The Holy in the commonplace

The title of Tuesday’s Bible study in the book that I’m going through (Uncommon Vessels by Elyse Fitzpatrick) was “Uncommon Service,” and the main point was this:  Where do I fail to see the holiness in my Christian walk?  In other words, what parts of my spiritual life or Christian walk have become commonplace, ordinary, ho-hum, drudgery?  Wow.  This really made me think.  And since it really made me think, I wonder if anyone else really needs to think about this.  Let me point out the areas of my life that immediately jumped to my mind, and see if you, like me, are guilty of turning the holy into commonplace.

The first “spiritual duty”–for lack of a better term–that I thought of as one that I’ve let become common instead of holy was simply going to church.  I have gone to church all my life.  And not just here and there, but almost every Sunday, week in and week out.  For that reason alone, going to church can start to seem ordinary.  But going to church is a holy act–it is where I am to worship my Lord with brothers and sisters in Christ, where we are to come together in the fellowship of believers to learn and worship corporately.  Scripture warns us not to neglect going to church, but while I am not guilty of neglecting it, I certainly don’t always approach each meeting time with the attitude that this is holy, this is for the Lord.  And I suspect that many other people don’t either.  For evidence, I need to list no further than this:  have you ever heard anyone (or yourself) complaining about the worship service?  And I don’t mean complaining about doctrinal error or unbiblical practice.  I mean complaining about music style, preaching style, poor powerpoint operation, mistakes in the instruments or singing, the preacher going too long, what someone said to you or didn’t say to you, the behavior of someone’s kid during the service, and on and on and on.  If I approach worship services with a commonplace attitude, then all of these little things are going to be in my focus, simply because my focus has nothing to center on.  But if I approach the worship service with the attitude that this is holy, this is mandated by Scripture as one of the primary ways for me to worship the God Who created me, redeemed me, sustains my every breath, and promises to bring me into glory for all eternity, then very little of that list is going to steal my focus because my focus will be centered on joyful worship of my Lord.  Yes, there will be distractions-that is inevitable.  But distractions cannot steal your focus unless you let them.  If you find yourself constantly thinking of things in that list or things like that list when you think of “worship service” or “church attendance,” then I would say that there is a good chance that you have taken what should be holy and made it commonplace.

The other example that popped into my mind almost simultaneously–and it is closely related–was serving in the church family.  Assuming you have some role of service in your church (which you absolutely should), how do you approach your times of service?  Is it drudgery?  Is it habit?  Is it something that you complain about, or make sure that everyone knows exactly how much work you did?  Or is it a holy and joyful act of worship and service to your Lord?  Serving in the church, whatever the job is, is holy.  It is an act of worship, it is an act of service to the Lord and to your brothers and sisters in Christ, and oftentimes to unbelievers.  Do you look at your service in the church as holy or as commonplace?  If you absolutely cannot approach your duties in the church with a joyful attitude, then maybe you have the wrong duties.  Maybe you should say no to some of the acts of drudgery that you do only because you think you are supposed to do them, and let someone who may be more suited for that job and therefore will approach it with joy and humility step up and have your place.  Then you will be free to find a place to serve that suits your gifts and interests, one that you will view as a holy duty unto the Lord.

Now, in case you already find yourself thinking that viewing church attendance or service as ordinary or commonplace is not really a big deal, let me share with you the examples from Scripture that were referenced in the Bible study.  First, look in Leviticus 10.  All Nadab and Abihu did was light a censer, lay incense on it and offer it to the Lord when He hadn’t told them to do so.  In other words, they performed a service, a job in the church that they weren’t supposed to.  What happened?  The Lord killed them on the spot.  Apparently, serving wrongly is a big deal.  Now look in 1 Samuel 2.  Eli’s sons ate more of the sacrifices than they were supposed to.  Doesn’t seem like a huge, thing, right?  What happened?  The Lord not only killed them (later, not on the spot), but he cut off the line of Eli from the priesthood forever.  Apparently, serving wrongly is a big deal.  And although my Bible study didn’t reference them, Scripture is full of warnings regarding worshipping wrongly–just read 1 Corinthians for starters.  Apparently, worshipping wrongly is a big deal.  Finally, look at 1 Peter 2:9-10.  If you are a Christian, what does this verse say about you?  You are chosen, royal, holy, a person for God’s own possession.  As a Christian, nothing you do should be done with a “commonplace” attitude, least of all corporate worship and service in the church!!  So if you, like I did, find yourself looking at church attendance, serving in the church, or any other part of your spiritual walk (personal quiet time?  family Bible time?  tithing?  just loving people who are hard to love?) with an attitude of “commonplace,” maybe you need to, like I needed to, remind yourself of the holiness of those commonplace things.  Focus on His Holiness, and remember that all of your life is to be lived out as worship to Him, to bring Him glory.  A life lived with that perspective will be no commonplace life.

