping yours is, too. I have a roof over my head and am well fed. I’m blessed to be able to write this blog and am involved in a number of other meaningful ministries. I have a wonderful marriage and good family and friends. I have my own business that is moderately successful and gives me a degree of freedom over my schedule. That freedom allows me to be involved in events at my mom’s nursing home and other daytime activities that I might otherwise have to miss. Of course I could get more specific and the list would begin to bore you.

Yet for each of those things, it would be easy for me to add a “but…”

• I have a roof over my head, but that roof needs to be replaced and I can’t afford to do it.
• I am blessed to write this blog, but I don’t have time to do all the many additional things I dream about – truly taking Apprehending Grace Ministries from being simply this blog and a few other things to being a vibrant ministry.
• I have a moderately successful business, but there are so many stresses with owning a small business these days.
• I have a wonderful marriage, but…

You get the idea. For every aspect of our lives, we have a choice – to look at the blessing or to look at the disappointment. The disappointment might be real or imagined, but either way, it mitigates the joy we feel when we think of the blessing. I find that the disappointment we experience falls into two categories:

• “Not yet” disappointment – that is, disappointment in what you haven’t yet seen, received or accomplished.
• Experienced disappointment – reality crashed into your expectations.

Both find their solution in God.

Experienced Disappointment

We will experience disappointments and sorrow in this life. Things will break and people will die. Life will crush in and our hopes will be shattered in Humpty Dumpty fashion. We can hold onto that disappointment, or we can give it to the One who cares for us more than we’ll ever be able to comprehend.

²⁸Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke fits perfectly, and the burden I give you is light.”

Matthew 11 (NLT)

I find that dealing with life’s shattering disappointments makes me weary. There’s no better word for it. Weary is more than just tired, it’s overburdened and tired. Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines weary as “exhausted in strength, endurance, vigor, or freshness.” Phil’s family would describe it as “all used up.”

Jesus says “Come to me when you are all used up. Come to me when your strength, endurance, vigor or freshness is gone.” I love that the word “freshness” is included in the definition. When you have become stale and are about to become moldy – “come to me.”

And once you’re there – give him all your disappointments, your worries and your cares.

Give your burdens to the Lord. He will carry them. He will not permit the godly to slip or fall.

Psalm 55:22 (TLB)

Let him have all your worries and cares, for he is always thinking about you and watching everything that concerns you.

1 Peter 5:7 (TLB)

Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

1 Peter 5:7

If a “but” is taking the joy out of your blessing, you are carrying burdens you need not carry. Go to Jesus – the yoke He has for you fits you perfectly. Once there, give Him all your “buts” – and don’t take them back again. Let Him deal with them for you. (Remember, He is always working in the background to cause all things to work for your good if you continue to pursue Him.) Give God your “buts” today – then just focus on the blessings.

“Net Yet” Disappointment

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when dreams come true, there is life and joy.

Psalm 13:12 (NLT)

“Not yet” disappointment is the disappointment in ourselves and/or God, that our dreams have not yet been fulfilled. Scripture validates our feeling of disappointment, but that doesn’t mean we ought to dwell there. It also validates that fulfilled dreams bring life and joy.

Pray into your unfulfilled dreams. Trust God to bring them. “Not yet” disappointment teeters on the brink of lack of faith. Push past the lack of faith into the knowledge that God is on the move! You don’t see it yet, but He is moving to bring about the hopes and dreams that are within His will and those hopes and dreams will be more fulfilling than you imagine.

Live life on purpose! Don’t just hope for your dreams to come true and don’t just pray into your unfulfilled dreams – do whatever there is for you to do today to help your dreams come true tomorrow.

As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

James 2:26 (NIV)

Believe God for your dreams and work toward them. Make your life a “no excuse” zone. When you’ve given your energies toward praying and making your dreams happen, you cannot be disappointed in yourself. When you know that you know that you know that God is working on your behalf, you cannot be disappointed in Him.

For All Disappointment

King David knew a thing or two about disappointment. One of my favorite passages in Psalms was written by him in a period of disappointment. You probably know this Psalm – it begins with the well-known verse “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.” (Psalm 42:1, NRSV) Clearly this is a Psalm written in a time of disappointment. Yet David has found the secret to dealing with that disappointment. Read on:

⁵ Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and ⁶my God.
My soul is downcast within me;
therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.

