Living In the Presence of God

The rain, coming down in torrents, beat against the front of our house.  We went about our business, that Saturday morning, trying to ignore the weather maps that clearly showed the worst part of the hurricane approaching our eastern North Carolina home.  I sat at my computer trying to get some work done while the gales of wind forced whistles through the windows over my desk.  One rather large gust of wind caused the walls surrounding the room to shudder which drove me down stairs to check the weather maps once more.  I snuggled close to my husband on the couch as he watched the weather man on TV pointing out the swirling clouds moving closer to our happy little home.  As my eyes were glued to the screen, I heard a little girl of ten say, "Don't worry, it's ok, I put a bucket under the drip at the front door."  She walked into the kitchen before her words penetrated my mind.  I dismissed them briefly, distracted by the warnings of tornadoes and floods.  As the commercial played, I ventured over to the front door to see what our nonchalant little girl had discovered.  In the entryway, I noticed a bead of water forming in the frame above the window surrounding the door.  A small drip splashed down on the hardwood floors below, missing the bucket altogether.  As I looked more closely, I noticed another drip hitting the bucket dead on.  Following the drip upwards, I noticed a stream of water cascading down the wall starting below the window high above the doorway.  Immediately, I called to my husband (the solver of all the household problems) and asked him what we should do.  The rest of the day we took turns mopping up the floor, wiping up the wall, and going outside to place towels and tarps around the front door to block the rain, pelting our house at a ninety degree angle.  When the towels and tarps were in place the dripping almost stopped, but when the wind blew the towels out of their position, the dripping increased to a pretty steady stream. 

On one occasion when a gust of wind blew the towels out of place and the slow drip began to flow faster, our twelve year old daughter approached me with tears in her eyes.  Distracted by the wet floor, I asked, "What's wrong?"  She replied trying to suppress her anger, "Who put my hamster cage on the back porch?"  Irritated by one more problem to deal with I snapped, "What are you talking about?"  Then, in a flash back I remembered.  One night about a week and a half ago, my husband and I were sitting in the living room, catching up after a long day.  The hamster cage was sitting on the bookcase near the fireplace.  The little hamster was happily running on its wheel, making a loud rumbling noise.  My loving husband, distracted by the noise, carefully cradled the cage in his arms as he took it outside and placed it on the shelving located on the back porch.  Oh no! I thought, that poor thing has been outside in the hot temperatures for over a week.  "It's OK!" I reassured her, "Just bring him in the house now."  "I can't!  A gust of wind knocked the cage over!  It is broken in several places, the bedding is scattered all over the porch, and I can't find my hamster anywhere!"  I ran out to the back porch and asked everyone to follow.  We spent ten minutes in the 40 to 50 mile an hour wind looking for the hamster, to no avail.  I reassured her that peanut was a spunky little guy, and he was likely hiding under a bush somewhere waiting for us to find him.  No one believed me. 
 
When we finally came back in, we went back to our posts mopping up the floor and trying to keep the dripping to a minimum.  My husband pulled my daughter aside and apologized for forgetting about her hamster.  She reluctantly accepted his apology leaving both of them feeling pretty sad.  Eventually, the wind and the rain became less and less and we shoved a paper towel in the crack where the drip was coming from, to keep the floor dry.  We ate a dinner of tuna fish and crackers lit by flash lights, hoping for the electricity to return before we had to go to bed.  Instead, we went to sleep with the windows open in the pitch blackness of the night.  When we awoke the next morning, the pleasant breeze and the cool crisp morning air led us to explore the damage outside.  As we stepped out on the back porch, we noticed the bedding of the hamster cage scattered about.  The only other damage we noticed was our gas grill that had been turned over on its side.  Fortunately, we did not have much to clean up.  I went back into the house for a broom, when I heard my husband call, "Get a box or a bucket or something to put the hamster in."  "What!?!" I yelled.  "The hamster is out here in the fallen grill...get a box quickly before it gets away!"  I bolted up the stairs to get the box that we had brought the hamster home in, and ran outside to where my husband was crouched on the side of the half opened grill top.  I positioned myself on the other side and put the box, lid opened, at the edge of the grill.  The little guy ran across the top of the grill and jumped right in the box, shaking with excitement, or maybe with the horror of the weather he had just experienced the night before.

My husband, overjoyed at the miracle he had just witnessed, ran directly to my daughter's room, gently and excitedly woke her from her sleep, and presented her with the gift he had in his hands.  She took one look inside the box and burst into tears.   The terrible blunder made by a loving father had turned into a miracle that would create a bond between a father and a daughter for a lifetime.  

