Beauty from the Heart

2011-06-15T15:55:00.001-07:00

Switch your bookmarks!

Beauty from the Heart will soon be moving to a snazzy new address.

Uncompromising: An Excerpt

2011-05-19T07:00:00.000-07:00

Hey ya'll.

Moody Publishers has graciously allowed me to post an excerpt from my book, Uncompromising here on the blog.

Click here to download the first 22 pages

or purchase a copy at any of these retailers:

While I sit here sopping wet

2011-05-18T16:55:00.000-07:00

On this trip to the water I have been stalked by a sense of--what is it? Longing does not fit. Call it an intense stirring; a desire to be swallowed. Feet half sunken in sand, foam gathers at my ankles. Wave after wave collapses on the shore, as if grasping but never reaching, the heart of land.

As I watch this pattern of life that does not need me in order for it to persist, I ache for it to swallow me. To become one with the ocean. But I submerge myself in the water, patted back and forth by the waves as a ball of string with a kitten; never “one.”

The term “one” has been stolen by yogis, hippies and John Lennon. I understand it in a broader sense. I want the endlessness this ocean represents to belong to me--for “forever” to be carried in a locket near my heart. That’s not meant to sound cheesy. I don’t know how to say it.

Reading an essay on an academic’s conversion to Christianity, I am distracted from the meaning by the form. Words glisten on the page with far more power, potency and richness than gems. I want to own them. Don’t I already? I know these words well. Yet we are not at peace.

She spews words like “grace” and “catechism” much as the ocean does. The salient words canvass my mind in a rushing gale. What do they do to me? What do I want here?

I am reduced to scraping, trying to understand. I am enlarged by this fear, which feels a lot like awakening; a lot like a baptism.

The dimensions grow thin. At the water, I feel the earth eroding under waves. The sands are shifting. My own balance is quaking. I wade in.

I feel like a turtle in one of the eggs buried nearby. A whole world of new molecules and colors and light awaits. One peck could crack open this shell. One web-thin membrane stands between me and a different sort of birth. Everything is ready.

A long stream of seaweed clamps around my forearm. The tide pulls. I am pushed over. Caught, but not swallowed. Yet.

The Shell Collector

2011-05-18T11:18:00.000-07:00

On the inauthenticity, fear, and pride that gets in the way of loving people...

I collect shells. While most people keep their shell collections in glass jars, I carry mine with me every day. My shells go by different names. They're the various shields I use to hide behind: "Humor," "Smiling," "Independence." Those seem to be the ones I use most, but lately I've grown sick of them.

Why? They get in the way of truly knowing people and being known. Don't get me wrong; humor, smiling, and independence are all parts of who I am. But too often I fall back on them because they're the safe parts. They're parts that don't require me telling the truth about the other stuff, like pain, discouragement, frustration, fear, and shame. My shells make me safe.

But they don't make me free.

Read the rest.

2011-05-11T12:53:00.000-07:00

Interview with Paula Hendricks, staff blogger for the True Woman Movement!

Glorying in the Unseen

2011-05-05T16:04:00.001-07:00

I don't feel much like a soul right now.

Let me explain:

I eat. I sleep. I write papers.

And I've noticed in all of this, I have begun to lose real contact with the people in my life. Sure, we talk all the time, but our conversations have gotten surface-level. We talk about eating, sleeping, and papers.

Ever been there?

Attempting to dig out of this rut, this morning a friend and I sat down to share a Bible study together. We read 2 Corinthians 4 where it says "the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." Also noted is that rough experiences here on earth are only a "momentary affliction" which is preparing us "an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison."

I don't necessarily consider papers, or busyness in general a "momentary affliction." But the weight of the world can indeed press upon our souls, making us forget that we have them; we can easily forget the eternal weight of glory in the midst of running to the store, meeting with so-and-so, and getting assignments in on time.

C.S. Lewis talked on this in his sermon, "The Weight of Glory." He said, "You and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness."

Worldliness isn't flashing neon lights, gambling in Las Vegas and living like you're Bruce Wayne. At least, that's not the kind of worldliness that tends to capture me. It's the sneakier stuff--the good and perfectly justified stuff--like school, chores, and the simple "what'sgoingon" that tends to snag most.

In days such as these, I find the 2 Corinthians reminder a source of awakening: "...the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." May we be given eyes that look to the unseen.

Emails

2011-05-05T16:01:00.001-07:00

So, I feel like a horrible person. I just now found a stash of unread, unresponded-to emails in our contact@beautyfromtheheart.org address. If you sent one of these, please accept my humblest apologies.

While Lindsey and I can't reply every single email we receive, we do our best. If you sent us an email (especially of a time-sensitive nature), please expect a response from me soon!

Blessings,
Hannah

C.S. Lewis on Friendship

2011-05-02T17:55:00.000-07:00

“I have no duty to be anyone's Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.

"The common quest or vision which unites Friends does not absorb them in such a way that they remain ignorant or oblivious of one another. On the contrary it is the very medium in which their mutual love and knowledge exist...Every step of the common journey tests his metal; and the tests are tests we fully understand because we are undergoing them ourselves.

Hence, as he rings true time after time, our reliance, our respect and our admiration blossom into an Appreciative love of a singularly robust and well-informed kind. If, at the outset, we had attended more to him and less to the thing our Friendship is 'about,' we should not have come to know or love him so well. You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher or the Christian by staring in his eyes as if he were your mistress: better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him.

In a perfect Friendship this Appreciative love is, I think, often so great and so firmly based that each member of the circle feels in his secret heart, humbled before all the rest.

"Those are the golden sessions; when four or five of us after a hard day's walking have come to our inn; when our slippers are on, our feet spread out towards the blaze...when the whole world, and something beyond the world, opens itself to our minds as we talk..."

-C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, 71-72

Surprised by Pain

2011-04-14T16:05:00.000-07:00

I don’t like pain. No one does. We try to make it easier with platitudes.

“Pain is weakness leaving the body.”

“You’ll understand the reason on the other side.”

And a Princess Bride quote for good measure: “Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”

All those statements might be true to varying degrees. But they don’t answer the “why” behind circumstances. They all try. But they don’t make surgeries, torn muscles, death, tsunamis, nuclear meltdowns and broken hearts easier to understand.

It’s the problem of pain we’re dealing with here. It’s messy. It’s age-old.

And it’s incredibly important: When a friend is sobbing I want good theology to inform what I say to encourage her. I don’t want to just give platitudes. I want to love with affection that is comforting and true. When I’m fighting despair or depression, I want to know that I know that I know that God is worthy of my trust.

So for me, I focus on this question a lot. Why does God allow suffering? Where does His sovereignty mix with His love? When a friend’s car is totalled, or when my day absolutely feels like one of the circles of Hell, my first question is: why?

And although God has spoken much to us on suffering in His Word (Abraham, Joseph, Job, Paul, the Psalms...), and He does give us a place to stand in regards to pain, I do think I sometimes ask the wrong question.

Instead of asking “why pain?” it may be more just for me to ask “why...joy?”

Because...if you think about it, pain does make sense. Ever since paradise was lost, we’ve lived in a ghosttown; every human in their raw, natural state is a vapor waiting to fade. We wade through a sinful world without Edens, often busy and bustling to avoid the reality that we are daily nearing death. Sin is here. Death is here.

In one of my favorite poems, Eve ponders her life post-Eden. She says, “With shadow, my cup overflows.”

So true. We live in a world of shades. And we brought the shadow on ourselves.

The pain makes sense.

It’s the beauty that doesn’t. It’s the grace that stands in contrast. Why do butterflies even flit into concentration camps? Why are there oases in deserts?

Even more than temporary common graces--the question runs deeper. Why does God give us joy? We’ve earned this sinful state. Why does He offer redemption at so high a cost to Himself?

Pain has always been part of the package. It’s the healing, the happy days, the ecstasy of hope--those are the mind-bogglers.

Why does God choose to stagger me with joy? That could be a better question.

God in the Doorway

2011-02-19T10:45:00.000-08:00

Two very different quotes ringing in my head these days:

"That day, a day of the following summer, Miss White and I knelt in her yard while she showed me a magnifying glass. It was a large, strong hand lens. She lifted my hand and, holding it very still, focused a dab of sunshine on my palm. The glowing crescent wobbled, spread, and finally contracted to a point. It burned; I was burned; I ripped my hand away and ran home crying. Miss White called after me, sorry, explaining, but I didn’t look back.

Even now I wonder: if I meet God, will he take and hold my bare hand in his, and focus his eye on my palm, and kindle that spot and let me burn?

But no. It is I who misunderstood everything and let everybody down. Miss White, God, I am sorry I ran from you. I am still running, running from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge. For you meant only love, and love, and I felt only fear, and pain. So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid." -Annie Dillard, from her essay, "God in the Doorway"

"I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul."-Jeremiah 32:40-41 (God speaking about the New Covenant that would be made with His people)

Do You Cuv?

2011-02-07T08:22:00.000-08:00

Well, do you?

Love in 30 Seconds or Less

2011-01-28T06:22:00.000-08:00

A friend told me recently, “We like everything microwaved” –and not just food. I don’t know about you, but I eat my pop-tarts un-toasted because the wait is just too agonizing. I want what I want, and I want it now.

Add that microwave mentality to the pursuit of love, and what do you get?

Read the rest here at Moody Publishers' blog, InsidePages.

Homesick

2011-01-15T11:06:00.000-08:00

It seems as if most good conversations I've heard these days have culminated in talk of Heaven. Coincidentally (though probably not really coincidentally at all), I ran across a really amazing quote from Bonhoeffer on the subject:

"No one has yet believed in God and the kingdom of God, no one has yet heard about the realm of the resurrected, and not been homesick from that hour, waiting and looking forward joyfully to being released from bodily existence.

Whether we are young or old makes no difference. What are twenty or thirty or fifty years in the sight of God? And which of us knows how near he or she may already be to the goal? That life only really begins when it ends here on earth, that all that is here is only the prologue before the curtain goes up---that is for young and old alike to think about. Why are we so afraid when we think about death? ...

Death is only dreadful for those who live in dread and fear of it. Death is not wild and terrible, if we have not become bitter ourselves. Death is grace, the greatest gift of grace that God gives to people who believe in Him. Death is mild, death is sweet and gentle; it beckons to us with heavenly power, if only we realize that it is the gateway to our homeland, the tabernacle of joy, the everlasting kingdom of peace.

How do we know that dying is so dreadful? Who knows whether in our human fear and anguish we are only shivering and shuddering at the most glorious, heavenly, blessed event in the world?

Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But that is just what is so marvelous, that we can transform death."

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

______

All the thoughts

The galaxies of ambition

Oceans of attempts

All the poetry the world may

Hold

All the fancies I may cradle

In my arms

All the rain the clouds let fall

That drop tears in seas below

--Silent cries

(Mortals ought to know

That all our wants are calls)

It, the universe,

All in all

Everything is summed up

In a single longing.

(Come soon.)

A Certain Book, Life, Etc.

2011-01-12T12:10:00.000-08:00

I. feel. so. guilty.

To say that this blog has been neglected would not only be a nod to Captain Obvious, but a depressing admission I haven't wanted to make.

So I'm not going to say it. (You know the truth.)

What's been going on? I'm at Patrick Henry College in Northern Virginia. Lindsey is at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Our Texan/Californian selves (respectively) are getting to know snow pretty well.

We've continued to write for Revive Our Heart's Lies Young Women Believe (and the Truth that Sets Them Free) blog.

Some recent posts:

The Day of Small Things

The Power of Encouragement

Bring On The Wonder

Truth About Insecurity

Last, but not least, my book (!!!!!!!!--and one more exclamation point for good measure--!) is coming out this Spring. Yeah. Kinda looking forward to that. :)

Hoping to keep you a little more faithfully updated.

Much love,
Hannah (for Lindsey, too)

Home.

2010-08-24T17:01:00.000-07:00

The old glassware and candle-holders we’ve had stashed in the kitchen cabinet for something like 11 years? Headed for the give-away box. All those clothes that don’t fit us anymore? Packed up and gone. Even the couches will be going.

Because my dad has been out of work intermittently over the past year, my family is prepping our house for a move. We have no idea what's going to happen, but if it all goes through, we’ll be renting a small apartment in another city by the end of the year.

In so many ways, this situation is a blessing. And in so many ways, it keeps making me think of another subject that’s been on my mind lately: heaven. Somehow, the prospect of moving is helping to make me more sharply aware of the transience of our time in this world. If someone were to ask me where I’m from, I feel like any of these replies would be much more accurate than a mere statement of our current address--

We're foreigners, just traveling for a little while. Our home isn't around these parts, but I’m headed there soon.

Oh, we're living in the Bay Area for now, but we're really just visitors.

Funny you should ask- by birth, we're actually citizens of another country. I'm happy here, but I can’t wait to go home.

I’ve been meditating on Hebrews 11:13-16 this week, and I’m getting more excited the more I think about it. Read it slowly, and let the promise sink in.

“These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.”

I don’t belong here. Not in this house, not in an apartment, not in California at all—nowhere in this world. I don’t belong here, because I was made for heaven. That’s the sweet refrain I can’t get out of my mind.

Do you tend to see yourself as more of an “exile” and a “stranger” here, or a permanent resident? Which home seems more real to you—heaven, or earth? Why?

"Everywhere I Look I See Fire"

2010-08-09T10:02:00.000-07:00

Annie Dillard is now a card-carrying Catholic; but for many year, she was (as she described it) "spiritually promiscuous." Annie dabbled in Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and a smattering of other ideologies.

In an effort to sort through her thoughts, she wrote them down. Then, at age twenty-nine, Annie won the Pulitzer Prize for her first book, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek. (I'm now chanting, "iwillnotbeenvious, iwillnotbeenvious...")

Nearly twenty years following, Annie Dillard converted to Catholicism and seems to have stuck there ever since. But this short reflection from her first book, written in her days of searching, struck me with its beauty. I love her reflections on nature, and how they obviously led her to the existence of a creator. This passage left me in awe--not only of her ability as a writer, but in awe of God's ability to create magnificent beauty in such a way that we can't help but try and take it all in.

If you, too, are left speechless by beauty, grab a cup of tea and enjoy this piece:

After watching a frog killed slowly by a gut-sucking beetle (you read that right), Annie wrote:

"Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain. But if we describe a world to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump against another mystery: the inrush of power of light, the canary that sings.... Unless all ages and races of men have been deluded by the same mass hypnotist (who?), there seems to be such a thing as beauty, a grace wholly gratuitous.

About five years ago I saw a mockingbird make a straight vertical descent from the roof gutter of a four story building. It was an act as careless and spontaneous as the curl of a stem or the kindling of a star.....

The fact of his free fall was like the old philosophical conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest. The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

Another time I saw another wonder: sharks off the Atlantic coast of Florida. There is a way a wave rises above the ocean horizon, a triangular wedge against the sky. If you stand where the ocean breaks on a shallow beach, you see the raised water in a wave is translucent, shot with lights. One late afternoon at low tide a hundred big sharks passed the beach near the mouth of a tidal river in a feeding frenzy. As each green wave rose from the churning water, it illuminated within itself the six- or eight-foot-long bodies of twisting sharks. The sharks disappeared as each wave rolled toward me; then a new wave would swell...containing in it, like scorpions in amber, sharks that roiled and heaved. The sight held awesome wonders: power and beauty, grace tangled in a rapture with violence.

We don't know what's going on here. If these tremendous events are random combinations of matter run amok, the yield of millions of monkeys at millions of typewriters, then what is it in us, hammered out of those same typewriters, that they ignite?

....The whole show has been on fire from the word go. I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames."

Years later, and we still can't ignore the "conundrum." The whole world is still sparking and flaming for an answer to the question: who gave us this beauty and grace?

Getting Rolling Again...

2010-08-05T09:01:00.000-07:00

I've been asked, oh, maybe twenty times why Lindsey and I write for this site. Sometimes the questioner forgets to sugar coat it and asks point blank: "Why should I care to read your blog?"

Usually, in the past, I've fumbled for an answer. (I'm Southern. Rudeness throws us for loops.) Usually I respond with whatever's off the top of my head. "God just placed the opportunity in our laps." "I just like to write, bla bla bla," or something else vague and barely helpful.

The truth is, there isn't a special reason you should read this. There are a trillion blogs on the internet. The advice columns in the paper are probably more scintillating. We're not half as interesting as listening to the Old Spice guy on Youtube, and we know it.

So why do I blog?*

Profound question.

Let's see. The internet is filled with filth. Scratch that--the media is filled with filth. Scratch that. We're up to our necks with filth, so much that half the time we don't know it's there.

Do I write because I want to somehow try and counter all that, with some Superman complex? Uh, no. None of us can singlehandedly do that, because honestly, our hearts are all filthy too.

Here's what I do know:

In Ephesians 2:19-22, it says that all of us who belong to Jesus are being built together into a dwelling place for God. A crazy, incredible thought. Jews, Greeks, hippies and kings; all that live for Jesus are being built to become a dwelling place for God.

Meaning that God connects all of us together; uses each one of us as building material. We've all got jobs. We're all created to carry weight.

Great power means great responsibility--but even without power, we're still held responsible. It doesn't matter if you had an eating disorder when you were thirteen, or if you've spent your whole life looking down on those you sense are "less holy." We're part of a city on a hill. We're shining to angels, principalities and powers that Christ is worth it and is making all things new.

This applies to blogs. This means that, sometimes, we must write simply because God deserves to be praised even in the dustiest corners of cyberspace.

And as this principle becomes more clear, it becomes possible to trace into other areas of life. Forget communicating on a blog. What about praising Him through time and love?

Recently I read about Jesus washing the disciples' feet, a story I've heard told since childhood, but still have yet to fully absorb. After preaching to them, sharing meals together, and roadtripping all over the nation, Jesus washed his follower's feet. After speaking to them with words for so long, He forever imprinted His meekness in their memory by action.

The guys--they were his students, and dense ones at that. He was a famous rabbi the people, at one time, wanted to name king. They were fishermen, who dreamed they could ladder climb by sticking close to Jesus.

In the most poignant portrayal of His humility (next to that of His death) perhaps ever recorded in the Bible, Jesus wiped clean the feet of his friends.

It was an act any of us could do. We're all given opportunities to serve the hard-to-like. We can forgive and serve our family members. We can ask that little sister we've wronged for forgiveness, even though she's partially to blame. We can go out of our way to love on those former friends who've decided to shun us.

I guess the common thread that knits all this together in my mind is this: are we waking up every morning in order to lift His praises higher, and to put aside petty things?