……….

⁸ By day the LORD directs his love,
at night his song is with me—
a prayer to the God of my life.
Psalm 42:5,-6, 8 (NIV)

In the midst of his weariness, David speaks to his own soul – he instructs it to bring it into alignment with true reality. “Put your hope in God” he says. True reality is not what we see and hear and feel around us. Our emotions lie to us regularly. I woke up this morning wanting to cry for no reason – I was just feeling sad. I could come up with reasons I might be feeling this way and it’s tempting to do that. Life makes more sense to me when I can justify my feelings – but that’s just what it is – justifying them. Why justify them, when instead I can instruct them as David did? “Why are you so downcast, soul of mine? Rejoice in God! He is my Great Redeemer and my life. He lives in heavenly places and never ceases to pray for me. He is my hope and my salvation. He is my friend. He longs to whisper His secrets in my ear.” How much more edifying that is than figuring out why I might be sad. (Don’t hear what I’m not saying – there is a time to work through our emotions, but there is also a time for setting them aside knowing that they are simply lying to us or trying to sabotage us or divert us from God’s purposes.)

Peter has a final instruction that is worth noting here:

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Philippians 4:8 (NRSV)

We do have power to redirect our thoughts, and using this power changes our perspective and our attitudes.

Let’s Leave the “But” Out

I have a blessed life. That blessed life is diminished when I let the “buts” of Satan rob me of the joy of the blessing.

Friends, may I encourage you to silence your buts this Thanksgiving and then continue the practice throughout the holiday season and 2011. Make it a lifestyle choice you make today.

Stay tuned – check out tomorrow’s blog titled “But In…”

I apologize, readers, that over the past month I haven’t come close to achieving my goal of two to three posts each week. A couple of days each week I’ve driven across town to sit with a dying friend through her final days and nights on this earth. What a privilege it has been! I’ve found, though, that my mind and heart were so focused on my friend that writing blogs was difficult. I’ve been reading Scripture quite a bit, and thoroughly enjoying it, but unable to get many thoughts in writing. (I did sometimes write short notes on Facebook – be sure to become a friend of the Apprehending Grace FB page.)

My friend went home to be with the Lord Tuesday morning. Today, I’d like to share some reflections with you. I’m looking over the past month and simply musing on life here on earth and God’s interruptions in it.

• Life is precious. It is so easy to get bogged down in the trials and challenges, even the minor annoyances, of this life. Don’t let it happen! Each day is a gift from God. Over the past few years I have struggled often waking up not being as joyful and thankful as I want to be. I have committed over and over to say to the Lord “Thank You!” each morning. After a few days I forget. I’ve wracked my brain trying to figure out what trigger to use to remind myself to be thankful first thing in the morning. During this process, I’ve realized that the first thing I look at each morning is the clock that is next to my pillow and at eye level. I’ve put a simply sign on it that says “Thank You, Lord, for today!”
• Enjoy moments. Don’t let the challenges of this life be your focus. Even as my friend’s strength was growing weak, we went for a “walk” around the hospice house (she in the wheel chair, I in the driver’s position). I wheeled her up to a glass door to look out. She motioned for me to move her closer. Assuming she couldn’t see out the window, I did so. That wasn’t her intention. She immediately pushed on the crash bar and turned to me motioning for me to join in the fun of her “jail break.” She was determined to have fun in her last days.
• Remember God’s promises. We talked a lot about the promises of God over the past month. Yesterday, I was reading a book by Philip Yancey called Finding God in Unexpected Places. It’s a great book full of short chapters about finding God in all walks of life. He quotes a former pastor of his as saying this:

As churches grow wealthier and more successful, they’re less likely to sing “This world is not my home, I’m just a passin’ through” and more likely to intone “This is my Father’s world.”

God has given us many precious promises, and it seems that the better this world gets, the more we put our hope in it instead of God’s promises. Let’s focus more on God’s promises than what this world may or may not have for us.

