Why do birds sing? April 28, 2009

Last week, while letting my dog, Lexie, out once more for the night,  I heard a bird singing loudly. It was the only sound other than the sound of the wind blowing lightly through the trees and it was disconcerting. Disconcerting not only because it was late at night, not only because it was the only bird I could hear but because it was an eerie, desperate cry of sorts. I don’t know, maybe I was just being too imaginative for my own good, but it just seemed out of place in general to hear a song bird singing in the darkness rather than the light of day. The sound and the feelings surrounding it have stuck with me in the back of my mind for the week since.

Today in my quiet time I began thinking about it again. So, like every other distracting thought that comes into my head, I jotted it down on the notebook beside me to research later. The question “why would a bird sing at night?”, was repeating in my head over and over. To me, birds are creatures of praise. That is what I think of when I hear them. They just exist and worship, that’s it. Okay, back to my thoughts… birds usually are silent at night…sleeping or whatnot. So I googled the topic and began to read these threads about it. Here are the most common streams of thought.

1. A hungry cat has recently moved into the neighborhood causing the raucous

2. There is too much light in the area

3. Too much noise during the day so they sing at night. (mating calls, communicative singing)

So, here is what I felt drop in my spirit. We as believers are quick to sing our praises during the day, when we can see the light but when the darkness comes, we are often silenced out of fear of the hungry cat (roaring lion, enemy of our souls) or we are so busy during the day that the voice of God is drowned out by the noisiness around us. I know that I tend to withdraw my praises, not intentionally, but it just seems that when life gets really hard and I feel alone, I get quiet in my worship and prayers. It just dwindles until I am left cold, empty and fearful. I want to be like that bird. I want my song to be heard by God and the enemy even in the darkest moments of my life. I want to lift my voice loudly in prayer and praise when I hear the enemy coming. Lord, give me a song in the night, a word of praise during fear. Give me ears to hear in the midst of the storms around me. Help me to stay focused on you!! You are my deliverer, my refuge and my salvation!

sleeping January 8, 2008

Have you ever had a limb fall asleep? Maybe you fell asleep lying on your arm or maybe you sat on your foot for too long. You really don’t notice it…until you try to use it. Then it can seem as if small needles are pricking you from the inside as blood rushes to bring its life back into the slumbering entity. That to me is the most painful part of this whole sleeping limb thing.

There is a part of my spirit that fell asleep long ago. I remember when it happened. I remember choosing to cut the flow of life to that part of me because it was too overwhelming at times. So I chose to pretend it did not exist. I pretended that it was no longer relevant. I chose to ignore who I was created to be!

Recently, my loving Jesus began to bring to mind this sleeping limb. He is calling me to begin using this sleeping part of me. This part that I have buried beneath layers of fear of man and the unknown for so long that it lays dormant within me. The more I try to move, the more painful it becomes as life rushes back into my soul.

This sleeping part of me is one of the spiritual gifts that He imparted to me long ago. I am so broken hearted that I hid from it for so long, but I am so grateful that He loved me enough to wait until I can handle it. I don’t want to have to tell Him one day, that I buried it, No, I want to be a good steward of what He has given me. I want to use it to His glory!

Oh, for more thoughts on stewardship go check out Tam. She just wrote something about the same topic!

Holiness and Compromise October 4, 2007

Here is my promised blog. I have been working the details in my head and in my life. This is the hard copy of the talk I gave to our youth group tonight.

Hope it encourages and challenges you as much as it did me when I was studying for it!

Holiness that hurts the eyes. Holiness in the inward parts, is the fragrance of Christ on our very being. The life of Christ being exhibited in our everyday lives. In this day and age, it is often considered an outdated way of life, not politically correct or maybe intolerant but this is the way we who call ourselves Christians are called to live. We are called to be above reproach. Yes, we are under grace, but that is not an excuse to sin. The grace is there to cover the mistakes that we will make because we are not Jesus. We are mere humans but we are filled with the Holy Spirit of God who lives through us, giving us the ability to live up the challenge!

The first thing that I think we need to look at is pride and humility so that we can get a grasp on an accurate view of both! True humility is seeing yourself as God sees you. Pride obviously is the opposite. It is seeing yourself as either better OR WORSE that God sees you. Low self-esteem, is just pride in drag. Basically it is like saying that you know better than God what worth you really have. You absolutely cannot be a good leader if you are prideful. Pride will lead to ruin every time.

