An Awesome Place

In that day, the Lord will rescue his people. They will sparkle in his land like jewels in a crown. How wonderful and beautiful they'll be! Zechariah 9

     

     While looking through recent emails this morning, I came across one from a dear friend, dated July 1st. On that day I had been in the physical let-down from my intensive class, but also facing some other big challenges I can't share about at length here right now--I'm about to catch a plane to Los Angeles to visit my parents and family there. 

     All I can say is that very day, as my friend was praying for me, encouraging me, God was behind the scenes working to arrange wonderful, unexpected answers for my problems.  I'll share more about this in the future, as I'm able, but I write this to encourage you, dear reader.  

     God is doing this for you as well.  When you are beaten down and discouraged, and all around you looks bleak, remember that our Lord is working behind the scenes in your life to bring you out. Perhaps this is not the ultimate rescue, but it might be a resting place, an oasis.  That can make all the difference in a desert, can't it? 

     God was with Jacob as he laid his head on the rock for a pillow in his desert and then dreamed of angels on a ladder going into heaven.  That same God is with you in yours.  Like Jacob, we can say the Lord is with us, even when we don't realize it.  How awesome is it with HIM here!        
     And a hint  about what makes it awesome: not us, not the surroundings. The Eternal Lord God who was with Jacob, and who is with you and with me. 
     The great I AM. Not I WAS or I WILL BE.  I AM. I have to let go of my past and not fret about my future, and stay NOW, where God is. Forever. 

“Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it…How awesome is this place!” Jacob, Genesis 28

It's all about hope

     This week, God was kind enough to give me a slow week to recover from the intensive class taken in the month of June.  Any time you’ve poured out a large amount of adrenaline, you can expect to have a corresponding dip until your supplies re-charge.  That’s the academic theory. See the wonderful book by Archibald Hart, entitled Adrenaline and Stress.  Of course, all the theory all goes out the window when it’s about you, doesn’t it? 

     I forgot that’s what was happening, and wondered why I was feeling wrung-out and depressed, and hopeless—that last one I don’t remember feeling for a very long time, and it was truly unsettling.  For awhile I prayed for help in that awful, helpless, terrifying condition.  I turned to God’s word, but felt a distance between us. Please, Lord, show me, help me, we’ve always been so close, even in the worst times.

     Then, finally, he opened my eyes and heart again to see what was going on.  In my vulnerable state, I was having a crisis of confidence, and forgetting that hope is not an emotion in God’s terms.  Just because my confidence in myself flagged this week, it was still rock solid in HIM.

     As I see it throughout the Bible, hope is confident trust that what has been promised will be fulfilled.  This trust includes looking forward with pleasure to that fulfillment. 

     He's the only one who deserves my confidence.  He has proven his faithfulness again and again. The more I take my eyes off myself and fix them back on him and the future he holds for me, the more I remember the abiding trust I have in him.  

     He has never let me down. He is the joy-bringer to my soul in the parched and weary land. He is I AM with me now, in my pain, bringing me through every part of it. Praise his Name!

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Romans 15:13  

Courage in hope

You will have courage because you will have hope. You will take your time, and rest in safety. You will lie down unafraid and many will look to you for help. 

Job 11:18,19

Take your time and rest in safety for a few minutes to re-consider these promises.  Move in and take a vacation for awhile.


 In context, these words were spoken by one of Job's friends who ended up not understanding the grand cosmic picture of what was happening with Job.  That makes some people discount them.  Yet they were absolutely true for Job, and they are true for you. People have looked to him for hope and help in their despair ever since his story was written.


You will have courage because you will have hope. It's so easy to forget that hope is not an emotion.  Praise God! We all know how our emotions get bounced around by the events of our lives, even for those of us who have been believers a long time.


Most of you reading this know that hope is confidence and trust that what was promised to us is on its way. Our daily lives, however, can dim that confidence, or distract us. We only have that trust if we remember Who made the promise, and that we really can rely on him.  God is not only the giver of hope, he is our hope.  It's too easy to forget him when we get overwhelmed or overloaded.


What we hope for is what we live for.  Are you hoping for less than you used to, because you're afraid to trust for more?  Has your hope eroded--even a little--from recent events in your life?  You can lose your hope all at once or so slowly you didn't even realize it was inching away. 


Or, worse, we can take our hope for granted. We can live our lives the same way, not treasuring the hope we have, that Jesus paid such a high price to give us.  At this Easter time, how dare we forget the price he paid.


I'm reminded of a recent post, "The Source of Our Confidence," taken from Hebrews 6.  I recently re-read the passage in light of this topic of hope. Here is Hebrews 6:17-19a:


Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged. We may have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. 


Why not take the elements of the verses from Job and Hebrews and pray one or more of them back to God?  Sure, these are basic, but so is oxygen.

• Thank you, Lord, for the hope you have given me through your Son, and put into my heart and life, even when I'm not feeling it.
• Help me to act with your courage and boldness in your strength, to your glory.
• Show me how to slow down and take my time with you and your word.  
• Help me realize I can rest in safety when I'm resting in you.
• Take away my fears and fill me with your Spirit.
• Let me be someone who can help others; let me tell them how you brought me through this.