• Leaving this earth is often quite difficult. The dying process is long and arduous for many people. I’ve often wondered at that. One thought I have is that we were made for everlasting life – our bodies resist dying because we weren’t meant to die. Death is a result of sin. Praise God that He has made it possible for us to pass from this life into eternal life – because Jesus died in our place. Hallelujah! What a Savior!
• Family and friends are more important than most other things. Hence, I’ve neglected my blog and to a lesser degree I neglected my business. I also neglected my husband, but he was totally understanding and encouraged me to do so. Now this was an “emergency” situation, but I am sorry I waited for the emergency to get to know my friend better. I’ve called her “friend” throughout this blog because she was. But she was also my cousin and after high school we moved away from each other and barely largely lost contact. About eight years ago we moved to within two hours of each other, but still only saw one another once a twice a year at family gatherings. I so enjoyed getting to know her again and am sorry we didn’t make getting reacquainted a priority sooner.
• Be forgiving. Among the many conversations we had, my friend made the comment “we need to make room for one another’s craziness.” We’re all a little crazy, and family relationships can make us even crazier. What she was saying, a bit more colorfully perhaps, was “love one another” (John 13:34).

• God is in control. So many, many times over the past month, I watched God control my schedule to accomplish His purposes. Unfortunately, in my heart I didn’t always respond positively and in faith. Sometimes I grumbled. God is so gracious that He did it anyway and then unfolded His plans before my very eyes.

• Our enemy, satan, comes to steal, kill & destroy. Christ came so that we might have abundant life. (John 10:10) I hate the cancer that took my friend’s life (and the lives of five other family members in the past five years). Satan is the author of that cancer. God, in His abundant grace and overwhelming love, is the author of life. He created it, sustains it and He makes it possible for it to never end. I choose life! I hope you do to!
• God is our peace. The circumstances of this world might give us a temporal joy or happiness, but God gives peace. I love the temporal joy and happiness, but I’ll take the abiding peace over it any day. Out of that peace grows an abiding joy and strength. Thank You, God!
• God is good. When all is said and done, God is good. Period. No question, no doubt. God is good.

Here’s a get-right-to-the-point blog from someone I read regularly.

You know if I had written it, I’d have done so with many more words! Not necessarily more impact. Check it out.

Let’s choose together to linger in good places today!

I sat down to write a blog about 2 Samuel 24:24, in which King David replies to Araunah’s’ offer of free land to build an altar on and free animals to sacrifice to the Lord “No…I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.” What a powerful statement. And I’m so wanting to write it, but first I looked over previous blogs to see if I had already written about this verse.

What I found was a blog I wrote almost two years ago that’s along the same lines of my heart’s meditation over the past few days…I just didn’t remember that I had blogged about it. Perhaps you’ve forgotten the blog, too. It is a blog that grew out of David’s song of praise in 2 Samuel 22. David’s life had many ups and downs – he lived in caves and he lived in palaces – and praised God in both. Our God is worthy of our praises whether we are currently in the cave or on the mountain top. This blog from November 2008 covers the topic so well and I was so blessed to re-read it, I thought you would be too. So today’s blog is a reminder of things past. Tomorrow’s will be about David’s reply to Araunah.

Me & God Today
The truth is that my prayer life has been declining for awhile. Yet God is so good. He graciously continues to speak to me and to protect and love me. Yet slowly, I was allowing the world to grab my attention and it was pulling me away from God. Yet , God is so good – even when I drift farther away, He pursues me.

This morning, after reading my Bible, I began to update my to do list with new things that needed my attention today. While doing so, God prompted me to put three items of prayer on the list. I don’t usually put prayer items on my to do list, but this morning, I recognized God’s prompting and added the three items to the right of the things I needed to do today.

Let me again say that God is very good. I said that “I recognized” God’s prompting, but I don’t mean to take credit for it – all credit belongs to God, even the credit for me recognizing His promptings. His prompting was so strong, that thankfully, I paused while making the list to actually pray for the items! Making a note to pray, or saying that we’ll pray, and actually praying are radically different things. This morning I paused to pray about the items.