You may be extremely gifted but if you do not have character to match, it’s not of much use to the kingdom of God. Character is who you are when no one else sees. It is your thoughts, motives, attitudes, desires, habits and behaviors. It’s really easy to say all the right things in front of “church friends” but have a heart that is far from God. It’s called hypocrisy.

I want to clarify something. We are not SAVED by works. We are saved by GRACE! However, the bible says that a Christian is known by their love and their fruit! It also says that there will be many people who come before him and say Lord, Lord, I have done many great works in your name, and God will look at them and say depart from me, I never knew you! So it is about being in relationship with Him. Being immersed in Him. Are we so immersed in Christ that it changes the way we live and think?? Someone has to draw a line in the sand and say, even if culture tells me this is how I should live, I must live according to god. So, being saved by grace, does you life look like you are saved by grace??? Do you have godly fruit?

I peter 1:14-18 (the message)
14 So you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then. 15 But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. 16 For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.”
17 And remember that the heavenly Father to whom you pray has no favorites. He will judge or reward you according to what you do. So you must live in reverent fear of him during your time as “foreigners in the land.” 18 For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And the ransom he paid was not mere gold or silver.

God is Holy. In Isaiah 6, when Isaiah saw the glory of God, he fell to the ground and cried out, Woe is me, I am unclean man with unclean lips, I live among unclean people. He was immediately aware of His own sinfulness in the presence of God. Exodus 33:18 Moses asks God to show him His glory. God tells him to hide his face because no man could live if they saw his glory. In the old testament only the high priest entered the Holy place and then only once a year on the day of atonement. Before he entered, a rope was tied around his leg and bells were sown into his clothing. So that if he suddenly died the bells would stop ringing and they other priests could pull him out without violating the law. NO ONE dared approach the Holy Living presence of God with out perfectly fulfilling the law. They would not even write his name. It was too holy. Then when Jesus came in the New testament and fulfilled the law. He became the sacrifice. So the apostles who KNEW the holiness of God‘s law and also knew the grace of the lamb of God.
Now because He already fulfilled the law we can come BOLDLY before him in the holy of holies!!

Let’s look at Pharisees for a minute. Most of the time we think of them as the bad guys, right? Actually they were the conservative, intellectual church leaders who defended the faith as they knew it. All they knew was the law and they had that down pat. The thing that Jesus despised was the pride and the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. We must truly understand that UNTIL WE ARE AWARE OF HOW DEPRAVED AND SINFUL WE REALLY ARE AT OUR CORE WE WILL BE NOTHING BUT A CHRISTIAN PHARISEE. HYPOCRITICAL AND SELF-RIGHTEOUS. Purity begins with our determined refusal to hide from the condition of our heart. From this awareness, will come humility and true holiness. A hypocrite is someone who sees their own private sin and makes excuses for it instead being honest with themselves, God and another safe Christian brother or sister and then allowing God to remove it. Our first step in this process of sanctification is seeing and admitting that we are not as holy as we like to think.

To see accurately how we measure up as a Christian, we must put our life up to the life of Jesus. Do we look like him? Do we live a fully unselfish, Never sinning, always intimately connected to God life?? Do I walk in utter humility? Do I live in complete honesty with myself and others at all times? Do I walk in total forgiveness or do I harbor anger or offense against someone?

We are called to holiness. Holiness means totally devoted or dedicated to God, set aside for his special use and set apart from sin and its influence. The bible teaches that our actions flow from what we have going on in our hearts. Outward sin always begins in our heart. That is why as Christians, we must begin to make a habit of searching our heart. (Read: II Cor. 14:5, Psalms 4:4, Psalms 139:23) Ask God to shine the light of His truth on any darkness in our hearts such as wrong motives, pride, anger, un-forgiveness, jealousy, greed, disobedience, or rebellion gossip, criticism. Remember that ears that listen to gossip and criticism are just as guilty as the one who spoke it. You ears are holy, don’t let them come into agreement with the accuser of the brethren, the father of lies! What are you listening to on tv, radio, conversations? Your eyes are Holy too, what are you putting before them? The bible says that our eyes are the lamp to the rest of the body. What are you looking at when you are on your computer late at night? This is not about condemnation, it is about holiness. We are called to be holy. A holy God lives within us, are we aware of that? The bible says that we will reap what we sow, the things we look at the things we listen to, the things we say will plant seeds in our hearts and out of that we will reap. Are you sowing to the flesh, or the spirit? You are doing one or the other at all times! There is no in between! If you are not feeding on Jesus then you are feeding your flesh! What is our flesh? Your flesh is EVERYTHING you think and feel that is not a result of the will of God and His word in you. Holiness is not what you DO it is a product of What you are BEHOLDING. Holiness is abstaining from Idolatry which is putting anything above Christ.. Even if it is a ministry, or a style of worship or what you feel that God has called you to do.