As I reflected on the events of that hurricane weekend, I saw a picture of the life that we all live as parents.  If we are honest we all have made terrible "blunders": We respond to our kids in anger, with irritated answers, with careless or caustic, biting words;  we make selfish decisions, poor choices, and take detrimental courses of action.  In short, we sin and we sin and we sin against the children we love.  Before we had kids we were sure that it was because of bad parenting that the kid was throwing a fit in the candy isle.  We said to ourselves, Our kids were going to turn out right because we were going to be better parents.  But the truth is, we have a war with sin waging in our hearts.  We want to respond with patience, but more than not, we get irritated.  We want to discipline in love, but many times it is anger that rules.  Romans 9:21ff talks of this war that Christians fight daily.

²¹So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. ²²For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, ²³but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. ²⁴Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 

Our daily struggle against the desires of our flesh gives us a clear picture of the depth of our sin.  The Bible says, we are dead in our trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:5).  Just as a dead man has no hope of getting up and walking, so we, who are spiritually dead, have no hope of bringing any righteousness of our own before a holy God.  Even our feeble attempts at righteous works are as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6).  So how do we respond?  Do we say with despair, "Fine, I give up!  I will always struggle with sin, and therefore my kids and my life is destined to be messed up!"  The answer is emphatically, "No!"  Romans 8 gives us hope.  

¹There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. ²For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. ³For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do...

²⁶Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. ²⁷And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. ²⁸And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

We, instead, respond with confession and then hope.  We confess each day that we are truly sinful and without hope accept for the Saving Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Then we live with hope; hope that God will use even our worst days as a parent to work good in our lives and the lives of our kids.  We can then live with confidence that God will take the actions of a sinful father or mother and bring about good (sometimes in the form of a hurricane miracle). 

Three small children bounded out of bed at 6:30 am.  I groggily pulled myself out of bed after a night of nursing the newborn at 11:30 pm, 2:30 am and 5:30 am.   It seemed unfair to be forced to get out of bed while the baby was finally back to sleep.  As I made my way down the steps, I heard screams coming from the two-year old, "He pulled my hair!" she exclaimed.  Her brother, four years older, stood above her as she laid writhing in pain on the floor.  As I began to interrogate him, I was interrupted by a teary-eyed four-year old who whined, "Mommy, I'm hungry, and we don't have any milk."  Distracted from the two in conflict, I searched the pantry for food.  "Hmm," I said to myself, "I guess I need to go shopping today."  How I dreaded the shopping trip to Walmart.  After nursing the newborn, getting the kids fed with the scraps left in the pantry, and making sure everyone had clothes and shoes on, I finally had everyone strapped in car seats by 10:30 am.  I knew I only had an hour to fit the shopping trip in until the next feeding.  Could we make it through the store in time?  I can do this, I thought.  As I walked through the isles searching for enough food to last us a week, my kids, under threats, held tightly to the cart.  After the first 10 minutes, the oldest child realized that holding onto the cart really wasn't all that fun.  He reached out and pinched his brother, provoking a squeal and making him let go of the cart.  This got his little sister giggling, and she let go too.  Soon, the whole group was pushing, pinching, and screaming as I scrambled to throw food in the cart and corral my kids back to their positions.  This scenario repeated itself several times as we trudged down the isles of the store.  I could feel the fatigue setting in.  The sleepless nights were beginning to take their toll.  I felt tears of anger creeping up behind my sleepy eyes.  Then a sweet little old lady approached me.  "Are they all your kids?" She asked.  I was sooo tempted to say something bitterly sarcastic, but instead, I said in my sweetest Christian voice, "Yes, they are."  Finally, we made our way to the check-out line only a couple of minutes before the baby's feeding time.  As we inched our way toward the conveyor belt, the two-year old decided to show everyone she was wearing big-girl pants...only she took off both her pants and her pull-ups.  The boys started squealing in laughter.  At that moment, I looked straight at my two-year old and said with all of my wisdom, "You know if a policeman sees you doing that, he will put you in jail."  At that, the boys starting laughing even harder, and the two year old started crying at the top of her lungs.  It was at that moment that I realized that being a perfect mother was an unachievable goal. 

If I recognize my weaknesses and leave behind the goal of maintaining the image of perfection, then God's power will be perfected in me.  I don't have to struggle in my own strength to maintain the image of perfection because it is not me who is doing the perfecting.  It is God.

Philippians 1:3-6 ³ I thank my God every time I remember you. ⁴ In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy ⁵ because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, ⁶ being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. 

I Thessalonians 5:23-24 ²³ May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. ²⁴ The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it. 

He is the one who began the work.  It is he that will bring it to completion.  There is nothing in these verses about me bringing about my sanctification about me keeping my salvation in the balance.  It is God who is doing it in me.  So, when I sin, fail my kids, my husband, or my friends, instead of becoming devastated and impotent as a Christian, I look at these times as opportunities to learn the lessons that God is teaching me.  They are simply course corrections, times in my life that God is molding me and shaping me into the person He wants me to be.  God uses my failures as a mother to make my kids into the people he wants them to be.  Wow!  That takes the pressure off my shoulders.  I don't have to trust in my own strength to keep it all together.  It is God's strength and His work in my life that brings about His perfect will.

