Redeemed by love

I’ve been trying this thing recently where I read the bible and evaluate if it lines up with my life. Seems simple but it’s really crazy how often I have read words in the bible that have not reflected my life and I haven’t even given it a second thought. It’s almost like I’ve always subconsciously/consciously thought certain things don’t apply to me. Like for instance, it’s not okay to gossip. But if it’s talking to my coworkers about offenders, then it’s okay. Or if I don’t share my food with the poor it’s because they could be crazy and attack me and God will understand that. And probably most often of all, “do not be anxious about anything” really means “don’t be anxious about anything that I’m not already anxious about,” because it’s just not realistic to not be anxious about anything ever…right?

But most notably I’ve been noticing over and over how many times the new testament writers say that we need to rejoice in the Lord always. And not only that, but we need to not get caught up in the things of the world and to long for the day when we will be with Jesus. 

The writers were so consumed with spreading the good news to everyone around them, that even when they were persecuted by people they still prayed for them and sought to tell them truth. In Acts 14 Paul was stoned and dragged out of the city, seemingly dead. But then it says “he rose up and entered the city.” Again! What the heck? Paul, they just tried to kill you, man. I know that if that were me, I’d be running, running fast, to get as far away from there as I could. But the apostles never ran away. Never.

They had seen Jesus and were given instructions straight from his mouth to spread the gospel to the world and to make disciples to keep that mission going. So that’s what they did. When things were hard they remembered Jesus and his promises and the hope they had that they would one day be with him again.

When things are hard for me, I cry. And complain. And feel sorry for myself. I don’t take this command that Paul wrote literally:

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to all. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” 

—Philippians 4:4-7

Of all people, this guy had a right to tell us to rejoice in the Lord no matter what  life’s circumstances may be. He had some seriously hard times. But he also had that eternal perspective I was talking about, which I’m realizing changes everything. It changes how I look at an unexpected expense, someone’s hurtful comment, or even a loved one’s sickness. If I remember that this world is not my home, that God is in control, and that someday everything will be redeemed, then it’ll be much easier not to get caught up in the circumstances of life. 

We can rejoice in the Lord always, no matter what the circumstances of life are because he is always good, always true and always in control. Therefore, rejoice in the Lord always, not just sometimes.  

When I was in high school I prayed a prayer telling God that I trusted him to take me through any pain in the world, that he could have my life completely and I trusted him completely with it. A few months after that I experienced a life change that caused me constant pain for almost a year and even now, six years later can still cause me pain every once in a while.

Ever since then I’ve struggled with fear, fear of God and fear of putting all of my trust in him again. I started viewing my original prayer of surrender as something he used as an excuse to put me through pain. Like he heard me tell him I trusted him to take me through any pain in the world and decided to cook up something really painful to watch and see if I really meant it. Instead of actually believing in his goodness for me, I saw him as tricky and kind of mean. I hardly even realized that my view of God was so skewed. In the years that I’ve been believing that I’ve had some times where I’ve been gripped by fear because I’ve been really happy and worried that God would find out and remove it from me to test me again. I’ve stopped myself from saying things to God that were absolutes because I thought he’d once again want to make sure that I was truthful either by taking things or people away from me, or by creating another pain out of thin air.  

But God in his goodness, doesn’t want his children to suffer, and he definitely doesn’t want us to think that he is something that he is not. He’s not mean or tricky or conniving. He’s not waiting for me to surrender so that he can throw pain at me.

Actually, the exact opposite is true. 

Jeremiah 29:11 and Proverbs 3:5-6 are verses that I’ve heard since the days of bible school. But they really are some very powerful words.

“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.’” (Jeremiah 29:11)

That right there is contradicting all that I believed. His plans for me are not for evil, they are for good, for welfare and for hope.

 “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:5-6).  

He will make your paths straight, not rocky and broken. Instead of it being true that God was waiting for me to surrender so that he could give me pain, he already knew that pain was heading my way so he did whatever he needed to do in my heart to prepare me to face it.

I kind of picture him thinking something along the lines of, “I really need her to believe that I’m here with her always and that I am her greatest love who will never abandon her. I need her to know that I will always carry her and will always bring good from bad. I will not let her go into this battle unprepared. I’m arming her with everything she’ll need and with the trust she’ll need to keep clinging to me through it.”

I’m sure that when he heard me pray those words telling him that I trusted him completely, he was rejoicing because he knew that I was ready. 

So here I am again, finally back at the place where I am finally telling him again that I trust and believe in his goodness and he can do whatever he wants with my life. And whether he has me here to prepare me for pain that’s about to come—though that is a guarantee at some point in this broken world—or just because he wanted to rid his daughter of a lie she’s been believing for far too long, I still trust that he’s completely good. And I will fear no more.

God is good.

God is in control.

And his plan is best.

