ApprehendingGrace.com

You thrill me, LORD, with all you have done for me!
I sing for joy because of what you have done.
                Psalm 91:4 (NLT)

Wow! Am I “thrilled” at what the Lord has done for me? I am challenged by the word “thrill.” We talk about “thrill” rides - those that cause a bit of fear within us, take our breath away, then make us laugh with excitement. Does what God has done for me cause that reaction?

If not, I don’t think it’s God’s fault. I think perhaps it’s because my focus is more on the challenges of the day instead of the goodness of my God. I am seeing the petty problems in front of me instead of the tremendous grandeur of the long view of my life.

It’s not that I am some great person or have done such great things. Quite the contrary. Rather, it is the uncountable good things God has done for me and in me that is the “tremendous grandeur.” It is the beautiful clothes and jewels God has given me. You might see the shorts and T-shirt I have on. But God has clothed me in tremendous grandeur.

He has taken a rebellious young woman, focused only on herself and the gain she would someday have and turned her into a less rebellious middle-aged woman, focused at least somewhat on others and the gain she might help them have. None of that is to my credit, but it is all for my good.

He has worked in me a satisfaction that was sorely missing, taking away a striving that robbed me of joy. Again, this was not of my own doing, but a gift from God. And I am truly thrilled by this…it’s just that I often forget about it in the midst of the troubles of the day. Lord, help me to remember.

I usually don’t strive any more. I still pursue excellence, but I am usually able to remember that only God is perfect and He is immeasurably happy with me whether I am able to achieve all I want to achieve or not. That makes me able to relax and experience the thrill of all He has done for me. When I am striving, when I am uptight about accomplishing what “needs to be done” I also see only the shorts and T-shirt. Lord, help me to stay focused on the grandeur that I might always be thrilled with the life you’ve given me.

I’m reading through the book of Numbers right now. It’s easy to get bogged down in the details. Even so, I think it’s pretty cool that God includes them (but, yes, they can get a bit tedious). Including them (and so many of them!) shows that God cares about the little things. That details matter to Him. I’m so glad! Because it’s in the details that the difference is made in my life.

Like the detail that had me decide to join the Air Force after college. It’s where I met my husband.

Like the detail that placed angels around my bed the night our apartment was broken into and I was home alone sleeping. And the detail of the dripping sound outside my window that woke me up that night. These details led to me acknowledge that I wasn’t in control and there was One who wanted control. They led to me knowing God (or should I say beginning to know God).

Like the detail that put my husband at the same business show as the courier who took a brochure of ours and passed it on to a customer of his 20 years ago. It’s what started our business.

Like the detail that allowed me to be at my dad’s bedside when he died. It’s what gave me assurance that he had reached a point of acknowledging that he wasn’t in control and willingly gave control over to the One who waited to lead him home.

Or the detail that had me in any number of places at the right time to either avoid harm or receive something good from the hand of the Lord. The details are what enrich our lives, protect us, mold us into the image of Christ and allow us to be at the right time and place to help others.

You’ve heard it said that the devil is in the details. I say it’s the Lord who is in the details. Praise God for the details!

 I was re-reading my journal from last year and the year before. What impressed me was how valuable journaling is.

• It helps me sort things out while I’m struggling through them.
• It puts me in a place where God can speak to me (or perhaps I should say “where I can hear God speak to me”). Often I can’t hear God through the jumble of life inside and around me. Journaling enables me to hear God clarify the key issues in the situation.
• It serves as a reminder of where I’ve been and what God has done for me in the past. I so easily forget even the greatest milestones in my life, let alone the many, many “little” times He has been faithful to me.
• It allows me to see my past more objectively. There have been times that I remembered as being failures or a ”falling away” for me, but when I look back at the journal I don’t see that. I see someone who was holding on — perhaps by a thin thread, but still holding on — waiting to see the faithfulness of God. What I remembered about those times was a lack of faith on my part, a time of weakness…my journals show weakness, yes, even failings, but also great faith that God would intervene at any moment.  My journal shows my confidence that God would step in and change me and my circumstances. I am tremendously blessed to have this retrospective.
• It allows me to see my growth over a period of time. Spiritual growth is often gradual and we can feel like we’re never making much progress. My journal provides a concrete record of my growth.
• It encourages me — both while I’m writing in the present and years later when I read it.

