Upon consideration of the life God would have me live…

Fear is a natural emotion that most of us suffer. I’ve often struggled with fear: fear of man, fear of the future, fear of failure. More relevant to this conversation, I’ve feared the consequences of trusting God.

 Feelings themselves are not necessarily sinful, but it is how I respond to these feelings that decide my standing. Little by little, as I grow in my relationship with the Lord and am introduced and re-introduced to His faithfulness, I am releasing these emotions and exchanging them for rest. I have determined that, in spite of the fear that tries to grip my heart, and the doubt that preys upon my mind, I would rather live radically than securely. In fact, I choose this. I choose to leave room for my God, my Father, my Rock and my Salvation, to flex His mighty muscles in my life, even if it requires that I remain blind to His plan, child-like and dependent.

What does this look like?

As of now, it looks like a sustained obedience to the Lord’s leading, even it appears as though the path He has chosen for me is the path of least success by the world’s standards. It means that I will do less to earn what I have and more to press into His love, maintaining dependence on an Invisible Force. It means that I will face the fear of poverty, desertion, death, and instability in hope and faith that, as I take that leap off the cliff, He will provide a way to the other side.

Today, I want to set a standard for my life that defies all logic, man-made security, and worldly wisdom. I want to set a standard of trust in God that is so reckless, ridiculous, and abandoned, and I want to set it today.

I once heard someone say that the devil will do everything He can to keep me from getting to a place where I am desperate for God to come through, because it is in such a place of desperation that God is sure to show up. I have to believe that in my desperation, He will prove Himself to me, time and time again. In His faithfulness He is bound to me, by blood. He bought me, and I am His to provide for.

A powerful Biblical example of this desperate dependence that Jesus desires us to live in is in Matthew. Matthew 14 and 15 tell two separate stories of miraculous feeding. In Matthew 14, Jesus fed five thousand people with only five loaves of bread and two fish, and there were twelve basketfuls remaining after all had eaten. Similarly, in Matthew 15 Jesus fed four thousand people with seven loaves of bread a few small fish. There were seven basketfuls remaining after all had eaten. What an incredible God. Shortly after, in chapter 16, the disciples followed Jesus across the lake, and the Bible mentions that they forgot to take bread along with them. As Jesus began to teach them, they misinterpreted a lesson about the hypocrisy of the Pharisees due to their preoccupation with their lack of bread. They were hungry, and probably worried. Jesus rebuked them, saying, “You of little faith, why are you talking among yourselves about having no bread? Do you still not understand? Don’t you remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many basketfuls you gathered? Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many basketfuls you gathered?” (vs. 8-11) In this, Jesus was calling His disciples to a higher standard of trust in His power and in His provision. He was pleading with them, “Don’t you understand that I can make something out of nothing? Don’t you understand that I can, and will, give you bread? It’s what I do! I’ve done it twice before. I’ll do it again.” Jesus was demonstrating to them a lifestyle of the miraculous. He wasn’t trying to blow their minds with a super cool once-in-a-lifetime miracle. He was offering them a sure principle on which to base their lives.

Similarly, when I worry about where the finances will come from next month, or when I’ll get my next job, or where I should move, or whatever it might be, He’s right beside me, reminding me of His infinitely faithful provision for me every day of my life so far. Why should tomorrow be any different?

God, give us all the faith to trust You radically by abandoning our independence and self-sustenance. It is only when we do this that You have room to show up and show Yourself big and powerful. I want to be a witness to Your character every day of my life. I want this to be my standard of living. 

Freedom

This drawing mirrors the posture my Father beckons me to live in: free, fearless, favored. As I lay my striving down, He welcomes me into the palace to live under His protection and provision. All He asks of me is to be a child, and receive it as a child. Amazing!

Love

           My heart is for the nations. I’ve felt the pull since I was a little girl and it has only increased over the years. I’m so encouraged by the lives of missionaries who have served the Lamb all over the world. They have seen the Lord’s hand and sought His face, healed the sick and set the captives free.

When I think of the radical Love shown us by Jesus, I think of these supernatural displays of Divine affection. I think of giving sight to the blind, feeding the hungry and healing the broken-hearted. When asked why I want to go to missionary school next year, one of my many answers is that I want to learn how to love. To really love. I’ve said this in the past assuming that this kind of radical love can only be learned in a falling-apart orphanage in the middle of a hot jungle. And to be honest, I believe I truly would enjoy fully giving myself to loving the lost over there. Way over there. Wherever that might be.