If I believe in a God who is Omnipotent (all powerful), Omnipresent (everywhere present), Omniscient (all knowing), Omnibenevolent (perfect in goodness), then I will believe in a good God who can and will work all things in my life together for His glory and my good (Romans 8:28).  "All things" includes even my failures and mistakes.  It includes even the trials, disappointments, and struggles I am faced with.  When I read verses like Philippians 4:4-7, I can say with confidence that I can rejoice in all circumstances knowing that my good, all-knowing, all-powerful, everywhere-present God is working in even these circumstances for my good and His glory.

Philippians 4:4-7  ⁴ Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! ⁵ Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. ⁶ Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. ⁷ And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 


Being used of God no matter which path he takes me on, whether it looks like failure in the world's eyes or not, is my goal.  Fulfilling His purposes in my life is the only truly fulfilling path I can take.  All other side trails will only lead to frustration and discouragement. 

Laura Story's song Blessings reiterates this truth.  She says that God brings all the circumstances in our lives to bring about good.  She underscores that even the hardest trials that we go through are brought to us by God, who has our good in mind.  Instead of trusting in a good God that has brought about all of these things for our good, she sings to God, "We cry in anger when we cannot feel you near, we doubt your goodness, we doubt your love."  She goes on to explain, "When friends betray us, when darkness seems to win, the pain reminds us that this is not our home."  She sings, "What if my greatest disappointment and the aching of this life is a revealing of a greater thirst this world can't satisfy."  If we could come to the place where we realize that our greatest accomplishments, the money we make, the toys that we buy, the people we are friends with will never satisfy us, and instead realize that our only satisfaction can come from laying down our lives and surrendering our will to the one and only God of the universe.  It is only then that our failures won't devastate us;  our wrong decisions won't cripple us; and our unrealized hopes and dreams won't bring us crashing down.  When we get to a place where we can truly say like Jesus, "Not my will, but Yours, be done," (Luke 22:42) because we trust that God's plan is good, it is infinitely better, and it is the best plan for our lives.  It is then and only then that we can truly be satisfied.

The view of farmer's field out the windows beside my desk distracts me from the busyness of life.   In the midst of grading papers, several deer will captivate my attention, and before I know it, I am catching their stroll across the field through the lens of my camera.  On the mornings when I venture out of bed early enough, I am easily drawn into contemplating the magnificence of God's creative hand as he paints a beautiful sunrise right in front of me.  A few weeks ago, I noticed a flutter of wings out of the corner of my eye.  As I looked up from my work, I saw a pair of bluebirds perched on the fence posts right beneath my window.  The two little birds repeatedly darted up and down off their perch on the fence in search of a juicy bug for breakfast.  It was right then that I decided to put up the bluebird box that had been sitting in my garage for several years.  A week or so later, I set the box in place and wandered to the edge of my garden, and began digging a trench for the landscape timbers that I bought earlier that day.  Again, I noticed a fluttering out of the corner of my eye.  Both bluebirds were sitting on top of the box looking right at me.  I walked very slowly and carefully around the edge of my yard toward my back door in search of my camera.

After I got a few good shots, I went back to my digging.  The closer I got to the bird box the more agitated the birds became.  At first they flew close to my head thinking they might scare me off.  Then they sat on the fence post squawking and flapping their wings.  I relented and went in a little miffed at their obvious ungrateful attitude toward me.  I provided the box for them, rejoiced over their discovery of the box, and took pictures commemorating the event.  Yet they did not trust me enough to let me near.  They accepted the box as a gift, but did not want any part of the giver.  I told my husband what had just happened and he responded, "That sounds just like our response to God's provision in our lives."  Isn't that how I respond in so many ways to the gifts that God has given me throughout my life.  When my husband angers me, I am all too quick to squawk at God, "Why didn't you provide me a husband who was more (fill in the blank)?"  When events don't work out the way I had planned, I squawk again, "Why didn't you work out the details the way I had hoped?"  When trials enter my life, I squawk again, "God you don't know how much I am suffering, why are you putting me through this?"  When I make these statements, I am decidedly telling God that I will take the gift (my husband, my life, my kids, the people around me), but I want control over how I will use it, and I don't want Him interfering.

