Lessons As of Late

It seems I experience spiritual growth in fits and starts as of late, and I am grateful because the last couple of days have brought bits of fits and smatterings of starts.  Some convicting, some illuminating--and all reassuring of God's love and involvement in my life.  He cares enough to speak to me, and for that I am always grateful, whether the speech brings encouragement, admonishment, warning, or direction.

Here's what I've been hearing lately:

Lesson of the Hi-Chew (taken from an email I wrote recently)

Yesterday Junior had a big bag of Hi-Chews and was taking all of the candies out and putting them back in.  She toddled around the room and when I asked her to share some with me, she did.  Then Daddy asked her to give Mommy a beso (since she has been refusing to do so lately; she just shakes her head), and instead she gave me three Hi-Chews.  She did that, like, three times.  :-p  So I ended up with a handful of Hi-Chews and no beso.  I told Batty that this was a good object lesson for our relationship with God.  God says He doesn't want our gifts and sacrifices; he wants our love and affection and heart.  He doesn't want the Hi-Chews; He wants the beso.

Easier to see now that I'm in the parent role how hurtful it is to God when I attempt to do stuff for Him, but don't also spend time and give Him my love and heart.  Doing stuff for God is great--but only with the heart there too.  Of course, I know Batty loves Mommy; I'd be a lot more stressed about this beso thing if she didn't cry out 3 times a night for me to hug her, and if she wasn't uber-clingy all the time on the weekends.  Haha.  But the Hi-Chew/beso thing made me think.

The Chaff and the Wheat, the Wicked and the Righteous

I've been listening to Matthew 13 in my slow slog through the Gospel of Matthew. I feel like I've been working on getting through Matthew for what seems like forever.  I don't advertise this, but in many ways the Old Testament is easier for me to understand than the New Testament because I often feel like I don't "get" Jesus.  I don't really understand the magnitude of what He did on the cross.  Like, I "know" that I'm a sinner and I need a Savior, and I know He died on the cross and rose again to conquer death, and because I believe that His death and resurrection paid for my sins, so I can have a right relationship with God, but... so often I don't feel that I really know what that means.

So then I read things like the Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13, and freak out a little bit in my soul when I hear about the fact that weeds and wheat are permitted to grow together, and it's only in the end times that Jesus will sift through them and pick one apart from the other in judgment.  I freak out because the judgment is so severe:  the chaff will be raised together with the good stuff, but cast away into the fire.  But I freak out only a little because Jesus talks about the wicked versus the righteous and when I think about whether I'm more wicked than righteous, mmm...I tend to think of myself as tipping on the scale of righteous more than wicked.

Ah, but WRONG! Last night (and yes, it was just last night that this clicked) I had an epiphany. And like many of my revelations about Jesus, they are late in coming and seemingly elementary to many of you. But they are relieving and dear to me because while I feel I have a strong grasp on the Father and the Holy Spirit, King Jesus just seems so elusive most of the time.

So the epiphany went essentially like this:  The references to the wicked and the righteous have nothing (directly) to do with my deeds here on earth (i.e. the metric by which I measure my own "more righteous than not" status).  They have purely to do with the state of my soul as tainted by sin, or not.  And Jesus's work on the cross and his subsequent resurrection took the dead, twisted, rotted weed of my soul and covered it with the likeness and newness of fruitful wheat--ripe for the final harvest.  He made me righteous, and not by anything I have done, but only through what He has done.  On the cross.

Simple, I know.  And why it took me so long to arrive at this, ...not sure.  It's one of my great spiritual struggles. There you have it.  I'm glad to have that piece resolved.

Notes from Today's Sermon

• God doesn't call us to remain within our community, just taking care of our own. He called us to do what He did: go out to others who do not believe, and find them, and seek them, and get them.  Intercede for them, invest in their lives, and invite them to join the community and ultimately to believe in Jesus.

• Our world favors the following hierarchy in terms of prioritizing our time: financial (earning a lot of money), intellectual (knowing a lot of stuff), physical (how we present ourselves to others), relational (how we relate to others), spiritual (how we relate to God).  And while all such endeavors have their own level of importance, perhaps the better order of priority for our counterculture as Christians should be the inverse:  first spiritual, then relational.  Then physical, then intellectual, then financial.   I don't have a lot of free time these days, with Junior on our hands and a job that is more manageable but still time-consuming (especially with my first trial coming up!).  And now that I've stepped away from private practice and am doing the work I felt God had always called me to do, the financial aspect has gone away a lot.  And I do feel that I've placed a much greater emphasis on spending time with people.  But in listening to the sermon, I was convicted by this concept of the temporal versus the eternal.  I've always had a dream of owning a magazine-looking house. Not a big one, but a very cozy one that is inviting and nice to be in.  One that will make people want to visit, and feel welcome when they do visit, and one that will provide great memories for our kids....But that's the thing:  it's not the house that makes the memories, nor is it the nice-looking decor that makes people want to visit.  I want to think that the slick kitchen backsplash, six-burner gas range, stainless steel appliances (seriously, where did these wishes come from--HGTV?!?!), the shiny wooden floors, the tall ceilings, the modern arches, the bright and airy layout, the cozy throw over that perfectly placed corner chair, the minimalist-but-sophisticated decor, the plantation shutters (ha!), the granite countertops (that never seemed to matter to me before I knew about them), you get my drift... I want to think that all that stuff is necessary to the making of a welcoming, inviting, cozy, good-memory home.  And it's not.  In fact, I could have all that stuff and have just that: stuff.  Without a home at all.   And there's the rub: true life is found in the spiritual and relational.  Not the temporal stuff.  So all this time I spend (and it's not that much, but it's still a waste) on Pinterest fantasizing over this stuff is...wasteful.  It's not where true life is found.  That is time I could and should be using on spiritual things:  writing an email of encouragement.  Praying for the needs of brothers and sisters.  Interceding for the salvation of friends and family.  Reading the Bible.  Meditating on it.  Being still and knowing that He is God.  

• The Gospel should drive us to spend our time, talent, and treasure on God's mission, for His glory.  Amen!