These are the three facts that I have found myself holding onto for the past several weeks. I have to believe each of them together for my soul to be able to find rest in the truth of them. If I only focus on God being in control, without remembering that he is good, then it doesn’t make a difference. And if I don’t force myself to remember and believe that his plan is the best plan, then I start to feel desperate for control in situations that I can’t even pretend to control anyway.

Brad Paisley wrote a song about his wife called She’s Everything. One of the ending lines says “She’s the voice I love to hear, and someday when i’m ninety, she’s that wooden rocking chair, I want rocking beside me.” It’s a really cute song, but it made me realize that as nice as that thought is, it made me kind of wince because it made me immediately think about how many odds they have to beat to make it to that point. To get to the age of ninety you have to beat the odds of getting any number of diseases that could take your life, you have to avoid car accidents and plane accidents and any other kind of freak accident that can kill you, you have to avoid natural disasters and crazy people. And then your spouse has to do the same. Today, that seems impossible.

It’s really easy for me to get overwhelmed by the bad things that happen in this world. Because really, it only takes one second, one phone call, one accident to change your life so that all of a sudden your life as you knew it doesn’t exist anymore.

Okay let me turn this around before it gets to be too much of a downer. God is good. God is in control. And his plan is best. In college my friends talked a lot about living with reckless abandon. Well I really want to live that way—fearless of the future because I so believe that God is in control, and that that is a good thing. I want to believe that so much that it doesn’t matter if things don’t happen as I hope they do because what my hope is founded in will never change. God will never change. No matter how much bad news is on earth, no matter how much pain or how much brokenness, goodness will never cease to exist because God will never cease to exist. And that means that despite all the bad, there will always be good too.

God is good.

God is in control.

And his plan is best.

If you can really focus on those truths and believe them, you’ll find freedom. Because you’ll know in that moment that everything really will be okay in the end. I grew up loving that fairy tale ending of happily ever after. Believers in Christ are guaranteed that ending because God is good, He’s in control, and His plan is best. Goodness will never cease to exist because God will never cease to exist.

The reason you have a beating heart right now is literally because of God. I can remember a time when I was in fifth grade and I was writing a sad story. As I was writing I came to the realization that no matter how broken a heart may be or how much pain it feels, it keeps on beating just the same. 

The first time I experienced a broken heart while following the Lord was when I was sixteen. It was during that time that I learned for the first time about how only God can fulfill our hearts and how in the midst of suffering, that is made clear. As I clung to him in my pain, I felt like I knew him so intimately. I let him be a part of everything in my life. He held my entire heart in his hand. Not a single part of me was kept from him. I desired to love Him and to let him love me. I remember one night being so sure of his love for me and so grateful for the way he carried me through my suffering and brought me to a better place, that I told him I trusted him to take me through anything and that I knew it would be okay as long as he was with me.

Telling people about that prayer now, and even remembering it to myself sometimes, usually results in a response along the lines of “oh wow! that’s a scary prayer. What if he answers?” And the thing is, he did answer that prayer, as he does all prayers. But, he answered it in a way differently than I would have imagined. The suffering I went through the next year and a half of my life consisted of losing three of my best friends, being hated and slandered by my peers, and healing from the sexual assault that caused it all. But as I knew he would that night I prayed, God did carry me through. He grew me as a person and in him in so many ways, so much so that I am thankful for the things that happened. Even if I could change it, I wouldn’t, because I wouldn’t know him as intimately as I do now. 

My life has been pretty comfortable for the most part this past year. There have been a lot of changes that have brought about a lot of happiness. But somewhere along the way I lost that intimacy with God. I got distracted by all the pretty things in the world. Instead of focusing on the love story that I have in the gospel, I mostly just talked with God about other people and myself, not so much about us. If I am part of the bride of Christ and he is the bridegroom, I wasn’t being a very good wife. And while I would say that he was still included in all parts of my life, and I still tried desperately to make that true, I didn’t feel that need for him like I had before because of all the incredible comforts he provided me. 

This week has been really hard for me. I have been faced daily with loneliness and the absence of a person I care very much about. But it’s been so incredibly blessed and good because God has gently reminded me of his beautiful truths and love for my heart. Hosea 11 tells us that God’s heart beats for his people. It’s funny, His heart beats for us, and our hearts beat because of Him. 

He doesn’t need us, but he does love us. The one who knows us completely and satisfies us fully is the only one who created our beating hearts. And I’ve relearned the truth that his love is perfect. One of this past year’s changes has been starting to date someone for the first time since I had a broken heart when I was sixteen. Even though my boyfriend is an incredible man of God who teaches me more about God’s love every day, he isn’t always with me, he doesn’t know me fully and he can’t love me completely. But God can. And I am resting in those arms now and always. And as my heart beats because of him, i’m praying that it will only beat more and more for him too.