One of the three issues I prayed about related to a new endeavor in our business. We were moving ahead and I was beginning to be uncomfortable about the direction we were taking. So I prayed and asked for guidance. About two hours later, a totally new idea came to my mind that makes SO much more sense than the other direction we were headed. It is less expensive, has less risk, doesn’t impact customer service, and if it results in lower quality I won’t have lost anything for having tried the approach.

God is so good! He prompted me to pray, I prayed, and He answered.

Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.
John 16:24 (Jesus is speaking)

Phil & God Today
I went upstairs to tell my husband about the new direction and the goodness of God. After listening to my story, he had his own to tell. His prayer life has also been declining and this morning he was feeling prompted to pray. He began by opening his Bible t read a few chapters, but found himself in an Old Testament book that is sometimes dry and factual – not a place where we hear from God easily. But he prayed, expressing his desire to continue reading from where he had last left off and his desire for God to speak to him. He read seven verses before God responded to the prayer! God began to speak to him about an area of his life that needs refreshing.

God is so good. He prompted Phil to pray, Phil prayed, God answered.

⁹“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. ¹⁰For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
Luke 11:9-10 (Jesus is speaking)

You & God Today?
God is so good! Today He saved Phil & I from ourselves by prompting us to pray – and we couldn’t be happier about it! May we encourage you to take those issues that are on your mind and those areas of your life that need His input and ask God to speak to you? He wants to hear from you, so don’t put it off. We’re really glad we didn’t.

During the worship time of our church service this morning, several young children picked up small streamers and twirled them around. It was such a picture of purity and joy. I couldn’t help but be reminded of a verse God has highlighted to me many times over the years:

³Then he said, “I assure you, unless you turn from your sins and become as little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven. ⁴Therefore, anyone who becomes as humble as this little child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Matthew 18:3-4

Lord, help me to worship You with the uninhibited joy of children.

Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit,
for anger resides in the lap of fools.
Ecclesiastes 7:9

I had planned to spend all day with my mom last Friday. It had been on the schedule for two weeks, but I was having one of those mornings when it seems impossible to get out of the house. I had to go back upstairs several times because I kept forgetting things, then I had to go downstairs in the basement to gather supplies I needed. I was planning to eat my breakfast of toast and tea on the road, but couldn’t find my car tea cup. So after boiling the water for tea, I just threw it away and looked for an alternative beverage. Diet Coke was my second choice, but we didn’t have any cold. So I put ice in a plastic glass and took the can with me. I was also taking lots of other things for various projects we’d be working on – scrapbooking supplies for making some cards, my laptop so I could make some notes about mom’s life for a book we’re working on, a puzzle I bought to put together during some visit, and various other things I’d collected that needed to be taken to mom’s.

In retrospect, I recognize that this morning really wasn’t atypical. The problem was my attitude. It just seemed that each additional trip upstairs or downstairs or each thing that didn’t go exactly as I wanted it to go increased my frustration. Never during those 45 minutes of getting ready did I stop, take a breath and remind myself that life is good. I was letting little things that shouldn’t even rate being considered annoyances get to me.

Finally, after three trips to the car loading various supplies, I grabbed my purse, my glass of ice and my can of pop and headed to the car with my keys in my hand. I was ready to be off for the day (finally! – sigh). I put the glass of ice in the cup holder, then reached over it to put my purse on the passenger’s seat. That’s when my shirt caught on the straw and knocked the glass of ice onto the floor. One would think that I’d have celebrated that there was only ice in the glass, right? Wrong. My “celebration” more like a loud growl-groan – “Aarrrghhhhhhh!”

God’s Interruption
It was in the midst of that aarghh that God spoke to me. Not in an audible voice, but in a distinct thought in my mind that was inconsistent with the emotions I was experiencing. “Sandy, you’re making it harder,” was what I heard, “Sandy, you’re making it harder.” I knew instantly what He meant. My loud growl-groan didn’t do a thing to alleviate my frustration. In fact, it fed it and made it stronger. It was increasing my annoyance with the day in general and moving me closer to throwing in the towel – having my own personal hissy fit, slamming the car doors, throwing the keys in the key-basket and plopping in my chair and saying, “I quit. I can’t go to Mom’s today. I can’t deal with this!” Or maybe my reaction wouldn’t have been quite that bad – maybe I was just being set up for an hour-long drive during which I would rehearse all the miserable things about my life, arriving at Mom’s with a fake smile pasted on my face, and being frustrated at everything that didn’t go right for the next eight hours.

