Draw Me Nearer...

You know how we say, "Today is just one of those days..."? One of those days where stuff just doesn't seem to go right. Days where you just don't really care. Days where you know deep down that this is not our home, but you just can get past that to the joy of the home that awaits.

I have been having a lot of those days lately.

Nothing feels quite right. And I'm struggling to care. Where's my joy? Where's my passion? What is this thing welling up inside me called apathy... and how can I make it go away? These are a few questions I've been wrestling with over the past weeks.

I'm longing for God to move in my heart, to change the way I feel. And yet I keep wondering if I am the problem here. What am I missing? What needs to change?

This morning I pulled into the parking lot at work eight minutes before 8:00. I liked the song on the radio, so I sat and listened, attempting to let its truth wash over me and impact my heart. As the notes faded, a simple piano line began, and I continued to sit in my car. The song that came on was new to me, although it was released several years ago. The words touched my heart and became my prayer for the day:

Draw Me Nearer

For your nearness Lord I hunger
For your nearness Lord I wait
Hold me ever closer Father
Such a love I can't escape

For your nearness I am hoping
For your nearness Lord I long
Have no need of any other
I have found where I belong
Yes, I have found where I belong

So draw me nearer Lord
Never let me go
Closer to your heart
Draw me nearer Lord

In your nearness there is healing
What was broken now made whole
Restoration in it's fullness
Lasting hope for all who come

In your nearness I take shelter
Where you are is where I'm home
I have need of only one thing
To be here before your throne
To be here before your throne

So draw me nearer Lord
Never let me go
Closer to your heart
Draw me nearer Lord

And keep me here, keep me here
There's nowhere else I rather be
So keep me here, keep me here
There's nowhere else I rather be
There's nowhere else I rather be

So draw me nearer Lord
Never let me go
Closer to your heart
Draw me nearer Lord
Draw me nearer Lord
Draw me nearer my Lord

song by Meredith Andrews

Listen to the song at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqoIk-jj0uQ&feature=related

I pray that this song touches your heart as it did mine.

Calm My Anxious Heart, Part III

Greed. Purpose. Worry. Faith.

Greed.

It’s a thriving disease in our culture today. It is easy to become so focused on material things that we lose sight of our eternal perspective.

A lady in Poland who had very little was asked about how she felt about her seemingly difficult life compared to those who had all the modern conveniences. Her response:

Western women have so many things that they don’t need God.

I pray that it is never said of me that I have so many things that I don’t need God! Henry Kissinger said, “To Americans, usually a tragedy is wanting something very badly and not getting it.” Greed is a downward spiral that leads to envy. Envy leads to debt. All lead to discontentment.

To combat the trap of greed, these four scriptural principles can be applied:

• Everything belongs to God.

• Heart attitude is the issue.

• God comes first and possessions come second.

• Possessions are to be used, not loved.

Purpose.

We all want to have one. Too often we live shortsighted lives, never seeing the horizon in the distance. We live a dot-to-dot life, never seeing the big picture but only the next dot. We also often live on hold, waiting for the next thing. Something. Anything to give our lives meaning.

A way to combat a purposeless life is to create a life purpose statement. This is something I’m in the process of right now, but I haven’t completed it yet. Hopefully it will give me a greater focus as I make decisions and continue forward in my walk with the Lord.

“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” - Goethe

Worry.

It’s like a rocking chair. It will give you something to do but it won’t get you anywhere!

Worry is something that I’ve struggled with greatly over the years. It is so easy to focus on my circumstances and not focus on God. Thankfully He has grown me a LOT in this area over the last six years, and He has been faithful in teaching me how to rely on Him in my times of worry. A big part of letting go of worry is recognizing that worry is sin. When I worry, I’m saying “God can’t” in my situation.

George MacDonald said,

"It has been well said that no man ever sank under the burden of the day. It’s when tomorrow’s burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than a man can bear. Never load yourselves so, my friends. If you find yourselves so loaded, at least remember this: it is your own doing, not God’s. He begs you to leave the future to Him and to mind the present.”

Faith.

Faith cannot be based on our feelings. Rather, faith is based on God’s Word and rooted in God’s character.

So often we pray for faith, but what we really want is sight. We don’t just want the ability to trust God for the next step, we want to see the next step – and several steps further would be great too! Sight sees ahead and says, “I see that it’s good for me, so God must have sent it,” but faith says, “God sent it, so it must be good for me.”

Lord, keep me from greed that so permeates our culture. Give me purpose in my life that glorifies You. Help me not to worry but to have faith, basing my trust Your Word and Your character.

Calm My Anxious Heart, Part II

The next three chapters deal with contentment in three areas:

Being content with myself.

Many women (and men!) would laugh at this even if only in their minds. We all have things we would like to change about ourselves, whether physical features or personality traits. But Psalm 139 says that God created me just the way I am. He knit me together in my mother’s womb. When I think of knitting, I think of very detailed work. It’s one stitch at a time. I learned the basics of knitting several years ago and made a few scarves. I learned quickly, however, that if I messed up one stitch, it affected my whole scarf!

God intricately designed every aspect of me – my physical body, my personality, my emotions – He made it all! And He doesn’t drop stitches!