If it can do these things for me, it can also do them for you.  

Perhaps you like the idea of experiencing these benefits but don’t know where to start. It’s not as hard is it might seem. Many people are intimidated by the blank paper (or screen) at first. Don’t be. Here are some ideas for getting starting:

• Remember, NO ONE will be reading this but you and God. And God already knows it all anyway.
• Spelling and proper grammar don’t count. Write in whatever shorthand works for you. (As you mature in journaling, you might want to write more formally so that you will actually be able to understand your notes a year or ten years from now.)
• Start by writing notes about the most mundane things of your day. You’ll be surprised at how easily you’ll slip into your thoughts about those most mundane things. And writing your thoughts and emotions is what journaling is all about.
• Before you quit writing for the day, glance over your notes. Take a minute to ask yourself this question: “Is God trying to teach me anything through these things?” If so, add some more notes to journal.
• Try to journal at least twice a week. Even if you don’t have anything to say. It will teach you to look for what God is doing in your life.

I took a class in grad school on spiritual transformation. One of our assignments was to journal what God was doing in our lives every day. Now I don’t know about you, but my theology says that God is active in my life every day, but my practice is that I really don’t recognize His hand every day. The practice of journaling during that time caused me to focus more specifically on God’s work in my life and the lives of those around me every day. What a blessing!

No, I don’t journal every day now, but I find that the more I journal, the more God is doing in my life…hmmm…I doubt that there’s a connection between journaling and God working in my life. More likely, it’s the connection between journaling and me being able to recognize God working in my life. And seeing God at work builds my faith. It also increases my love for God. Both are very good things!

Try it for a month. It’s addicting!

I am praying through the 2 Peter 1:5-9 passage (Add to your faith goodness, to your goodness knowledge, then self-control, then perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love), taking a different quality each week. (See my blog An Effective Life.) Having gone through the entire list over the past several months, this week I am again praying for faith. As I prayed this morning I was praying simply “Lord, increase my faith.”

Now the truth is I’m running a bit late today and I wasn’t fully engaged in the prayer. I have an employee arriving in 45 minutes and I need to prepare some things for her to do. (That’s my “excuse” today, yesterday it was that I had a very early morning meeting and needed to leave the house by 6am, tomorrow it will be something else…Lord, remove my excuses, make me so hungry (even desperate) for You that You become the “excuse” for not attending to those other things.)

So back to praying on auto pilot this morning. As I prayed “Lord, increase my faith,” a thought appeared in my mind. “In what areas do you want your faith to be increased?” Wow! I’ve been at this long enough to recognize that such thoughts are rarely generated by something within myself, they are usually born of the Spirit. Wow! God is speaking to me. God is asking a question of me. I’m reminded of the passage in Mark 10 in which God asks blind Bartimaeus “what do you want me to do.” It seems totally obvious to everyone what Bartimaeus would want. But God looks at him intently and asks “what do you want me to do for you.” I find it fascinating that God gives us the opportunity to look inside ourselves (if we will take it) by stopping, pausing, and asking us what we really want.

So I am left with the question from the Lord. When hearing from the Lord personally, I am compelled to journal (and now many of those journal entries become a blog). Often I will sit down during our worship time in church to make notes about what God is teaching me. It is so precious, I don’t want to lose it or forget it. I want a record of His Voice to me.

