inthedust.org

With this change in life's seasons, it's time to start a new blog. Or 2, really.

www.inthedust.org will be the story of God's changing our lives. From asphalt to dirt, from pulpit to ... wherever it is God takes me and my family in our ministry.

Thank you for joining me in this adventure -- hope you'll be with me on the next!

Elane

Make a blessing an earworm

God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is and we know who we are: Father and children.

Romans 8:16ish, The Message

Digesting Scripture

I am terrible at memorization. Always have been. One of my clearest memories is reviewing multiplication flashcards with my mom for hour after frustrating hour, until exasperation finally set in for both of us and at least one abandoned the task in tears.

I believe with all my heart that Scripture memorization, particularly of longer passages, is critical to apprenticeship to Jesus. He knew Scripture, of course, and that's reason enough, but mimicking him in this is not the point. The point of memorization is to "eat the book" -- to digest it, to make it part of oneself. The Bible is the clearest shared record of God's self-revelation and our shared history; knowing it changes who we are, how we know God, and the people we are together.

For my current class, I have chosen Romans 8:15-39, The Message version. It begins like this:

This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, gravetending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?"

Writing this from Little Rock, with Smyrna days off, this passage is ready for consumption, altogether nutritious. What's next, Papa, indeed.

More Oswald Chambers

Fellowship in the Gospel

Text Size: Zoom In

Nov

10

2011

. . . fellow laborer in the gospel of Christ . . . —1 Thessalonians 3:2

After sanctification, it is difficult to state what your purpose in life is, because God has moved you into His purpose through the Holy Spirit. He is using you now for His purposes throughout the world as He used His Son for the purpose of our salvation. If you seek great things for yourself, thinking, “God has called me for this and for that,” you barricade God from using you. As long as you maintain your own personal interests and ambitions, you cannot be completely aligned or identified with God’s interests. This can only be accomplished by giving up all of your personal plans once and for all, and by allowing God to take you directly into His purpose for the world. Your understanding of your ways must also be surrendered, because they are now the ways of the Lord.

I must learn that the purpose of my life belongs to God, not me. God is using me from His great personal perspective, and all He asks of me is that I trust Him. I should never say, “Lord, this causes me such heartache.” To talk that way makes me a stumbling block. When I stop telling God what I want, He can freely work His will in me without any hindrance. He can crush me, exalt me, or do anything else He chooses. He simply asks me to have absolute faith in Him and His goodness. Self-pity is of the devil, and if I wallow in it I cannot be used by God for His purpose in the world. Doing this creates for me my own cozy “world within the world,” and God will not be allowed to move me from it because of my fear of being “frost-bitten.”

Schedule, finally

Nov 19-20: Pack
Nov 19-20: Smiling Daughter's early birthday.
Nov 23-29: Thanksgiving in Little Rock
Nov 29: TN House closes (with God's grace); 2/3 of family goes home
Nov 29-Dec 3: Smiling Daughter in day care, Daddy in charge; Mama doing house-y things, like having heat installed.
Dec 3-5: Pack
Dec 6: Movers
Dec 7-11: Drive with Wonderful Husband, Smiling Daughter, Dog and Cat in Honda Accord to Little Rock.
Dec 12-23: Movers arrive, sometime. God willing.
Dec 24-27: Asheville!

We'll see how this actually goes, but that's the plan. Today. Of course, we've had plans before...

God snickers a little.

Reconviction

Watched Francis Chan's goodbye sermon today for ideas about what to say in mine.  Francis Chan is one of my go-to guys: wonderful preacher, serious man of God. What God remembers, that I never do, is that I don't get ideas from Chan. I get convicted. Every single time, because he is a serious man of God who is also a wonderful preacher, rather than the other way around.

Chan's sermon was really about wholeheartedly surrendering your life to God, trusting that the Bible is both true and the source of real life. He believes that, and lives it. So I didn't come away with a sermon idea -- I can't be Chan -- but I did remember how little I have been steeping and surrendering, and how little Wonderful Husband (WH) and I have engaged in all-out, knee-scraping prayer about this thing we're doing. While I have trusted in the strength of my marriage, his and my ability to sustain our family financially, and God's general care for us, I have not trusted that God has a purpose in this, a mission that WH and I have to fulfill.

As long as I do not trust that God has a purpose in this, a mission for our family, God will not entrust us with it. Until I am truly ready to join with my family in this -- not just in the practical pieces, but in God's purpose -- I am as faithless as any agnostic, any pagan, any of those whom Christ condemns.

Father, please forgive me for taking all of this into my own hands. Forgive me for spending more time online than on my knees. Forgive me for worrying so much about the form and details of my leaving and so little on your Kingdom plan. Forgive me for hanging my guts on the demon in your church instead of the angels of fire you have provided. You have that in hand. You have released me from leading to focus on following.

May I be a serious woman of God. Convict me over and over until I no longer depend upon my own strength and only on yours. May I trust my husband when he sees something greater, and help him trust that you will provide.

Don't give me words, Lord. Give me your heart.

Rose, cross, Trinity

Ink by Santa Barbara artist Pat Fish