O God our help in ages past, our help in days to come. 
Our shelter in the stormy blast, and our eternal home.

Sparkle plenty

When that day arrives, the Lord their God will rescue his people, just as a shepherd rescues his sheep. They will sparkle in his land like jewels in a crown. How wonderful and beautiful they will be!

Zechariah 9:16, 17 a

Ready to sparkle? Ready to shine? God's rescue is coming, in his time and in his way. Hold onto this hope, because:

1. Hope gives you something to keep living for.
2. You'll be watching for his rescue.  --And, if you are one in ten,
3. You'll give him thanks afterward, knowing he's the Rescuer.

Sometimes, there is truth in silliness.

Have you heard the old joke about the woman who waited so long for her ship to come in that her pier collapsed?  Why would a pier collapse, anyway? Because she didn't maintain it, and she let it get run-down.  Don't ever stop maintaining your faith, your relationship with God. Don't let your expectations of God's greatness on your behalf get lower as time goes by.

There's another joke about the man who said, "When my ship finally came in, I was at the airport!"  We have to make sure we're at the right place for God to work in our lives. Where would that be?  At his side, in his presence, trusting him to bring us out of our current trouble and make us sparkle like a jewel in his crown.

Keep your expectations fresh and polished in the hope of his deliverance, because the God who spoke the universe into being is coming to rescue you. How wonderful and beautiful you will be!

Watching God at work

Our family has been passing through a place of the deep waters mentioned in Isaiah 43. It seemed like all of us were suffering in  very different, terribly hard ways.

Some of the suffering is still going on, but we are beginning to see changes for the good, beginning to see God bringing us out at the other side of the river.

Of course God has been with us through the depths.  His Spirit has been comforting our aching hearts and wiping our tears, translating  prayers that we couldn't even speak in our agony.

I always have hope in our faithful God. I've learned to trust him over the years. He's working now, changing these circumstances, bringing us out of these deep waters and the fire in his time. Praise his Name!

When you go through deep waters and deep trouble, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown.When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up--the flames will not consume you.

Isaiah 43:2

When you think there is no plan

This past week was a tough one, and I let myself fall into the slime far more than was fun. How wonderful to feel God's restoration every time I remembered to turn back to his word, or heard encouragement from a friend.

You may be looking at chaos in your own life, and you may not see a plan at work right now--or at least not one you like. Our hearts long to make sense out of the disorder in our lives, for life to be fair and right.  In spite of everything, life is frequently messy and unfair, no matter how hard we try to control it.

But our God does have a plan, and no matter how things look at the moment, this is a part of the larger picture.

In 1931, my grandfather, Clifford Clinton, had a wife and three young children. He had just been fired from his own father's business by two men who should have had no right to fire him. Clifford had a vision, however. He felt called to run a cafeteria based on the principles of the Golden Rule. He also believed he could honor God by feeding people in need and running an honest business.

Clifford spent many years of his childhood seeing starvation in China, in the beginning of the twentieth century, and he was never the same. He resolved to fight it any way he could, including through his business. But here he was, in the height of the Depression, surrounded by hungry and unemployed people.

His policy was never to turn away a customer who could not pay for a meal. He trusted that God would somehow provide for him and his employees.

My grandfather later wrote letters, remembering those hard times, which our family has kept. As I read them, he talked about turning to God for direction, and seeing God's hand at work to bring in supplies at reduced cost, and miraculous provisions to keep his business running.  One of his early customers was a bankruptcy judge who told him he'd expected to see him within the first year!

While Clifford did not make any cash profit in his early years, he was able to keep his doors open, pay his employees, and provide four million meals for people who could not pay.

Remember Who holds your future, and Who guides your plan, no matter how today looks.

"For I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord. "They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope."

Jeremiah 29:11

Don't give up

Last week, my program gave us four quizzes, and next week brings two midterms and another quiz. These are stressful times.  A new career depends on passing these classes.  Pressure. 

You have pressures in your life, just as large for you as mine are to me. I recently re-read  something I wrote several years ago that helps put the quizzes into perspective. Skip to the last paragraph if you don't have the time to read it all.


God rescued me from the grave, and now my life is filled with light. Job 33:28

I have been there. I know what the darkness of despair feels like, so when I talk about being filled with the light of God, I'm not a chirpy Pollyanna who never had a problem. Hang on, dear one, because God has a plan for you, and the plan is for good.

God reached into the grave and pulled me out, more than once. Perhaps the most dramatic was when I drove a babysitter home late one night. On the way back from walking her to the front door, a large man jumped out of the darkness and held a knife to my throat, trapping me in the wedge of my open car door. I could feel the metal blade. I looked into his eyes, and they were filled with hate.  He said something. Years later, the exact words came echoing back in my ears. The essence was that he had caught me, and he could do whatever he wanted to me.

I knew there was no one on earth who could help me, and it was completely instinct in me that called out loud, "Jesus."