And now today, the question is still left hanging. I realize that I am avoiding the Lord, choosing to not take the time to look inside myself. Instead I am writing about God’s goodness, His willingness to speak to me in the midst of my own haphazard. distracted devotion this morning. Yet God in His goodness interrupts me from stumbling along the path I was going and says “What do you want me to do for you?” I’m so glad He’s the God of interruptions!

This is Sandy, signing off, to visit with God.

“Herod was furious when he learned that the wise men had outwitted him. He sent soldiers to kill all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under, because the wise men had told him the star first appeared to them about two years earlier.”   Matthew 1: 16

I hadn’t realized that the reason Herod killed all the boys under 2 years old was because the wise men hod told him the star first appeared to them about two years earlier. What a planner God is! He put the star in the sky for others to see and take action “about 2 years” before Jesus was born!

It is so easy for us to take the short view of history. But God takes the long view.

Mondays are my busy days. I have a graduate class on Monday nights and have to leave my home office by 3pm to make it on time. I prefer to leave at 2:30. I don’t get back home until nearly midnight. Then I have a 7am business meeting every Tuesday. So before I leave at 3pm I have to have everything I need for my Tuesday morning in a neat pile or briefcase because there’s not a lot of time between midnight Monday and 7am Tuesday. When I look at it in print, that doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it just seems to cramp my time all day on Monday. If anything out of the ordinary comes up (and you know it always does) I feel unable to accomplish all that I “need” to get done before leaving for class.

So this (Monday) morning, I was praying through my daily prayer list (yes, I’m a list person). The list was interrupted by remembering something I needed to do. I decided that stopping the prayer to accomplish the task was more beneficial to my prayer time than trying to remember it while praying or adding it to my list of things to do. I did the task and went back to my prayer time…At which point I almost immediately needed to go to the bathroom. “Nothing like an uninterrupted prayer time,” I thought. (Too much information, you’re probably thinking!)

Can you feel the frustration beginning to set in? Now on any other morning, I wouldn’t be frustrated, it’s just that I know I’m up against this hard deadline of leaving by 3pm. Well, as I walked upstairs to the bathroom, I continued to pray. Somewhere between my desk and the bathroom God whispered in my ear…”Do you think I’ve given you more to do today than I’ve given you time to do it?”

And it hit me. I can approach today with the knowledge that I have a lot to do and seemingly little time to do it, or I can approach the day confident that God has given me all the resources I need to accomplish those things He’s called me to. There’s not really anything on my list today that doesn’t support something He’s called me to. I’m confident of that. So why don’t I just drop my own expectations and the expectations of others and choose to be confident that the God who is sovereign over all things knows what He’s doing and will enable me to accomplish what needs to get done today? I’m choosing that approach today. I’ll probably need to be reminded of it tomorrow and next Monday, but it’s the way I want to live. Trusting that God has my life in control and not stressing about my schedule and my to-do list.

“And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.”
      2 Corinthians 9:8

Today God’s been whispering to me …how many times have I prayed …”make me more like Jesus”…”I want to know You more, Lord”…how could that possibly happen without difficult times in which I can reveal God’s character and qualities? …how could that possibly happen without people treating me in such a way that I must learn, practice and demonstrate patience and forgiveness? …how could that possible happen without facing uncertainty and confusion so that God can show me His faithfulness?

Lord, it’s hard. I don’t want to practice those things. Help me to rejoice in You. Help me to choose to rejoice in You.

Hard things to hear (because I know I haven’t been revealing Christ as much as I’d like to be)…yet I love it when God whispers in my ear.

Thank You, Lord.

So if you read my last entry you’d know that I made an error in formatting of the entries from Dad’s Online Guest Book and that caused me to experience a wave of grief. Well, today we went and had new copies made…and in the process saw that the color laser printer we’ve been considering went down in price $125 from Friday when we printed the wrong version of the Guest Book. So a little bit of time and grief saved us $125 (because yes, we bought the printer). I’m praising God today for the error that gave me a reason to return to the store today.