In the deep recesses of my heart

The Lord has really been peeling back the layers of my heart lately.  There are a few huge skeletons that He yanked out of the closet all at the same time.  It’s been actually overwhelming.  My mind wants to say, “Lord, I could deal with any of these issues one at a time, but how do You expect me to deal with them all at once?!?”  But that’s just how He works.  My love for the Word and desire to spend time each day in the Word has really grown over these weeks through our ladies’ book study at church, and as a result I’ve come across passages of Scripture that are poking at these places in my heart that I’d really rather not deal with.  It’s the sins that feel normal, feel comfortable, sins that I know everyone else has in their life but for some reason they are “acceptable.”  These are the sins the Lord is asking me to kill in my life.  Have you ever tried to root out a sin that has been part of you and your thinking for as long as you can remember?  The roots go so deep that it is an intensely painful process to yank them out.  And I’m not writing this to say that I’ve gotten them all the way out.  I’ve just begun yanking.  More some days than others because the heart- and mind-work involved in literally exhausting.

The first one that He brought to light involved eating/food.  I’ve longed to lose weight for what seems like my whole life, I’ve known that I’m overweight, I’ve been aware of the fact that my eating habits are not healthy.  But I never really labeled them as sinful.  Then several little “coincidences” happened all within a few weeks, and boom!  All the sudden I’m on a journey that is totally challenging the way I approach every bite I take.  A book I’ve been reading, Love to Eat, Hate to Eat by Elyse Fitzpatrick, has been phenomonal to open my eyes to the ways I’ve been sinning in this area.  But it’s such a huge change in thinking that it is mentally draining.  (Although I have to be honest:  the 11 pounds I’ve lost in the process are a great motivation to keep doing the hard work necessary to root out this sin!)  It’s been so eye-opening to think about the freedom we have in Christ to not be legalistic about our eating, and yet at the same time, to examine my motives for eating what I eat to see if they are sinful or not.  So, I’m eating without the guilt that has always accompanied my meals (I’m eating too much, I really shouldn’t eat this, etc.) even as I see how sinful my approach to food has really been.  A longer review of this book will come when I finish it, but I have to read it in little chunks because there is simply so much to process.  Part of me would rather still be eating in ignorant bliss of the idolatry present in my heart–that’s why this journey is such a struggle.  It is difficult to deal with the “acceptable” sin of over-eating and emotional-eating, especially when everyone around me eats as much as they want of whatever they want, but I am thankful for His grace to open my eyes to this sin in my life, as hard as it is to kill it.

The next corner of my heart that He ordered me to sweep out–literally at the same time as He was cleaning out the sinful-eating corner–was that corner where bitterness had pulled up the rocking chair and settled in for a nice long stay.  I’ve been aware of some bitterness in my heart for awhile, but when the Lord had pointed it out in the past, I’d never really done anything with it.  I may have shaken my finger at it and told it to get out, but bitterness is a lot stronger than that.  I’ve been reading the last week through the book of 1 John in little tiny sections.  The theme that is repeated over and over is that if I don’t love my brother, I am not in Christ.  At one point it speaks even more strongly:  “Whoever does not love abides in death.”  (3:14)  Wow.  That hurt.  All of the sudden that morning, faces started flashing through my mind of people toward whom I have been harboring bitterness.  There are people in my family that I do not love.  There are people in my church that I do not love.  There are people from different places in my past that I do not love.  “Whoever does not love abides in death.”  It seems okay to feel bitter toward people who have hurt us.  It’s another one of those “acceptable” sins.  If we have to be around them, we avoid speaking unless absolutely necessary, and for me, even though my voice is friendly and there is a smile on my face, it’s all completely fake and I’m mentally calculating the quickest escape possible.  The issue I immediately brought up in my mind when the Lord pointed these people out to me was this:  They have hurt me (or someone I love) deeply and yet have never admitted that they were wrong, have never apologized, and in some cases are continuing to add to the hurt.  So how do I forgive and love them?  But the question remained:  Do I want to abide in death?  Well, of course not.  So the Lord is asking me to take steps to show love to people who have plotted against my family, to people who have thrown poison arrows with their words at me and those I love, to people who hurt me through such careless and thoughtless actions that they don’t even realize what they did, to people who are fiercely unwilling to even acknowledge that a break exists in our relationship.  He wants me to step out and show love to these people even though most people around me will not “get it.”  The thought frankly scares me to death.  I picture myself speaking love to these people and I can already feel the words choking in my throat.  But I do not want to abide in death, so I’m thankful for His grace to show me this sin so that I can begin to oh-so-painful process of killing it.