In a second, the man's face changed: his eyes became confused, as if I'd struck him in the head. He looked into my car, grabbed my purse, and ran off. This was a time before cell phones, so I ran up into the babysitter's apartment and called the police. They wouldn't even take an incident report, because the crime rate in that area was so high, and I couldn't identify the man.

My rational mind knew that he was not in my car, but I couldn't think straight. All the way home I was certain that somehow he was still in the car, or following me. Not until I was in my own house did the nightmare remotely seem over.

Yes, the Lord delivered me that night, and I still praise him for the deliverance. But God allowed me to have enough of that horror to know what it is to drive home alone in the station wagon, knowing that my robber now had my wallet and he knew where my family--my little daughters--lived.

I would still awaken in the middle of other nights in a cold sweat, re-living the terror of being absolutely without power in the presence of another person who wanted to do me harm. It took a long time to recover, and I still over-react if I'm startled (my husband has learned I don't mean to gasp if I don't hear him coming up from behind me--some things are burned too deeply into PTSD brains).  Because of that experience, I was able to work for 20 years in the field of Post-Traumatic Stress and Sexual Trauma recovery. God was able to take my experience and multiply it to help others. 2 Corinthians 1:4"Who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort others with the comfort we ourselves have received from God."

And I can tell you truly that the light is much more dazzling after you have been without it; hope is the sweetest when you thought you'd never taste it again. There were times when I didn't think I could keep on going, days of defeat and interrupted nights. 

I pray God will send you a glimmer of the good to come this very day.  In the meantime, hold on until there are more of them. They will come. God has promised them, and he can be trusted.

God's presence is with you NOW

When you go through deep waters and great trouble, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown! When you walk through fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you. Isaiah 43:2

When my first child, Elizabeth Joy, died less than an hour after her birth, I was suddenly in the deepest water I'd experienced until that time. For better or worse, I've had to pass through other kinds of deep water in the 30-something years since. But as a naive young woman, I had no idea that premature labor could happen to me, or that a labor could end without a baby to take home from the hospital.

Nothing can prepare you for some kinds of pain, but God made me the same promise he makes YOU now, in your deep waters:

1. You will go through suffering as well as joy in your life--notice it says "When...";
2. He will be with you through every part of it; --and--
3. No matter how painful it is, the intensity will pass, and your life will get easier.

But you are only passing through the deep waters, and walking through the fire of oppression. You are not there forever. Take your hope in God's deliverance.

Life comes in stages. If it is wonderful, it will come to an end at some point. Sorry! To paraphrase Dr. Seuss: Don't grieve that when it's over; rejoice for as long as you have it. Celebrate and recognize the good times, but realize that they cannot last, until you reach heaven.

The good news is, if you're going through a tough stretch, it will also ease up in time. When tragedy ransacks your life, you will eventually come out again on the other side of it. You will be different, but you will be whole again. Not as soon as you'd like, but in God's timing and his most loving way.

Your current crisis will end. You will survive. God will remain with you. There is no Plan B. This is the plan, God's plan. No matter what everything around you looks like at this moment.

He will bring out strengths you never knew you had, and bless you in ways you could have never imagined. May his presence be more real to you now, today, than it ever has been. May his comfort and strength fill you with hope and courage for whatever this day holds.

You are not alone. The God who made you is with you, working to bring you through these deep waters.

When you go through deep waters and great trouble, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown! When you walk through fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you.

Isaiah 43:2

Hope as a way of living

Yesterday, my husband asked me to make the call to the health insurance company for him. He'd received notices on 4/1, 4/16, 5/1, and 5/16, all stating that he had to contact them "for verification of benefits." He was told each time that until he called, all payments would be on hold. There was no indication that we would ever stop getting these extortion notices.

As soon as he dialed the number given, however, he was told there was no need to call-- everything was in order. Was this some kind of joke by United Health Care? Did they have nothing better to do with their time?

Naturally, I dialed the number he had called, and was given the same recorded message. The first time.

Then I called a different number: the customer service line, where I could talk to a human. After explaining our story to one lady, she decided I needed to speak with a rapid claims reconciliation expert --someone with the power to cut through red tape.

"Hello, this is Hope." Of course you are!

"I have a daughter whose middle name is Faith," I gushed.

"Oh, I have a sister, Faith. And Charity and Peace." What a household of spiritual gifts! I said as much.

"How can I help you?" she asked. When I told her our frustrating story, she discovered the problem, found how to stop the glitch, and asked if there was anything else she could do to help me.

While I had her on the line, I gave her a long-standing problem I'd had with the company over an old bill. She helped with that. Because I have trouble hearing information over the phone (where the tumor is--auditory cortex), she repeated the information several times so I could write it down properly with tender patience.

By the end of the call, I told her how much she had helped me, and blessed me by her way of living her name. Hope in action.

What an inspiration to me, and to us all: it doesn't take much to be kind, to do the right thing, to get up off the couch. Hope colors everything. What you hope for becomes what you live for.
This Hope showed me also it is how she lives.

Lord, do not desert me now! You alone are my hope in the day of disaster. --Jeremiah 17:17
Come back to the place of safety, all you prisoners, for there is yet hope! I promise this very day that I will repay you two mercies for each of your woes! -- Zechariah 9:12