A Desert Transformed

No man wants to find himself stuck in the middle of a desert. No way to find water, which means no way to find life. We survive on water and cannot go very long without it. But so very often, there we are... in the middle of the wasteland that is our soul on our hands and knees digging into that hard ground... if even for just a drip of water, of life. 

Whether your desert is in the land of anxiety, immense hopelessness, crushed dreams, or overwhelming depression there is One who has no fear of the desert. No fear of your desert. 

“Sing to God, sing praises to His name; lift up a song to Him who rides through the deserts; His name is the LORD; exult before Him!”- Psalm 68:4

This barren area within your heart doesn’t alarm Him, he isn’t worried about finding a way to replenish and restore because HE is the restoration. He is the one that can turn our deserts into streams of living water. 

“...Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’”- John 7:38

He welcomes our parched souls, beckoning us to draw near. And immediately, once our cracked lips touch His living water, there is no returning. The desert is transformed and our soul feels the weight of His glory and eternal life. So, stop digging for just a drip of water in that barren wasteland. Instead, remember that the lover of your heart is waiting with arms wide open to not only quench your parched soul, but to transform it. 

Well Pleased

“This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.”

These words ring with the tone of a loving Father, one who has no reserves in His love for His son. Of course, we know these are the words of God to Jesus His son and of course we know He loves him. The display of love that God gave to Jesus is magnificent, the heavens open and God audibly declares His fatherhood and Christ’s sonship. To imagine hearing that with our own ears... how magnificent!

But, we don’t believe it. Not fully at least, because with each doubt about God’s love for us we doubt His love for the Son. God has always been pleased with Jesus why did He need to say it? Why did He need to say it audibly?
  For us. 
When God said these words to Jesus it was not the beginning of the plan for salvation. That plan was set before time began. It wasn’t the beginning of God’s pleasure in Jesus... that is eternal. But what the ears of those present could not yet grasp was that these words were meant for them as well. They are meant for us. 

This display of love was amazing, but the display of love of Christ on the cross trumps even this. The display of love and power at the resurrection of Christ proves the depth of God’s affection for mankind. God loves Jesus, for Jesus deserves that love. But the fact that God loves us, even when we do not deserve it... that is powerful. And when God spoke these words, for mankind to hear for the first time, He also knew that he would be speaking them over and over again to every son and daughter who has faith in His Son.

Do we fully believe that God is pleased with us? Do we completely trust that we are His beloved? Jesus deserved to be called these things, we did not. And yet, He still calls out to us as His beloved. He still claims us as His daughters and sons. Let us not doubt His love for us because it is not dependent upon our fragile human ability. It is simply dependent upon God’s love for His Son and that love is eternal.

God, with us?

The Gospel of Matthew begins the whirlwind of fulfilled prophecy in the form of Jesus Christ. The pages that lead up to this book are filled with expectation, sinful desires, longing for freedom, and God’s broken heart over mankind. They are mixed with struggles of sin and His Grace. His righteous judgement constantly collides with His mercy. It is too much for us to fathom because we are post-salvation. But in Matthew 1, the author gives us a glimpse of how amazing this God-man actually is. God’s judgement had to be satisfied, not because He’s evil, but because He is perfect. And the only way to satisfy His judgement was to send Himself.

The angel gives Joseph the name of this child which is not his own. This child that had been there at the beginning of the world (Genesis 1:26). “Call his name, Jesus...”  This name is the Greek for Joshua which means “The LORD saves”. And it is vital that this name is mentioned first for without His salvation we could not enjoy the next name of Jesus.

Immanuel, God with us. We know what this word is. We sing it at Christmas, it hangs on our walls in the form of paintings, it brings a sense of love and comfort. But without Jesus, God with US is too heavy to bear. We’ve lost the sense of awe at God’s perfection. This same God who is with us, is the God whose glory was too much for Moses to glance at.. This is the same God whose presence killed 70 people because they simply looked into the ark of the Lord. God... with us? That’s terrifying.

BUT, because we have this Salvation, because we have Jesus, God with us becomes heaven on earth. Jesus is the perfect mixture of salvation and justice. He is truth and grace. Let’s not forget how beautiful and terrifying Immanuel is. But let us also praise the Father for saving us from His unfathomable judgement through Jesus Christ.

Psalm 121

Psalm 121

The Psalmist here begins by looking out ahead to the mountains in the distance. Many scholars have differing opinions on what exactly the mountains represent. Could it be the altars of gods known as the “high places” or maybe it’s a reference to Zion? Whichever the Psalmist was envisioning, one thing is for certain, as he looks ahead into the unknown and questions arise as to His help and safety, He sees Yahweh. He sees “I AM THAT I AM” in His distance (v.1). His goal is set, and it is Yahweh Himself. But the beauty of this Psalm is not just in the walking into His presence in the future, but He is also under our feet as the sure foundation (v.3), beside us covering us from the calamities of this cruel world (v.5), alert for us when we are not (v.4), and with us forever from the onset of our journey until the end (v.8). He is pictured here is our guardian and watchman that never sleeps and He promises 3 times (v.7-8) that He will protect or keep us. This trinity of promises should point our anxious hearts and concerns to the ever-present trinity that is Himself. Our sight, as we look to the looming mountains or troubles of this life, should be quickly turned to our true Help and Keeper. The Great I AM is with us always, from now until forever. 