*Which is a funny question in light of the fact that Lindsey and I haven't blogged in several months since the site's been down. But humor me.

Pray for Peter Helms

2010-07-30T15:20:00.000-07:00

On Thursday, Peter Helms, a homeschool student from Texas and NCFCA speech and debater (the league Lindsey and I were involved in during highschool), was the victim of a serious car accident. Peter was flown to a nearby hospital, where he is currently in a coma with bleeding on the brain.

His sister-in-law, Hope wrote in an update,

"On Monday or Tuesday the doctors plan to try and get him conscious, but for now they are just trying to keep Peter stable through this critical time.

Prayers for physical strength would be greatly appreciated. We are all exhausted (especially mom who was here through the night and has gotten very little sleep). God has used so many people to encourage and strengthen us and we are so grateful.

We are sorrowful, yet hopeful because we know we serve a God who can make even dead men walk again. God has been faithful to us in the past, even in our unfaithfulness to him, and we know he will be faithful to us as we walk the road ahead."

Please join us in lifting up the Helms family. Updates on Peter's condition can be read on his Facebook group page, here.

Aaand we're back!

2010-07-29T00:39:00.000-07:00

After a two-month-long technical problem with the site, Beauty from the Heart is rolling again! It feels good to be back. Stay tuned for new posts coming in the next couple of days.

Overthinking A Country Song

2010-04-27T08:14:00.000-07:00

"There's a place in the sun that she's never been
Where life is fair and time is a friend...
She looks out the window and wonders again..."

I'm going to cut it for you straight. This is a dumb song. It's about a mother wanting to leave her children, and I have some obvious issues with that. And, I'm kicking myself for even starting a post with a country song in the title. (Oh where is my dignity?)

But I had an epiphany while listening to this song and the story of a woman who "lives for tomorrow," dreaming of the future. It hit me how often I hear people talking about not being obsessed with the future, not worrying, etc.

The topic of "The Future" is a dead horse I beat all the time when chatting with friends: "Don't get worked up over this [homework, guy, job, otherproblem]; it'll all work out in the end. Just chill. Keep your mind in the now..." is the advice we give each other. Nobody wants to be that woman from the song. You'd be better off just stamping the words "doomed" and "desperate" on your forehead.

Yet while we talk about not obsessing over the future, we don't really make a gameplan for how to live out our talk. (At least, I really haven't.) So what's the plan? How do we actually "live for the now" and stop going crazy worrying about tomorrow?

Here's a quick diagram:

1. Don't Stop Your Obsession. Just Change it. My gut says (sadly, from past experience) that yes, we need to stop obsessing over life, but we need to replace that obsession with something else. We need to obsess over God, instead of our situations. If we don't shift over to Him, we're going to jump right back into anxiety. The key to not being that lady from the song is to become obsessed about something better, that something being God. (Wow, am I really taking the song that far? Hmm. Yes. I am.)

2. Supplement Point 1 with Friends. Okay, but still there's the "how." How do we obsess over God?

While I'm not a pro on this topic, Imma gonna say it: you need more than the Bible. Now, the Bible is vital. You won't come to know Jesus without it. You won't grow without it. We should probably read it more than we do, because it's the source of every good hope. Just the same, God designed us to need more than His Word.

He's made us to want not only the companionship of His Spirit, but also the companionship of friends.* Through them His grace is also dispensed. I'm just beginning to realize how much of the positive changes in my life were influenced, partially, by the friends close to me.

Mhmm. I just sounded like a cheeseball, didn't I? Seriously though, just ask yourself: would you laugh at the same kind of jokes you do now, if you hadn't grown up around your family members or your good friends? Would you have the same standards you do now if you were, instead, born into another family? What if your family was the same, but if you had a different hometown? Our companions affect us, and we affect our companions. They become part of us.

The obvious challenge for us here is that, as friends, we need to point each other to God-obsession. We have different personalities. Don't fight with them; use them. Those differences can help us see ourselves, decisions, and situations in a totally new way. Letting good, wise friends nudge us toward wisdom helps us to grow. If we want to stop worrying about the future, we need to surround ourselves with God-obsessed friends who are dedicated to doing that, too.

None of us are independent enough to live totally without friends. (When was the last time you booked a vacation on a desert island?) We were created to do life with other people.

Maybe if that woman in the song had some friends around to give her shoulders a good shake, she would've thought twice about "living for tomorrow." Maybe they could've warned her that too much dreaming about the future can make us lose the present. And who knows? I might even be her myself, except for my friends.

That might be a stretch though, because it was a country song, and bad things were bound to happen anyway.

*I define "friend" as any person who knows you to some degree, and is a part of your life. That means family members can be friends too.

So, what are your suggestions for becoming more obsessed with Jesus? Tell me about your friends, too. How do they encourage you? Have you made friends with your family members? Do you ever overthink country music?

A Kick In The Shins

2010-04-12T09:08:00.001-07:00

My pride got a kick in the shins this past week. In a conversation, someone asked if I was my friend’s personal assistant.

Uh, no. She’s my friend. And why do you think I’m her assistant? I wanted to pout. Why can’t you assume she’s my assistant?

Continue reading.

Hannah Harps On Humor

2010-04-09T10:57:00.000-07:00

I like humor as much as the next guy. Maybe even more, depending on who "the next guy" is and if they like Brian Regan.

Lately, it seems Christian blogs have really acquired a sense of humor. Take for example Jon Acuff or Carlos Whittaker or Bianca Juarez. There's also Mark Driscoll and CJ Mahaney defending the use of humor as a tool of the Gospel. I couldn't be happier.

But there's also such thing as too much of a good thing, and there are places where lines ought to be drawn. I'm trying to find this line myself.

Honestly, I don't see anything wrong with making fun of kitschy art, "youth pastor hair," evangelical Christian's over-use of alliteration in sermon titles or v-neck shirts. And if there is something wrong with that kind of humor, I need to be convicted, because I do those things all the time.

At the same time, I've seen, heard, and cracked jokes that now I think were probably inappropriate. It's not that they were trashy or crude, but the object of the joke is not something to be made fun of: the Bride of Christ.

It's one thing to mock marketing attempts by churches that try too hard to be cool. It's one thing to laugh good-naturedly about the Christian "counter culture" that made side hugs what they are today. Humor can be a tool to expose wrong thinking and helps us not take ourselves too seriously.

It's quite another thing altogether to sneer at the honestly-trying Christian leaders, or at Christian behaviors that are Biblically-rooted. (Like, say, communion crackers and grape juice.) That's where we start to tread on hallow ground, making fun of the honest efforts of those for whom Christ died.

If you laugh at the Bride that way, it makes me wonder. Who are you trying to get to laugh?

At one point does humor stop being salient and just becomes condescending? Where do you draw the line?

God Kills Death

2010-04-06T14:14:00.000-07:00

"My two companions were faster than I. Swiftly, they took flight, perhaps in fear, perhaps running to tell the disciples of these words. Risen? I could not see it. I could not see past the bloody and torn body I had watched upon that cross. I could not allow such a wild hope to be embraced. I slipped to the ground, still soft from the fierce storm that raged on the night of my Lord's death, and struggled to think of the sweet smelling grass...instead of His lost face, His missing healing-filled hands. Peter and John came...and left, and still I lay and wept. Where was He?

'Woman, why are you crying?'" (Amy Rachel Peterson, Perpetua.)

New life. The trumpet sound in a room of silence; the river that washed out the desert. That's what the Resurrection was.

What is it now? For me, Easter Sunday is the time dedicated each year for making fun of weird traditions: "Jesus rose from the dead, so let's hide eggs in the shrubbery." As Jim Gaffigan pointed out, if hiding eggs on Easter is too weird for you, "Don't worry. There's a bunny." Cause if it's already weird, why not make it weirder?

Taking communion back to back with criticizing nonsensical American customs and listening to apologetics on the Resurrection, the narrative can get lost.

Come close and listen. I want to show you something beautiful.

There's a poem by Debora Greger that imagines what Eve would feel after the Fall, if she still lived today. In the poem, Eve opens her eyes to see Adam, just as she did on the first day. "But this time," she says, "you were old. When I looked closer, I saw myself in your eyes, a fallen leaf starting to curl."

The world outside her is dying, too; though it doesn't know it yet. "Down the street," Eve observed, "trucks trundled their dark goods into eternity, one red light after another. Though it was morning, street lamps trudged down the sidewalk like husbands yawning on the way to work. On puddles, on rags of cloud, they spilled their weak, human light. With shadow my cup overflowed."

That's the world. That's you and me, reading Ecclesiastes or The Great Gatsby or the newspaper, finding futility in every corner. We live in a depressing world, where all its beauty is choked by death. We're all slaves, really, to aging and time and the inevitable end to what little good we know. The gods of our pursuit have abandoned us.

"With shadow my cup overflowed."

Then. BAM! The Resurrection happens.

That's what it's like. Smack in the middle of a tragedy where the main protagonist (God) dies, the greatbutimpossiblething not only becomes possible...but it occurs. It actually happens. God not only chooses death for Himself in order to erase the debt of sin, but He does something else entirely new.

God kills death. Jesus folds up his burial clothes and walks away. Those nails? They became nothing. What was once a nightmare no one could imagine overthrowing...now became one more victory.

I'm explaining again an old story, that you could probably turn around and explain to me. We both know it well. But think again.

Jesus' resurrection is not only a landmark (or even The Landmark) in history, but it's a metaphor for you and me. Even though it was Jesus who was raised, we were raised with Him. In Him, His life becomes ours. If He's alive, we're alive too. Death can't hold us anymore either.

"He was risen! Risen! I jumped to my feet, oblivious of decorum... He was risen....The sacrifice was made, and now this God was mine. I cried out, reaching beyond the ceiling, the sky and the stars hidden above the sun, 'You are God!' The words echoed and re-echoed... Jesus heard them." (Ibid.)

I want my every Easter to be like that--or hey, forget Easter. I want to be like that all the time...which is one of the reasons I'm writing this several days after the eggs have been hunted and the bunnies have been put wherever the bunnies go. The Resurrection deserves more than once-a-year obligatory attention. Isn't the news wonderful enough to deserve it?

What Then Happens

2010-04-01T07:15:00.000-07:00

“Sisters, if the only charm you have is your physical appearance, beautiful as you may be, you are foolish and will come to rue the day you scoffed at the value of inner beauty. You will find a man for whom physical beauty is also the main thing. What then happens as you age? You will grow more insecure with every birthday….You will become one of the empty, frighteningly sad women who submit to face lifts, breast surgery, and Botox injections (if you escape the deadly grip of anorexia). By midlife, you will be popping antidepressants…. When it comes to appearance, Tallulah Bankhead’s (1903-1968) axiom is worth remembering: ‘There is less here than meets the eye.’”

-John Ensor, Doing What's Right in Matters of the Heart, p.127 (emphasis mine.)

I've Seen God Pushing Wheelchairs

2010-03-30T15:30:00.000-07:00

If we've spoken recently, you probably know I've been thinking a lot on humility. I've tried to understand what it means to love selflessly--and how that translates into action.

The True Woman conference provided some inspiration.

Sitting in on Carolyn McCulley's session, my heart was wrenched as she spoke on women's global issues. She explained that more women have been killed across the world for simply being women, than were killed in all the genocides of the 20th century. She tied together the principles of Biblical womanhood with social justice, but with the Gospel as the uniting bond. It made sense.

As Carolyn said, "The Gospel fundamentally changes all the rules--it's not longer about you." When it's no longer about us, our hearts are freed to serve others in dynamic ways. We have God-given resources at our disposal; we're called to defend others as an extension of God's heart for the oppressed. After all, how can we uphold Biblical womanhood and "Christ-centeredness" if we are unwilling to act on behalf of the most needy? In that double standard, I have seen my own hypocrisy.

That's kind of how I see my love, too. Hypocritical, undetermined, proud. There's the ideal of what love should be like, and then there's the mini version that I pull off.

I don't think I'm unique this way; lack of love seems to be one of the chief grievances people have against the Church. More often do we see churches building bigger parking lots than combating homelessness. In the face of sin, I'm quick to give up and become cynical. "God, Your people...we're a mess. We can't do anything right."

And yet, as I overheard women praying together outside of the conference session rooms this weekend, and watched as an older woman mentored a friend, I've seen God's hands touching people. In the midst of my own conviction, in the midst of indwelling sin, God is still conquering. He's still teaching through the speakers; He's still serving through the volunteers at the Prayer Room and book tables; He's still pushing wheelchairs down the hall.

I know this is only a branch of God's Big Plan for the world, but that does not make it less meaningful. Yes, we're small and frail--but nevertheless--tools in the hands of a mighty God.

God is big enough to love the world through weak people.

Girls Gone Wise

2010-03-26T11:26:00.000-07:00

Oh my goodness. Sitting in on Mary Kassian's "Girls Gone Wise" session, my heart is literally floating. Don't you just love it when a familiar topic is spoken about in a new way, with new depth?

Talking about modesty, Mary said, "It's not just that the wild woman [of Proverbs 7] dresses like a prostitute," rather, she likes the idea that she can use her sexuality to control others. "We need to get beyond the rules of what to wear, but to understand why we even wear clothes." The history of clothing started in Genesis, when Adam and Eve were naked in their sin before God. God invented clothes when he gave them covering for their sin. "Immodesty is saying to [God], 'I don't need Your covering.'" Our lives are meant to reflect the Gospel--and what we wear joins in that purpose. This principle should make us re-think what we wear--whether choosing not to dress immodestly or not to dress sloppily.

Wowza.

AND, to my delight, I found out today that Mary Kassian has begun a new website. Check it: http://www.girlsgonewise.com/

The Gospel & Me

2010-03-26T09:55:00.000-07:00

Live-blogging True Woman 2010.

Yesterday evening, Bob Lepine challenged us to ask ourselves what was holding us back from obeying God wholeheartedly and saying “yes” in surrender to His will. What “lesser things”, he asked, might be holding you back from godly maturity?

The Spirit supplied an answer immediately: Me. That simple word sums up the tug-of-war that’s been going on in my heart days before I arrived.

As I’ve been taking the time to be quiet before God yesterday and today, the motives I’ve had behind many things are being exposed. Even while I’m praising Him in words, I’m often so much more concerned with making my name look good than Christ’s.

So here I am, in one of the most conducive settings possible to focus entirely on Christ—surrounded with godly men and women, singing with 2,500 followers of Jesus, listening to powerful messages extolling the glory of God. And yet, within the past few hours, I’ve still been wobbling back and forth with being strikingly self-centric. How much littler can you get than that?

But here’s the amazing part. Yes, God is revealing idolatry and hypocrisy in me. And yet—it isn’t all ‘woe-is-me’. I’m not sludging knee-deep in condemnation. I’m being humbled, I’m repenting—and there’s joy in it.

Which is amazing.

If you don’t really know me, I should explain: it really isn’t very difficult for me to get trapped in a merry-go-round of self-centeredness. Even the opportunity to jump off-- with conviction-- can easily turn into more self-centered thinking about the sin itself.

Because of the emphasis on the gospel, God graciously isn’t allowing that to happen right now. There's nothing sweeter (and more necessary for my soul) than hearing the gospel over, over and over in different ways, from different people—and the gospel is being proclaimed everywhere right now, from the speakers on stage to our table-mates at meals. It’s been so re-focusing to hear God’s works praised all throughout the day—in-between bites of cream-cheese slathered bagels and pineapple at breakfast, listening to different sessions, and even walking through the halls. (Keeping His works on my lips like that is one thing I plan on taking home with me.) Through the speakers and people here, God’s showing me His glory in the forgiveness and freedom He offers through the Cross.

Since the emphasis of the gospel isn’t on me anyway, that means the focus doesn’t stay on my dirtiness—and I can be freed to praise Him honestly. This really is all about Jesus.

Dannah Gresh Q&A

2010-03-26T05:23:00.000-07:00

Dannah Gresh graciously gave a few minutes of her time yesterday. You can find her at www.purefreedom.org and liesyoungwomenbelieve.com.

Live-blogging True Woman 2010.

Pardon Whilst I Chew On This

2010-03-25T10:38:00.000-07:00

Live-blogging True Woman 2010.

After an eventful taxi ride (in which Lindsey and I failed miserably at a trivia game with the driver), we arrived last night at the True Woman 2010, Chattanooga conference.

For me, this has been an incredible experience so far, especially as I've seen the common theme of humility randomly pop up in conversation and in the Pre-Conference Leadership session. God has been nudging my heart on this topic lately, particularly in how it relates to "diving for the bottom" (to quote a chat with Paula, another True Woman bloggette) and jumping at the chance to serve.

This last session, Nancy Leigh DeMoss pointed out that "we are never more like Jesus than we are serving." She explained that while we must first be Christ-centered and Gospel saturated, that theological understanding is meant to play out in our servanthood. Christ is most celebrated in us and put on display through us when give our time and energy to other people.

She also made the point that if we do not pray, it means that we lack humility, because we are depending upon ourselves rather than Christ. I'm not going to lie--that point was a zinger for me. My go-to excuse for not praying is usually "I just forgot" or "I've been so overwhelmed and busy," but those aren't really accurate. The truth is uglier--that I haven't handed over my fears to the Father because I want to handle them myself. My flesh doesn't want to trust God to provide and to govern.

Already, God has given me plenty to chew on. More notes, videos and thoughts should be coming your way soon.

Until then!

2010-03-17T13:51:00.000-07:00

Next week, the first True Woman conference of the year will take place in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Mary Kassian, and Voddie Baucham are just a few of the featured speakers. Lindsey and I plan to be there too. (The above photo is an approximation of the look on Lindsey's face when she found out she'd be winging it to Tennessee.)

If you live in the Chattanooga area, we'd love to have you join us! And if you know you can't make it to True Woman '10, be sure and check back at Beauty from the Heart for session notes. Lindsey and I will be live-blogging the entire conference. (Or at least as much as we can possibly type without wearing off our fingerprints!) We think it'll be the next best thing to being there in person.

Do you have a blog? Do you have a Facebook? Twitter? Help us out! By A) copying this header and posting it to Facebook, B) Linking to this post on Twitter, or C) pasting this header to your blog, you'll help us immensely in spreading the word about this fantastic conference opportunity.

Oh, and should you want conference notes via twitter, be sure and follow Lindsey and me. Yes, that was a pretty shameless plug, but hey, we follow back. :)

Register Online//Speakers//Podcasts from Previous Conferences//Other Conference Dates

"Avatar" and Depression

2010-03-10T07:39:00.000-08:00

When I saw the trailer for Avatar, I laughed. (Blue people on another planet? Really now?) Then my oldest girlfriend called to say that she was coming into town and that she was dying to see it. Her treat. Guess who caved.

