It’s hard to believe in something you can’t exactly see, isn’t it? The popular saying “you have to see it to believe it” is burned into our psyches. For the non-Christian one of the greatest obstacles to trusting in Christ is that salvation comes by faith, not by sight. For the Christian, living in light of this reality is often just as hard. When life is going well it might be relatively easy to trust in God’s promises for you. You want for nothing. The sun is shining. Everything seems to be going your way. But what about when things aren’t going the way you hoped? What do you hope in then?
Tim Keller on Suffering
Daniel has been reading The Kings Cross by Tim Keller and for the last couple of weeks has been reading portions of it to me at dinner. It has blessed me immensely. So on this Monday I would like to share a little of this blessing with you. I pray it encourages your soul like it did mine.
Desperate People Pray
I’ve always been a little envious of people who pray well. You know who they are, the ones who genuinely seem to seek the face of God when they pray. They don’t get distracted, or fall asleep, when praying. They want to pray, and often come out of praying feeling energized and alive. Usually I hear them talk about joy in praying and feel like the kid who wasn’t invited to the party. Like there is something really important I’m missing. I have always known that prayer is how I talk to God, and that God wants me to pray to him, but I haven’t always felt like it’s the spiritual discipline that gives me the greatest spiritual high. And I always wondered why.
I Don't Belong at Walmart: Thoughts on the Baby Aisle
Nearly every week I make a trip to Walmart. While I’m usually there to buy food to feed my little family of two, as my husband can attest, I often find myself meandering about the store. Sure I only need some bread, but a detour through the home goods section never hurt anyone, right? Every once in a while I find myself wandering through a more painful section of Walmart. The baby aisle. Call it wishful thinking, but I sometimes feel drawn to all the little outfits, furniture, and products that are designed for that little bundle of joy.
On Wrestling Well
I’ve been camping out in the Psalms a lot lately. I know that I’ve said this before, but the Psalms are filled with such raw emotion. There are words for people who are joyous and words for people who are in deep despair. And they are all God’s words to his people. Last week I listened to a couple of excellent messages on our emotions and I was reminded that God did not create us to be emotionless beings. He gave us our emotions, but sin has corrupted them and therefore we must wrestle daily through our feelings—feelings that can be up one day and down the next.
Suffering Produces Faith in Future Grace
Count It All Future Joy
I’ve thought a lot about the experience of suffering and the Bible’s response to our suffering this past year. Before our miscarriage and infertility I quickly passed over passages on suffering, not because I didn’t see them as important, but I just didn’t relate to them. I had faced trials before, but nothing that really made me wrestle with God’s good plan for my life in the way I have recently. I don’t doubt his goodness; I just need to understand it more than ever before. While difficult, that is a good result of our suffering. It causes us to lean hard into him and desperately seek his face because without his presence in our lives we are hopeless.
Piper on Romans 8:28
"If you live inside this massive promise [Romans 8:28], your life is more solid and stable than Mount Everest. Nothing can blow you over when you are inside the walls of Romans 8:28. Outside Romans 8:28 all is confusion and anxiety and fear and uncertainty. Outside the promise of all-encompassing future grace there are straw houses of drugs and alcohol and numbing TV and dozens of futile diversions. There are slat walls and tin roofs of fragile investment strategies and fleeting insurance coverage and trivial retirement plans. There are cardboard fortifications of deadbolt locks and alarm systems and antiballistic missiles. Outside are a thousand substitutes for Romans 8:28.
Letter from a Grieving Mother
My Sweet Baby,
This is not how I thought my first Mother’s Day would be. I had hoped to be holding you and dressing you for church this morning. But I'm not. Instead my arms ache to hold you this side of heaven. I know you don’t weep for me. You are with our Savior, King Jesus. I can’t help but smile thinking that when I worship the Savior this morning at church, I’m joining in a heavenly song already going on. One that you are a part of.
Finding Your Home on Mother's Day
In all of your pain and sorrow you desperately want God to hear your prayer and comfort you in this dark season. Mother’s Day can be a stark reminder that there is a deep longing in your soul for a baby you long to hold, either in heaven or yet to be formed. And when you cry out to the Lord it seems like he isn’t there either.