“Since he did not spare even his own son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? Who dares accuse whom God has chosen for his own? No one-for God himself has given us right standing with himself.”

–Romans 8:32-33

 

When Romans 8 transitions from the defeat of the previous chapter to “no condemnation,” it is not just a no condemnation because we’ve swept it under the rug and agreed to forget about it.

It is the type of no condemnation that carries no more shame toward the past, that stands tall and openly exclaims,

“I was defeated, but I am not defeated anymore! That is all paid in full now, and I am destined to become like the Son of God Himself, so bring it! Who dares accuse me?? I am his chosen and I have nothing to hide. Every sin you could find only points out all the more how beautiful he is. Every threat shrinks away from his power.

I am not afraid of you.

I am not ashamed of me.

I am not defined by who I was,

and no one dares accuse who I am now:

Daughter of the King. Just in his sight. Becoming like his Son. His own. His favored. His protected one.”

It is only when I allow myself to be distracted with what once was that I start to believe that is how things are now. And so, when I look at myself and start to feel defeated, I must remember that the question, “Who dares accuse whom God has chosen for his own?” goes for me, too.

“For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart and knows all things.”

–1 John 3:30

I must learn to tear my eyes from the accusations. From my own. From anyone else’s. They do not agree with him. And perfect was never the goal for right now. It’s just what I’m headed towards.

“…I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No…I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on…”

–Philippians 3:12-14

 

Lord-

Let this be my one focus as well:

Ahead. Ahead. Ahead.

Onward. Forward. Into the fray. Up the mountain. Onto the water. Through the storm. This is a new moment, and my past does not come with me into it unless I drag it there.

Shameless, I can lean into the sea-spray with clear eyes and great expectations of how the God who favors me against all odds will meet me there.

Ahead. Ahead. Ahead.

Free of fear that He will not help me. Free of the doubt over whether I have what it takes. He is making me like his Son, and I will press hard after it, grinning and unburdened by the cares and failures of yesterday.

You have so much waiting for me, Lord, so help me stay my gaze

Ahead. Ahead. Ahead.

 

 

 

 

 

“So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws and it never will…you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, ‘Abba, Father.’ “

–Romans 8:6-7, 15

“For God did not give us a spirit of timidity or cowardice or fear, but [He has give us a spirit] of power and of love and sound judgment and personal discipline [abilities that result in a calm, well-balanced mind and self-control].”

–2 Timothy 1:7

 

Fear is not gentle.

Cowardice does not equal Self-Control.

Power does not need to threaten.

True strength is not fueled by anger.

With urgency, dark emotions cry for action, scream for justice, demand that I give in to them. But they are hostile toward you, Lord. They do not please you and they do not produce good, no matter what good reasons they claim.

Two mindsets. Two spirits. Choice after choice, minute after minute. I let one or the other take my mind.

If I am worried, fearful, angry and self-preserving, I know that my mind is not led by the Spirit who makes heroes, by the God who speaks truth softly in mountain caves after wind and firestorms and earthquakes. (1 Kings 19:11-13)

But it can be.

It is always mine to choose who I will follow, what will be the atmosphere of my heart. I do not have to continue thinking about what agitates or scares me, no matter how pressing it seems, no matter how persistently my inner hostility screams for it. I do not have to settle for impostors of gentleness, of courage, of strength.

The spirit I have been given does not make me a fearful slave. He leads to calm reckoning, sound judgment, stillness in storms.

And I can choose this day to follow Him instead.

“They don’t know where to find peace. They have no fear of God at all.”

–Romans 3:17-18

This is the conclusion to the passage that begins with “No one is righteous-not even one…all have turned away.” (v 10-12)

When we turn from You, it is not just You we leave behind, but all that You provide for those who follow, those who trust: wisdom, direction, unreserved joy, unshakeable peace.

And when we leave You behind, we do not know where to find it again. Take away the fear of You and all sorts of other fears rush in.

Peace is not to be found.

But if I choose to still those other fears and make You the highest, to regard You more than any other factor that seeks to direct my life, a great calm settles over all the frantic questions, all the persistent worries, all the silent dread.

Thoreau said this: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, and go to their graves with the song…”

I think it’s because we don’t know where to find peace. I forget all the time. I grasp for it in all the wrong places.