After the visual roller coaster ended (yes, I was impressed), my friend observed that the real world now looked one-dimensional and colorless. I had to agree. (The fact that our immediate surroundings were colorless—it was a dark theater, people—might have heightened the impression just a tad.) In contrast with the dazzling, lush world of Pandora we had just been immersed in for the past two and a half hours, reality did look dwarfed and bland.

Later, I was unsurprised to read about extreme reactions of other viewers. CNN quoted fans who experienced a whiplash of depression after the movie:

"When I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first time yesterday, the world seemed ... gray. It was like my whole life, everything I've done and worked for, lost its meaning," Hill wrote on the forum. "It just seems so ... meaningless. I still don't really see any reason to keep ... doing things at all. I live in a dying world."

Read the rest of the post here.

"For The Lady Well Comported"

2010-03-09T15:48:00.000-08:00

I picked up this book last summer while on vacation in Colorado. It’s a compilation of advice from 19^th and early 20^th century etiquette, homemaking and recipe books. Amongst the advice given, I found these as a rather interesting peek into the past:

(Oh, and for the record, some of this advice I consider to pretty ridiculous--namely the stuff at the bottom. It's included for humor's sake. Just so you know.)

Not-so-common sense:

“Limit your observations. A quiet person is seldom disliked, while a noisy one sets the nerves all in motion and at war with each other and causes one to feel, in parlance popular, ‘like flying.’ Noise, the disturber, deranges the mental faculties and incapacitates the mind for clear and deliberate thought. ….Many times we have seen an inoffensive husband tucked completely out of sight by the superabundant volubility proceeding from his wife…”

“Treat enemies kindly. If you have an enemy and an opportunity occurs to benefit the person in matters great or small, do good service without hesitation. If you would know what it is to feel noble and strong within yourself, do this secretly and keep it secret. A person who can act thus will soon feel at ease anywhere. If enemies meet at a friend’s house, lay aside all appearance of animosity while there and meet on courteous terms.”

“Kiss sparingly. Many times a contagious disease has been conveyed in a kiss. The kiss is the seal of pure and earnest love and should never be exchanged save between nearest and dearest friends and relatives. Indeed, public sentiment and good taste decree that even among lovers it should not be so often indulged in as to cause any regret on the part of the lady should an engagement chance to be broken off. Let promiscuous kissing, then, be consigned to the tomb of oblivion.”

“Stray from spoiled men. A woman should avoid marrying a man who is the favorite of many sisters who constantly dance about in attendance on him. That man is spoiled for matrimony. He will require his wife to bestow on him all the attention he received from his sisters.”

On hygiene:

“Wash without shampoo. The head should be washed at least once a week, but shampooing is a great detriment to the beauty of the hair. Soap fades the hair, often turning it yellow. Brushing is the only safe method of removing dust from the head, with the occasional use of the whites of eggs when washing.”

I tried that once, but the hot shower water cooked the egg to my head.

“To clean the teeth. Rub them with the ashes of burnt bread. The juice of the strawberry is a natural dentifrice.”

On suitable exercise:

“Running. To strengthen abdominal muscles, run, lifting your feet high, like a spirited horse.

Skipping. There is some prejudice against this form of exercise from the fact that it can be overdone, and also from the popular idea that it is injurious to girls to jump. If they are properly dressed, and their muscles are gradually developed, and they use good common sense…there are practically no dangers in skipping.”

Glad to hear it.

From Keeping Hearth & Home in Old Colorado, compiled and edited by Carol Padgett, Ph.D.

The Dark Night of the Soul

2010-03-04T10:15:00.001-08:00

I remember walking through Home Depot with my dad when I was about eight years old. On one of the aisles, I found a gospel tract with a gigantic yellow smiley face printed on the cover. In thick, black lettering it said, "Smile, Jesus loves you."

I thought it was inspiring. Someone left a gospel tract in Home Depot! How wonderful. For some reason, the smiley face stuck in my mind.

In summary, that's what I thought Christianity was about. The gospel tract said it all. Every Christian was supposed to resemble that gigantic yellow smiley face. After all, Jesus died for His people's sins and loved them very, very much. Knowing that, how could they ever be unhappy?

Read the rest here.

Crafty Things

2010-02-24T08:07:00.000-08:00

Pictured: A collage made out of the pages of an old book.

These ideas are all so great. I want to get to work on some of these projects...soon. Out of a list of do-it-yourself decorations from the "How About Orange" blog, here are my personal favorites:

License plate collage
Tea cup clock (try your own DIY version) at Sweet Paul
Twig-framed mirror at Point Click Home
Collage made with an old book by Tangente
Paper silhouette art at Time Out New York

I am so inspired now.

Cussing, Dancing and Discipleship

2010-02-21T20:48:00.000-08:00

The other evening, I found myself in a long conversation with the grocery-store-checkout-girl. Oddly enough, we got on the topic of religion and it’s affect on culture. She told me, “No one around here is really religious anymore. I know, like, three people at my school who are really…you know…real Christians.” She added significantly, “…and one of those is a girl who cries when anyone cusses.”

Uh, what? I wasn’t sure how to reply.

“I don’t cry when people cuss.” Not my greatest response ever.

“That’s good.”

The conversation ended, but in my mind I began to take notes.

There’s a tightrope believers must walk in how we represent ourselves to the world. We have centuries of stereotypes to contend with. For instance, in the town where my grandpa grew up, Christian ministers were responsible for creating a “no-dancing” ordinance. According to a local pastor, dancing was the start of a slippery slope toward “adultery, divorce, murder, and little children left as orphans.” You can guess how Christians were perceived in that town—as a bunch of legalists with frowny faces.

However, on the other side of the arena, there’s the “lax Christian” stereotype who, other than attending enthusiastic worship services, has no Christian features coloring their lives. They may proudly emphasize that they don’t care who wins the governorship, that Muse is their favorite band, that they party on the weekends and love to dance. “Absolutely nothing, nothing,” they say, “makes us unusual. We’re just like everyone else, except we love Jesus.” The danger there is if Christ does not change us, can we honestly say He has dominion over our lives?

I used to think I needed to find a balance between the two extremes. I didn’t want to be law-oriented, but I didn’t want to be a Christian-with-no-Christianity either. All I needed to do was figure out a way to live radically for Christ, while still looking pretty normal and cool.

Since then I’ve realized that knowing Jesus is not about finding a balance in the stereotypes. It’s a third option altogether:

What does Christianity look like Biblically?

2 Corinthians 4:7 says, “But we have this treasure [the Gospel] in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” We’re the jars of clay; God is the treasure we hold inside.

Ni Tou-Sheng, a Chinese evangelist, expounded on the passage:

“Numbers of people have their own conceptions of a Christian, but these conceptions are one-sided, because they are just a creation of the human mind….

Here is a man [the apostle Paul] who is afraid and yet determined; he is encompassed by foes and yet he is not bound; he seems about to be overcome and yet he is not destroyed. It is plain enough that he is weak, and yet he declares that just when he is weak he is strong….

Do you begin now to understand what it means to be a Christian? To be a Christian is to be a person in whom seeming incompatibles exist together, but in whom it is the power of God that repeatedly triumphs.”

He explained that we’re not supposed to hide our weaknesses, or to train ourselves to be un-human. Instead, that humanity is meant to further highlight God’s strength and God’s grace which He gives to us. Nee added, “The flesh is to be withstood and given over to death—the death of the cross…but weakness, in this other sense, is to remain.”

In other words, I realized that Christianity isn’t trying to fall into any category. It’s not about being “the girl who cries at cuss words” any more than it is to be the “cool, cussing Christian” on campus.

Living for Jesus means living to represent Him with accuracy. It means God’s grace showing in our lives, because we’re vulnerable, honest and authentic enough that we don’t mind if others see. Being a Christian means pursuing the Jesus of the Bible, while inadvertently busting stereotypes as we go; it’s not the other way around. Being a Christian means seeking holiness--not necessarily perfection.

As for dancing laws and cussing…well, that doesn’t have much to do with it, does it?

Is Jesus an Egomaniac?

2010-01-29T06:24:00.000-08:00

"What I have found in my own life, and in the life of many others, is that God’s God-centeredness is the test of whether our own God-centeredness is real: Do I rejoice in God’s unwavering commitment to uphold and display his glory—do I rejoice in God’s God-centeredness? Or am I God-centered only because deep down I believe God is man-centered…?

… Before the foundation of the world, God planned a redemption in Christ with this great and ultimate goal: that we would praise his glory. And the apex of that glory would be the glory of his grace.

So from the very beginning, we see that God made his exaltation and our salvation one piece. You don’t have to choose between God’s glory and your joy, because the apex of your joy is praise, and the apex of his glory is grace…

Here is the end of the matter: God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is not the act of a needy ego, but an act of infinite giving. The reason God seeks our praise is not because he won’t be fully God until he gets it, but that we won’t be happy until we give it.

This is not arrogance. This is grace.

This is not egomania. This is love."

-"Is Jesus an Egomaniac?," by John Piper at 2010's Passion Conference

Great Things Done, With More Coming Soon...

2010-01-26T08:06:00.000-08:00

Ephesians reminds me of one of those “Space Saver” plastic bags of infomercial fame: a ton of information is held in only a few paragraphs.

At first, it reads like a catechism, listing off God’s completed to-do’s and His intentions to do next. Disconnected, the points make little sense. It didn’t really make for an interesting Bible study this morning, until all the points began to fit together. Take a look:

He gave us with “every spiritual blessing” (past tense, it’s been done) “even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.” (Ephesians 1:3-4)

Why the “even as?” It’s the connecting line, between the spiritual blessing and the choosing of His people, meaning “Just as He chose us before time, He gave us the spiritual blessings we need to endure in Him and to live out our purpose on earth.” They’re hand in hand.

What’s included in “every spiritual blessing?”

Later on in Ephesians 1:13,

“In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will….In Him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance…”

Again, it reads like a catechism, packing in a lot of promises. The Holy Spirit is a promise of our inheritance. To paraphrase the verse, “If you heard the true gospel and believed in Christ to save you, you’ve become included in an inheritance. You don’t have it yet, so that’s why it’s an inheritance—you’ll receive it at a later date. But how do you know? You’ve been given the Holy Spirit; as literally ‘the down payment.’”

What does this mean for you?

· God planned you before the foundation of the world, so that your existence, right now, in January 2010, would fit in His plan.

· He has given you the spiritual blessings to make it through whatever tomorrow holds.

· He has given you the Holy Spirit—Himself—to live within you and be your Helper.

· Your inheritance is a sealed deal.

…and most of all it’s a reminder that God is in the midst of a huge, master plan; a drama of His glory, that was conceived in His mind before time began, of which we are only a tiny part. Just as He chose you before the foundation of the world, He’s working all things to the counsel of his will, to fit in his design. Great things are yet to be seen from Him. God is on the move.

Thank You

2010-01-17T14:00:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone.

Hannah here. I just felt it would be right today to say "thank you" once more for your prayers, letters and support while my brother, Tyler was in the hospital. Today marks the one year anniversary of his accident.

Last night,we gathered as a family around the living room and shared our memories of the accident and the months in the hospital. It brought to my mind the first night, when Tyler was in emergency surgery, and my sisters and I were waiting it out at my grandparent's house. I remember flipping on my computer at 1am, unable to sleep, and reading your prayers already being posted here and on The Rebelution. The fact that total strangers could care so deeply about how my brother was doing--well, it's still something I struggle to wrap my mind around. My entire family felt your prayers, and we're so grateful to have experienced the love of the body of Christ.

Tyler is doing fine. It's amazing how thoroughly he has been healed. My dad's specific prayer during the whole time in the hospital was that God would "heal the wounds but leave the scars"--and that's come true for Tyler. His scars remind us of God's faithfulness, grace, and of the love you all showed us.

So thanks, every one of you, for praying. Let me know if I can ever return the favor.

Love in Christ,

Hannah

What's Next?

2010-01-13T08:57:00.000-08:00

The most challenging moments of my life have been waiting periods: when my brother was in the hospital, waiting for progress to be made; when I finished highschool, waiting for the next thing; when the next thing came and went, and I had to buckle down and figure out what would be the next-next thing.

In such moments, there are truths of which I must be constantly reminded. Interestingly, they are each touched on in Psalm 39. Take a look:

1. God establishes our steps. He's in total control. Nothing escapes His view. None of our desires go unnoticed, and none of our circumstances are beyond His power to change.

"And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you." -Psalm 39:7

2. Waiting is never an excuse to waste time, or forget the brevity of our lives. Just because we're in between jobs or waiting for some door to open up, it doesn't mean we have a right to squander the time we've been given. We should do something.

"...my lifetime is as nothing before You. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath!" -Psalm 39:4b

3. God doesn't promise we'll win the lottery, but He does promise a future hope and eternal purpose. God never promises that we'll be rich, famous, or have perfectly healthy, trial-free lives. Instead, He says that He's created us for His glory, and if we're His children, He'll also work out every detail of our lives for our good.

"O LORD, make me know my end..." -Psalm 39:4a

4. No period of time is ever useless if it is used for God. Even waiting periods can be used powerfully for our maturity and growth. We may feel like we're wasting away, but God can use our circumstances to set our eyes on Him, which is an issue that matters for eternity.

"Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear to my cry; hold not your peace at my tears! For I am a sojourner with You, a guest, like all my fathers." -Psalm 39:12

Are you in a waiting period? What wisdom or verses have helped you?

Spending Like A Macedonian

2010-01-11T09:11:00.000-08:00

While staring at the crumpled paper that littered our living room floor—leftovers from unwrapped Christmas gifts—I winced to consider what others were doing at that moment. As my part of Texas celebrated its first white Christmas in 80 years, I wondered how many others were struggling in the extra-cold weather to keep their houses warm. Considering the numbers I'd seen lining in front of our local food kitchen, it wasn't far-fetched to guess that some nearby were suffering.

If I were completely honest, I'd tell you that I'm not in the habit of thinking very often about the needy. And even if I do acknowledge those around me, I normally limit myself to daydreaming. I think, "One day, once I finish school and have money to spend, I'll give to an orphanage or sponsor a child. Hey, if I get enough money, I'll sponsor as many kids as I can!" The more I imagine, the more the idea of giving becomes a part of my distant, fantasy future.

Read the rest here.

Convicted In the Dark

2010-01-06T12:54:00.000-08:00

Shakespeare, Galileo, Milton, Kepler, David; each wrote of the stars. Some in verse, some in scientific essays—all in wonder. However numerous their mention, have you noticed stars never grow cliché? Scientifically speaking, we know these orbs are only the gaseous dustballs of the universe with no potential to support human life, and yet staring at them sends us into a speechless stupor.

Lord Byron, a poet rarely caught without a quip, could not begin to describe them: “Ye stars! Which are the poetry of heaven! ….for ye are a beauty and a mystery, and create in us such love and reverence from afar.”

Unfortunately for me, my thoughts seldom reach as high as the heavens. My thoughts tend to stick to the solid, predictable and unoffending ground. What will I do after highschool? Do I pursue a degree? Do I take a job? Where? When? Is this right? Will God allow me to feel His Presence or must I trust blindly? Must I continue fumbling in the dark, groping for a light switch? How much longer?

But when the lights are off, the stars are easier to see. Galileo admitted, “I've loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.” Maybe that’s the wiser perspective.

Isaiah wanted us to adopt this view when he cried, “Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning?” Finger pointed to the sky, the wizened prophet must have shouted, “Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.” (Isaiah 40:21, 26)

When attempting to figure out my future, I used to feel stuck in the dark; but I’m now of the opinion that “in the dark” should no longer be a synonym for ignorance and confusion. Instead, it’s a doorway into clarity. In the absence of man-made lamps, which illuminate at my command, I’m powerless. I can’t trust myself. Reflection is all I have to do. It’s time count the stars and laugh at my smallness; remembering that the God who leads constellations through infinity can guide me, too.

Resuming...

2010-01-02T17:26:00.000-08:00

Friends allowed Lindsey and I to take a spin in their British sportscar (1960 TR-3) during Lindsey's December visit to Texas. Although it appears that I was permitted to drive--I wasn't. But don't get me wrong, it was cool just sitting there.

Lindsey and I are both eager to get back to posting this January. Looking forward to catching up with you!

Hello, Sunshine!

2009-12-07T07:53:00.000-08:00

You're so observant. You noticed that Lindsey and I haven't posted much lately. (Well, I hope somebody noticed.)

We could say that we're in the midst of a top secret project for NASA, or conducting vital international diplomacy, or that we're doing something else really big...but we'd be lying. We're just busy, as we're sure that you are this Christmas season. That's our only excuse.

This is to say that we haven't fallen off the planet. In fact, we miss you. We miss posting. We fully intend to jump back into the blog as soon as possible.

In the meantime, we're psyched to have a few posts coming up at the Lies Young Women Believe blog (by the authors of Lies Young Women Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free, as well as some other great staff writers.)

Alex Chediak interviewed Lindsey and me just the other day as well. The interview is to be posted on his blog. That's where we are blogging-wise.

I also have it from a reliable source (uh, me?) that Lindsey may be visiting Texas soon. If a random blog post of pictures and ramblings does indeed pop up in the next week or so, know that you have been forewarned.

Cordially,

Hannah

2009-11-19T08:13:00.000-08:00

Everyone seems to know the up and up about Twilight--be them lovers or haters. The film adaptation of Stephanie Meyer's novel (a vampire-human love story) released last November to largely adoring audiences. Tomorrow, we're in for a similar ride, as the sequel (now a vampire-human-werewolf love triangle) is set to hit theaters. With this déjà vu, some old Beauty from the Heart posts came back to mind:

Lindsey brought up a point at the first Twilight series release that's worth re-visiting.
She quoted God's Missionary, by Amy Carmichael:

Do we never hear the question "What is the harm of it?" asked about reading certain books, following certain pursuits, taking our recreation in certain ways? Perhaps... we need change of thought and rest of brain. "What is the harm of the latest novel, even if it happens to be rather unprofitable?" And we (who have not time to read one out of a thousand of the real books that have been written) spend a precious hour by deliberate choice over something not worthwhile; and when our immediate world interrupts us, breaking in upon us with some call, do we find that we come back to it with quite undistracted gladness?
...."Surely there is no harm in recreation?" To this question we answer, "No, if by recreation is meant re-equipment for future work with no leakage of spiritual power." We must have a fresh influx of life for both soul and body, or we shall dry up and become deserts in a desert. But where are our fresh springs to be? That is the main question.
"All my fresh springs are in Thee." Can we say so truthfully? Or is it not a fact that-- with some of us at least-- certain forms of recreation have, perhaps quite insensibly to us, got out of their place, and hinder, rather than help, all-round robustness
of life?