George MacDonald puts it into perspective:

“I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of, for to have been thought about, born in God’s though, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest, and most precious thing in all thinking.”

Being content with my roles.

Currently, my main role is that of being a wife. I’m usually quite content with this role, but there are days where I can wish things were different. I must remember that all roles provide opportunities.

Am I willing to make the most of the opportunities I have in my current role?

Dr. Larry Crabb said that in marriage, a wife will either minister to her husband or manipulate him to get her own way. You could say the same for all relationships really. I can choose to minister to those around me or manipulate them to get what I want.

Which have you chosen: to minister or to manipulate?

Being content in relationships.

People are great… from a distance. The closer you get to them, the more they can hurt you. And do they ever hurt you! And if you’re honest about it, you hurt them, too. Learning to forgive is an important component of contentment.

In commenting about the consequences of an unforgiving spirit, Swindoll said, “A Christian is a candidate for confinement and unspeakable suffering until he or she fully and completely forgives others, even when the others are in the wrong.”

As kids we heard the phrase “Forgive and Forget.” I never liked that phrase because I couldn’t just forget what someone did that hurt me! As I grew older, I realized that you didn’t literally forget the incident. Rather, you choose to not bring it up.

When Clara Barton was asked about a previous incident by one of her friends, she acted as if she hadn’t even heard of the incident. When her friend asked if she remembered it, Clara stated, “No, I distinctly remember forgetting it.”

Forgiveness isn’t just a one-time thing. We often have to continue choosing to forgive.

And forgiveness isn’t enough either. Romans 12 says, “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves…Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse…If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”

It must go beyond feeling to choice, just like contentment. We won’t often feel like blessing and honoring those who have wronged us, but that is what we are called to do.

Lord, thank you for the way You knit me together. Help me to be thankful for the way that you made me to be. Help me to also find the possibilities in whatever roles you place me in and to take full advantage of them! Finally, help me choose to be faithful to You, choose to forgive others and go beyond forgiveness, and choose to say words of blessing and love even to those who wrong me.

Calm My Anxious Heart

Last semester, the seminary wives group that I am a part of read and discussed Creative Counterpart by Linda Dillow. We also had the privilege of having Linda speak at our spring seminar. After thoroughly enjoying and being challenged by both the book and her lecture, I decided to read another book she wrote that has been sitting on our shelf for over a year now.

Calm My Anxious Heart.

For my own benefit, I wrote down things from this book that challenged and encouraged me in my own journey of learning to be content. I thought I’d share some of the things that God put on my heart as I read about this issue that we all struggle with.

What is contentment and how is it achieved? The book aims to answer these questions. The first chapter mentions a woman who lived a life of contentment. Here is how she is described:

“Her eyes were fixed on eternity. Her tomorrows belonged to God. She had given them to Him. And because all her tomorrows were nestled in God’s strong arms, she was free to live today. One day at a time she could make the right choices and grow to possess the holy habit of contentment.”

What a great life! Free to live today. All of my tomorrows nestled in God’s strong arms. I love that picture. It’s so easy to become wrapped up in my circumstances, letting them dictate my responses and attitudes. However, “true contentment is separate from our circumstances. Contentment is a state of the heart, not a state of affairs.” Just as Paul wrote about in Philippians 4 when he said that he had learned to be content in whatever circumstances he was in. The secret? “I can do all things through Him who gives me strength.”

J.I. Packer leaves little wiggle room for debate: “Contentment is essentially a matter of accepting from God’s hand what He sends because we know that He is good and therefore it is good.”

So what control do I have over my own contentment? Quite a lot!

Question: If you made a list of all the negatives and all the positives in your life, which list do you spend the most time dwelling on?

I know I can so easily see all the negatives and miss out on the blessings in my life! We love to complain, don’t we? We want others to feel our pain, join us in our misery, and adopt our indignation!

It all comes down to perspective.

"Two women looked through prison bars
One saw mud, the other saw stars."

Where’s my perspective?

A few verses before Paul reveals his secret to contentment, he breaks it up into two parts – our part and God’s part.

Our part: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”

God’s part: “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

If I choose to pray to the Lord and be thankful, He will give me His peace! And the very next verse tells me one more thing –

Dwell on the positives!

“Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things.”

We become what we think!

Our mind is a secret place where no one has to know what goes on except for us and God. Linda said that she feels God speaking to her, “Make secret choices that will honor Me. Though no one sees your choices and knows how difficult they are, make them for Me.”

Lord, help me to make choices that honor You even if no one else knows. Help me to pray to you with a thankful heart when I start to complain or worry. Help me to dwell on the positive things in my life and to accept whatever life brings, knowing that it is from Your hand and therefore, it is good.

Bathrooms, Beaches, and Beauty

Much of our new place is set up, and it is truly starting to feel like home. I really do love it here, and I'm so glad we moved! I still need to take more pictures and can't do that now due to lighting. But what I do have is pictures of our bathroom! It's an enjoyable place to get ready each morning with space for both Roy and me at the counter! I love being able to enjoy my love for the beach and dolphins in this space, too!


And the view here just keeps getting better! How do you beat this?!?


It looked like a watercolor painting outside of my window. So blessed and thankful to the Lord!