Is it at the end of this to do list?

Is it past all the errands?

Is it waiting behind my next goal, my next step, my next project?

Is it just beyond my reach because something terrifying stands between us?

It is strangely elusive, especially when I am consumed with worry and most desperate for it.

But it is found in fearing You, in returning to this sacred place, these quiet halls, where I shut out the other noise and seek to hear one still, small voice. Where I shut out the other demands and remember that one thing is needed. Where I turn my eyes from all that threatens, all that warns I am sure to fail, and choose instead to see who You are and what You have done.

When I allow You to become bigger in my thinking than all the things that gnaw away at me inside, the ache and the racing thoughts and the torment of my heart stops and I am here. And so is peace. So is the calm.

I could not find my way to it by digging and analyzing and wrestling for answers to settle my problems. Peace is not found at the end of problems, but in the midst of them.

And that is why I often don’t know where to find it. Because it seems like a thing I can only have once THIS is out of the way. So I don’t look. I see peace as a hard-earned treasure I reach only at the end, not as the warrior who guards my heart all along the way.

“…Tell God what you need, and thank Him for all He has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Jesus Christ.”

–Philippians 4:6-7

Peace is not something I have once I settle my heart, my mind. It is Your gift for hearts and minds that are unsure, unsettled, with unsolved problems and unresolved fears.

Peace is what You give when I say, “I’m deeply bothered and I don’t have answers for this, but I trust You , so please help me!”

We don’t know where to find peace because it’s not something we work our way to or fashion for ourselves; it is a gift that only comes from one source, and only when we have stopped trying to solve our own problems and come to Him for help.

“So when the natives saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another: ‘No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he has escaped the sea, yet justice does not allow him to live.’ But he shook off the creature into the fire and suffered no harm.”

–Acts 28:4-5

 

How quickly I assume I can attach meaning to the events that unfold around me. How easily I decide ‘I know what this means.’ How strongly I believe I can piece together their purpose, their significance, if I only think about it long enough and hard enough. How important it seems to make sense of things.

But the natives of Malta were wrong.

Being bit by a snake apparently does not always mean you are a murderer. And often, as satisfied as I feel when I think I have nailed down the meaning of things…I am wrong, too.

It makes me wonder as I think back through the years to all the meaning and significance I found learning to be independent and single. I grew deeper in my relationship with you, Lord, and that was good! But what other conclusions did I come away with?

When we are dumped or bitten by a snake, we feel we have to know why. But many of the why’s I came up with were wrong.

I don’t need anyone.

I’m better off undistracted.

I’m not marriage material.

Anyone else I get close to will just decide they don’t want me either.

Men can’t be trusted.

Better to invest in “safe” relationships.

I have a purpose I  must fulfill alone.

One after the other, they roll off my pen: assumptions. Some I’ve never even thought to challenge. Until I teasingly (but semi-seriously) asked another pilot wife the other day how she felt about her “role or lack thereof.”

She glowed. She told me how important she thought her husband’s training was; how proud she was of him; how proud she was to be able to help.  She said her struggle was finding too much of her identity in her husband and his calling, not feeling like she didn’t fit into it.

And so I started trying to understand why this has been harder for me. I, too, once felt that desire to be part of man’s life, wherever he went, whatever he did; just desperate to be with him.

But the snakebite stung and I tried to figure out why, and slowly, I decided it had been stupid to feel that way.

I reasoned that it had been short-sighted to limit my goals and my purpose to joining a man and having a family. I sorted out that my pain must have been my own fault, because I had let myself need him so badly; and I determined that I would never put myself in that position again. I would forge my own calling. I could not have a husband and a family, so I would just have to figure something else out that was equally as meaningful; something that being dumped couldn’t take away.

Damage was done when my heart was dangled and dropped off a cliff that day. But more damage was done when I obsessed with understanding why.

Paul could have heard the native’s concerns and become paranoid that he was going to die and gone into all sorts of ruin, just when he had become such a voice of hope to the crew. But he shook the snake off into the fire and no harm came to him. He did not worry, and he did not need to.

Sometimes, you get bit just because there’s a snake there, not because the universe is dealing out justice. But you do harm when you interpret things that way, especially to your own heart.