A few months ago, my 16 year old son told us that he would like to stop homeschooling and go to public school next fall.  I fully expected my husband to discourage him by carefully explaining the merits of homeschooling, but instead he said, "You are old enough now to make this decision.  Take some time to pray about it, searching out all the options, and let us know what you decide."  I am not going to lie.  It was right then that I began squawking.  It was a silent squawk.  No one heard it, but it was a squawk none-the-less.  I did not trust God to lead my son to the right decision.  I wanted to force my own agenda on him, because after all I knew better.  Instead of following my inclinations, I listened to the wisdom of my husband and let my son have the freedom to make this decision.  The following week we found ourselves sitting in the high school counselor's office listening to all the options.  She explained that because my son had not taken his high school courses in the order prescribed by the school system, he would have to take at least three of these courses over, possibly in summer school.  I was so relieved, I knew my son would not go for this.  But when we got out to the car, he said, "Well that sounds pretty good."  Squawk, squawk...I could hear the squawking building...God what are you doing?  For a month and a half I called the school counselor repeatedly trying to get her to agree to count the courses and work with us.  My husband and I continued to pray that God would lead our son to the right decision.

During this process, God began reshaping my heart.  He brought me to the realization that graduating my children from my homeschool had become an idol in my life that I wasn't willing to give up.  As the weeks passed, I began to trust in God's work in my son's life rather than trusting in the schooling option I thought was best.  During this time, I slowly began to pry my fingers off this idol and let God take control.  I prayed for wisdom for my son.  I prayed that God would lead him where He wanted him to be.  I began to be at peace with whatever the Lord led him to choose.  After several phone messages left on the counselors voice mail, I finally received the deciding call.  She told me that all of my son's classes would transfer over, but they could not be accepted as honors level or AP level courses, which would bring his grade point average down significantly.  After I hung up, I shared this information with my son.  He responded immediately with, "When do we sign up for our homeschool classes."  I was shocked.  When I had finally let go of my idol, God gave me what I wanted.  I wasn't jubilant. I didn't gloat. I didn't say I told you so.  I was simply glad that God had led my son where He wanted him to go and extremely thankful for the wisdom of my husband.

I am hoping that next time when I am faced with a gift from God, I will let go of my agenda, I will trust that He is working, and I won't squawk so loudly.

The stuffy, warm, early morning air, very uncharacteristic for February, made the layers of blankets covering my body seem unbearably hot.  Pushing the blankets to the bottom of the bed, I tried to cool off and get a little more sleep.  The sun had just begun to peak over the horizon, when I felt my husband rustling under the covers next to me.  I must have dozed off for a few minutes, because the next thing I knew he was climbing back in bed saying, “I turned on the air conditioner for a few minutes to get the stuffiness out of the air.”  The welcomed coolness allowed me to snuggle under the covers for about thirty more minutes, when I awakened to the sounds of the shower running and the trailer song to the Dave Ramsey Show calling out its oh so familiar tune.  As I made my way to the sink to wash my face, my husband asked, “What is that horrible smell?  It reminds me of rotten eggs!”  He searched around the shower sniffing until he found the culprit: a sponge that had been left on the tile floor since the last time I attempted to clean it.  The sponge, completely covered in slime, immediately found its way to the trash can, where I escorted it out of the house.  A little embarrassed by the condition of the shower and the fact that I had not noticed, I quickly put “cleaning the shower” at the top of my to-do list for the morning. 

As I wiped the slime off the bottom of the shower door and scrubbed the mildew and soap scum off the walls of the shower, I began to contemplate the gross build up of sin that I had so easily ignored in my own life.  This week the Read Through the Bible in a Year program has led me through the passages in Leviticus that deal with the intricacies of the ceremonial sin offerings.  Reading through these passages, I have found a new appreciation for the seriousness of sin.  God made very strict rules regarding atonement for sin.  Yet, I so cavalierly deal with the sin in my own life, often explaining it away or ignoring it altogether.  I often think thoughts like, I would not have snapped if my husband had responded to me better.   I would have exhibited more patience if my children did not bicker all the time.  “I would have” and “if only” statements let the sin accumulate in my heart like the soap scum and slime on my shower walls, which hardens producing a self-righteous attitude.  If I could take time more regularly to clean the sin out of my own heart, recognizing my guilt and repenting, I will be in a much better place when I am confronted with other people’s sin.  1 John 1:8-10 hits me to the core:

I began to realize that it is so easy to fall into the trap of claiming to be without sin.  I am forgiven right?  What sin do I commit?  Yet as I search my heart, I realize that sin is lurking even on the surface of my feeble self-righteous heart.  As I attempt to live in God's presence, I am more aware that I am in need of daily confession to get rid of my self-righteous attitude, helping me to recognize my need of the Holy Spirit in my life to not only convict me of sin, but to help me grow in righteousness.  So, what can I do to remind me that I am a sinner saved by grace?  As I began to search through my memory banks, looking for a way to add confession to my daily life, I remembered an acrostic that my favorite high school Bible teacher encouraged us to pray through.  The ACTS acrostic, which stands for: A-adoration, C-confession, T-thanksgiving, and S-supplication might do.  Rethinking this model, I am struck by the fact that the majority of the time spent praying is focused on God rather than on what I want (supplication).  Adoration focuses on God’s wonderful attributes; confession focuses on God’s forgiveness; thanksgiving focuses on God’s blessings; and by the time I get to supplication my needs seem so small in comparison.  My hope is that praying through the ACTS model, I will see my need for a savior because instead of explaining my sin away, I will more easily recognize my dependency on my savior, exalting Him rather than feeling a need to exalt myself and my vain attempts at greatness. 