You know where I’m going with this. It’s hardly an original thought. But it finally seems to be sinking into my spirit, no matter how many years I’ve “known” it, and so I thought to put it on paper. 

I recently moved home after being on my own for a number of years, and I feel the tension of being a new creation in a far too familiar environment. As I prepare for my next season in life, which will in fact involve foreign missions, I am tempted to hide myself away from this old familiar world in my quiet times with the Lord, in my endless stack of spiritually edifying books, through my hobbies, and through various activities of worship that I love to and feel called to sacrifice to the Lord. Externally, this appears to be a great way to spend a summer of preparation and consecration, set apart and untouched, hidden and…un-touching. In the confines of my room, I am preparing myself for the next season of my life in which God will finally call me to love. Then. Not now. But this attitude couldn’t be farther from the will of God. Jesus despises an unwillingness to love in the now, for today is all we have.

I appreciate the life of Stephen, the first martyr and a powerful man of God. He positioned himself humbly before God and man. He began his ministry serving at the public tables. Hardly glamorous. Elizabeth Elliot, in her book Discipline, comments on his circumstance, “If Stephen had set his heart on the working of miracles and signs or on becoming a brilliant apologist, he would hardly have been willing to accept an appointment on the welfare board…But there was a need. He was called upon to fill it. He said yes. His heart was set on one thing: obedience to God. He was counted worthy to suffer because he was willing to serve. Stephen did not lift up his soul unto vanity, dreaming of attaining a place of high distinction in church history.”

His heart was set on obedience to the Master. It was his delight to obey. It was his delight to wait on tables. It is through this sacrificial worship that Stephen touched the heart of God and was later counted worthy to bring resurrection power to his environment, bedazzling his heavenly crown with the treasures of service and martyrdom. What an encouraging example! As I spend the next few months at home, I know that I have a powerful call on my life. Right here, right now. Every time I unload the dish washer, take out the trash, set down a book to play with my siblings, or give up sleep to pack four PB&J lunches, I’m releasing God’s glory in my home and on the earth. I really am! Living out of real love means living determined to serve, humbly positioned before the needs of others no matter who it is, where it takes place, or how anticlimactic or unrecognized the act might be. This kind of love is climactic. This kind of love is recognized, in Heaven’s Courts. “Yet what is due me is in the hand of the Lord, and my reward is my God.” Isaiah 49:4

In one of his sermons, Bill Johnson recalls that David the shepherd boy killed the lion and the bear in secret. No man witnessed his victory, yet His God did, and rewarded him for his courage and trust in the Lord. Similarly, true love flows out of a heart that is bare before an audience of One, longing to imitate Jesus and minister to His heart in the secret place, finding its only reward there. Killing a lion with bare hands and unloading the dishwasher for your mom are hardly comparable; however, both are heroic acts before the throne if done out of a pure and worshipful heart. God sees the motivation behind every act of service and the attitude backing every step taken. He will have no shallow love. He will not have a glory-seeking Bride. He calls her up every day to this standard of loving: un-exaggerated, unannounced, and holy.

Eternity

I am small one among winged legions

waltzing in rank

to the sweet symphony of raindrops

clinking on red, green, and purple gemstones-

a kaleidoscoped highway-

twinkling beneath a family of feet.

“You shall love Me”

He speaks.

The massed words suspend in the air like thunder,

molecules floating toward every corner of the cosmos.

colliding and shattering into a million beads of light;

white rose petals falling onto my upturned face

like floating snowflakes, stinging my forehead and freezing my tears.

Icy air is quickly swallowed up by the fierce heat beneath my feet

burning on Holy ground.

Lapping tongues of fire shoot up my legs

in fierce command -Dance!-

But my eyes linger hungrily upon the One.

Can I break the order, leaping out of line into loving arms?

Searching out His face my fingers cling to the corner of His

lily white robe cascading down the throne and resting at my feet

like a mighty roaring waterfall pouring into a stilled pool – my soul -

A multitude of glorious figures,

like Greek statues come alive with the warm glow of beating hearts,

encircle His resting place.

The quick, corporate movement of one massive body in unabashed worship,

spinning, leaping, laughing, weeping,

begets a heavenly breeze, a celestial mist

swirling around my head. 

I run back to join the dance,

sucked into the laughing rip tide,

loosing my white-tight grip on white silk cloth.

Brushing petals off of my shoulders and mist from my eyelashes

I look up to the tip of the crown,

To the delicate lily-white satin, to those fiery eyes. 