I am a native of Malta, and I have tried to make sense of things when it would have been better to just trust you; to decide I didn’t have to establish a reason, I could just ask for help getting through it.

“The Lord directs our steps, so why try to understand everything along the way?”

–Proverbs 20:24

“How unsearchable His judgments and His paths beyond tracing out. Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor?”

–Romans 11:33-34

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”

–John 16:12

So here I am, seven years later, recognizing that part of my ongoing struggle is that, in learning to be part of someone else’s calling, I was feeling that I had lost mine. But if I could go back seven years, to the girl that was desperate to fall in love, to marry, to belong to someone, to follow him anywhere, to be loved and cherished and wanted, and begged for someone who would see her that way…I might realize I have not lost my calling.

I do not have to scrape out my own niche or defend that I have some separate, equally important purpose. Together, you have led us. Together we are here, and this calling belongs to us both.

An old calling I stuffed away has resurfaced and it can hold all the passion and purpose I thought I had finally reclaimed in singlehood, if I let it.

If I will decide it is not bad to need. It is not bad to trust. It is not bad to risk.

It is not even bad to hurt. It is evidence of life, of growth, of stepping out.

Hurt is part of passion;  but so is thrill, so is hope. I can’t have the high points without risking pain. But you have made it so that pain does not end us. It only shapes us; and it can shape us for the better if we put it in your hands and find meaning in you-instead of trying to translate all the details of an impossibly complicated universe, and chasing a desperation that says I must understand them all to be okay.

Lord-

I don’t understand all the “why’s.” But I can trust you. I can trust that in your hands, what I have gone through is not for nothing.

I can shake off the snake, blink through the smart of the snake bite, refuse to worry about why, and walk forward. Following, watching you, deciding I don’t have to conduct a side investigation where I figure out everything on my own; that it is okay not to have the answers sometimes.

Content with some mystery, because whatever you’re doing,

it’s good.

 

This change of plans greatly upset Jonah, and he became very angry. So he complained to the Lord about it: ‘Didn’t I say before I left home that You would do this, Lord? That’s why I ran away to Tarshish! I knew that You are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. You are eager to turn back from destroying people. Just kill me now, Lord, I’d rather be dead than alive if what I predicted will not happen.’ The Lord replied, ‘Is it right for you to be angry about this?’ “

–Jonah 4:1-4

Jonah didn’t answer. Instead, he built a shelter so he could watch and see if maybe You would still destroy the city. Livid that what he predicted might not come to pass; sore that Your mercy might damage his reputation; determined to be proven right.

Jonah didn’t answer You. So You sent a plant, then a worm, then You asked him again:

“Is it right for you to be angry?”

And you pointed out how crooked Jonah had allowed his heart to become: angry over the death of a plant, but looking forward to the deaths of 120,000 people.

“Is it right for you to be angry?”

More of my time should be spent on this question, not on, “Is it right for them to treat me this way? Is it right for me to have to go through this?” Those questions only frustrate me further. You have allowed me to go through this. Rather, I should give my hurt and my anger to You, ask You to help me with this ruffled heart of mine, and teach me to trust You through it.

But I am Jonah.

You love them and they need You, I get it.

But I do not feel structurally sound enough to be around someone who constantly makes me feel inferior and humiliated.

It makes me want to run.

I am Jonah.

You  have said to go to Nineveh, to speak to Nineveh, and I am DONE with Nineveh before I even start. I do not like Nineveh. I do not care what happens to Nineveh. I haven’t booked a cruise to the opposite side of the sea yet, but I’m definitely in a sit-on-the-cliff-above-them-and-watch-them-burn mood.

And I would probably have it out with You if you let my shade plant die in the process.

Lord…soften my heart.

I am Jonah.

And Jonah was wrong.

Help me to love Nineveh instead of counting up all their offenses to feed my anger.

You are broken for Nineveh, and I just want them out of my life, out of my way. You are broken for Nineveh, and I am angry and offended at them. Your heart is to rescue Nineveh; mine is to avoid them at all costs.

And You must change my heart before You change theirs, because Your heart is also to use me.

 

Lord-

I am sorry I give so little mercy before I grow angry. I am so focused on myself, I see very little of what might drive the hurtful words that come from Nineveh. Hurt drives hurtful words, but I don’t see their hurt; I see mine.