The brilliant fingers of the morning sun poking through the blinds onto the living room couch seemed to beckon me out onto the back porch.  I followed them through the French doors where the warmth of the sun met my face, and I breathed deeply of the crisp October air.  The sounds of morning birds singing, led my gaze to the trees lined with bright yellow leaves, which stood in stark contrast to the deep blue color of the fall sky.  This beautiful weather came as such a welcomed change to the dreary wet weather we had become accustomed to the week before.  Oh what a beautiful day, I thought as I scanned the backyard and noticed my girls poking around the dirt in my garden desperately searching for worms.  I had a hunch they were planning an afternoon at the neighbor’s pond fishing for the prized wide-mouthed bass.  As I stepped back inside, I noticed the voices of my teenage boys making calls and finalizing plans with their friends to hang out somewhere, anywhere.  I had already planned to brave the crowds at Wal-Mart in an attempt to refill the shelves of our pantry that had been licked clean of every crumb by our ravenous teenagers.  When they asked me for a ride to the park, I readily agreed.  After shuttling the boys to their destination and braving the crowds, I returned home with bags filled with groceries.  Walking into the kitchen, I found my husband sitting intently in front of the TV watching an action-packed, rather scary-sounding movie.  Now, I don’t generally enjoy watching scary movies, but since it is not very often that we have the house to ourselves, I decided to snuggle up to my husband and endure the scary parts of the movie so we could spend some time together.  This was a mistake!  The snuggling abruptly ended as the intense music alerted me to the danger of the zombie-like creatures who lurked in the shadows of the dark deserted building.  Will Smith and his dog only narrowly escaping their fangs.  I knew that if I continued to sit through the movie I am Legend, my dreams that night would be filled with nasty creatures.  So after only fifteen minutes of the movie, I made my way up the stairs and into the playroom, where I shut the door tightly behind me.  I could still hear the screams and booming sounds of the movie through the closed door, but at least I didn’t have to watch the zombies attacking anymore.  

Later that evening, I questioned my husband, “How can you stand to watch movies like that?”  His response piqued my interest.  He told me, “I love zombie movies because they illustrate how most people view the world around them.  They believe that they are the only sane people who have a corner on the truth, and people who oppose them are zombies.”  He went on to explain, “Think about it, people who are resolute in their political beliefs sincerely believe that those with the opposing point of view are clearly messed up in their thinking.”  He gave another example, “How about this,” he said, “When someone offends us, instead of confronting them and working through the difference, we pull away often brooding over the sinfulness of their behavior.”   He continued, “Pretty soon, we find ourselves only associating with a very small group of people, feeling like the people on the outside are zombies who need to be quarantined or given an antidote to make them sane again.”    

As I pondered my husband’s observations I began to realize that he was onto something.  Because of the effects of sin in the world and in our lives, we constantly offend and are offended by the folks around us.  If we neglect to forgive those who offend us, we allow these relational wounds to fester often leading to bitterness or hatred.  If we continue to refuse to deal with the problem, when we are forced to interact with the person who has offended us, it seems that everything they say or do is misconstrued into bad motives or poor judgment on their part.  In effect, we have "zombified" the person, feeling that if only they were rational human beings they would see things our way.  Pretty soon, we are left with only a few “sane” people  as our friends.  We rally together to fight off the zombies with the stockpile of weapons gathered in the race to destroy them before they destroy us.

I am convinced there is a better way.  The more clearly I understand the depths of my sinfulness and the heights of the grace of the gospel at work in my life to restore me to a right relationship with my savior, the less I am tempted to judge or “zombify” the people who offend me.  This truth is illustrated by Matthew 18: 21-35.  In this passage, Jesus tells the parable of the servant who begs his master to forgive his debt and then turns around and demands that a fellow servant repay him a much smaller debt.  When the fellow servant begs for mercy, the man man responds, not by forgiving his debt, but by putting him in prison.  How foolish the servant was to gladly accept Jesus’ forgiveness, but turn around and condemn his neighbor of a much smaller offense.   Jesus illustrates the fact that since God has forgiven us a debt we could never pay, we ought to turn around and freely forgive those who have offended us.  Matthew 7: 1-5 also lends credence to this principle of forgiveness.  In this passage, Jesus instructs us to take the plank of sin out of our own eye before taking the speck of sawdust out of our brother’s eye.  We must first look at the depths of our sin and our desperate need of a savior.  When we fully realize our standing before a holy God, we begin to see how our neighbor’s offense is in comparison a speck.  When we respond to offenses with humility, then and only then can we work out our differences with godliness.  The truth of the gospel just might be that even I am a zombie in desperate need of the antidote: a saving relationship with a loving savior. 