God calls us to be holy because He is holy. Out of respect, out of gratefulness because he saved us. In the old testament he told his people to be holy, to come out from among them and be separate, because he is the lord their God who brought them out of Egypt. Egypt was a place of bondage due to the disobedience of the Israelites. They refused to destroy their idols and God in his love for them allowed them to go into slavery so they could recognize their need for a deliverer! Today, Egypt can be a picture of whatever holds us In bondage. Sin, lust, greed, pride, busyness, partying, drinking, music, hobbies, tv, our cell-phones, our friends, video games, computers, anything that takes precedence over our relationship with God. What dominates our time, what we feel we cannot live without. Maybe it is friendships, or what people think about us that we worry about.

We must remember that it is not about performing good deeds to earn the favor and grace of God! The good works will naturally come from your life when you are in constant relationship with Christ because you will be exhibiting the life of Christ in you!

Dancing and dependency August 17, 2007

When God starts to teach me something, he usually does it by giving me all these different pieces from different places that all sort of mesh into a truth He wants me to get. I am hard headed so I guess it takes telling me the same thing over and over in different ways until I “get it”. So this is one of those times that I am hearing this message all over the place.

Last month Jesus was asking me this question: Who do you say that I am?
This month the question is a bit deeper and has multiplied but still in the same vein. Here it is: Do you love me? And if so, Do you want more of Jesus in your life? As any “good Christian girl” my knee jerk response is a somewhat offended and very quick “YES! Absolutely!” But he asked it again… in the following manner.
If you love me then answer these questions:
What made me happy this week? Was it an hour alone with Jesus Was it a new outfit? Was it hanging out with my visible friends?? Was it a stolen moment in His presence?

If I am truly hungry for more of Jesus, do I crave alone time with Him? DO I carve out time just to be in his presence?
Do I talk to him about seemingly trivial things throughout the day? Am I in a relationship with Him or am I in the business of Christianity?

See, I am in the ministry. I am a mother and I work alongside my husband who is a youth minister. I would not have it any other way. I love it. I love seeing God move and I love being on the front lines of His movement. But the tendency is always there lurking in the background to let it become a job. Something that God “needs” me to do. My calling becomes my occupation. Ridiculous I know. The danger for most Christians, particularly those who are actively engaged in ministry, is to know more about God than to Know HIM!

I love Oswald Chamber! This is how he put it;
It is possible to know all about doctrine and still not know Jesus. A person’s soul is in grave danger when the knowledge of doctrine surpasses Jesus, avoiding intimate touch with Him. Why was Mary weeping? (at Jesus’ tomb) Doctrine meant no more to her than the grass under her feet. In fact any Pharisee could have made a fool of her doctrinally, but the thing they could never ridicule was the fact that Jesus had cast seven demons out of her. Yet His blessings were nothing to her in comparison to knowing Jesus, himself.

Think about the apostles. They walked with him. They ate with him. They knew him and he knew them. If it had been merely doctrine that they had knowledge of, do you think that would have sustained them when Persecution came after Jesus’ death? No, they had to have something more to sustain them.

For me, in my personal relationship with Jesus, I constantly pray, asking Him To keep me from becoming numb. To keep me in awe of him. I never want to be in the place that my own belief and my own opinion gets in the way of Him. Do I hunger enough for Him that I don’t care if he busts right through my denominational wall or do I have Him and the way He moves figured out? I heard someone say recently that if the Holy Spirit packed up and left the church today, most of us would not even realize it. This just grieved my heart.

For those of you who know how to ballroom dance, think about this. When you are dancing with a man, you let him lead (ideally lol) You have to be tuned in to where he is moving or you will get out of step. I want Jesus to keep me in a place of such dependency that I MUST keep my eyes on Him or I will lose my step. I must seek his face so that I know where He is leading. I need to feel His hand on the small of my back guiding me. I want to dance with him.
In Exodus, 40:34-38 is an amazing example of this. It says that a cloud came and covered the tabernacle and the glory of the Lord filled it. …. Whenever the cloud lifted and Moved the people of Israel journeyed onward, following it. But if the cloud stayed, they stayed until it moved again. The cloud rested upon the tabernacle during the daytime and at night there was fire in the cloud so that the people could . see it.
I want to be that dependent on his presence. Oh Jesus, keep me dependent on you.