Because Twilight is so crazy-popular, it is an obvious target, but the need for discernment applies to everything we give time to. The question of discernment not only applies to movies we watch but songs on the radio ("Is that Katy Perry song okay?") or even internet activities ("Do I really need to Twitter sixteen times a day?").

Regarding music, Proverbs 25:20 says "Whoever sings songs to a heavy heart is like one who takes off a garment on a cold day, and like vinegar on soda." Ever notice that when you're feeling depressed, a good break-up song can make you feel more so? Music has power. Don't underestimate it.

In the same way, books can potentially help us understand God better--or other kinds of books can potentially desensitize us to unbiblical philosophies and ethics. I don't need to list the dangers; you are likely very aware.

Another BftH oldie made me think of something I hadn't considered for a while:

"In forty years, I’ll be fifty-eight. 58. It seems like a long time, but judging how quickly the past eighteen years have traveled, it may arrive faster than I think—if I even make it that long. (According to deathclock.com, I have 1,900,316,800 seconds left to live...and counting down.)

I’m not trying to sound dark—but it does make me think. How am I spending my time? Specifically, I’ve been considering books and movies. How many movies have I watched that simply weren't worth the minutes? What about books? Although I don't spend nearly the amount of time the average American does on entertainment (6 hours per day!), that isn't saying much.

What do you think? I’m curious—what is your criteria for approving of a movie or book to spend time on? I’m not just asking how you gauge if something is appropriate, but whether it’s worth it."

Hmm. Looks like a question worth re-asking myself.

How God Humbled a VerySmartMan

2009-11-13T08:13:00.000-08:00

Of the Old Testament patriarchs, I related to Jacob the most. He didn’t share grandfather Abraham’s extreme faith, or daddy Isaac’s apparent naiveté. Instead, Jacob likes the illusion of control. He thinks, and then overthinks, in attempt to finagle this situation to his advantage.

Like the time when his drama queen of a brother, Esau, was simply “staaarving,” and said if Jacob didn’t feed him, he “would diiie” (I imagine him whining.) So Jacob said, “Here, bro. I’ll trade you some soup for your inheritance.” I wonder if Esau thought he was kidding at first. In any case, Jacob supplanted his brother and got the birthright.

Jacob’s lives by his wits, seemingly doing pretty well for himself…until his brother decides to put a hit on him. He flees to Paddam-aram to go visit some relatives, where he falls in love with a pretty girl. The girl’s father is cunning too, so he sets the boy to work for seven years: Jacob’s service in trade for the girl.

All’s well and good, as Jacob and the girl’s dad are cut from the same cloth. That is, until the wedding, when Jacob discovers that beneath that veil is his girl’s nearsighted older sister. Yes, he was outfoxed. Someone made a switch. But does it mean that with a taste of his own medicine, Jacob sees the error of his ways? Sorry, not yet. Even getting the wrong girl in a marriage contract doesn’t teach humility.

Seven years later, with his girl finally under his wing (along with her older sister, who is unfortunately the sad part in this love triangle) Jacob flees from Paddam-aram. The relatives have gotten just a bit too cozy. With cunning, he sneaks out. That plan fails, as his father in law catches up with him on the road; but God is near, and Jacob’s family comes out okay.

Arriving back home has its difficulties too. Old brother Esau has grown his family to a small army, and Jacob knows his clock would be cleaned in a fight. God says, “Go ahead anyway,” so Jacob does, with fear and trembling...and cunning. He sends Esau an extravagant gift ahead of time to smooth the way, just in case God’s promise of “I will be with you” wasn’t quite enough.

But the very night before Jacob would confront his brother and know whether he was to live or die, a man tackles him. They wrestle, though I’m sure Jacob has no clue why. He’s just competitive like that.

As the sky just begins to go pink at dawn, the man dislocates Jacob’s hip with one withering touch. At last, Jacob knows who he’s dealing with and says, “I won’t let you go unless you bless me.” Obviously, this person with supernatural ability could get away if He wanted, but appreciates Jacob’s panache. He blesses Jacob and says, “You’ve struggled with God and won.”

Clutching his hip, Jacob staggers back to the camp with newfound wonder. No one has ever come that close to God; not even righteous Abraham. And Jacob, who thought himself oh-so-smart, had dared to punch Deity. Why was he still alive?

A million questions ran through his mind, and would run until the end of his life. For forever after, he limped; a constant sign that God was the one with the power.

Of all the patriarchs, Jacob’s story touches me the most. He’s got a donkey’s stubbornness and tends to think better of himself than he ought. In the end, God chose to wound Jacob rather than leave him be.

God’s nature is revealed in this story. He proves how He uses mostly fools (1 Corinthians 2), and the “smart” people he chooses must be made fools before they become useful. It’s not until he gives up on his own abilities that we see a glimmer of why God chose to make a nation from Jacob’s descendants.

And even more, the story reveals God’s humility—that he would deign to wrestle with a cocky little man—so the man might finally see rightly. It doesn’t happen every day. But then again, maybe it does.

Painting by Chris Cook.

He Said, she said

2009-11-04T10:23:00.000-08:00

"Train yourself up in godliness," You say, "for godliness with contentment is great gain, not only to yourself but the people around you. Plus, there's eternal reward involved."

So I say, "Sure" and have at it for oh, two hours. I know the rote rules of godliness: Read the Bible. Pray for a little while. Read a devotional, maybe. Make sure you've tithed or fasted or done something servantful recently.

But in the quiet, I know better.

Jim Elliot scattered reflections in his journal, "The tendency is to go to Egypt as our fathers have done, even as was Isaac's case. There is a river which does not fail; seemingly Egypt is without famine. But God wants me to find my satisfaction in wells in a famished land..."

Satisfaction. Satisfaction in a well? Surely the ancient imagery can translate for modern sensibilities. I say, "There is an unfailing source of food...somewhere. In Egypt, I hear they have self re-filling grocery aisles, while around here, people are scraping the bottom of the food pantry. I've gotta ask, can God fill my hunger?"

Can God fill my hunger? Hunger. I have pictures in my brain of that word. The pains of stomach walls imploding. Starvation; little distended stomachs from photographs of children eating bugs from the ground. Is that what I look like on the inside?

"Train yourself up in godliness," You say, and I think that is somehow related to the hunger.
Besides, what's the point of reading, praying, or even fasting if that soul-hunger is unaddressed? Isn't the assuaging of hunger the whole point? Or maybe...just maybe...hunger is the leash that trains us to godliness.

After reading a gem of a book entitled The Life of God in the Soul of Man, George Whitefield described his state: "O what a ray of divine life did then break in upon my soul! I fell awriting... I laid aside all trifling conversation. I put all trifling books away, and was determined to study to be a saint, and then to be a scholar. From that moment God has been carrying on His blessed work in my soul."

Sounds like godliness to me--though described in a way a mind accustomed to 3 Step Plans might marvel at. The opening of a shaft of light that illuminates hunger like a storm of dust particles caught midair. A godliness that does not only satisfy the hunger, but whets it as well. A godliness that starts with a refreshed soul, and moves on from there, wracking every conversation and written word with truth and heavenly urgency.

There is a river which does not fail, and reading the Bible and praying is only carrying a cup to its banks. We must search You out to be satisfied. We must want You to find You.

"Train yourself up in godliness," You say, and I think I know what You mean.

The Way Pirates Look for Gold

2009-11-02T13:32:00.000-08:00

"But the hard truth is that most Christians don’t pray very much. They pray at meals—unless they’re still stuck in the adolescent stage of calling good habits legalism. They whisper prayers before tough meetings. They say something brief as they crawl into bed. But very few set aside set times to pray alone—and fewer still think it is worth it to meet with others to pray. And we wonder why our faith is weak. And our hope is feeble. And our passion for Christ is small.And meanwhile the devil is whispering all over this room: 'The pastor is getting legalistic now. He’s starting to use guilt now. He’s getting out the law now.' To which I say, 'To hell with the devil and all of his destructive lies. Be free!' Is it true that intentional, regular, disciplined, earnest, Christ-dependent, God-glorifying, joyful prayer is a duty? . . . Is it a discipline?

You can call it that.

It’s a duty the way it’s the duty of a scuba diver to put on his air tank before he goes underwater.

It’s a duty the way pilots listen to air traffic controllers.

It’s a duty the way soldiers in combat clean their rifles and load their guns.

It’s a duty the way hungry people eat food.

It’s a duty the way thirsty people drink water.

It’s a duty the way a deaf man puts in his hearing aid.

It’s a duty the way a diabetic takes his insulin.

It’s a duty the way Pooh Bear looks for honey.

It’s a duty the way pirates look for gold.

I hate the devil, and the way he is killing some of you by persuading you it is legalistic to be as regular in your prayers as you are in your eating and sleeping and Internet use. Do you not see what a sucker he his making out of you? He is laughing up his sleeve at how easy it is to deceive Christians about the importance of prayer.

God has given us means of grace. If we do not use them to their fullest advantage, our complaints against him will not stick. If we don’t eat, we starve. If we don’t drink, we get dehydrated. If we don’t exercise a muscle, it atrophies. If we don’t breathe, we suffocate. And just as there are physical means of life, there spiritual are means of grace.

I have three practical suggestions. First, set aside a set time each day, and don’t leave prayer to chance. Second, I suggest you combine it with reading the Bible and that you take what you find in the Bible and turn it into prayer. Third, I suggest that you pray in concentric circles and make the aim of each circle the glory of God. You can work from outside in, or from inside out. For example, pray for your own soul, then for your family, then for your friends and colleagues, then for your church, then for wider ministries and the global mission of Christ, and then for the political leaders of the land. And let what you ask be at least partly shaped by what you just read in the Bible."

From Put in the Fire for the Sake of Prayer, a message by John Piper.

Last Words

2009-10-26T09:35:00.000-07:00

He did not cry easily, but the sight of his friends—more like brothers—gathering around him in prayer for the last time was enough to bring Paul to tears. For three years they had fought side by side proclaiming the gospel to the stubborn city of Ephesus. Together the band of brothers had shouldered the threat of beatings, imprisonment and even death from those hostile to their message.

With each brother he had developed a strong bond. Paul distinctly remembered nights in which he remained awake into the early morning hours, kneeling in prayer on behalf of every one of the men. Now, he was leaving them. He was making the journey to Jerusalem alone.

In his spirit, Paul knew. This was the last he would see of them in this lifetime.

From a Roman prison some time later, Paul wrote his last words to these Ephesians. His final message to them is interesting. Naturally, it would contain his heart's cry—what truth he wanted most for the church to cling to:

“But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God…” (Acts 20:24)

The point that Paul so desperately wanted to convey to these dear friends was not that God loved them. They knew the gospel. They recognized God's supreme love in sending His Son; but what they needed to hear most from Paul was this final challenge: Don't value yourself.

Paul's goal was not to lift their self-esteem. ‘But I do not account my life of any value…’ Rather, he hoped to lift their eyes to Christ.

The key words spoken by Paul were not meant only for the ears of his Ephesian buddies. God means those words for us too. We aren't supposed to draw security from belonging to Christ and have it end there.

Once I’m set free from constantly trying to mimic the clothes and behavior and body types of everyone else, I’m really, really free! It makes me want to dance around with a permanent marker and paint moustaches on all the little images I’ve had stored in my mind of what I “should” measure up to. No longer must I try to appease these images to be loved, because my Maker loves me as I am!

But that’s not all. In fact, if learning about God’s love ended at bringing up my self-esteem, I'd only be worshipping myself. Christ would still be missed. My focus would be only self-love, not really the love of God at all. As one man said, “If God’s love made us central and focused on our value, it would distract us from what is most precious; namely, Himself.”[i]

God's love for us should not drive us to higher self-esteem, but instead to a higher value of His opinion. Ditching the world's measurements ought to be the shove that pushes us into knowing Christ deeply. Our reaction should be something like, “So God loves me and created me with a reason; but what was that reason? How can I know more of Him?" And, "How can I draw more attention to His greatness, so that others can see how awesome He is?"

The answer to our questions should only lead us to the Answer of all questions-- which is, I think, what Paul wanted.

[i] Piper, John. Pierced by the Word, Multnomah Books 2003, page 13.

Make Like a Berean

2009-10-23T07:25:00.000-07:00

(If you don't get the title check out Acts 17:11.)

Should we fear God’s discipline, while we are under the New Covenant and thereby living under grace? And what is the meaning of “fearing God," when we are now told that perfect love casts out all fear? It’s not as if we’re in the Old Testament, where the relationship with God and His people was less intimate and based more on fear and faith rather than the person of Jesus Christ.

To place these questions in a more real-life scenario, imagine that your friends invited you to a casino. You aren’t quite crossing the line when it comes to sin, but lately, you’ve been hop scotching on it. You know that gambling isn’t explicitly banned in the Bible for New Covenant Christians. In fact, casting lots is even mentioned in the Old Testament as an activity of the priests. At the same time, you realize that because of all the verses on how we should spend our money wisely, and not love the pursuit of money, it’s probably not the wisest thing you should be doing. But, you reason, we’re living under grace. You shouldn’t be afraid, should you? To the pure all things are pure, right? Tell me, would it then be legalistic and wrong for you to contemplate—even fear—God’s consequences for your actions?

What do you do? I have friends who gamble, and I have friends who are adamantly against it. I'm not trying to tackle the gambling question. Rather, I'm concerned about the rationale in the example. Is the fear of consequences a form of legalism?

I don't have a straightforward answer to whether, in some sense, the fear of the Lord ends in the New Covenant. While I have a hunch about the answer, it's an issue I intend to search out further before forming a firm conclusion.

Thanks to Scripture, I do know a little bit: In Philippians 2:12, Christians are told to approach living out their salvation with "fear and trembling." Obviously, this means there is a good kind of fear that should still persist in us. In Hebrews 12:6, it says that God disciplines His children, meaning that God does sometimes mete out pain to his children as consequences for their actions; this discipline, however, is contrasted to eternal punishment, which was forever removed from the options list because of Christ's death.

So what does it mean to fear the Lord, while walking in grace? Care to weigh in?

Is Risk Really, Well, Risky?

2009-10-16T07:08:00.000-07:00

The other day, I ran across four converging lanes in downtown Dallas. I looked both ways first, and mentally measured the risk. I glanced back at the intersection of cars, guesstimating how many seconds I’d have to get across while they sat at a red light. In the end, it was the little old man yelling, “What are you doing just standing there? Get out of here, girl!” that motivated me to cross all four lanes. (One meets such congenial people downtown.)

Luckily, I made it across alive and well. Or was it fated to be that way? In stepping onto the street, I took a risk. The cars were stopped at a light, so it wasn’t a huge leap to assume that I’d make it, but it was an assumption nonetheless. Makes me wonder:

Is there such a thing as risk? In one sense, of course there is. We risk ridicule when we stand up against popular opinion. We risk pain when we choose to love. We risk when we assume that the cars at the intersection will not run a red light while we run across the street. Of course there is risk. But in a higher sense, does risk exist?

In Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, he tries to prove the existence of God. He reasons that he can’t trust his senses—because sometimes our eyes play tricks on us. So, he cannot really know that anything exists. In a Matrix-esque line of questions, he asks if the world around him is actually a dream. How can he prove what is reality without his senses? Because he is thinking, he concludes that the only thing he can truly know is that he himself exists, and posits that if he does, then God must as well. While that may be an oversimplification of his meditations, Descartes’ writing demonstrates to me something that is a natural human reflex—to base our understanding first upon ourselves.

We say with Descartes, "I exist, therefore, I am," or "I exist, therefore, I must watch out for myself." We naturally see decisions through the lens of cost and gain. "What will this decision give me? What do I have to lose?" If we start from the understanding that we exist, and every choice we make will have an unsalvageable domino effect, risk is a valid concept. Yet, if God is the author of all things, we must realize that we risk nothing. Not now. Not ever.

Sure, our actions will have consequences—there’s no contradiction between God’s sovereignty and cause and effect. What we are guaranteed is that God has a will—promises that He has made that He will bring to pass—in spite of or in hand with our decisions. For example, He declares that He is the beginning and the end. He will never cease to exist. Ergo, his attributes—grace, love, mercy and holiness will never cease. No matter what we do, we can never change the indelible reality of God.

In the book of Ruth, the young widow Ruth takes the advice of the older widow, Naomi. Naomi tells her to go visit an acquaintance named Boaz and essentially request Boaz for a marriage proposal. It’s all kind of crazy and definitely awkward, especially as Ruth is Boaz’s employee. But in obedience to Naomi, Ruth takes the risk. She talks to Boaz. While the Bible doesn’t set forth Naomi’s advice as a prescription for how to get a marriage proposal, it does seem to praise Ruth for her trust. She must’ve known that her risk—as uncomfortable and daring as it was—meant that she had confidence that God would provide for her, even in unlikely circumstances.

Thinking on God’s sovereignty amidst our “risks” is comforting, because it pulls the pressure from my shoulders. It means that if I go to college and live to regret the decision, God remains. All is not unsalvageable. If I make an effort to share my faith and the words don’t come out as smoothly as I wish, God is still on His throne, and He is still mighty to save. If I cross the street and get hit in a freak accident, He still is. And the God who is eternal--who will never die and whose plans are never thwarted--He takes care of His own.

The Unguarded Ones

2009-10-15T07:15:00.000-07:00

"Before my wife and I got married I knew that I had to tell her everything about me, all the ways I'd messed up, all the things I'd done. She had to know what she was getting before she agreed to marry me....

I find myself acting differently with God. Often, when I pray, I will phrase my sentences in a way that makes me sound better. I will try to soften my sins, or touch up my true feelings before laying them before God. How foolish it is for me to be completely honest with my wife about my shortcomings, but try to fool God!

God wants us to be open with Him. He definitely doesn't want us to 'season our wretchedness' as we would raw meat. He knows what we are, that we are disgusting, that all we are doing is trying to make ourselves feel better....

People who are obsessed are raw with God; they do not attempt to mask the ugliness of their sins or their failures. Obsessed people don't put it on for God; He is their safe place, where they can be at peace."

-Francis Chan, Crazy Love

Grace & Gone With the Wind

2009-10-12T09:39:00.000-07:00

At the end of this summer, I resolved to spend more time reading classics. I figured that there was nothing like foils and symbolism to clean the literary palate...or something like that. I stuck fairly close to my resolution until hitting Gone With the Wind this past week. Southern Renaissance lit sounded enticing at first, but truth be told, I'd forgotten much of the storyline. By page three, I doubted whether I could read 689 smallprint pages about Scarlett O'Hara.