In His grace, God stopped what was happening by whispering into my mind, “Sandy, you’re making it worse.” I immediately realized the truth in the words. I could/should have been considering myself blessed that there was no pop in the glass. I could/should have been spending the morning in anticipation of the blessings of being with Mom all day. I could/should have been using each trip upstairs or downstairs to do any of a number of things other than complain about them. If I hadn’t been expending mental and emotional energy complaining, I probably would have remembered everything I needed on the first trip upstairs…or at least the second one.

There are blessings all around us and we miss them because we get too caught up in the minor things that go wrong (or in some cases, the things that might go wrong – but that’s a different blog).

Blogging about this experience has been on my list for the past week, but when I read the verse in Ecclesiastes this morning, it was moved to the top of the list. “Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit.” I was much too quickly provoked last Friday. And all along the way I had a choice to not be provoked. At any point I could have re-directed my thoughts to the good that God has put around me and in my life. Perhaps this sounds to you much like brainwashing or self-delusion. Not so. The truth is that we constantly have a voice inside us that speaks into our minds – either good or bad. That morning, I had chosen to listen to the bad.

My Freight Train of Thought
If I had taken the time to really listen to that bad voice, I know that I would have been hearing things like this: “You’re never going to get out of here on time. You’re always late when you go to your Mom’s. If you don’t get there by 9am you won’t really have time to do much of anything before lunch. Why is it that your Mom always gets the short end of the stick?” Another line of self-talk might have been more like this: “Why is it that you can’t remember three simple things in one trip? If you had laid this stuff out last night you’d be having a better morning today. If you forget something you won’t be able to finish making the cards you want to do with Mom.” And here’s the third track the voices would have taken: “You know it’s going to take you three trips to get all this stuff to the car. And then three more trips to get it all from the car into the nursing home. Not to mention three more trips to get it all back home. What are you going to do with your laptop while you’re working on cards in the lounge? You know you’ll have to leave it in your Mom’s room because you can’t carry your laptop and your scrapbook supplies all at once. Maybe you should leave your laptop in the car and just work on cards, then go out to the car and exchange the scrapbooking supplies for the laptop. Of course, that limits what you can do…”

I debated about including that last paragraph in this blog for many reasons. It’s very revealing of my personal thought life. Yes, I think these kinds of thoughts, more often than I’d like to admit. This is the kind of self-talk that creeps into my head, trying to suck the life out of me and get me to take the easier path of just giving up and doing nothing. Can you relate to that? It’s not just a “train of thought” – it’s more like a freight train of thought, because it hits you with such impact and it’s full of the baggage of life. But it’s baggage that we’re not called to carry. These thoughts reside just under the surface of my life waiting to pop up at the least provocation. Who can sustain a positive attitude with that flood of negative thoughts vying for attention?

God’s Better Plan
Part of the wonderful package of becoming a follower and disciple of Christ, though, is learning to replace those thoughts with His thoughts. What were God’s thoughts during this time? If I could have silenced the darts the enemy was throwing, I would have been able to recognize how blessed I am to be able to take a day off to spend with Mom. How wonderful it is to have a house with three floors, and the health to be able to climb all those stairs, and the finances to buy scrapbooking supplies and a puzzle and a laptop computer! Was I angsting over what to wear this morning? (Yes!) What a blessing to have such choices in clothing! Was I complaining about tromping upstairs so many times? (Yes!) What good exercise on a day when I would spend most of it sitting! Beyond those blessings that relate directly to what was frustrating me, I have the overriding blessings of a God who is just wild about me, a husband who loves me just about as much as God does, and other family and friends who help make life precious. I also have the physical and mental ability to work and play in the beautiful and abundantly varied world that God has created for me. And I have a warm, dry, and comfortable bed to sleep in each night as I thank God for His goodness.

Being easily provoked last week was all a matter of focusing on the wrong things, and dealing with them in a fleshly way. As God said, my reaction to each incident was just making it worse. The greatest blessing? That God mercifully spoke to me to remind me that I have a choice about letting these little things provoke me to frustration and anger. What a great God we serve!