Unfathomable Love

Ephesians 3:14-21

Once we are overcome with His unending mercy (v. 4-10) we then sink into an unfathomable love. Paul explains to the Ephesians here that we need to be rooted and grounded in love. How can we do that? How do I stay rooted in love? Only through staying connected to HIM, the creator of Love itself. The way he describes God’s love is a knowable love that surpasses knowledge. How can I know an unknowable thing? This is the beauty of the love of God the Father, Son, and Spirit; there is always more of His love to be known. At that precise moment that I feel an overwhelming sense of His love, I’ve reached a new knowledge of it, but that will not be the last time. I will learn more and more of His love in new ways and I will know Him more and better through those moments. Paul says that through His power we will be given “strength to comprehend… the breadth and length and height and depth” of His love. There is not one area of the universe that His love cannot reach. When I’m at the highest heights, His love will be there. When I have fallen into the depths of sorrow are, His love will be there. When I look to the right or to the left, to the deserts or to the places that I think His love hasn’t reached, His love will be there. And in all of these places I know more of this never-ending love. In the depths I see new pieces to His love that I would not have known on the heights of easy times. In the farthest places that are so foreign and nowhere near comfort, I am held fast in a new corner of His love that I haven’t traversed thus far. It doesn’t end when I finally think I’ve reached the “end” of His love. No, it’s in that moment where I realize I have only just begun to glimpse this eternal love that is not bound by time, space, or location.

Heavy Burdens and Hard Yokes

I lay there wide awake for two hours in the early morning feeling so exhausted mulling over all of the thoughts in my head. There is this burden that I can’t seem to shake and this fear that creeps in through so many ways. This isn’t the first night but instead just one night in a long series of wide-awake struggling with the Lord. It isn’t a struggle of anger nor one of disappointment in who He is, because in those moments I know how good He is and how gracious He is. This is a struggle between my flesh and His Spirit. It’s a million questions bottled into one huge “is this all worth it?” moment.

Of course I know He is worth all the sleepless nights, battles with culture, struggles with sin and my own flesh. But as I look ahead and look behind I feel overcome with anxiety and fear. The past year was one of stretching, pruning, growing, and learning. Yes, I had fun and laughed a lot. But I also walked through some of the most terrifying and dark moments of my life. I’m not here to compare my life with anyone else’s or say that my life experience is harder than another’s I’m simply here to be honest with what is swirling around in my heart. I think God desires honesty amongst His saints. When our vulnerability and reality collide with His goodness and immeasurable grace the world glimpses His glory amidst our mess.

So what do we do when the honest reality seems to completely bury his goodness? What is our response when the burden he promised would be light seems to weigh heavier than we could imagine? Why does this easy yoke seem to be choking the life out of me? Where is this rest? (Matthew 11:28-30)

It’s in those moments that we lean in even deeper to the cross He has asked each of us to carry. We look at the burden and declare that His grace is enough to carry it all. We relinquish the expectation that we’ve put on ourselves to figure out why this season is hard and remember the desert is a place that even He walked through. We open His word and let it push back the darkness in our heart and confusion in our minds. We echo the Psalmist as he says “Trouble and anguish have found me out, but your commandments are my delight.” (Psalm 119:143, emphasis added.)

So I choose, in those moments of fear and confusion, to not make this desert experience longer by complaining or questioning; instead, I recognize His pruning as a sign that He has work to do within me so that I can display His love better. I share with Him in suffering because He is sharing with me the glory of His father. And I cling to His love-everlasting which has rescued me time after time.

Unending Mercy

Ephesians 2: 4-10

These 6 verses contain some of the greatest glimpses into God's grace and mercy that we could spend our whole life dissecting them and still never reach the boundary of what is contained within. The vastness and wealth of God’s mercy is at the forefront of Paul’s words here to the church in Ephesus. His mercy and immeasurable grace stand in appalling contrast to our sinful and rotting flesh (v.4-5) and remind us of where we have come from. “BUT GOD,” is the only way by which we can remove our eyes from our lowly sinful state and see that God himself has chosen and called and placed us in the heavenly places right next to Himself. It is here that we glimpse this glory which we as saints look forward to but it is also the glory that we have the chance to live in right now. Yet, if we read these verses and think, if only for a second, that any of His mercy and grace was bestowed upon us because of something good within ourselves then we have missed the entire point. He lavishes His unending mercy because of HIS GOODNESS. If we had any good in us, if only just a drop, we would not need immeasurable grace. However, because of our immeasurable depravity we are able to experience a grace that never depletes and that our depravity can never run dry. At the end of creation as we know it, His storehouse of grace will be just as full as in the beginning, it is immeasurable. There is not one saint in time’s past that has ever reached the limit of God’s grace. Every new second of our lives as daughters and sons contains just as much grace as in that first moment where we were transferred from the domain of darkness into His glorious light (Colossians 2:13). Grace upon Grace.