She's one of the most iconic female characters in literature. To this day, we borrow her lines (unknowingly,) such as "Great balls of fire!" and "Tomorrow is another day!" And yet, I had to ask, why? Scarlett O'Hara stands out as one of the most self absorbed, manipulative, overtly racist, flirtatious and aggravating leading ladies ever to grace a novel. Why, oh why was her character a hit?

I don't plan to finish the book, so I'll admit right here that my opinion is not the most educated one; but it appears at first blush that Scarlett's immortality branches from her flaws. When she connives for attention, she's like us. When she flings herself into a steep depression, in Scarlett, we see ourselves. Likely her behavior is worse than our own. I don't know many people who could match her for selfishness, because really, she's an absolute pain. But her incredible humanity, bad decisions and all, causes us to remember her.

While this does not make Scarlett admirable by any stretch, it does shed light on who we are. We instinctively like knowing other people are as messed up as ourselves. Scarlett-the-shamless-flirt is exactly the person we may take pride in not being. Like the thief who is comforted knowing that at least he isn't as bad as a murderer, we're uplifted to read about people who indulge in the same or worse behavior than we do. At the same time, others of us live vicariously through Scarlett, appreciating that she commits the sins we only imagine doing.

These perspectives are all entangled. Call it hedonism. Call it self-righteousness. Much of it is actually pride. In the end, we must realize that we each carry these flaws to some extent. Beyond the problems of a fictional character, we live with sin in a very real way. Ignoring the problem only results in a guilt-ridden existence, so we must inevitably come to terms with our inner O'Hara. With honesty.

Take this then, as a public confession. All the character flaws I despise in Gone With the Wind, I can claim for myself. I hate Margaret Mitchell's main character; but it's mostly because bits and pieces remind me of me. And in retrospect, it's funny that this brush with classic literature has led me back down this familiar trail of grace.

Instead of taking pride in what we are not, we can frankly recognize what we are. Christ demands that we have the courage to see ourselves realistically; there is no hiding where God is concerned. We live our lives disguising our mistakes from others, trying to do better, trying to win their hearts; but if we look at it correctly, all we're doing is splashing some paint on a tomb. (Matt. 23:27) We are not providing a solution.

Tim Keller wrote, "In Christ I could know I was accepted by grace not only despite my flaws, but because I was willing to admit them. The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This....undermines both swaggering and sniveling."

The love of Christ gives us the boldness to see ourselves truly, causing us to find refreshed humility every time we see our sin in someone else. Renewing ourselves constantly with the remembrance of sin, we're then freed to grow beyond the flaws.

But then again, is there really much to learn beyond grace? Or is it all just a matter of learning to accept forgiveness and re-learning again?

Proof's in the Words

2009-10-07T08:12:00.000-07:00

“If we truly understood and applied the doctrine of 'justification by faith', what would that look like in our relationships within the Body? What is one of the primary evidences of a justified life?”

My professor paused to let us think. It wasn't hard. Love, I answered silently, and waited for him to confirm it.

“Refusal to speak evil against our brothers.” Oh, right. Wait-- what? “Applying the doctrine of justification to everyday life would mean the death of all gossip and unloving speech.” My puzzlement must have shown on my face.

Titus 3:1-2 flashed to mind-- Remind them to be… ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people. Unfortunately, no instant epiphany accompanied the verse. I'd grant that our speech reveals our hearts-- but can you really call it a primary demonstration of our grasp on the gospel?

Yes, I think you can.

When you break it down, it clicks. "The gospel" is shorthand for the good news of justification-- being made holy before God. As a Christian, the righteousness of Christ is now yours. You stand blameless and irrevocably forgiven before God. The zinger: so is every other Christian you've come into contact with. Don't I deny the efficacy of the Christ's death, then, with every unloving word I speak against another Christian, whether it's to his face or behind his back?

The believers who test our patience stand no less fixedly in God's favor as canonized saints. Torrential grace overpowers all their daily sins. These people have been stamped "righteous" by the same God whose presence compels the seraphim to cry Holy, Holy, Holy day and night. Christ came-- Grace incarnate-- and spent His life for their eternal gain, to say "I remember your sins no more."

Knowing this, how can I possibly dare to resurrect those same sins for a rehash?

Against that simple gospel backdrop, dredging up a brother's past offense sounds sickening. I cannot claim to be in sync with the gospel and simultaneously air another believer's sins, even in the simplest passing comment. Honesty and accuracy have no bearing here. Unless I'm deliberately stirring my listener "to love and good deeds" through a humble, sober warning against the deceitfulness of sin, my words only feed self-righteousness and defame the grace of Christ.

You can hear the intensity of passion permeating Paul's words in Romans 8:33-34: "Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us." That's it. God has justified.

Judging and confrontation still have an important place. We aren't called to ignore the reality of each other's sin. We're simply called to forgive as our Heavenly Father forgives, and act like we're part of a holy Body. Because we are.

Fall Knitting

2009-10-05T07:50:00.000-07:00

Accessories: How To Knit A Scarf

Fall is here (and if I can say that from Texas, which often enjoys only two seasons per year, then it must true.) As Edna St. Vincent Millay said, "Oh, Autumn! Autumn!--What is the Spring to me?" Between the mild temperature and hot tea, it's hard not to like.

Rather than waxing poetic on one of my favorite seasons, I thought a better ode to the weather would include an instructional video on scarf-knitting. I'm not usually a fan of instructional videos about knitting because for me, at least, I learn best with someone to walk me through step-by-step. However, I think the video is pretty helpful, particularly for beginners.

Have fun.

(Addendum: Google recently added short commercials to precede the videos, so while I didn't see anything objectionable when I re-watched this video today, use your own discretion!)

Snakeoil, Anyone?

2009-09-30T07:25:00.000-07:00

Saw these photos (taken from vintage magazines) and had to smile. Some things--like vanity and gimmicky ads--never change.

Photo credits: Modern Mechanix Blog (not all blog content is necessarily recommended.)

Taking Off My Shoes

2009-09-29T10:23:00.000-07:00

When the trees shudder in the breeze, or a butterfly barely glances your hand, you can feel beauty pull at your heart. You long to be a part of the beauty—to both soak it in and add to it.

It happens to me a lot. Especially when I write.

Maybe for you, this desire pertains to a musical instrument. Maybe you draw, paint, or write. You might not be artistic at all—but in living out your talents, you long to reach your fullest potential--whatever it might be.

I’ve come to see this desire as a thumbprint of God on our minds. The desire to do something beautiful is there because we were created in His image, and He gets a kick out of beauty. As Elizabeth Barrett Browning explained,

"And truly, I reiterate, . . nothing's small!
No lily-muffled hum of a summer-bee,
But finds some coupling with the spinning stars….

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes."

God has crammed the Earth with signs of His nature, reminding us that there is more in existence than taking out the trash, returning books to the library, eating, sleeping and the general occurrences that stuff our lives. But when it comes to imitating that beauty, we don’t do it right all the time. We fail (more often than not) and our minds typically prefer contentment in the mediocre—but the longing to create a masterpiece is a God-thing. Why? There’s an amazing potential for projecting the glory of God in our work.

John Piper wrote something rather shocking on this subject, which I've quoted before, but I believe deserves re-visiting. He wrote, "...when a person speaks or writes or sings or paints about breathtaking truth in a boring way, it is probably a sin." And why wouldn’t it be? Since when was it preferable to slack off, burying our talents, rather than investing our sweat and tears into mirroring God’s love for beauty the best we can?

Piper continued, "The supremacy of God in the life of the mind is not honored when God and His amazing world are observed truly, analyzed duly, and communicated boringly." Further on he said, "I pray for the grace of imagination, lest I fail to love my fellow man and fail to render Your glory for what it really is..." (Life As a Vapor.)

I wonder what that prayer would look like, played out in our lives.

Interrogating the Heart

2009-09-21T07:32:00.000-07:00

What is that thing which stands between you and total happiness? What is that that your heart claims will be the key to your satisfaction? Is it an accomplishment? A goal in school? Marriage? Popularity? What is it?

Whatever that thing is, if it stands between you and total happiness in Christ, it's an idol that will only lead to your hurt.

Of course, we have God-given gifts and hunger to do things. Sometimes we feel as if we'll never have peace unless we're knee deep in accomplishing those goals. But don't let that understanding make you automatically dub your desire as "healthy" and "God-given." We should always be in a position where we can stop what we're doing, take a breather, and still be happy because Christ is the well from which we draw our joy.

James 4:14-15 exclaims, "Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, 'If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that.'"

You don't know what will happen tomorrow. Why hope in something that is not sure?

Since your life is only a blip on the radar, is it worthwhile to spend it on this unnamed pursuit?

Is longing for this thing bringing about positive transformation in your spiritual life, or are you growing in bitterness instead?

As Elisabeth Elliot concluded, "Until the will and the affections are brought under the authority of Christ, we have not begun to understand, let alone to accept, His Lordship. My heart would forever be a lonely hunter unless settled 'where true joys are to be found'."

Are you satisfied? Or are you a lonely hunter?

More Recommendations for Bibliophiles

2009-09-16T08:40:00.000-07:00

Looks like it's a literary week around here. If you’re like me, you’re always on the lookout for a new treasure (aka "book")—and this summer, I made two discoveries that I’m dying to share.

Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God’s Will, by Kevin DeYoung

I honestly wish I could put this tiny little book in the hands of every Christian I know. Kevin DeYoung’s style is irresistibly fresh, full of memorable examples, highly quotable, and humorous in appropriate places. Most of all, he applies the Word clearly and honestly to a massive issue in our generation.

If you’ve ever spent hours agonizing over God’s will for your life—if you’ve ever found yourself mired in passivity, or downright unsure about how to make a big decision— well then. I don't want to sound controlling or anything (ahem), but I have a four-step command for you.

Open a new tab. Go to Amazon.com. Buy it used for $5.79. Send me a thank-you card.

I literally felt like jumping out of my chair in sheer exhilaration on several occasions. Chapter after chapter unfurls gloriously liberating, roundly biblical truth that our Christian sub-culture has largely forgotten. The way I think, pray, and act has been changed. Please, go ahead and open that tab, won’t you?

The Prodigal God, by Timothy Keller

It’s short, it’s easy to read, and it still ranks among the most powerful books I’ve ever picked up.

The subtitle is “Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith”, and that’s exactly what the book does, through a fresh exposition of the familiar Prodigal Son parable-- making it a deeply refreshing awakening for believers, and a wonderful introduction to genuine Christianity for unbelievers. There aren’t many books that you can read as a seasoned believer or a young believer, and then hand to an unsaved friend-- but The Prodigal God was designed for all three.

From the book: “Jesus does not divide the world into the moral "good guys" and the immoral "bad guys." He shows us that everyone is dedicated to a project of self-salvation, to using God and others in order to get power and control for themselves. We are just going about it in different ways.”

Keller gives one of the most balanced, rich, and accessible presentations of the Gospel I’ve discovered to date. If you don’t gain something from it, I’ll buy your copy off you. I want another one anyway.

Regarding Myths and Whimsical Things

2009-09-14T06:53:00.000-07:00

"What's magic, anyway? If you asked a kitten, 'How does a bumblee fly?' the answer would probably be 'Magic.' Aerwiar is full of wonders, and some call it magic. This is a gift from the Maker...

"I have seen many things, child,” said Nia, and a faraway look came into her eyes. “Wonderful things. The old stories might call it magic, but I call it beauty.” -Andrew Peterson on magic, in North! or Be Eaten

To be honest, I’m not sure how to start writing this book recommendation. I could start drawing some comparisons between this author’s writings and C.S. Lewis’ more whimsical stuff—like "The Chronicles of Narnia"—but you wouldn’t believe me, would you?

I could start talking about how my family has read together for as long as I can remember—how about that?

When I was about eight years old, my parents began picking out books to read as a family. We started with obscure classics from the mid-1800’s (because of their strong vocabulary and sense of right and wrong) before treading into modern lit. My parents’ criteria in picking books have always been to find something that would be understandable for the whole family, convey Biblical themes, and hold some entertainment value.

Of the books we recommend to friends, Andrew Peterson's new series has become an unquestionable favorite. Last year, the singer-songwriter published the first book in his "Wingfeather Saga" series, beginning the story of two brothers and a sister who learn that they are the heirs to the throne of the ancient country of Anniera. While that sounds like a happily-ever-after conclusion rather than a beginning, it's not.

The children's world has long been subdued by conquerors from across the sea--the venomous Fangs of Dang--who are determined to squelch any memory of Anniera. Once their royal heritage is discovered, the three siblings--along with their mother, grandfather (a reformed pirate,) Nugget-the-dog, and the mysterious Peet the Sock Man--must run (and fight) for their lives.

Lace the storyline with humor and Lewis-esque profundity, and you'll get the right idea.

When the sequel, North! or Be Eaten was released in August, immediately my sister Grace began asking (and asking and asking) when we'd get a copy of the new book. She was right in doing so. Having finished the sequel, I can honestly say that the sequel is as good, possibly better, than its predecessor. Themes of responsibility and self-denial are fleshed out more thoroughly. After closing the book, I thought about Peterson's portrayal of love, weaved throughout the novel and culminating in a boy losing blood for the sake of his undeserving brother.

It brings to mind something a certain Oxford professor once wrote:

"The value of myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity’… If you are tired of the real landscape, look at it in a mirror. By putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it. As long as the story lingers in our mind, the real things are more themselves. This book applies the treatment not only to bread or apple but to good and evil, to our endless perils, our anguish, and our joys. By dipping them in myth we see them more clearly."

(C.S. Lewis, reviewing The Lord of the Rings in Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces.)

Sidenote: I found both of Peterson's books on sale, two for $20.

Playing Small

2009-09-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

Who are you?

I find that question keeps coming up, and accordingly, keeps getting posted on this blog. One response to the question was proposed by Maryanne Williamson, who said (as famously quoted by Nelson Mandela at his 1994 inauguration):

“It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and famous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world…We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in all of us.”

On the surface, with terms used such as “God’s glory” and “light and darkness” it sounds like a perfectly acceptable Christian statement. And to a degree, I suppose we could find some agreement with it. We are children of God (those saved by faith in the atoning death of His Son, that is). We are to glorify God and He has created us in His image. But the underlying philosophy is revealed in the one, quiet little phrase: “Your playing small does not serve the world.”

This is the same belief that trips us up when we wonder who we are.

In order to find fulfillment, it’s easy to think we must “live large.” We’ve got to be cool. We must be accepted. We must be glittery, confident, and popular. We must be significant. Surely that is who we are.

But in a paradox (not surprising if you’re accustomed to Bible reading, chock-full of such paradoxes) our only true significance will be found in being small.

On a very basic level, we won’t have friends or companionship if we selfishly cling to our own “manifest glory.” As the French novelist, Muriel Barbery wisely deduced, “We have given up trying to meet others; we just meet ourselves…because other people have become our permanent mirrors… As for me, I implore fate to give me the chance to see beyond myself and truly meet someone.”

Infatuated with being charming, or being loved— we will miss out on loving. If we focus too much on finding who we are (and if we are not content to be small, meek, and serving), we will never truly know anyone else beyond our own “permanent mirrors.”

Instead, I suspect that it is the humble cry like Francis of Assisi’s that results in truly shedding God’s glory: “O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love, for it is…in dying that we are reborn to eternal life.”

Likewise, we cannot find fulfillment unless we realize the truth. We are small. Our lives are as vapors in the wind. At the same time, we're cherished by a big God.

So, rather than questioning who I am, I find that the answer is always found somewhere else. It is found in God. It is found in the grace I’ve been given freely by Christ. It is found in loving other people; never in seeking to become my own.

Photo credit: Ivan Petrov.

Loving the Master Most

2009-09-02T20:10:00.000-07:00

I have a geeky confession.

Some girls squeal at the thought of meeting celebrity singers. I’d prefer meeting pastors and quietly listening to them talk for hours. A couple months ago, I actually fell asleep and dreamed that I was eating lunch at Chic-Fil-A with John Piper and his wife.

In and of itself, these are only amusing eccentricities. Most of us can relate to having similar “personal heroes of the faith”— fired-up Christians, whether alive or preserved through their writings, who stoke our yearning for God-centered living. These godly, wiser mentors are essential in guiding us along the path of maturity.

Respect and imitation for godly leaders is healthy— up to an extent. The problem starts when we forget that “Christian” means nothing more than “little Christ”, and we begin to think of the pupil like the Master.

Godly Idols?

This morning, I read a few chapters of Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth—a church struggling with just such an overdose of devotion to certain Christian leaders. Paul wasted no time in setting them straight:

“Each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized into the name of Paul? …

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” (1 Corinthians 2:12-13 and 3:5-8)

I love how these verses read like a triumphant bugle call to worship. No Christian is anything except a servant; Christ is everything. God is the one working behind the scenes in every godly leader’s heart; He’s the only one who deserves the full spotlight.

Do I feel less inclined to pick up the Bible than to pick up a meaty Christian book? Am I more apt to quote Spurgeon than to quote Scripture? Whenever my answers are yes, the primary allegiance of my heart has been revealed: my delight in Christ has atrophied while my delight in the message-bearer has swollen. Respect has toed the line reserved solely for the true Hero of my faith.

J.C. Ryle wisely observed, “The best of men are only men at their very best. Patriarchs, prophets, and apostles – martyrs, fathers, reformers, puritans – all are sinners, who need a Savior: holy, useful, honorable in their place – but sinners after all.”

The only Person worthy of our boundless adoration is Christ Jesus. No one else can even begin to compete.

Photo credit: irishcalvinist.com.

Humbly Accepting Reproof

2009-08-26T07:00:00.000-07:00

How well do you take correction, even when it isn't offered graciously?

Learning To Love Correction from Covenant Life Church on Vimeo.

Victory Already Acheived

2009-08-24T07:42:00.000-07:00

I am coming to realize that Christians—to some degree—will always struggle with schizophrenia. With two conflicting natures beneath our skin, we must constantly scrap in the struggle between them. When we believe we’ve won and finally have a foothold on righteousness, pride shows our true weakness. When guilt pushes our heads down, the Spirit reminds us that Christ is enough, and that there is no condemnation in Him. Yet it’s always a fight.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer lamented his own conflicting natures from his prison cell, not long before his execution by the Nazis. His description of this conflict is insightful:

"Who am I? They often tell me

I stepped from my cell’s confinement

Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,

Like a squire from his country-house.

Who am I? They often tell me

I used to speak to my warders

Freely and friendly and clearly,

As though it were mine to command.