Lord, as we face the coming week, will you help each reader hear Your voice and not be easily provoked by the darts the enemy throws their way.

If you want to stretch your brain a bit today, read this article by John Parsons posted at http://www.hebrew4christian.org/. The website teaches biblical Hebrew so that the reader can better understand Scriptures “from a Hebraic point of view.” This article is a commentary on the weekly Scripture reading.

To help you understand the article, let me give you a little background.

• What we call the Pentateuch, that is the first five books of the Bible, the Jews call the Torah, or the Law.
• The Talmud is a collection of interpretations and applications of the Law (or Torah).
• The oral portion of the Law is called the Mishnah.
• If you were to go through the first five books of the Old Testament (the Law or the Torah), you would find that there are more than 10 commandments. In fact, there are 613.
• The parashah is the scheduled weekly Torah reading, similar to a lectionary.
• Shabbat is the Jewish word for Sabbath.

Wow, that sounds like a lot to know just to read an article. Actually, you can understand the message of the article without knowing these things, but not knowing them bothered me as I read it. So I looked them up using the website’s dictionary and am providing them to you. Oh, by the way, chaverim means “friends.”

So, chaverim, I pray you enjoy this short but challenging article as much as I did. Shalom.

 This last blog in the “Heart of a Worshipper” series (HWS) summarizes all the characteristics I’ve written about. You can find the articles about each characteristic here. Much of this series has been revolutionary to my walk with Christ. I hope it’s impacted you as well. Today’s blog hits the two things that have impacted me more than all the other things put together. Read on…

The Heart of a Worshipper

For almost three months we’ve studied the heart of a worshipper. We’ve seen a progression of the worshipper’s heart as he or she pursues God more diligently. Let’s review all 7 qualities:

• A hungry heart – one that desires to know God more intimately.
  • A pursuing heart – one that follows hard after Jesus. It is the action that results from having a hungry heart.
    •  A transparent or unveiled heart – one that allows the Light of Life (Jesus) to shine through it so that He can reveal to us what is hidden in it’s most private corners.
      • A vulnerable heart – the heart that suppresses our “fight or flight” response as we sit at Jesus’ feet and allow Him to change us. It is the logical extension of the transparent heart.
        • A willing heart – one that is predisposed to say “Yes, Lord.” It is also the obedient heart.
          • A free heart – the heart that is unencumbered by sin, condemnation and fear.
            • A secure heart – the heart that is confidently established in the knowledge of Christ’s love.

Where are you in this progression?

• Are you satisfying your hungry heart by pursuing God diligently?
• Are you remaining transparent and vulnerable before God and His people?
• Are you obedient and increasing in your victory over sin?
• Do you reject condemnation and fear?
• Has that lead you to a place of steadfastness in Christ, a place of calm and joy despite life’s circumstances?

I wish I could say that I’m always at that steadfast place, but I’m not. In this final article, I’d like to share two teachings that have helped me to become a greater worshipper of God.

Developing Childlikeness

He [Jesus] called a little child and had him stand among them. And he [Jesus] said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. ”
          Matthew 18:2-4

While reading this a dozen or so years ago, I was struck by the word “change.” That means that being childlike doesn’t come naturally, which makes a lot of sense when you think about it. From a very young age, children are trying to be older than they are. And while we try madly to reverse the process once we reach a certain age, we still don’t want to be considered childlike. Children are unsophisticated. They’re annoyingly spontaneous. They’re immature. I want to be sophisticated, in control and mature. Yet Scripture says I should change and become like a little child.

So I began to focus on children and the qualities they possess that I lack. And then I worked at changing to become more childlike. This was a step of obedience. Being willing to be childlike regardless of what others thought was a HUGE step for me. I’ve always had an overactive “what will people think” response. But I wanted to be more concerned about what God thinks, so I began to change. Here are some of the childlike behaviors that I saw and began to imitate.