Monday morning broke cold and dreary.  Thoughts of the cold bedroom floor made it difficult to escape from the clutches of the warm blankets on my bed.  After laying there for just five more minutes, the blankets finally lost their grip.  I hopped across the hardwood floors to the cold tile of the bathroom in as few steps as possible, lighting on the rug in front of my sink.  I did not want to start the day or the week.  I quickly washed my face, threw on some clothes, and made my way upstairs to wake the kids.  From their responses, I gathered they were having the same trouble I was that morning.  As we all grumpily made our way to the school room after eating breakfast, we found it hard to be pleasant with each other.  The day proceeded this way, bickering, fighting, tattling, and me responding grumpily by disciplining everyone for everything.  By dinner time, everyone was on a razor’s edge.  We were all jumping down each other’s throats for minor offenses.  Then my precious husband called to tell me he was going to be late.  On the phone he lamented, “Traffic is backed up on Charles Blvd.  It’s going to take me an extra fifteen minutes to get home.”  Oh great!  I thought to myself, Now dinner is going to be cold!

After dinner, I hopped into the car to take my son to swim practice following the same route my husband had taken earlier that evening.  We saw the cause of the traffic jam.  A small Honda had crashed into an SUV.  Both cars were completely mangled.  Large flood lights had been set up, and fire trucks and tow trucks were working to get the road cleared.  It was a mess.  Tragedy had obviously occurred that night.  Later we learned that the Honda had crossed the center line and smashed head on into the SUV.  Both drivers were killed.  The next day it seemed every driver in Greenville had been sobered by the accident.  Cars avoided switching lanes, the speed of the traffic was noticeably slower, and everyone acted a bit more courteous.  It seemed as though we were all contemplating the deaths of the drivers and were carefully trying to avoid their fate. 

Today, after a week has passed and the obligations of life have pushed the thoughts of death out of our heads, the rush of traffic has resumed back to its hectic pace.  I tend to respond in my Christian faith in a similar fashion.  When the new year comes around, I am reminded of my need for a vital growing faith.  I make resolutions to read the Bible and pray regularly.  However, come February the excitement wears off and I find myself consumed with daily life and forget or neglect the time I had planned to spend getting to know my savior.  I don’t think God desires short-lived courteous driving or often neglected resolutions, but rather a living, active, growing relationship with Him. 

In my Bible reading this week, I came across the passage of the parable of the ten virgins who were instructed to wait for the bridegroom.  Five of the virgins were prepared with enough oil in their lamps.  However, five were not prepared and therefore were not allowed into the marriage feast.  In this parable Jesus illustrates the fact that Christians need to be prepared for Jesus’ return.  I am so tempted to respond to this passage by making sure I have my Christian to-do list in order.  Included on this list would be items like: 1. Read my Bible each day.  2. Be patient with my kids.  3.  Be loving toward my husband, and on and on it would go.  When I have tried to keep a list like this, I have invariably gotten frustrated and felt like a failure when I fell short of the items I had planned to check off.  As a result I give up the to-do list and go about living my life as usual.  When Jesus told this parable, He was not asking me to keep a spiritual checklist that would set me up for failure.  Instead He wants me to completely and totally surrender my whole life to Him, trusting Him fully, and falling more deeply in love with Him.   I love the way Ann Voskamp put it in her blog post this week.  She posted beautiful pictures of the Niagara falls, and artfully described the ice that was being chipped away by the rush of water, which caused it to go careening over the edge of the cliff.  She posted, “The way to fall in love with God is to surrender to the fall.”

Surrendering to the fall means a complete and total surrender to God’s will.  It means viewing my grumpy Mondays with thankfulness instead of bitter resentment.  Living in God’s presence means surrendering my plans to the Lord.  It means responding to any and all circumstances that He places in my life with contented thankfulness.  How thankful I am that it wasn’t my husband’s SUV that was crushed in that awful accident, but what if it had been?  Would I grieve with hope...or as one with no hope?  Is how I am responding to the cold floor, the grumpy children, and the cold dinner how I would respond to tragedy in my life?  Or am I so in tune with my maker, walking in his presence, that I would see his finger prints on even the tragic details of my life?  I want to desire a peace that passes understanding because I am basking in His presence, seeking his will, and enjoying His plans as I watch them unfold in my life.  I will only be able to attain this if I can fully come to grips with the fact that God works all things in my life together for my good (Rom. 8:28).  Oh Lord Jesus, help me to surrender to the fall.