Who am I? They also tell me

I bore the days of misfortune

Equally, smilingly, proudly,

Like one accustomed to win.

Am I then really all that which other men tell of?

Or am I only what I myself know of myself?

Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,

Struggling for breath, as though hands were

Compressing my throat,

Yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,

Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,

Tossing in expectation of great events,

Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,

Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,

Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?

Who am I? This or the other?

Am I one person today and tomorrow another?

Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,

And before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?

Or is something within me still like a beaten army,

Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.

Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am Thine!"

(First published in Christianity and Crisis, March 4, 1946)

Now there’s a note worth taking to heart. We are never wholly defeated in our struggle against the flesh. We are never entirely weak. We are like an army that has faced momentary defeat on the battlefield, while the rest of its forces have already won the war.

“But we have this treasure [which is the good news of Christ] in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh…. knowing that He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into His presence.” (2 Cor. 4:7-12, 14)

When all is said and done, this fight is something we're destined to win.

Tell Me Who You Are, Pt. 2

2009-08-20T05:58:00.000-07:00

If you had one opportunity to tell me who you are, what would you say? I wonder if we communicate this--the only message worth communicating with our lives--nearly enough:

This world system doesn’t work. At all.

Corruption has seeped into every government the planet. Slavery is booming across the world. Kids aren’t just starving in Africa; they’re starving in your hometown. Look hard enough outside yourself, and you’ll see suffering on every streetcorner.

Yet these things aren’t the problem.

These are only symptoms of the pervasive problem: human depravity.

Sin is smeared across each one of us. We’ve all lied at least once. We’ve jumped at the invitation to lust. While we haven’t all murdered or masterminded concentration camps, we’ve hated other people, which is the same as committing murder in our minds. Most of all, we haven’t worshipped the God who created us. We’ve given God a virtual slap in the face, refusing to love Him.

Picture this individual sin multiplied by over six billion people. World problems don’t seem so surprising.

Yet God made men to walk in the light—the light of holiness, that is. Not holiness in terms of two-facedness or fake goodness. Not holiness in terms of lists and rules. Holiness that is the absence of corruption.

He made us for His Presence, but our sin (and our love for it) bars the door.

God had one option: He could punish us. Like a judge over reprobates, He could lock us up forever. In fact, in order to be a good judge, He’d have to punish us severely. (Even to our standards, a judge who lets a rapist free isn’t doing his job.) Punishment was necessary for justice, and death is the penalty for sin.

Somebody needed to die.

And yet, in a never-before-seen dramatic twist, heaven rushed to meet earth. Perfection stooped to caress an infected world. The judge took a seat in the reprobate’s electric chair. The Triune God sent the Son to meet death for us.

The One who was called “Morning Star” and “King of Kings” squeezed Himself into the casings of a man. He gave Himself nerve endings, so He could feel pain. He made Himself small, because someone needed to die for sin--so He did.

And our world system still bashes God for trying to force morality on us. Some even publicly denounce His existence. We’ve turned not-worshipping God into an art form. On that note, nothing has really changed.

But God is still Judge. Someone will have to pay for our insolence—for yours. Either you will hate your sin and hide behind Jesus or you will reject Him and pay for it yourself. There is no in-between.

When was the last time you honestly, truly thought about this? Is this truth the foundation of who you are? If not, what is?

Tell Me Who You Are

2009-08-17T06:55:00.000-07:00

If you had one message that summarized your life, what would it be? What is your lifework? When you die (face it, girls, it will happen), what do you think people will remember you loving the most?

Back in February, when my brother was in the hospital after his accident, I met a lady who was a volunteer clerk at a local hospitality-home for hospital families. We spoke only briefly—just long enough for her to ask why we were there. “My sixteen year old brother was in an ATV accident.”

I remember the woman because her response was unusual. She didn’t ask how it happened. She didn’t reply with that oh-so-aggravating response, “Well, he should be more careful next time.” Instead, she nodded her head knowingly. She asked if he’d be okay. I shrugged. “We’re trusting God. We’re thankful he’s alive right now, but we don’t know…”

The lady quizzed me further, nodding some more. She explained that she’d lost two friends in the past year to ATV accidents. With an outburst of energy she exclaimed, “You need to go on a national crusade! Get on ABC! Get on the news! Let people know how dangerous those things really are.”

Unsure how to respond, I remember smiling and saying something noncommittal. “I’ll definitely tell the people I know…”

She had a point. Countless stitches, hospital days, and some research later, I’ve learned that there are major legal battles ensuing as we speak regarding the safety and stability of certain ATV designs. My brother and his friend weren’t even speeding when their vehicle wrecked. The government is currently investigating certain companies involved in ATV production.

These findings are more than enough fuel for a national campaign. So, why not?

The truth is, if I had one message I wanted to champion, if I could tell you one thing, I would want it to be a fact of critical importance. I’d want to pour all my passion into that message. I’d shake my soul awake for the sake of heralding this one thing. It’d have to be more than a life or death issue. It’d have to be an eternal one.

If you have a single message communicated by your life, what is it? I’m talking seriously here—not what you ideally would want your life to communicate. What do you communicate? Legalism? Fear of condemnation from God? An obsession with people and things? Foolishness? Or do you exude love? Do you think it's obvious from the way you live that you maintain a Big Picture view of life? What defines you?

Is God's Love Hard to Understand?

2009-08-12T06:59:00.000-07:00

Yup. It most certainly is--if we try to look at from the standpoint of the Bible. Is God cushy and flattering in His love? Or is His love a stoic choice, bare-bones and emotionless?

Reading through D.A. Carson's book, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God, I had a several envigorating ah-ha! moments. For those of you who waded with me through some of the mind-bogglingness of God's love in this recent post, you may appreciate what Carson had to say as well. He's a very scholarly writer dealing with a weighty topic, but I guarantee, it's worth the read:
"Although I have never traced it out in detail, I suspect that the heritage of understanding...to refer to a willed loved independent of emotion and committed to the other's good has been influenced by the schoolmen and other philosophical theologians of a bygone era, who denied there was feeling in God. To have feeling, they argued, would imply passivity, i.e., a susceptibility to impression from people or events outside Himself, and this is surely incompatible with the very nature of God."

"Many Christian traditions affirm the impassibility of God. The Westminster Confession of Faith asserts that God is 'without...passions.' If this is taken to mean that God is emotionless, it is profoundly unbiblical and should be repudiated. But the most learned discussion over impassibility is never so simplistic. Although Aristotle may exercise more than a little scarcely recognized influence upon those who uphold impassibility, at its best impassibility is trying to avoid a picture of a God who is changeable, given over to mood swings, dependent upon His creatures." "[But] it is no answer to espouse a form of impassibility that denies that God has an emotional life... The price is too heavy. [If you affirm impassibility] you may then rest in God's sovereignty, but you can no longer rejoice in His love. You may rejoice only in a linguistic expression...couched in the anthropopathism of love. Give me a break. Paul did not pray that his readers might be able to grasp the height and depth and length and breadth of an anthropopathism and know this anthropopathism that surpasses knowledge. (Eph. 3:14-21)"

A weighty concept? Yes, and if you're like me, you had to look up "anthropopathism" in the dictionary to grasp Carson's statement fully. What he's saying, however, is dramatic in its impact: God has feelings. He has emotions. While those emotions are not the guide to His behavior (God is not rash or flippant), God does feel. Out of His holiness, He feels wrath against sin. Out of His love, He feels affection for us.

Read enough literature on God's love and you'll start seeing a so-called contradiction in His nature. In one view, God is this unfeeling giant in the sky who smashes people like ants when He is angry and just barely tolerates people when He's in a good mood. To others, God is cuddly and small--a perpetual infant in a manger. The truth is grander.

God is infinite. If we've felt pain on a large scale, we can know He's felt it more. It doesn't mean that He's weak or vulnerable because of His ability to feel--He's still sovereignly in charge of it all. But it does mean that when He says He loves us, He's not talking smack. God isn't speaking of an emotionless love that costs Him nothing. God speaks of choosing to love us with a passion that cost Him everything.

I know I still haven't fully comprehended it (and have great doubts whether I ever will.)

On Perfectionism, Part 2

2009-08-10T06:40:00.000-07:00

Motivation #1: Fear

We’re terrified of personal failure. We tremble at the thought of disappointing anyone we respect or love. The ghosts of future disasters waft through our imaginations, triggering stress.

Beneath all this drivel we feed ourselves about our “work-ethic” and how we’re trying to “glorify God through excellence,” we've hidden a truth from ourselves. We’re mousey. No matter how placid and confident we appear, we're timorous at heart; a mere whiff of anything we deem failure topples our assurance. Perfectionism is only the paper shield we try to duck behind for safety.

But this buried, irrational fear begs another question. Why are we cowards? Why does imperfection-- even in minute measures that other people never notice-- grip our hearts with anxiety?

Motivation #2: Control

Because failure means embarrassment. It's the ultimate unmasking, showing everyone who we really are. Perhaps worse still, failure proves to ourselves that we are weak, bumbling people without any real charge over our own destinies.

Even the most carefully-laid plans misfire. Circumstances intervene without asking our consent first. And in spite of our hard work, we still can’t win every time or perform flawlessly. It doesn’t really matter how much we crave an ideal of “perfection” in a certain area; ultimately, the outcome is never under our power.

There. I've said it. The simple, obvious realization that stops the hearts of all would-be sovereigns: I'm not in control.

But we must have control. When a driver's gas pedal quits working en route, he feels an instinctive surge of panic-- why? Because he knows that a crash is waiting to happen if you can't control your vehicle. Likewise, if we cannot guarantee our perfection, humiliation is waiting expectantly just a few miles down the road. Naturally, then, control is everything-- without that illusion, our security is gone. This is why we strive so doggedly after our aims; what alternative is there, without increasing our risk of the embarrassment or frustration that failure brings?

So we've circled back to failure again. We seek control because we fear failure, and we fear failure because it devastates us-- but why does it devastate?

Motivation #3: Self

There can only be one answer: we’re consumed with ourselves. Independently, minor mistakes and imperfections are rarely frightening monstrosities-- unless, that is, we have something very deep and very personal at stake. Our pride.

Even small things-- like scouring the kitchen so long that you could eat off the floor, though it meant missing an opportunity to love someone-- are used to boost our delight and confidence in ourselves. After a thorough job, we can then conclude that "I did this well", with unduly heavy emphasis on the I. I'm in control. I've just succeeded. I look good; I feel good.

Feeling good about ourselves isn't wrong when it's paired with heartfelt thanksgiving to God, who deserves all glory. But that doesn't describe the typical response of our hearts, does it? Lip-service to God aside, our concern is usually all self-focused-- it's all about us and our image. Faith works for God’s glory; perfectionism always works for mine.

Because of this, a God-trusting perfectionist is a contradiction in terms. In practice, the perfectionist’s hope is visibly grounded elsewhere: in himself, and his often-wobbly performance. Faith relies on God; perfectionism relies on me.

Crushing Perfectionism

It isn’t surprising, then, that Scripture calls everyone who trusts in himself a fool (Prov. 28:26), but exclaims, “Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust" (Ps. 40:4)!

There’s this really interesting, twisty element of faith, though. Have you ever tried trusting God to ensure that you don’t embarrass yourself? When pride was your unquestionable motive? It comes out a little awkwardly in a prayer. (Been there, done that, got a closet of T-shirts.)

Here’s the thing: we can’t trust God to give us the “stellar” results—from our human, perfectionist's perspective—that we crave. That’s our agenda, but not necessarily His; God will never choose to spare me from mistakes when they contribute to making me more like His Son. His aim is His own glory, not mine. John Piper loves to say, "Don't waste your life making yourself look good. Use your life making God look good"-- because it's so true. At the end of the day, only He matters.

With this God-centered perspective, faith takes on a different hew. We can trust God to make all the circumstances of our lives-- including our failures-- work "for good" (Romans 8:28). We can trust that He is faithful and loving (Deuteronomy 7:9), that He is chiseling away at the sin in our lives (Ephesians 5:25-27), and that He will glorify His own Name (Isaiah 42:8).

As we slowly replace our self-absorbed focus, concentrating instead on God's sovereign control and matchless worth, something strange begins to happen in our hearts.

When we don’t meet our ideals after giving it our best, we are no longer so perturbed; we can't be, because whoever trusts in the Lord is full of joy (Prov. 16:20, Ps. 33:21). We're free to push ourselves hard— but our feathers aren’t ruffled anymore at the prospect of humiliation, since our trust and hope have been invested in God (Isaiah. 26:3-4). Normally, we can’t stand our own weakness; now, we can rejoice in the knowledge that God’s strength is perfected in our frailty (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).

The timid perfectionist in us starts to shrink-- while fearless, unshakable joy takes root.

Related Posts:

* Gloriously Frail
* The Truth About Insecurity

* On Perfectionism, Part 1

(Photo credit: "Monk," USA Network.)

Are You Fighting?

2009-08-06T08:11:00.000-07:00

"For this is the will of God, your sanctification." -1 Thessalonians 4:3

“That is so convicting.” I say those words a lot.

My friends and I email each other quotes from convicting authors. We listen to convicting sermons at church, forward each other convicting sermons during the week, enjoy convicting conversations, and generally thrive on convicting resources. If I say something is “convicting”, I’m giving it some of the highest praise I know.

It all sounds so great, so holy. Because… honestly… how many people do you meet who are really, really eager to be confronted about their sin?

Exactly my point. But I’m not just anyone. I know that God really likes it when I feel convicted. I mean, why shouldn’t He? It’s a clear sign of my humility, teachable spirit, sensitivity to His voice, etc, etc.

Naturally, I enjoy it too. If I can say, “That’s so convicting” with sincerity, it gives me a feeling of relief— of satisfaction, even. It’s like the feeling I get when I have a lengthy to-do list and I put an “x” in one box. Sin recognized; sorrow felt; up goes the subconscious mental check in my mind. Now I’m a step further on my way to holiness, and if I manage to remember it throughout the week-- well, more power to me.

It’s a sham, though, when this “conviction” is all I've got. No amount of convicting feelings can replace the practice of true repentance.

We'd call a man crazy if he broke his leg, recognized the break, mulled remorsefully over the fact for a while, and then hobbled off with a sense of satisfaction. Such indifference is nothing short of idiotic— yet sin is eternally more significant than a broken leg. God isn’t interested in how many times my conscience gives me a two-minute sting, or how many times I can spot a sin in my heart and proceed to decry it. He doesn’t even care if I tell my friends I’ve been convicted.

The question He cares about is far more revealing: Am I fighting?

When sin enters the realm of my thoughts, do I detest it or tolerate it? Do I attack it with instantaneous vengeance, pulling my thoughts toward God-- or do I cordially entertain it for a few more minutes? If I really hate my disobedience, it means all-out, non-stop war—none of this couch-potato flippancy of feeling “sorry.” The violent language Paul uses in Romans 8:13, 2 Corinthians 10:5, and Colossians 3:5-7 is not dramatic hyperbole. Am I literally seeking to “kill” and “mortify” my flesh—to take “every thought captive” in obedience to Christ?

Or do I love God so little that I feel content in observing the defiance of my heart against Him, moaning about it, and then making a forgettable mental note to do better next time?

That’s not conviction. That’s self-deception. Real conviction leads to repentance, and repentance means slaying my flesh. We're not talking about broken limbs, but a spiritual disease we have the power through Christ to conquer.

Romans 6:17-22: “But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.”

When every unholy thought and word is an offense against the God who shattered my bonds of enslavement to sin with His own death— how can indifference ever be an option?

So You Wanna Get Married?

2009-08-03T06:25:00.000-07:00

Preface: I don't know why I've stumbled over so many of these articles lately. For the curious, for the friends and family who I know secretly follow this blog, and for the sake of killing rumors before they start--no, I'm not in love.

There. Now I'm free to share with you all the delectable advice I've been mulling over.

Boundless' Girls Guide to Marrying Well.

Carolyn McCulley on Matchmaking (what I've always maintained is my spiritual gift...but haven't exactly proven myself there...yet.)

Lydia Brownback on Love & Risk.

Kevin DeYoung on God's will. (This message speaks strongly to guys, but has insight on God's will that is applicable for girls.)

So what are the 4 things? Read each one of these resources.

Is Perfectionism Sin?

2009-07-29T07:12:00.000-07:00

“You have perfectionist tendencies," I read. Ding-ding-ding! Yessir. On some days, that factual statement might even elicit a smile.

How blasé the personality analysts can make sin sound—how perfectly normative. No worse than a penchant for nuts on your ice-cream or preferring warm weather over cold. To psychologist gurus, it’s mere biological makeup.

Anyway, it’s hard to be ashamed of belonging to a select group of isms that can boast the word “perfection” in its name. Of course we know that perfectionism can be taken to unhealthy extremes, but I wouldn’t exactly call it an embarrassing weakness to confess.

And why should it be? I’m hardly going to be ostracized by the Christian community. Some people will even think that I’m a humble dear for seeing it as a struggle at all; put it up against sins with nasty names like “fornication” and “greed”, and my sweet little perfectionism sounds like the mild weakness of a pious saint.

I would be remiss, of course, not to note: this is exactly how we perfectionists like it.

You know about the associations as well as I do. If you’re aware that you’re a perfectionist, you’re also aware that you belong to a class containing some fairly impressive world-shapers. You know that you’re:

· Highly excellence-driven in at least one area.

· Often quick to notice your own faults. You take them seriously, and you set about at correcting them in short order.

· You like things done well, and you like to do them well. Sloppiness and shoddy work revolt against your very nature.

Not bad things, all. Oh, sure, we may be a little extreme sometimes, but all in all— if we temper our perfectionism with moderation, who cares?

Perhaps… God does.

What if the motives behind our so-called “perfectionism” are sinful, not praiseworthy—even if our obsession isn’t at the level people typically call extreme? What if this half-way flattering jargon about being “driven” simply describes what is visible, while missing the propelling sins of cowardice, obsession with control, and self-absorption?

If that's the case-- and we'll look into each of those points in a following post-- then I don’t want to be caught smiling when the perfectionist in me wakes up again.

Learning To Beat Myself

2009-07-26T06:57:00.000-07:00

I cannot earn His love. I cannot earn His love. I cannot earn His love. This topic is quickly becoming my inner mantra.