I find the corner of His robe again

and dive beneath the cool silk,

rolling, reaching, covering every part of my self.

Palms flat on the jeweled stones beneath my knees,

head buried beneath holy garments,

I mouth the word my soul can no longer contain.

Holy. 

The Father-Face of God

I like eating peanut butter toast with Daddy. He sits on a big chair and I sit on a big chair; that is, on a telephone book on a big chair so I can reach the plate. He bits into His half and I listen to the warm crust crunching in his mouth, curiously watching breadcrumbs fall from lips to golden beard; happy sprinkles across a happy face, like wheat chaff blowing across an untamed landscape. He sneezes and I giggle, squirming off of the telephone book and onto the table to brush the crumbs off His face. I like the feel of his whiskers tickling my hand, playfully inviting me to join the twirling chaff in a prairie dance across the wide-open palm of his hand. I made you something Daddy, I whisper in His ear then scramble to the ground. His eyes follow my pink and yellow socks, up and then down the stairs, pretending not to notice the hand-painted pot, barely hidden behind my body. It’s for You. He takes hold of the offering, smiling softly. Spinning it around for inspection, my little heart wraps itself tighter and tighter around His warm, calloused finger as it traces the painted hills rolling over the cool ceramic. He catches my awed gaze, shy with unexpressed affection, and, laughing out loud, lifts me up and onto His lap. Pressing my head into His chest, I rest. In a field of wildflowers, face to the sun, inhaling sweet fragrance, I rest. My breath slows to match the strong and steady beat of His heart, the life of the earth pounding beneath my lying body, the full, pressing, pulsing persuasion of His chest beneath my head. I look up to the dark lines of His face, tracing the wrinkles around His smile with my thumbs. His fingers dance around my freckles. I ask, What are you doing? He says, I’m memorizing them. Each and every one.


Reading between the lines: I am a twenty-one year old woman. I use that word liberally. But, despite my shortcomings, weaknesses, and childish enthusiasm, I am a woman, by definition and design, by purpose and destiny, in spirit and in flesh.

Just this year God gave me a gift that transformed the very core of my womanhood: the revelation that I am a daughter of the Most High King, a princess in the Land of the Living God, a rose in His garden, the delight of His heart. I am Amy, His beloved one.

This realization alone has lifted me out of the hollow and fruitless pit of childish pursuits and into the spirit of daughter-ship by which I cry out “Abba, Father!” into my pink pillow late at night, and by which I now take a stand, by grace, in my role as a woman. The sweet irony of a maturing relationship with the Father, however, is that it demands self-reduction, even to the point of infancy all over again. Sweetly dependent. Sweetly spoon-fed and rocked to sleep in Daddy’s arms.

When I approach the throne of grace in prayer, I see a small baby safely held and comfortably molded to the palm of God’s hand. That baby is me. And the warm curvature of His hand is my home. When I am clinging fast and hard to His fingers, seeking all I need and desire in the rich, bottomless treasure that is the man Christ Jesus, the abundance of His heart’s love rains down on this empty vessel, satisfying all thirsts of my flesh and hungers of my heart. Hungry no more, I am confidant to stand in my womanhood, because this woman has a Father looking after her, leading her, loving her, protecting her. And He is a good Dad. Always good.

Learning to trust a father isn’t always as simple as it was designed to be. The world wounds, and the enemy delights in driving a poisonous stake between father-daughter love. I have no power to heal those burns or to restore another’s ability to trust. But I can tell you that every woman, whether tip-toeing or stomping her way across the face of the earth, belongs in His nurturing hold just the same. My failures and insecurities have power to burn my flesh and deaden my spirit only when I run, crawl, jump, or whatever form of abandonment I choose, out of His arms and into my own empty strength, leaking and depleted. I was not made to stand on my own, no matter what feminist pseudo-power mentality momentarily poisons my mind, challenging the righteousness of my child-like dependence on Dad. I, a woman, was made to be a child. His baby. For when I am weak, I am strong. Only in this place of mind and state of heart am I free to be a woman warrior for the King. Only then am I liberated by love to pour my own gifts, no matter how insufficient or silly, onto his feet. Only then can I enjoy His hugs and kisses, and our daddy-daughter dates; just time and Him. Toast or no toast.

I was made to be loved by Him! Thank God I have a Father who is not only able and willing to love a sinner like myself, but extraordinarily desirous of my own heart’s affections towards Him by some unmerited, holy miracle. I am His beauty. I am His rose. It is a good thing to be.