Finally, He’s been dealing with me regarding the fear and lack of trust that has always resided in my heart.  As we’ve gone through various trials, and as my understanding of the sovereignty of God has developed, my fears have changed somewhat, but fear still remains in another one of those dusty, skeleton-inhabited corners of my heart.  I used to be afraid of what might happen to me because I did not grasp the sovereignty of God.  Now I’m afraid of what might happen to me because I do grasp the sovereignty of God (at least much more than I did several years ago; the sovereignty of God is so big and mind-boggling that it can never fully be grasped in our tiny, finite minds).  I look at the uncertainty that surrounds our lives right now, particularly in regard to church since we are without a pastor, and I feel fear.  I know what I want for our future, but I know that God is much bigger than that and He may have other plans in mind for us.  I know in my mind that His plans will be for our good, and that He will be ever faithful to care for us and provide for us.  But my heart realizes that even those good plans may involve pain and a “no” answer to what it is that I think I desire.  That’s what scares me.  And that is what He’s pointing at when He asks, “Do you trust Me?”  He’s pointing to that corner in my heart where I’ve allowed this fear to take over, the corner that causes the tears to well up in my eyes when I think about getting a “no” answer to my desires.  Do I trust Him?  Am I willing to quietly surrender my desires to His perfect plan and wait quietly on the Lord?  Wow, this is a hard one, too.  And it’s silly, really.  Because His plans are going to come to pass whether I have a quiet, submissive heart or a heart filled with fear.  But I know which kind of heart is pleasing to Him, which kind of heart is more like Jesus.  And that’s the kind of heart that He’s calling me to cultivate.  Who knew that letting go of fear would be so hard?  But the root of fear is deep in my heart.  Yanking it out hurts.

I’m not really sure why I’ve chosen to be so vulnerable here, except that I made a commitment to myself to be authentic and real and honest.  So this is real for me right now.  I can feel His hand on my heart.  I can feel myself responding in ways I never have before, like taking the thoughts that I think out of habit into captivity to examine them and see if they are true, excellent, lovely, praiseworthy.  But the path in front of me in this process still stretches out so long.  I want to harbor no sin in my heart, even if it is “acceptable” and so deeply rooted that removing it threatens to change my very way of thinking.  So I cautiously continue to open the Word each morning, to see what skeleton He will point at today.  I beg for grace to change what He’s told me to change.  And I shed some tears as the thorns on the roots of sin pierce my heart as I pull them out.  This is sanctification.  It’s not often pretty and fluffy and comfortable as Christian coffee cups and t-shirts would lead us to believe.  It’s hard.  It hurts.  But it’s worth it.  And best of all, it’s possible through Christ who promises to never leave us, to give us strength to do all things, and to bring us to completion at the day of glory.  That is why it’s worth pressing on.

Isaiah

The book of Isaiah has always captivated me.  It could be easy to get bogged down in all of the laments and “woes,” but it is chock full of nuggets that my soul just grabs onto and basks in.  I’ve been reading through Isaiah for the past few days, using the outline at the beginning of the book that the ESV Study Bible provides to try to make sense of the overall flow of the book.  Each day, I have stumbled upon these nuggets–reading through these dire prophecies and warnings, the promises just leap off of the page and into my soul where they are a balm.  I just want to share some of them here, and pray that they will comfort you and fill you with a peace and a hope as they have been doing for me.

“Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD:  though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall become like wool.”  1:18

“He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn way anymore.  O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.”  2:4-5

“I will give thanks to you in that day, O LORD, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, that you might comfort me.  Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the LORD GOD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation.”  12:1-2

“He will swallow up death forever; and the LORD GOD will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken.”  25:8

“You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.”  26:3

“Does one crush grain for bread?  No, he does not thresh it forever; when he drives his cart wheel over it with his horses, he does not crush it.  This also comes from the LORD of hosts; he is wonderful in counsel and excellent in wisdom.”  28:28-29

“In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see.  The meek shall obtain fresh joy in the LORD, and the poor among mankind shall exult in the Holy One of Israel.”  29:18-19

“For thus says the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.”  30:15

“Therefore the LORD waits to be gracious to you,and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you.  For the LORD is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.”  30:18

“And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher.  And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left.” 30:20-21