Funny thing: when you read through Galatians and 1 Corinthians, where the needlessness of Jewish ceremonial laws is emphasized over and over—it’s not always natural to see the connection between the then-legalism and our own. Yet legalism plays itself out in different ways in different lives. More and more, I am learning to see myself just as legalistic as those early Christians.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not completely satisfied with who I am. Flaws far deeper than I’d like to imagine trip me up all the time. I yearn for change. Like the early Christian legalists, I have a list of self-improvements I think would make God happy: A heart that stirs at the heartbreak of people. A self-less perspective, free to love without limits. An uncomplaining tongue…

Desiring inner change is okay. God-pleasing actions are fantastic. Personally, I’m a fan. But all too often, the motive behind my desire for change isn’t all that God-pleasing: I’m prone to be good for the sake of earning God’s blessing or God’s love, and not so much acting in obedience simply because I love Him.

Shockingly enough, my good works don’t earn me anything in God’s sight. They don’t earn my salvation—but they also cannot earn His blessing. In Matthew Henry’s astute commentary on Ecclesiastes, he wrote: “No man knows either love or hatred by all that is before him in this world.” He was dealing with a troublesome passage, trying to explain why bad things happen to good people. Amidst the verse, he drew an interesting connection:

Your house, your family, your friends, your possessions, your grades, your joy, your sorrow---none of these are a reflection of God’s love for you. If you have a lot of goods, it doesn’t mean God is particularly happy with you. If you have next to nothing, it doesn’t mean you’re out of favor. “No man knows either love or hatred by all that is before him in this world.” What you have doesn’t measure your spiritual standing.

For a girl like me, that phrase holds a lot of shock-value. It means that we can’t judge our place in God’s eyes by how our situation looks. If the sun is shining, it doesn’t mean I’m pleasing to God. In fact, it only means that God is gracious. Incredibly gracious. That this revelation is any surprise is a sign of our own sinfulness--the imprint of works-based heresy on our minds.

Still struggling to see yourself in the legalist camp? Let me ask you something: Do you ever assume God’s love takes a nosedive when you sin? Do you think His love for you fluctuates? And here’s a kicker for me: When you feel guilt, do you force yourself to feel more and more guilty in order to earn back God’s approval by the extent of your sorrow?

If the answer to any of these is “yes,” join me in taking a fresh hold on God’s grace. Know that for grace to be grace, it must be free. Take Scripture literally, starting with Colossians, 1 Corinthians, and Galatians--and give your inner legalist a sound beating.

Cross-Eyed Article

2009-07-22T11:41:00.000-07:00

"Rarer than an understanding of manhood and womanhood is an application drawn out for teens and singles. Conservatively raised girls may know something about the calling of motherhood, but what does Biblical womanhood look like in the life of an (obviously unmarried) 14-year-old girl?

The unique problem we have here is that the Bible doesn’t address teenagers. A gap between adulthood and childhood didn’t exist in previous centuries, and the betrothal of 13-year-olds in ancient Israel wasn’t uncommon. Little is then said in Scripture to unmarried young folks, simply because they didn’t stay that way for long."

Curious? Read Hannah's whole article at the Cross-Eyed webzine.

There Is No Tightrope

2009-07-16T07:26:00.000-07:00

Is it holier to cut our lives in two--to save a portion for reading Scripture and the rest of the day to spend on walking the dog, laundry, studies and friends? Is it more Christlike to be single--to just "be happy with God"? Is it more noble to be a missionary than a streetsweeper?

I catch myself thinking, sometimes, that these are either/or issues. "I can be super-holy by spending an extra hour reading my Bible...or I can lose holiness points and go play with my little sister." Or, "Someday I'll have to choose between getting married or spending my life sacrificially on the missionfield."

Worse than catching myself with this false dichotomy, sometimes I don't catch it at all. Snap decisions are made based on the assumption that some things are holier than others. I constantly walk a tightrope between what I suppose makes Heaven smile and what daily drudgery I've got to do. This is problematic, because it means that the "holy" aspects of my life are in a constant clash with all the necessary "other things."

Nancy Pearcey critiqued this thinking in her book, Total Truth. She explained that dividing our lives between the sacred and profane is dualism, not biblical Christianity:"[In Platonic dualism] Creation was divided into two parts: the spiritual (superior, good) and the material (inferior, bad). ....In contrast to the Greeks, then, the Bible presents the material world as originally good: Since it was created by God, it reflects His good character.... For instance, Scripture does not treat the body as inherently sinful or less valuable....Indeed, if the body were inherently sinful, the Incarnation would have been impossible, for Jesus took on a human body yet had no sin."

Pearcey went on to say that Augustine, who was heavily influenced by Plato, popularized this stream of thought in Christianity. As a result, it became popular in the Middle Ages to choose between conventional living or the "holier" life of a monk or nun. I shudder to consider how much of this thinking has impacted my own life and decisions. What can be done for a cure?

The trick to living rightly must be to find the celestial in the mundane. Instead of separating the different strands of our lives, we must unite them as balanced whole: Taking every thought captive to Christ. Doing all to the glory of God. Obeying our parents out of loving service to God. Studying because God is the Author of all real truth. Walking the dog because...well...surely that counts as being faithful in small things.

Boyfriend Likes Immodesty. What To Do?

2009-07-13T15:36:00.000-07:00

The following is an excerpt from an email we received from one of our readers. "Tiffany" wrote us about her boyfriend, a guy who doesn't share her views on purity.

Dear Hannah and Lindsey,

I don't know if you have time to read and respond to e-mails from your blog readers, but I am looking for some Godly advice. My boyfriend of 2 months and I are both Christians, however we both have different views of women. He likes it if I wear clothing that is revealing, and yesterday upon seeing a young woman wearing an off the shoulder top that revealed much of her stomach, he told me that he thinks it is hot when women dress like that. We are both strong in our faith and it surprises me to hear such statements from a Christ-follower.

Purity has always been something I value. At the beginning of our relationship I explained that I am not interested in kissing someone until I am in a very committed, marriage bound relationship. He respects my decision to guard that aspect of my purity, but I know it is disappointing to him.

I would love to hear your opinion on these issues.

Love,

Tiff

Dear Tiff,

Thank you for sharing such a personal concern with us. What you’ve described sets off the alarm-bells in our minds.Your Spirit-led intuition here is absolutely right: it should surprise you to hear such statements from someone who is a Christ follower. You say that you want to be in a committed, marriage-bound relationship, but your boyfriend isn’t guarding his eyes and mind from lust and temptation. That’s an immediate red flag. If he has a cavalier attitude towards women and sexuality now, there’s no reason to believe that this proclivity will diminish by any means after marriage—with other women. We’re relieved that he hasn’t pressured you to drop your standards, but consider if that is likely to change if you do reach a more serious level of dating, or engagement.

Another cause for concern, we think, is his attitude towards modesty. We know that modesty is something God commands of women and that immodesty can tempt men to lust. If your boyfriend wants you to dress more provocatively, he is effectually asking you to open yourself for public viewing (not just his own). We urge you to ask yourself if your boyfriend demonstrating appropriate protectiveness over you and your purity. If you were to someday marry him, would you want him (as your husband) continuing to have this laissez faire attitude about your safety? Please understand, we're not inferring that dressing immodestly would directly put you in harm's way or that your boyfriend should be an overbearing protector--we refer to the same kind of loving protection and indignation father or brother would feel if his sister or daughter was violated or lusted after. If he loves you or seeks to love you in a Christ-like way, your boyfriend should want to protect you becoming an object of lust.

Secondly, if your boyfriend is really desiring purity, you must wonder why he wants more temptation by asking you to reveal more. He may talk about agreeing with your standards, but unless his actions follow, it's hard to believe that he wants to be pure, too. If your boyfriend is truly seeking the Lord, he should be running away from temptation, not inviting it. (James 4:7)

All things considered, we recommend discussing these issues with your boyfriend. But before then, we even more highly recommend that you pray for wisdom. Ask yourself and ask your Heavenly Father if it's wise and God-glorifying for you to continue in a romantic relationship with him. Do you have godly parents, a pastor or mentor who could pray with you about this? At first blush, it may sound antiquated to seek them out, but they'll have wisdom to share-- and it's biblical to pursue their counsel.

Finally, we want to encourage you to be strong. Don't be afraid to do what's right. God is faithful and will never leave you and if you seek to honor Him, even if it means a tough sacrifice-- He will be there to help you succeed.

We've been very careful in picking our words here, because we know it's so much easier to give advice than to have to live it out. In your case, what you have at stake is your boyfriend. So please understand that what we're writing to you doesn't comes from flippancy, but from a genuine desire to help!

With that said, we wanted to leave you with a final quote from one of our favorite authors, John Ensor. We hope this helps.

"Sisters, there is power in waiting. If you give away this God-endowed power and simply act, as the apostle Paul said, "like the Gentiles who do not know God" (1 Thessalonians 4:5) and satisfy his lusts, you undermine God's work of maturing manhood. So part company with the crowd....

There are potentially good men in the mix, but how will you know the seemingly mature predatory male from the immature provider-protector type of man who is ready to grow up? Purity is the litmus test. Waiting will reveal the heart of the matter." -John Ensor, Doing Things Right in Matters of the Heart

Because of Him,

Hannah & Lindsey

<3

2009-07-09T07:40:00.000-07:00

I’m in the midst of a word study on “love.” Why, you ask? Rather than praying for God to rid me of all selfishness, pride and unholy ambition, it’s seemed more effective to just try to love God more. When all my affections are shifted to Christ, selfishness, pride and ambition have no place left to stand. (I can’t love myself as much when I’m working on loving Christ more.) Call it a pro-active approach to killing the flesh.

Of course, love is a huge topic. Where L-O-V-E is not spelled out directly, it is knit in as a theme through the entire Bible. So I’m asking for your help.

If you stumble across a passage this week relating to love, or indirectly showing an aspect of God’s love, I’d love to read the verse and add it to my growing list. Verses on…

Pre-requisites for Love

Salvation (1 John 3:9-10)

Humility (Gal. 6:1-3)

Hope in Heaven (Col. 1:4-5)

Examples of Love

Christ’s life, death and continued intercession (1 John 3:16)

Father of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15)

Actions that Result from Love

Bearing each other’s burdens (Gal. 6:2)

Submission/Obedience (1 John 2:5, 1 John 2:27, 28)

Service/Giving (1 John 3:16-18)

Outgrowth/Consequences of Love in our lives

More love (1 John 2:10, 3:10)

Pain, which is inevitable when we love other people in a fallen world (Luke 6:29, Luke 15:11)

Heavenly rewards (Luke 6)

Let me know if you have a verse to add!

In Things Difficult and Dangerous

2009-07-06T06:01:00.000-07:00

"It is a vain thing to say we love Christ if we slight His commands. Does that child love his father who refused to obey him? If we love God, we shall obey Him in things difficult and things dangerous.

Forgiving our enemies is hard. We are apt to forget kindnesses and remember injuries, but if we love God, we shall leave behind offences. When we seriously consider how many affronts and provocations He has put up with at our hands, this makes us copy Him and endeavor to bury an injury than retaliate it.

Love made Christ suffer for us. Love was the chain that fastened Him to the cross. If we love God, we shall be willing to suffer for Him. Love is the most suffering grace. It will suffer reproaches, bonds, and imprisonments for Christ's sake. Love will carry men out above their own strength. How did divine affection carry the early saints above the love of life and the fear of death? These divine heroes were willing to suffer rather than by their cowardice to make the name of God suffer. They refused to come out of prison on sinful terms.

Many will not forgo the least comfort or undergo the least cross for His sake. May not Christ suspect us when we pretend to love Him and yet will endure nothing for Him?"

-Thomas Watson, A Divine Cordial

The Theologian With a Pacifier

2009-07-02T06:57:00.000-07:00

Picture this.

A famous theologian (think Augustine + Calvin + Spurgeon + Edwards + insert-your-favorite-Bible-hero-here all rolled into one) is standing on a street corner. A lady scooting a baby stroller nods to him as she passes; everyone knows he’s one of the most spiritual men around. The lady stoops to pick up the pacifier she accidentally dropped on the ground. As she’s stooping, her baby—scratch that, it’s a toddler—jumps out of the stroller and rambles into the street. The lady and theologian look on in horror as the 5 o’ clock bus rounds the corner and closes the gap between its tires and the toddler in the street.

The lady screams and makes a dive for the baby. The theologian, who is closer to the toddler and the street, thinks faster and calculates that saving the toddler isn’t worth possibly injuring himself. So out of the Pharisaical goodness of his heart, the theologian stops and picks up the pacifier.

Question: Is he worth his spurs as a theologian? Of course not. He's a jerk. But here’s a little more difficult question: can the theologian have good theology and act so selfishly?

Tougher question. At first blush, we’d probably say that the man’s theology shouldn’t be invalidated by his own miserliness. You can’t jab an entire creed because of one imperfect representative. On the other hand, if theology is our view of God that supposedly impacts every aspect of our lives, then we have no choice. We must question the man’s theology if he acts wrongly. We’ve got to wonder what he honestly believes about God, human life, and himself if he doesn’t bat an eyelid at the danger to the toddler at his feet.

While I’ve made up this scenario, it’s something we see all the time-- professing Christians who fall into sexual immorality, respected pastors coming out of the closet, or our own selves taking a fall to pride. How does this happen?

I suspect that we can have a flawless statement of faith and still be heretics. We may check off on our theological list “the chief end of man is to glorify God” and yet secretly scramble for all the praise we can get. Our hearts may not actually line up to the list of points we think we believe. Our actions reveal our true theology.

So how do we know we truly hold to good theology? There's no math equation for having a right heart. Ultimately, we have to renew our minds continually in Scripture. We must question our motives when we sin and ask what lie we're believing that makes sin look attractive.

In the end, good theology compels us to duck and run back towards the cross. As Vern Poythress wrote, “The power of the Christian faith is the power of the cross, power in human weakness, the power of God’s love.” It’s not the arrogance of knowing it all or thinking we have our spiritual ducks in a row. Good theology leads us to the Rock that is higher than ourselves-- and then to prove its strength by hanging all we have upon it.

Update: Tyler Farver

2009-06-30T08:22:00.000-07:00

"When I thought, 'My foot slips,' your steadfast love, O LORD, held me up. When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul." (Psalm 94:18-19)

We thought that those of you who have been praying so faithfully for my brother, Tyler, would like to know the very latest news. Yesterday, he was taken once again to the ER (for the third time this week) because of some concern over his drainage tube coming out.

Following more tests, Tyler was released from the hospital, but continued having intense nausea. This morning, a we received a phone call from his surgeon, requesting that Tyler immediately return to the hospital. (The surgeon suspects that something was missed in yesterday's tests.)

Now, Tyler is again in a hospital room, facing the possibility of having more tubes inserted (requiring surgery) and experiencing a painful déjà vu. After so many weeks at home, it's a disappointment to have to go back to the hospital. Please pray for endurance and peace. This has been a rough week.

Thank you so very, very much for praying for my brother. You are so kind to think of us. I'll try to continue posting updates as they come. God has been so gracious. We've been amazed at His marvelous works on our behalf. We know that whatever happens, He is good and right.

UPDATE: 4/18, 10:45 AM. Tyler is still in the hospital. Word is that he will remain there for observation until Monday. Last night he had a fever--which is concerning--but hopefully test results today will offer new insights.

REVISED: 4/19, 9:26 PM. Wonderful news! The surgeon told Tyler that there was no reason to continue keeping him at the hospital. Tyler has been discharged and is coming home earlier than expected. He's on the mend--which is amazing and miraculous when I think back to where we were only a couple of months ago.

Thanks for praying. You cannot know how much of a hope-boosting thing it has been for us to know our brothers and sisters in the Lord have lifted us up continually in prayer.

UPDATE: 6/23, 3:19 PM. Tyler received word from a specialist today that he will need another procedure this Thursday. Apparently the connection between his pancreas and stomach is blocked, which impedes further healing. The doctors are considering the possibility of another surgery--something we are praying will not need to happen. Another surgery would mean another huge incision across Tyler's abdomen, which also means virtually starting the entire healing process/hospital stay over again.

UPDATE: 6/30, 9:44 PM. Tyler is scheduled for surgery on Monday. The doctors on his case have agreed that surgery is the wisest plan. Tomorrow, Ty will return to the hospital for testing (to give the doctors as much information as possible preceding the operation). Then on Sunday, he'll will be re-admitted to the hospital in preparation for Monday's all-day surgery.

If you think of us, please be in prayer for Tyler and our family. Tyler is at peace with having another operation, but it's very tempting for all of us to give in to anxiety and discouragement.

"Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor? Or who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen."-Romans 11:33-36

UPDATE: 7/6, 7:14 PM. Tyler came out of surgery at about 5:00 PM today. He's still heavily sedated, but the surgeons say the operation went as smoothly as they expected. They will be monitoring him for infection, etc., but at the moment all looks well. Thanks for your prayers!

UPDATE: 7/11, 3:20 PM. Tyler seems to be recovering well. Already he is drinking juice and is hoping to eat as soon as Tuesday. The pain is still a struggle, but Ty is encouraged by the hope that he's approaching the end of hospital stays. The surgeons have said that all looks promising, and we're hoping Tyler's pancreas will soon show definite signs of healing.

UPDATE: 7/13, 5:50 PM. Praise report! Tyler is doing phenomenally well. While it looks like he'll be staying at the hospital longer than initially planned, his spirits are high and we're all pumped that he's looking so much better. I believe that today his last drainage tubes were removed and he's slowly beginning to eat some oatmeal. How exciting is that?

UPDATE: 8/18, 9:16 AM. Sorry, folks, for not updating sooner! Thank you for the reminders to do so. This morning, Tyler is at the hospital for his final procedure. Since his last surgery, he's done very well. He's back to eating normally and gaining back some of his old strength and energy. The healing process probably has some months to go yet, but we're so happy to see Tyler on the road to recovery.

Your continual prayers have been such a blessing!

(For previous updates on Tyler Farver's condition, click here.)

What Spike Taught Me

2009-06-26T09:38:00.000-07:00

Lindsey, Naomi Lumpkin (BftH worship leader) and Grace Farver in front of the U.S. Capitol--affectionately nicknamed "Spike" by Hannah's little sisters.

When Hannah and I were in D.C. last week, I was able to visit the the Capitol for the first time. It was a wonderful experience, but neither the greatness of our nation nor architectural prowess left me in the most awe.

Our tour guide ushered us into an opulent room with a dome-shaped, gorgeously ornate ceiling. With our necks arched back to gawk, he rattled off a brilliant-sounding Latin phrase that someone important had given to describe it-- "the glorification of Washington," he translated. We stepped into the adjacent hall and the tour went on, but the words jammed themselves in my brain.

Glorify. "To extol; to honor, praise or admire." With that definition, political leaders aren't the only ones we bestow with pedestals of glory. Church fathers, missionaries, pastors, authors, musicians, doctors, athletes, actors, boyfriends, girlfriends-- no title is exempt. This is what we do. Our natural propensity is to exalt.

