What Has Become of Your Life? (#50 - #56)

It’s habits that can imprison you and it’s habits that can free you and when thanks to God becomes a habit, so joy in God becomes your life.

- Ann VosKamp

I made this crazy commitment to write.  I am not "a writer."  I'm a  home-school Momma of four in love with Jesus. I search desperate for Truth and sin miserable in this life.  But God called me to write.  So I made this commitment - to the Lord, to myself, to the four silly souls who might someday read what their Momma really thought about during those years of child crazy and family frenzy.

I began a new habit.  Not only to practice the art of writing, but to practice the art of holiness - a setting apart. By setting apart time to share this journey with you.  A journey like the Israelites of old: freed from slavery, brought to the promised land, and turned back because of unbelief.  I'm not saying I don't believe.  I do believe.  I am merely saying, "help my unbelief."

As I head to my promised land, I, like the Israelites of old, doubt God's love.  Although I am free, I still think like a slave.  And as I stare at my Jericho, I wonder how I'm ever going to cross this Jordan - this raging river poised to whisk me down...and out.

So I began this new habit of holiness - setting apart time to publicly thank God for the present of His presence.  I walk through my wilderness exposed, challenged by New York Times' best selling author Ann VosKamp, to write down one-thousand ways joy in God has now become my life.  To compose one-thousand notes of grateful thanks.  To re-collect one-thousand of His gifts into a heaping pile of remembrance..on the other side of my Jordan.

I know.  I know.  At this rate (one post a week) I'll be at this until mid-December 2014!  But by then her challenge will surely become my habit.   With faithfulness, joy in God will undoubtedly become my life.  

Rejoice with me over seven more Good and Perfect Gifts for August, 2012?

50. Gift white - Color of little boy's laundry after inaugural spin in new washing machine (shocking!)
51. Gift eaten - dinner for six where all rejoice and  six plates are swept clean
52. Gift at 10AM -Evidence of answered prayer, "Lord, do whatever it takes to help this child see his need of a Savior."  Hard Eucharisteo.
53. Gift sitting - Me. Here. One hour of solitude despite dinner dishes and bedtime routines.  Ahhh the bliss.
54. Gift upside down - Jack.  Hanging high from his feet above Daddy's head
55. Gift in water - Flower bouquet secretly tucked into grocery bag
56. Gift in His Word - Realizing this: "Blessed is He who is not offended because of Me" (Luke 7:23) really means, "Blessed is He who forgives because of Me."

Here's Hoping Nothing Comes my Way (#36 - #49)

"But love your enemies, do good and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great...Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful." (Luke 6:35-36)

I sat in my "Momma" chair, strolled through this morning's Scripture reading, and stopped dead in my tracks.  How is it that I have been a Christian longer than I haven't, and I still discover Bible verses I never knew existed.

I mean, I know about, "BE holy, as I am holy" (1 Peter 1:16) and

"BE still and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10)

and even, "BE transformed by the renewing of your mind (Romans 12:2).

But somehow BE merciful completely passed me by.  I think the bigger reason this verse halted my parade through Luke was the five-words phrase in the previous verse - "hoping for nothing in return."

Luke and I tromped through familiar ground with the words, "love your enemies, do good, and lend."  But when He got to, "hoping for nothing in return," my walk in the woods became a march through the wilderness.  I no longer knew where we were headed.

You see, previously Luke explained the difference between a Christian and a sinner:  Even sinners love those who love in return.  Sinners do good to those who do good to them.  Sinners even lend to those who repay in full.  So what makes a Christian?  Those five scary words "hoping for nothing in return."

True Christianity loves friends and enemies, with no retribution.  True Christians do good with no hope of return.  True Christians lend without expecting any repayment.  And there's no getting around this one, friends - lending without expecting repayment is really giving.  All lending in the name of Christ is a FREE give-away.

So here's where it gets daunting.  Not only do I have little to zero hope of ever truly loving, doing, or giving freely, but doesn't this also mean (and forgive me if I get struck down by lightening as I say this), but doesn't this mean that God loves me, does me good, and gives to me hoping for nothing in return? 

In the words of singer/songwriter Jeremy Riddle, I must confess. I wonder how great is God's love and how great is His faithfulness.  Will He really still  love me when I do what I do best - give Him virtually nothing in return for His mercy?

For this is what hoping for nothing in return really boils down to - acting as our heavenly Father acts. Acting with mercy.


I have heard mercy and grace described this way. Grace is getting what you don't deserve.  While mercy is not getting what you do deserve.  Grace offers dessert after a 'yucky' meal because your big brother finished your plate for you.  Grace offers: 

1. His Word (do I deserve full, unrestricted access to the Truth that sets me free?)
2. His Son (do I deserve the death He died for me?)
3. His Spirit (do I deserve His quiet whisper when I stomp my feet in sin?)
4. My faithful husband (this I definitely do not deserve)
5. Our four precious children - souls who call me, "Momma." (do I deserve their devotion?)
6. His Healing (do I deserve rescue from the brokenness I create?)
7. And this...just this from my own back yard...

