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.

For my Mom

My mother is joyful.

Peaceful. 

Exciting. 

Strong-willed. 

Courageous. 

Bold. 

Humble. 

Patient. 

VERY patient. 

She is gentle and kind.

She gives discipline when I don't think I deserve it, and GRACE when I know I don't deserve it. 

She shows me how to be fearless. 

She shows me how to love Jesus above all else. 

She shows me how to love when I don't want to, and forgive when I don't think I have to. 

She cries with me when I'm hurt and laughs with me when I do something silly.

She teaches me to cook and clean so that one day I can do the same for my children.

She wakes up early to work and goes to bed late to make sure everything is ready for the next day. 

She loves with no restrictions and forgives with no regrets. 

My mother is my role model, confidant, stronghold, and friend. 

She is the one I look to for guidance.

She praises me when I do good, and pushes me to do better when I mess up.

She shows me that life is not about winning or being the best, but about loving every second along the way. 

But the greatest thing about her is that she makes me want to love Jesus more. 

Everything she does pushes me to be a better Christian, daughter, servant, sister, and friend.

Today and everyday I am thankful for her. I love you Mom.

Called

He has not called me to be a "missionary". Nor has He called me to save. When did I begin to insert my simple, sinful self into His place? When did I become powerful enough, Holy enough, gracious enough to do either of those? Jesus has simply called me to know Him deeper, to follow Him through dark wilderness and abundant goodness. I am not special or more gifted than the rest because of my geographical location. My flesh doesn't desire to say "yes" to Him and it isn't a natural thing for me to follow Him. But it is only through the constant emptying of myself that I might find more of Him and allow His Spirit to fill me up with something new altogether. New desires, new endurance, a new heart. The emptying hurts, I feel all of my unholy desires slipping through the cracks of my heart, begging to stay a little longer. But my whole being knows that this is best, He is best. Wherever I am in this world, and wherever you are, no matter the location of our physical body or even the location of our emotions, we find our true calling in nothing except knowing Him more. Seeing His glory. Experiencing His goodness. 


I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being. - Ephesians 3:16

Punished Not Punished

Jeremiah 30:11 “For I am with you to save you declares the LORD… I will discipline you in just measure, and I will by no means leave you unpunished.”

The Hebrew for “leave you unpunished” is two-fold. Simply put God is saying they will be “punished not punished” through His salvation. The first part of this verse offers the Hope that leads into the second part which is the Promise. There is no easy means of salvation. The preposterous though of a painless salvation makes light of the immense evil which is sin. We think it is avoidable, this harsh punishment, but God clearly states that judgement is not. His first response to sin in the garden was to kill an animal, to shed blood; so, why should it be any easier after so many generations of sin? There is no easy (or unpunished) way of salvation! Yet, there is grace (30:11a). It is through this grace which we were “punished not punished” by way of the death of His Son. The punishment of Himself was in the most horrific and ghastly way known to mankind at that time in order that our punishment would rest upon His perfect shoulders. The way to salvation was not easy, but the way of grace is! Praise God that he took our punishment! However, we are called to remember our state as “punished not punished” as “sinner yet saved”. We deserve full punishment, BUT He is with us to save us! Praise HIM!

A Grieved God

Jeremiah, known as the weeping prophet, declares through his life the grief of a God that had been forsaken by His own people. How does a human being declare the grief of a perfect God? Through trials, persecution, and constant sorrow in Jeremiah’s life we as readers catch a glimpse of the anguish in God’s heart as He watches the people run away from Him. 

This man, whom God had chosen to be his mouthpiece to a lost and backsliding people of God, was not unlike many of us. His personality was contrary to this task that God had called him to (Jeremiah 11:19) and many times Jeremiah questioned God and even cursed the day of his birth (Jeremiah 20:14). Maybe we haven’t all reached a point of cursing the day we were born, but I have felt the substantial weight of the task that we are called to as Christians and it terrifies me. How am I, a sinful wreck of a girl, supposed to love others unconditionally and fight through the copious amounts of darkness that surround me? Why did God think I was capable for this task and how do I push forward when all that is within me cries to fall back? 

In the country that I live darkness is every where; yet, it is not seen as darkness. The lost practically accept their lostness with joy and whenever truth is shared they run from it. The people that Jeremiah spoke to did have a concept of the Almighty God and who He was, but these people that I live next to, work with, and laugh with have no notion of the Savior.  It feels like a losing battle. 

When I share, it is rejected. 

When He seems to convict the heart of people, they run from it and ignore His call of salvation. 

My heart is in pieces most days because I feel as if I haven’t done enough, or that I’ve done it all wrong. I question God, not in doubt, but in sincerity seeking to know why He called me to this field. His Son said that the fields were white for harvest, yet this place feels like it is in a perpetual famine. Why? Why Lord? He understands my grief. He grieves himself for the hearts of His beloved creation. The different is that he doesn’t grieve from lacking the ability to save. God is not lacking in might or power. He grieves because of the blatant disobedience of those who have believed in His word and keep quiet. He is grieved because there are so few workers. The grief he feels will never compare to the sorrow we experience. 

A sob story is not what anyone needs, and this is not that. But it is a call for the church to fight. A fight which is fought from our knees, instead of picking up our swords, and beg the Father “who makes things grow” to move in the fields of Japan (1 Corinthians 3:7). 

It is a call to hope, even when hope seems ridiculous. It is a call to praise Him, even after the questions like Jeremiah did (Jeremiah 20:13). 

It is a call to remember that His ways will never be understood by our feeble and temporal minds.
A call to recognize that our grief will never be compared to His as he watches his creation day after day step into an eternity without Him.

But it is also a call to share boldly, love wildly, and trust endlessly in His goodness and grace. 

Jeremiah’s heart was for His King and his King’s heart was grieving for the souls of His creation. And so, when the questions abounded and the response to Jeremiah’s call to repentance was a roaring mockery he plowed on (Jer. 20:1-2). Because He trusted that the one who had called Him would equip and His words which were faithful and true would never fail.