“…until the Spirit is poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field, and the fruitful field is deemed a forest.  Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness abide in the fruitful field.  And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.  My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings,and in quiet resting places.”  32:15-18

“The LORD is exalted, for he dwells on high; he will fill Zion with justice and righteousness, and he will be the stability of your times, abundance of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge; the fear of the LORD is Zion’s treasure.” 33:5-6

“Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees.  Say to those who have an anxious heart, ‘Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God.  He will come and save you.’  Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.” 35:4-6

 

And I haven’t even gotten through the second half of the book!  How could anyone read these promises and not long for that day?  Trust Him, take Him at his word.  No matter what your circumstances, no matter how difficult your life, no matter how much further our nation slips down the slippery slope it is on, hope in the Lord.  Come, Lord Jesus.  Quickly come.

The Great Flood (by Abigail)

The Great Flood

The rain pounded on the muddy ground>

Lightning flashed all around!

Thunder bellowed at the men!

The wind blew, stopped, then blew again.

The earth trembled, it seemed like the end!

 

Men worked furiously inside the boat.

Noah hollered, “Make it float!”

His family rushed inside the ark.

Animals scurried.  “Come on, aardvark!”

 

When the rain stopped and the land dried,

Happy Noah glorified.

His eyes scanned the barren land,

The dove flew from his trembling hand.

All the animals came out again.

From Noah’s family a new earth would begin.

 

**This was a recent writing assignment for Abigail.  Basically she had starter lines that consisted of the noun in each line, and she filled in the rest.  I know that some of the timing and details in her poem don’t exactly match up with the biblical account, but–if I’m allowed to brag a little bit–I thought she did a remarkable job on her poem!  Thanks for letting me boast for a minute!

A Day in the Life of a Mommy, Round Three

“Hey, Mommy!  It’s morning! Now let’s watch a show!”

My quiet time’s not over, but it’s time to go!

It’s only 6:30 but my day has begun.

Welcome to life as a mommy.

 

Let’s get that first diaper change out of the way

And downstairs we go to start off our day.

“I want oatmeal!” “I want Pop-Tart!” “I need a drink!”

“Can I have some more, please, Mommy?”

 

Back upstairs to do “Morning Stuff,”

Somehow one reminder is never enough.

Combing hair, brushing teeth, getting clothes on.

“Please go make your bed now for Mommy.”

 

Now that we’re ready, school can begin.

“Girls, do your reading, you’re on Chapter 10.”

Bible and Phonics with Samuel and Bess,

“I’m ready for Grammar now, Mommy!”

 

The rest of the morning is filled up with jobs:

Doing laundry and dishes and calming their sobs.

“She pulled my hair!” “He took away!”

“Silas dumped the salt again, Mommy!”

 

“What do you want for lunch?” “Peanut butter and jelly!

And remember that Cheetos are great for my belly!”

“I want more!” “I’m all done!” “Can I have a cookie?”

“You forgot my drink, silly Mommy!”

 

A little more school, then take Silas to bed.

The thought of doing math often fills her with dread.

But we buckle down and get it done.

“Can I watch a movie now, Mommy?”

 

I sit down for a moment but then hear his cries.

I go in to find him rubbing wake-up eyes.

Rest time is over, the snacks come out.

And it’s back to work now, Mommy.

 

“Mommy, I pee-peed!” (Oh dear, it’s on the chair.)

“Mommy, Silas has yogurt in his hair!”

“Play with me, Mommy!” “Can you find my book?”

“Samuel dumped the cars out again, Mommy!”

 

I look at the clock. Hurray, it’s almost time!

Onto the couch by the window they climb.

“I see him! There’s Daddy!” And to the door they run.

Everyone’s forgotten about the mommy.

 

Time now for dinner.  “Girls, come and sit down.”

“Remember to eat and not act like a clown.”

“Take a bite.”  “Use your fork.”  “Let’s use our manners.”

“Can we have a treat now, please, Mommy?”

 

Some nights we load into the van and we go.

Anywhere we are we make quite a show.

“Stay with us and keep your hands to yourself!”

“Yes, they’re all mine.  I’m their Mommy.”

 

The evening’s now over.  Prayers have been said.

Daddy takes his two boys to tuck them in bed.

The girls climb in bed with expectant faces.

Time to read a chapter with Mommy.

 

The house is now quiet. I sit down with a sigh.

The days are so long, but oh, how they fly.

My body’s exhausted, my brain is worn out,

But after all, I am a Mommy.

 

I climb into bed and know this is bliss.

I turn to my husband for my good night kiss.

But lightly I sleep because likely as not,

Someone will be crying for Mommy.