After a lively dinner, my husband and I shooed our kids upstairs, so we could spend our coveted fifteen or twenty minutes catching up with each other. We dimmed the lights, threw the accumulated junk from the day off the couch, turned on some love songs, and flipped the gas logs on for a romantic atmosphere. I began the discussion with my frustrations over how most of my plans for the day had been interrupted by phone calls, settling disputes between the kids, and a forgotten pile of laundry that sucked me into folding it. I admitted that I felt like I had gotten nothing accomplished. My loving husband comforted me and began sharing the details of his day. He shared his thoughts on a case that had caused him trouble over the last few weeks; he mentioned frustrating exchanges that he had with clients; then he shared with me an interesting article he had come across while reading the news. He said, “Evidently, obesity is contagious.” He fired up his computer and pulled up an article written in the New England Journal of Medicine by researchers who had studied 12,067 people for over 30 years. He skimmed down the article and read, “A person’s chances of becoming obese increased by 57% if he or she had a friend who became obese in a given interval.” He went on reading, “The closeness of friendship is relevant to the spread of obesity. Persons in closer, mutual friendships have more of an effect on each other than persons in other types of friendships, increasing the chance of obesity 171%.” As we continued to read through the article we noted that the researchers suggested that many other behaviors were influenced by close mutual friendships.

In some ways, the article revealed new, helpful insights that will provide healthcare workers with tools to give to their patients who struggle with obesity. However, this thirty year study of over 12,000 people simply stated an obvious truth: The people you hang around will affect your behavior. As I Corinthians 15:33 puts it, “Do not be deceived: Bad company corrupts good morals.” As I have been reading through the Bible this year, the plan I am following has taken me through the chapters in Genesis, where God tells his chosen people to avoid contact with the Gentile nations. In some cases God tells the Israelites to utterly destroy the heathen living around them. When the Israelites refuse to listen and marry Gentile women, they inevitably end up worshiping other gods, and incurring curses instead of blessings from God.

So, if bad company corrupts good morals, and I am trying to daily live in the presence of God, how should I respond? The same truth of immersing myself in God’s Word, praying continuously, and developing close friendships with others who desire a close relationship with the Lord is the key. This truth does not give me an excuse to avoid non-Christians, or to shelter my children from the world. Jesus put it best when he said,

This truth gives me an impetus to strengthen my relationship with my savior and continue to establish solid Christian friendships so that I can be used of God to reach a hurting world. As my kids have gotten older, I am sensing a prodding from the Lord to reach out to that hurting world with them. I don’t know how this will all play out, but I am praying that God would give us opportunities to share the truth of the gospel as we reach out in tangible ways to those in need.

God desires an intimate relationship with me and you. From the very beginning of the world, God walked with Adam and Eve regularly in the garden building a close relationship with them. Adam and Eve’s sin caused a break in this intimate relationship, and this break extended to the whole human race. Instead of desiring to be in God’s presence, they felt ashamed and hid from Him (Gen. 3). God could have rejected them and the whole human race, but instead He planned a way of salvation to restore their/our relationship with Him. Throughout the Old Testament, God continually sought out his people in the middle of their sin to communicate His plans to bless them. He established a covenant with Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; a covenant reminding them of his promise to provide a savior. In His ultimate outpouring of love, God humbled himself, became a man and lived among us, so He could seek and save us (Luke 19:10; Matt 9). He then died a shameful death on the cross to provide a way of restoration and forgiveness. Jesus, God’s only son, fulfilled God’s promise of salvation, in order that we might enter his presence unashamed.

The God of the Universe loves us so much that He was willing to send His Son to die for us and to pay the penalty of our sin. He wants us to be acquainted with Him, like He is completely and fully acquainted with us!

So, how do I respond? I live my life like it all depends on me, like God does not even exist. I make my plans, set my goals and move aggressively toward them. When someone or something gets in the way, I get frustrated or angry. In response, I tweak my plans and strive even harder to attain my goals. When my plans continue to fail, I get frustrated with God for not helping me to reach my goals. Do not misunderstand me, striving for and attaining goals marks a person living in the presence of God. However, holding with clenched fists onto those goals, draws us far away from God’s presence into bitterness, anxiety, or depression.

Rather than living as if I am the ruler of my universe and responsible for my successes and failures, I want to strive toward living like I know that it all depends on God, because it does. The only way to obtain this posture is to live in God’s presence. I need a reckless abandonment of my will and a resolute confidence in God’s will. I need to follow Jesus’ example, who when confronted with the hardest task he had to face, said, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42). If I can make my life’s motto, “Not My Will, But Yours Be Done,” I will have a peace that passes understanding. I can only get there by sitting at his feet every day, basking in His greatness, soaking in His word, and fellowshipping with other believers who are striving to live in God’s presence.