Humility and trust – Verse 4 specifically says that God values humility. I see humility in children as trust without understanding. Children trust. Period. They don’t have to understand how it works or why it works, they simply trust what they’ve been told. I often require understanding before I give my trust. When I examine that attitude under a microscope, I find that at the root of it is pride. I am essentially saying, “Unless you explain it to me in such a way that I understand it and agree with it, I’m not going to trust you.” Or maybe I’m saying, “I don’t trust you to do what’s best for me. I only trust myself. Therefore, I must understand before I extend my trust to you.” Either way, there’s too much pride in the attitude. Scripture teaches by word and example that God is more loving than I can ever imagine, that He loves me more than I can imagine, and that He desires good things for me. I believe that. (Lord, help my unbelief!) The action that’s required on my part is that I place my trust in Him. Lack of trust shows up in adults in many ways: The need to control situations, the unwillingness to fully submit to God’s will in one or many areas, and the attitude of rebellion are just a few.

Spontaneity and joy – The two seem to go together in children. Children are discovering God’s world for the first time and they find great delight in it. (I’ve seen more spiders than I care to see, so I no longer take much delight in them.) By nature, I’m serious and reserved. When I look at my personal history, though, I can see that part of that nature developed as a defense against being hurt or judged negatively. So I’ve made a decision. I’ve decided that God wants me to take delight in His creation. I need to see it through the eyes of a child and be willing to respond to it like a child. That means being willing to be thought a fool for laughing aloud or skipping in the rain or showing awe when it’s appropriate. My adult response is to suppress the laughter, carry an umbrella, and act nonchalant toward new things. God wants me to be childlike. And I’ve found that life is more enjoyable this way. It continues to be a struggle for me, something I must repeatedly remind myself about, but when I’m successful at it I enjoy life more, and I’m confident that it pleases God.

I am the Bride of Christ
In addition to beginning to understand what it means to be childlike, I’ve begun to have a greater understanding of my position in Christ and before God: Scriptures teaches that I am the Bride of Christ. Not only does God love me, but Jesus is “in love” with me. The Bible says He “delights” in me. When I began to understand how totally, unconditionally and passionately Jesus is in love with me it changed my heart and increased my passion for Him. It also gave me the confidence to be transparent with Him and the courage to be childlike in His presence. It revolutionized my worship of Him and my desire to draw near to Him.

The Transformed Heart
While I have loved the Lord for thirty years, I have only been “in love” with Him for about fifteen. It was about fifteen years ago when I began to study childlikeness and Bride of Christ teachings. That led to studying the topic of worship and pursuing God through worship. The result is that my life has been transformed from the inside out.

In the first article of this series I included a definition of worship by William Temple, the archbishop of Canterbury from 1942 to 1944. It’s somewhat long but it explains how worship transforms the worshipper. I’d like to close the series with the same quote. If you find yourself fitting the description Temple gives in the first sentence, please ask God to help you make worship a priority. It will undoubtedly change your life.

“Both for perplexity and for dulled conscience the remedy is the same; sincere and spiritual worship. For worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is:
     the quickening of our conscience ………………………. by His holiness;
     the nourishment of mind ………………………………….. with His truth;
     the purifying of imagination ……………………………… by His beauty;
     the opening of the heart …………………………………… to His love;
     the surrender of will ………………………………………… to His purpose
– and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.

Yes – worship in spirit and truth is the way to the solution of perplexity and to the liberation from sin.”

Lord, help me to be one who worships you in spirit and truth.

Every so often my perspective gets out of whack. I begin to forget how blessed I am. Maybe a better way to put it is that I have a hard time remembering that I am blessed, or why or how I’m blessed. You know those times. Life pushes in hard, and you really want to stand firm and you want to continue in the joy of the Lord, but you just can’t seem to remember how you are blessed. You know that God’s Word says you’re blessed and you have set your mind to believe it, but there’s just too much junk in front of your eyes to see the blessings.

Let me take you to a simple verse: 

Blessed is the man
whose sin the Lord will never count against him.
          Romans 4:8

Hallelujah! No matter how bad your day is going, if you have asked God to forgive you and trust in Christ as your Savior, your sins are forgiven and the Lord will never count them against you. We deserve God’s wrath, but instead, He chooses to give us His love. What a phenomenal exchange!

I am blessed. And during those times when I can’t think of any other reason that I might say I’m blessed, this one is overwhelmingly enough.