“I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’”

—Revelation 21:3-4

One of the most mind-blowing things about that passage is that it is literally my future and someday all of that will be true. It’s easy to read those words and think that would be so great if that could actually happen. But it WILL actually happen. It’s not that it could, it’s that someday it is going to be true. Someday the God of the universe is going to wipe away every tear from the eyes of his people. There will be no more death, and there will be no more mourning, no more sadness, no more pain.

Those were verses that I clung to while I was in high school. I remember one day wondering if there would ever be a day when I wouldn’t cry—a day when the pain of this earth wouldn’t overwhelm me at seemingly every moment. That day I cupped my hands and I let the tears fall into them and I thought about what it will be like when Jesus catches my tears the way my hands were. Because someday he will. Someday, he’ll take every tear I’ve ever cried and wipe them all away. Gone forever. Ousted from the land that doesn’t allow death or sadness.

We just celebrated Easter. For followers of Christ this is the most significant day in history. For our future to consist of dwelling with God, the greatest miracle of all time had to take place. Because not only did Jesus die and come back to life, but when he died, he suffered the wrath of God. Think about what that means. The wrath of God. I google defined wrath to get a slightly better understanding of it. The first definition to come up said “intense anger.” Now, it’s one thing for me to be intensely angry about something. But it’s a totally different thing for God to be angry. I mean I’m talking about the God of the universe. The one who is more powerful than every person that has ever existed combined. The one who can melt mountains by the sound of his voice. The wrath of that God is what Jesus faced. And not only did he face it, he conquered it. He came back to life and he fixed the unfixable problem.

Because of that, my future has changed. Now, I get to dwell with God someday. I get to experience him ridding me of all the pain I’ve ever felt, all the tears I’ve ever cried, all the sorrow I’ve ever anguished and all the loss I’ve ever had to bear. That is the future.

God will always be God, and someday I’ll stand at his throne and worship him, completely devoid of anything less than perfection.

Last night was one of the most powerful moments of surrender and brokenness I have ever seen. I get the privilege of leading seventeen amazing women in a bible study and last night was no different in reminding me of why I love it. We’re currently going through Acts, and yesterday as I sat in church I felt God really tugging on me to scrap the original plan I had created days before to do a whole new study for the night. Instead of delving into how the prophecies of scripture were fulfilled in Jesus, we skipped ahead to the chapter on the fellowship of the believers.

To start, I asked all of them to put everything they had in the middle of the room, including their shoes and coats. The pile of our belongings represented the early church’s practice of sharing everything. Scripture tells us that they didn’t think that anything they owned was their own. First, they saw all of their possessions as the Lord’s, and second as the collective group’s. Instead of viewing their stuff as theirs, it was God’s to do what he wanted with it. There was not a needy person among them because the early church so believed that this world was not their home and that Jesus and his mission was all that mattered, that it was a natural response to come together and share in real, authentic community.

But it wasn’t just their stuff that they shared. Acts 4:32 says, “the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul.” They shared their hearts too. So for the second half of our study, we did that too. Modeled after the show “If you really knew me,” we finished that sentence, revealing the deepest pains of our hearts to our sisters around us. As people voiced things they had never voiced before, they were set free.

At leadership retreat this year the speaker, Rick James, told us that satan really hates women. He’s constantly attacking our self worth and trying to make us hide. Most little girls go through a phase where they hide from their parents, because they want to be found. Women, although grown up, still hide, only not in closets like when they were little. Now we hide behind silence, humor and lies. But still we desperately want to be found. I doubt there’s a woman in the world who doesn’t want to be pursued or fought for. So last night, we fought for each other by allowing each other to be exposed in an environment that was totally safe.

I think every woman is tempted to believe that she doesn’t matter, that she’s not worth it or that she isn’t enough. As my sisters confessed those lies last night, I experienced feelings of anger and joy. Anger, because I am so mad at this fallen world, and at the evil forces that exist in it, that have caused God’s precious daughters to believe that they are worthless. And joy because, as they spoke them out loud, the lies lost their power. Only when we expose ourselves before God and to others do we really experience freedom. Everything in our heads and in this world will tell us to keep it to ourselves. But last night—through our brokenness—healing and unity were conceived. Sin and satan lost their power.

There’s a tenth avenue north song called Healing Begins. The lyrics say “there’s freedom waiting in the sound when you let your walls fall to the ground, this is where the healing begins, this is where the healing starts, when you come to where you’re broken within the light meets the dark.” Because the truth is, every person in this world is broken in some way. It’s only when we expose that brokenness that the light defeats the darkness.

lovethompson-deactivated2011030 asked: I heard you were blind. Is this true? If so, how do you write such beautiful artikles?

well first of all thank you on the compliment about them being beautiful artiCles. Second of all I think you have been misinformed, I am not blind actually. And if someone told you that—I won’t name names but I will say her name rhymes with shawn sharker—then she is terribly mistaken.