(do I really deserve Beauty?)

  Mercy, on the other hand, offers no such thing.  In fact, mercy offers no-thing and yet everything worth possessing:

1. No condemnation - Romans 8:1
2. No punishment for sin - Romans 4:15
3. No guilty fear.  1 John 4:18
4. No stain or wrinkle or any other blemish - Eph 5:27
5. No accusation to stand against us - Col 1:22
6. No height nor depth nor anything else in all creation to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus - Rom 8:39
7. No hope of ever receiving what my sin rightfully deserves - death, even death on a cross.

In this upside down Kingdom, emptiness leads to mercy-full living.  Vacant stores of expectation.  Barren repayment ledgers.  Blank record of wrongs.  Here's hoping nothin' comes my way.

For by These Trials...(#29 - 35)

I see empty spaces.

You know the little boy in The Sixth Sense who saw dead people?  Well, I see empty spaces.  That vacant corner over there where the garbage can is supposed to be.  I see that.  The blank wall beckoning for art, photography, sculpture, anything (!) to fill up the empty canvas.  I see that too.

I see empty spaces all to easily.  I can spend hours imagining just the right furniture arrangement for this room, dreaming up the perfect drapes for the dining room, or even visualizing a future day when my husband's closet is beautifully organized.  But lately I have struggled to to close my eyes to the empty places and open my mind to the fullness of God's Word. I just cant seem to sit down to concentrate on anything but the empty places.


So I opened the Valley of Vision instead.  This amazing little "collection of puritan prayers and devotions" astounds me.  In a prayer titled, "Contentment," Arthur Bennett describes trials (like my own) this way:



"It is Thy (God's) mercy to afflict and try me with wants,
for by these trials I see my sins,
and desire severance from them."

Mercy?  It is merciful to try me with wants? It is merciful to conflict my soul over time spent home-decorating vs. time spent studying the Bible?  What mercy systematically discloses my day dreaming as carefully disguised sin?  I've worked long and hard to hide my skeletons in a pretty white-washed tomb, and You're telling me it's MERCY to dig up the bones?

He continued.

"Let me willingly accept misery, sorrows, temptations,

if I can thereby feel sin as the greatest evil,
and be delivered from it with gratitude to Thee,
acknowledging this as the highest testimony of Thy love. "

Acknowledging this as the highest testimony of God's love.  Just this. That misery, sorrows, and temptations are all gifts disguised as trials.  If they can cause me to feel my sin as the greatest evil and drive me to beg for deliverance - this is a gift.  Sin is what turns His Providence into my pain.  Sin is what separates me from Christ.  Sin is what keeps me from desiring deliverance from sin.  If trials offer a way out of all these pits, then aren't trials really a gift from God?  Misery, sorrows, and temptations are the highest testimony of His love.  They offer restored relationship.

He persisted.

"Teach me to believe that if ever I would have any sin subdued
I must not only labor to overcome it,
but must invite Christ to abide in the place of it."


The landscape of my heart felt like an exhumed graveyard.  I've spend years identifying the sins of my heart, digging them up and leaving the pits behind.  But the Christian life is not supposed to be like an exhumed graveyard - riddled with deep traps and headstones proclaiming the sins that used to fill me.  Where was the firm foundation? Where were the strongholds of Truth?  Where were the fruits of the Spirit sustaining me on this journey?

And then I realized.  I never invited Christ to fill the holes.  I never invited Him to abide in the empty places where sin used to rest.  I just lived among this mine field of empty pits and tripped over headstones reminding me of sins that used to be.  Of sins that threaten to return to their old places in the ground.

Is this my trial?  Not my conflict over spending too much time considering the empty places in my house.  But rather, the conflict of not addressing the empty places of my heart.  Is figuring out how to let Christ abide in the place of sin my gift of mercy driving me to restored relationship?  Was it sin that convinced me to leave the empty places empty?

As if these questions were not enough to chew on for one morning, seven more (good and perfect?) trials arrived on my front doorstep.  For by these trials I see my sin...and by God's great mercy, desire severance from them.  Come, Christ.  Come.  Fill my empty places.  Restore me unto You.


1. Cut the palm of my hand (deep!) on that sly little razor edge along the aluminum foil box
2. Watched oldest son "help" youngest son pour out almost every drop of sticky White Grape Juice over the edge of cup, onto counter, and spread to chair seats, kitchen floor and under edge of Pottery-Barn rug.
3. Discovered a week's collection of cereal crumbs under the chairs, now mixed up with sticky White Grape Juice
4. Lost the battle to control my tongue (insert yelling, complaining, ridicule and demeaning chatter)
5. Watched youngest son smack back of his head on counter while sliding down chair to "help" Mommy
6. Shrank under the weight of conviction, repentance, embarrassment, frustration
7. Listened to oldest daughter "console" Mommy after all was said and done with, "That's all right, Mom.  You were worse the other day in the car."