Lord, give me a reckless abandonment of my will and draw me into a resolute confidence in your will, so I may dwell in your presence daily.

Over the last several months, a dull pain in my right hip had gotten steadily worse. Ibuprofen, helped me to ignore its nagging, but the pain kept returning. “I am too busy to be bothered with this,” I told myself. “I don't have two or three free hours to waste in a doctor’s office?” I rationalized. “I will suffer through,” the martyr in me decided. In my heart, I was making excuses. I did not want to be bothered with finding out the cause of the pain. Subconsciously, I think I feared the diagnosis, or felt the treatment would be too time-consuming. Over the next several months the pain increased, and eventually I made an appointment with my doctor who referred me to a physical therapist.

After a few minutes in the physical therapist’s waiting room, a slender, bright, cheery woman called me back into her office. After asking several questions, she listened intently to my symptoms, gently examined the affected area, and then confidently told me the cause of my pain: A misalignment of my hips. Without hesitation, she asked me to do a few maneuvers on the examination table. With the last maneuver, I heard three pops in my hip. When I stood back up, she asked me, “How do you feel?” Amazed, I replied, “The pain is gone!” She saw the relieved excitement on my face and warned, “This is your fix. The pain will come back, but when it does, do these three maneuvers, and you should realign your hips again. Eventually, after doing a series of exercises, you will strengthen the muscles which will hold your hips in place and get rid of the pain.” After making a follow-up appointment, I went home excited and eager to start working on the exercises she had given me.

Each morning, I awoke motivated to do my hip strengthening exercises realizing this was my ticket to a pain-free hip. When the pain returned, I performed the hip-aligning maneuvers to relieve it. With each visit, my physical therapist gave me encouragement along with new and more challenging exercises. My hips began to stay aligned with little pain. On my last visit, my physical therapist nonchalantly explained, “To keep your hip aligned you need to do these exercises for the rest of your life.” “I don’t know if I can maintain this enthusiasm about these exercises for the rest of my life.” I told her. Her response took me back, “You will if the pain comes back.” The returning pain would be my reminder to keep up the exercises.

The way that I reluctantly made a doctor’s appointment to determine the cause of the pain in my hip is how I so often deal with the pain of sin in my life. I try to ignore it or make excuses or rationalize away my sin. When I am impatient with my kids, or angry with my husband, or irritable because life is not going the way I think it should, I treat my sin with a little “pain medicine.” I lie to myself, making excuses, blaming others for my sin. It’s PMS, I tell myself. It’s disobedient children or a selfish husband, I rationalize. When the pain of my sin gets too difficult to bear, and I make an "appointment" with my heavenly father, He eagerly invites me in. He listens carefully to my problems and diagnosis my sin. With his forgiveness, my pain goes away.

The exercises God gives me include regularly reading the Bible, praying continuously, and fellowshipping with other believers.  When I begin to struggle with sin, I am reminded of my constant need to be in fellowship with my Savior.  The sin will always be in my life, but He gives me the means to keep it at bay. I want to approach my relationship with God in the same way I am approaching the pain in my hip, with diligence and with the belief that straying from his Word will have a similar effect that the misalignment had on my hip: much unnecessary pain.

After spending a whirlwind of a week preparing for my 14 year old son's unexpected surgery on his leg, our family was forced for the next two weeks to bring a halt to our busy lives and spend time with each other.  This relaxed schedule compelled me to reflect on how my harried schedule had taken my focus away from being in the presence of God and had unintentionally placed me into a hectic lifestyle where I constantly rushed from one task to the next.  I had over-committed and over-scheduled to the point where I felt the need to rush through my daily quiet times or neglect them altogether so I could begin checking the tasks off my list.  When I did have a break during the day I felt more eager to get acquainted with long lost friends on Facebook then I did discovering new truths about my Savior.  Getting messages on email, Facebook, or my phone held more excitement for me than connecting with the living God.  My kids and husband often found me easily frustrated, irritable, and more interested in getting them to do tasks than helping them to navigate their way through the day. 

The unexpected surgery brought more than just healing to my son's leg.  It gave me more time to reflect on God's word which gave me a greater awareness of how far I had drifted from his presence.  In an attempt to daily focus on living in God's presence, I decided to begin blogging about the things I am learning by studying God's word and memorizing scripture.  Hopefully, my journal entries will be a log recounting the truths I discover, a loving heavenly father I encounter, the failings I confess, and the triumphs for which I can give God the glory.

Until next time,

Sandy

Two resources I plan to use this year: 
Weekly Bible Memory Verse
Read Through the Bible in a Year