I don’t see 120 hours of chances to care for them and point them to a God whose heart is set on their rescue, not their judgment. I see a massive amount of time I have to survive with them before I can be around someone I like.

Change my heart, Lord. It is seething.

So livid at whatever stands in the way of its own happiness, it does not even see that I have started to worship my own comfort and shut out the heart of the God who rescued me.

 

/So I shall call her Nineveh, and I won’t run away.

Though it takes all I have, Lord, I am here to stay./

 

For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps…who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously.

–1 Peter 2:21, 23

 

 

¹⁸ Many of those who had become believers were coming… ¹⁹ And many of those who had practiced magical arts collected their books and [throwing book after book on the pile] began burning them in front of everyone. They calculated their value and found it to be 50,000 pieces of silver.

 

They did not just decide that Your power was superior.

They decided it that Your power was all they needed. They disregarded what it cost and burned the back-up plan. That is very different than adding You to a collection of strategies to make life work.

You make life work. That’s it. There is nothing to add to be better equipped for what’s ahead.

If I have You, I have enough. If I don’t have You, everything else I might try is worthless, so there’s no point in toting them along, “just in case.” My idols never help me, and when I continue protecting their place in my life, I only confuse my heart’s interpretation of the events that unfold before me.

Did God answer? Or was it because I prepared so well? Maybe because I didn’t jinx it by saying it out loud too soon? All of the above?

I see why You trimmed Gideon’s army down to 300. It is easy to start parceling out the credit when I spread my dependence across several things.

Best to cut away all else I depend on so I will recognize what really made the difference.

What is my magic book? What do I revert to, hold on tight to, struggle to leave behind in those really challenging situations?

What is my “just in case?”

Isn’t it just anything, (even good things?), that I manipulate to try to control how life turns out?

Over-Studying?

Detailed planning?

Intricate preparation?

Meticulous budgeting?

Hoarded savings?

Flattery?

Charm?

People-pleasing?

Let me, like the Ephesians, burn what I bring to the table and depend only on You, throwing book after book on the pile until You are all I have left.

You are worth all that it costs.

Magic books are back up plans for if You fail me; tools for if I’m left to figure this out on my own. I don’t need them. Continuing to make space for them is like saving room on the shelf for poison. It punctures the watertight seal of trust and allows a black thought to seep in:

You might not take care of me and I had better have a plan for what to do when You don’t show up.

Letting the lie linger twists my heart to render You with suspicion. It tempts me to give up early and try something else, when it would have been so worth waiting!

Magic books are suggestions that You can’t be completely trusted, and I should burn them.

They have no place in a life held by Your promises.

“If you are the Christ, tell us.”

But He said to them, “If I tell you, you will by no means believe. And if I also ask you, you will by no means answer me or let me go. Hereafter, the Son of Man will sit on the right hand of the power of God.”

Then they all said, “Are You then the Son of God?”

So He said to them, “You say rightly that I am.”

–Luke 22:67-70

 

Sometimes, people ask a question when they’re not really seeking truth. When they think they know and are only asking to see if someone agrees with them or not. They are loaded questions that will unleash a pre-determined response upon the One who answers.

Leaders of men looked down on God Himself that day and asked this sort of question.

He gave them the dignity of an honest answer, but not before He called them out on what they were doing, and reminded them who was really in charge:

You have already decided what you’re going to do. You have already decided that what I say won’t make a difference. So you will go through with your mock justice,

but after this, I will take my rightful place in power.

And that is kind of the sum of things. You have shown Yourself to us. We face eternal wisdom, and half of our interaction with You is just trying to get You to agree with us, to do what we say. It is not trying to learn, not trying to understand, but trying to enforce our will.

You see through to the heart of our questions. You know who is trying to understand and who is just trying to get their way. How few even see that they are speaking to the One in the place of the highest power?

 

Powerful One-

Teach me to come to You open, and ask questions that are actually asking.

You know better than I do. Yet, how often do my questions just push for You to agree with me? How rarely do they depart my mouth bearing true openness to whatever You answer?

Do I approach You assuming that I know what You will say, that I can guess how You will proceed? When did my concept of You become so simple? When did I start believing I can predict what You will do, what You will want?

You allow us to think what we choose, but we so quickly decide that our thoughts don’t need guidance.

Mine do.

Help me to trust who You are, to believe what You say. Even when it does not line up with what I understand. If I am to be open toward something, help me to be open toward anything and everything You say. To discern what is truly from You, but then, to hear what You say for what it is and adjust my reality to line up with it, not the other way around.

When what You say doesn’t seem to make sense, help me remember WHO it is coming from: the One who stood against the entire administration of Israel, died at the hands of Rome, denied Death its own authority to hold Him there, and sat at the right hand of the power of God, just like He said He would in answer to a question that wasn’t really asking.

Two of those don’t even fit into my realm of reference. Facing human authorities I can picture, but winning against death…after You died? What does sitting at the hand of power even mean?

So when what You say makes me question, help me remember that it’s coming from past my realm of reference…and the source has proven itself very, very trustworthy.

 

“Therefore settle it in your hearts not to meditate beforehand on what you will answer. For I will give you a mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries will not be able to contradict or resist.”

-Luke 21:14-15

How opposite from my thinking.

From my society, where it is responsible and good to analyze and over-analyze every word you say and prepare your speeches in detail and plan for every possible outcome. Yet this verse offers a challenge:

Don’t plan.

Don’t prepare.

Don’t think ahead.

For once, just be where I am and trust Him to give me what I need when the time comes. Settle it now, that this does not and will not depend on me. Get my heart to a place that I am okay with that; that I am ready to step forward, watching, waiting for my God to come to the rescue; placing myself totally at His mercy; banking on His faithfulness by refusing to build a back-up plan for if He doesn’t come through.

Let this be my preparation rather than crafting clever words for a situation I haven’t even seen yet.

There are times where planning is appropriate and good. But there is never an appropriate time to plan for His failure.

He never fails. And that means He will never fail me.

 

Lord-

Help me to check my heart: is it preparing to depend on You? Or is it preparing itself to not need You, just in case?

The latter is a poisonous thought that sends me spinning into countless anxieties. It feeds the conviction that I must prepare for and manage anything and everything possible in order to guarantee a certain outcome . When you strip it down, this very responsible-looking mindset is really just a decision to live in fear.

It is the tragedy I become when I have set aside the precious promise that You will take care of me.

But You will take care of me. Whether I believe it or not. So how will I prepare my heart?

Will I train it to gaze bravely ahead because help is coming?

Or to constantly scan, warily check over my shoulder, furtively glance and jump at every shadow because I’m never sure that I’m safe; never sure that I have accounted for everything; always haunted by the nagging suspicion that I have missed something vital and this will all fall apart.

I have lived too much of my life this way.

So, Lord, in all my preparations, let the most important one be the settling of my own heart.

I can scrap any just-in-case plans for if You don’t help me. Those are a waste of time and energy.

“Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him;
I will set him on high, because he has known My name.
He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble;
I will deliver him and honor him.”

–Psalm 91:14-15

“So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be my disciple.”

–Luke 14:33

This is not the kind of journey where you bring your most treasured possessions along. This is the kind where you look at them long and hard and decide, “I don’t treasure these anymore…I treasure the One I follow.”

I can spend my whole life in a hobbit hole making sure the doilies are straightened, the shelves are dusted, and the pantry is in order; loving and pouring my life into stuff. Or, I can fling open the door and race down the path after You, knowing that I may never see what seemed so important again, and as I let it fall behind me, exclaim,

“I’m going on an adventure!”

Lord-

Help nothing that I have grow in my affection to where it has my heart. Not my job, not my savings, not my plans, not my relationships, not my reputation, not my pleasures.

Help me to weed away misplaced dependence. Affection is fine, but it has a darker twin that slips into its stead: need. Where appreciation becomes demand. Where ‘I’m delighted to have this!’ becomes ‘I HAVE to have it!’

Guard my heart from these subtle shifts and teach it to worship You alone.

Thank you for bringing me this far. Thank you that I can look ahead, with clear eyes and steady breaths, knowing that whatever is out there, You will walk through it with me. So help me learn to cling to You, steady, fearless One, not to things which can so easily be lost.