But something struck me, as I read the brief encapsulations beneath the Capitol's many statues. Though the legacy of our founding fathers was notable-- their sheer finiteness still wins the day.

George Washington, hero though he was, is dead as an unknown beggar. For all Benjamin Franklin's genius, he's now little more than a face on a $100 bill. Passing one historical figure after another, I was reminded of their earthly absence. Above everything else, the colossal smallness of human beings bowled me over in that tour.

When fancy domes and statues mark the highest earthly reverence that dead men can attain--how significant is "Washington's glorification", really? How is it even remotely logical to desire the spotlight for the spotlight's own sake, when even the highest fame and fanfare mean less than nothing after death?

Even if such accolades could be appreciated by the dead, they're attainable by only a sliver of the population. My name isn't ever going to be in a history book. I'll never join the ranks of marble greats in DC. A few generations after my death, no one at all is going to remember that a girl named Lindsey Wagstaffe ever lived and breathed.

Truth has a way of resizing us.

And this makes me think. If the highest forms of human glory are nothing, and if each of us will slip out of remembrance before long-- what are the day-in, day-out ramifications for normal people like you and I? What-- or who-- is left to exalt?

Only One.

The face of the past looks different, viewed through these lens. All those men who've "changed the course of history", as we're told in books? Yes, they were given roles to play, and many were used of God to accomplish great things-- but "changing history" seems a mite overstated. Even the greatest leaders fall under the sovereign will of God; "the king's heart is like a watercourse in the hand of God-- He directs it wherever He pleases." All their greatest accomplishments, ultimately, must be attributed to the One who supplied them breath, ideas, and the will to carry them out.

The face of the present changes too. What of those pastors, authors, and missionaries who rally us to action? Every gift they've been given came from the Father. Any holiness in their lives-- any truth proceeding from their mouths-- is all His workmanship. And the scientists and artists who amaze us with their ingenuity? Every ounce of their intellect came from the God who is all-wise. As John Piper put it in The Pleasures of God, "to treat any subject without reference to God's glory is not scholarship, but insurrection."

Our pride is forced to wilt when God is gazed upon. Placing fellow human beings on pedestals becomes unthinkable-- how can we, while cognizant that it is God who's acting through them? More personally still: if I truly believe that God is the one who enables men to serve Him, can I ever take credit when something I do comes off well?

Only God deserves to be glorified for every good, praiseworthy act ever accomplished. We will return to dust, but He will remain forever: He alone, whose Name is above all others.

2009-06-23T10:48:00.000-07:00

At our last conference, I was asked to post our definition of purity online. (We used this definition at the conference as a springboard for our session on purity. It's by no means complete, but may be helpful if you're interested in delving into the topic further.)

Attached below is also a copy of a modesty resource sheet we distributed at the conference. Enjoy!

Purity Definition // Modesty Check

As We Meet New Highways...

2009-06-18T13:54:00.000-07:00

As we're in Richmond, Virginia this week, preparing for our last conference of the summer, we've found ourselves completely devoid of theological post ideas. Instead, we wanted to catch you up on some of the not-so-conference related stuff we've done. To be more precise, we haven't done these things. They're more like situations that have come flying at us, making us want to run away screaming.

But we digress.

A week after Lindsey's arrival, word spread quickly through the household that a rattlesnake was in the backyard. Sure enough, as we all piled around the backyard fence to witness the excitement, we heard the whirring of the rattlesnake's tail. The snake was very ready to strike our dog and anyone else who ventured near, when Dad shot the trespasser.

Lindsey then posed for a very candid souvenir. (We may or may not have since discovered the snake was an endangered species...but that's not relevant.)

Only days later, we filed out of the car and into the hotel lobby in Washington, D.C. After less than twenty minutes in the city, we saw a man in front of us pull a gun on a woman who was attempting to hijack his car. The next day, Hannah and Naomi (our conference music leader) were chased through the streets by a stranger.

Why do we tell you these stories? Well...we don't really have a reason. Surely there is some didactic point we could pull out, but that could be very lame. So, we won't. We will highly recommend locking car doors and carrying pepper spray--but that's all we can come up with. We look forward to sharing some news/musings as these travels conclude and hope very much to meet some of you in person!

Two Ways We Live

2009-06-15T06:46:00.000-07:00

Tim Keller, in his book The Prodigal God ("prodigal" defined as "recklessly extravagant and "having spent everything,") gives some insightful commentary on the story of the Prodigal Son. He explains how the actions of the flagrantly immoral younger brother and the unforgiving attitude of his older brother demonstrate two patterns for sin: Outright disobedience or legalism, coming from the motive of trying to manipulate for the father's favor.

Keller wrote, "Do you realize, then, what Jesus is teaching? Neither son loved the father for himself. They both were using the father for their own self-centered ends rather than loving, enjoying and serving him for his own sake. (page 36)

"Elder brothers obey God to get things. They don't obey God to get God Himself--in order to resemble Him, love Him, know Him, and delight Him. So religious and moral people can be avoiding Jesus as Savior and Lord as much as the younger brothers who say they don't believe in God and define right and wrong for themselves." (page 42, 43)

Are you a prodigal son--openly rejecting the love of the father? Are you the older brother who obeys the father out of selfishness, hoping to receive a good, cushy life in return? Or are you both?

(The picture is a detail from "The Prodigal Son in Modern Life: The Return" by James Joseph Jacques Tissot.)

Starting When You Look Up

2009-06-13T08:12:00.000-07:00

"God knows you better than you know yourself. He knows just how small and frail you are. He knows you're just one person, and a tiny one at that. He knows all the things that you are not--and He made you that way for a purpose. That's why He has never asked you to be more than you are--little you with a great big God.

But God also is in touch with just how potent He is, desiring to do huge, God-sized things through you if you're ready to abandon the path of making more of self and embrace the miracle of being small, yet knowing His name.

It all starts when you look up."

-Louie Giglio, I Am Not But I Know I AM.

(Photo of nebula NGC 2818, taken by the Hubble telescope. It's 10,000 lightyears away from Earth.)

Give Us This Day...

2009-06-10T06:52:00.000-07:00

The widow of Zarephath is one of my favorite Bible stories.

She’s hunting down kindling to cook her last meal and kissing life goodbye. Then she meets Elijah. He asks for food. “But sir, I have next to nothing myself,” she says. He promises the bizarre—an unthinkable, never-before-seen miracle from Heaven. For some reason, she trusts him enough to give him all she has. (I Kings 17.)

The spectacular takes place. Her jars of oil and flour never seem to run out. While they’re never mentioned as overflowing in obvious abundance, day by day, they never empty. She is given enough.

There is a common theme woven through the Bible about “daily bread.” In the early days of Israel, God fed manna from Heaven. The people were only to take enough for that day, not storing up for later. In Matthew Henry’s commentary, he said: “They called it...'Manna’…which means ‘what is this?’…It is a portion; it is that which our God has allotted us, and we will take it, and be thankful.” Hundreds of years later, King David praises God for being His “portion.” And even later, Jesus tells his disciples to ask God for their daily bread.

What is all this on portions, bread, and an unending oil supply? Often, it would appear, God gives us only what is needed for the day. Granted, there are occasions in which God seems to shake a piñata over our heads and showers of abundant blessings fall; in fact, not long after the widow of Zarephath was provided oil day-by-day, yet another widow was instantly given barrels and barrels of oil by God. She didn’t have to wait daily to witness God’s faithfulness. Oil came bubbling forth until she had filled every jug and pan her village would lend her. But God does not always operate like this.

For the most part, it seems that the first widow’s story is the “norm.” She wasn’t provided for with millions right off the bat. In the midst of her Titanic-sunk economic situation, she probably still had other wants to be met; but God met her biggest needs day by day.

This concept still goes. In my own life, I’ve prayed for certain outcomes (like a smooth, stressless day). Had I known beforehand what the outcome actually was going to be—that my day would be more like the perfect storm than the perfect day-- I probably would have panicked. But when those moments arrive, so does He, with strength and grace enough.

Beauty from the Heart: Dallas '09

2009-06-07T20:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday marked our first full-day Beauty from the Heart conference. We were thrilled to meet with so many of you. (If you have pictures from the conference and want to add them to the pool, please email us!)

We were especially excited to feature booths at the conference from two ministries, The Way of the Master and Sower of Seeds International. You can follow up with Sower of Seeds at our project page or at www.sowerofseeds.org. If you met Trish from The Way of the Master, I'm sure she'd love to hear from you at her blog (Fish with Trish).

"We Are Still Yours..."

2009-06-02T06:30:00.000-07:00

A love is ringing in my ears.
I have been taken by the One
Who I was made to love.
Captured free.
Through violent force I was consumed
By the Great Affection.
Eaten, swallowed whole
Til I am no more;
Once again subdued
By the terrible, unutterable
Tenderness of God.
How could any other way be half so sweet?

A new song has been posted on the Beauty from the Heart Band Virb page! In case you didn't see the update, this worship album is a project that we're excited to be releasing at our conferences this June. The music was chiefly written and performed by Naomi Lumpkin and Gabrielle Elliot, two dear gals who are helping lead worship at the conferences.

The new song, entitled "Half So Sweet" is based on two free verse poems, one of which is pasted above and another, which is here. Tell me what you think:

At the oceans edge
My feet wandered o'er white sand
Shells bit at my feet
The houses of dead clams--
But everything around me screamed
"ALIVE!"

It's funny to think; to sit upon a beach
Watch the water thunder
Collapse breathlessly at my feet
Foam swirling with lethal power on waves
Tickle my toes

I have floated thus far.
I have lost sight of the lights.
I have known loneliness to bite
When we are most weak.

And still...
When I find myself crippled on the sand
Waves licking at my ears,
Threatening to suck me in,
The heart still beats.

I have found (oh, at last!)
I have found the Joy
Not in sunlit skies or rainbows
Not in waves subservient to my will
I have found the Joy
In the unlikeliest places

On the sand

In the rain

When we are still Yours

In spite of everything.

Genocide in the Bible

2009-05-29T07:34:00.000-07:00

If Christianity was only a myth fabricated by men, and if I’d been given a hand in crafting some of the books of the Old and New Testaments, I know this as fact: I would never have depicted God the way the Bible does.

The Troubling God We Worship

For instance— the killing of men, women, and children, sprinkled frequently throughout the Old Testament. Nothing less than genocide.

I can accept the deaths of the pagan men. Their wives give me momentary pause, before I acknowledge their equal sin-guilt. But the children? Infants? My gut-reaction screams “They’re innocent!” Why couldn’t Israel have taken the children into their own camp, and raised them to fear God? How is the mass killing of children—born within nations no more idolatrous than our own—any different from abortion?

And that’s a comparatively simple example; I read 2 Samuel 24 yesterday. It wasn’t vague. I couldn’t dismiss it, couldn’t explain it away.

To summarize: God “incites David” to take a census. Once it is taken, God convicts David that he has sinned greatly in taking the census. David repents, broken. God offers three options for his punishment: Famine, plague, or the sword against Israel. David begs that God do whatever He sees fit—and God sees fit to annihilate 70,000 Jews by pestilence.

Stories like these make me swallow hard, as my sense of morality protests.

Four Common Reactions

1.) Choosing ignorance. It takes effort to work through these things, and we can spare ourselves mental exertion and confusion by simply focusing on the parts of God’s character that are easy to sing about.

2.) Working to reason the uncomfortable away with theological Twister. We can recast God as a cuddly, tame Being who agrees with us… never-minding that we’re flirting with blasphemy and developing a false view of God.

3.) Sinking into perplexity and doubt. Is God really good? Is He truly holy? Is He worthy of our trust— and praise?

4.) Shaking our fists, demanding answers. “When I get to heaven”, we gripe, “I’m going to have a few serious questions for Him.” In extremes, we even go so far as to accuse Him of being unjust.

Pride is the core issue here: each response reflects an underlying exalted view of ourselves and a weak, inadequate view of God.

Humbling Ourselves Under The Mighty Hand of God

God is God. He's the founder of morality— He cannot sin or err. We have no basis for ethics at all apart from Him; how can we object to any of His actions on any ground?

I said earlier that my sense of morality protests when I encounter these difficult passages. And there’s the key word: sense.

When I find my first reaction differing with God’s, I’m never in the right. Whenever I begin to raise my head in dissent, I can know without doubt that my “sense” of morality is flawed in that area, and must be re-aligned in short order.

In the end, such biblical quandaries can only be resolved by acknowledging who God is, and who we are in contrast. It isn't a cop-out. It's the essence of true humility, and it's the only right posture we can adopt every time we approach God and His Word.

As I mulled over this, my thoughts went back to Job. Here is a man faced with an intensely personal case where the unfairness of God seems to be on full display. God silences his complaint,

“Will you even put Me in the wrong? Will you condemn Me that you may be in the right? Have you an arm like God, and can you thunder with a voice like His?

Who then is he who can stand before Me? Who has first given to me, that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine.” Job 40:8-9, 41:10-11

I am not the Just Judge. I am not the Holy One. I am corrupt—and I can see but a glimpse of the majesty of God. As such, my only response must always be one of acceptance and submission: You are right, You are just, You are holy; I am none of these.

Still— still, we would like to think that the human race deserves something from the hand of God. Surely even sinners deserve to be given water, food, health, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness from their Creator.

We don't. No one does. But self-entitlement is so deeply ingrained in us that we have difficulty stretching our minds over truth: God owes nothing to the people He puts breath in. He can take away that breath whenever and however He pleases.

There is a greater tragedy than the death of any man, woman, or child. It takes place every day that men, women, and children refuse to bow in worship to the God who created them— when the Son of Man who went to the Cross is not lifted up and exalted in their hearts. This, not death or genocide, is the ultimate travesty.

Related posts:

On Modern Wishy-Washiness

2009-05-26T06:21:00.000-07:00

“The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.
“The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as Supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.”

As I was searching through Wikipedia, I stumbled across these tenets on the bio page of an influential American bishop. His bio page read like a catechism would-- if you crossed out each doctrine with a red pen. In summary, this bishop openly proclaims that the Resurrection is a metaphor, the Cross comes from a “barbaric” and “primitive” concept of God, prayer is impossible, and the Ascension of Christ back to Heaven is “not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.” What’s then left of Christianity? I don’t know. You tell me.

What struck me as I read this man’s list of “Things Not to Believe,” was how many statements he made based on the fact that we live in the 21^st century. Supernatural events are impossible in an era following the life of Isaac Newton. The story of the Cross was the fairytale of a primitive people (something we modern people cannot possibly be). Heaven is a dumb idea, now that Copernicus taught us about space. Since Charles Darwin, Eden has become nonsense. Apparently God needs to be replaced with “Deity 2.0.” We have evolved past Him.

Strangely, after reading through the bishop’s statement of faith (or lack thereof), I was not motivated to rebut him. I didn’t want to research an opposing argument. I didn’t even care to try; because there was simply no competition between the man’s religion and Biblical Christianity. He touted a sanitized, anemic version of Christianity, drained of hope in the eternal and more about not knowing anything for sure than anything else. The man proposed Christianity only after doing away with Christ. Who wants that? What kind of attraction does that kind of religion hold? I don't get it.

Really, if you think about it, the man’s creed is just what Christianity would become without the Bible. If we take away Scripture, we pull out the carpet from beneath our faith and end up sounding plain ol’ ridiculous. Without a high view of the Word, we lose all the reasons for believing in Christianity in the first place.

But the Bible, applied rightly, changes everything. It can make run-of-the-mill sinners into passionate, grateful worshipers (a supernatural miracle in itself.) Plus, He promises that His word "shall not return to Me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose..." (Isaiah 55:11) Everybody else may follow fads of post-Newtonian and post-Darwinian thought, inevitably wearing out like an old pair of socks, but He is "the same," and His "years have no end." (Psalm 102:26.)

Only the words from Him will last; and only His words can transform men. As Spurgeon exclaimed in a sermon,

"Such a man never has a cold heart or a slack hand who is much in meditation with his Lord Jesus; his heart comes to be like a mass of molten lead. …if this man should be a preacher, he will preach with holy power; his heart being hot, his words will burn their way into his hearers' hearts. Nor will it end there, but this hot heart will soon make a hot hand, and the man who once has his soul full of Christ will not have his hand empty for Christ. Now he will work; now he will preach for Christ; now he will pray, now he will plead with sinners; now he will be in earnest; now he will weep; now he will agonize; now he will wrestle with the angel, and now he will prevail; for, as the fire burneth, his whole being gets into a glow; and the man, like a pillar of fire, warms those who are found about him, burns his way to the glory of success, and gives his Master fresh renown.”

There really is no competition, is there?

"Half So Sweet" Album

2009-05-21T08:36:00.000-07:00

"Rise up O Church of God
Have done with lesser things
Give heart and mind and soul and strength
To serve the King of kings..."

I have several new songs lodged firmly within my cranium at present. (This may be caused by the fact that I have clicked "repeat" with unusual vigor while on the Virb website.) Happily for me, I don't really mind, because the songs are filled with thoughtful lyrics and beautiful vocals.

What on earth am I talking about? Ladies and...ladies, I am thrilled to announce: the long-awaited (for me) , much-anticipated worship album by the BftH Band.

Wait, you're thinking. They have a band?

Not really--at least not in the general sense of the term. We don't have a band that practices in our garage or ever wants to "make it big." It just so happens that earlier this year, when we asked two amazing, Christ-loving friends of ours (who happened to be brilliant musicians) to lead worship at our conferences, someone (we can't remember who) hatched an idea to make an album of original worship songs, in conjunction with Studio T.

I'm so excited about the results. I hope these songs bless you as they have blessed me. A couple sample songs from the album are posted on our Virb player, http://virb.com/beautyfromtheheartband. (The albums will be available at our conferences in June.)

On another note, our Doing Things Right in Matters of the Heart book giveaway concludes today. Our final winner is Olivia E. Enjoy the book, Olivia!

In Which Lindsey Flies to Texas...

2009-05-20T08:32:00.000-07:00

After terrifying her mother and I with the prospect that she might've gotten on the wrong plane (she did, in fact, have a connecting flight in Phoenix that no one knew about until she landed in Phoenix), Lindsey arrived in Texas last night. Needless to say, posting may be light for the rest of this week. We're delighted to be able to visit and...well, we confess that we'll mostly be working on the conferences. (But "business trips" can be fun, right?)

In the meantime, Lindsey and I were interviewed for the Real Teen Faith blog a few weeks ago. Debra Weiss, a teen staff-writer for the site, asked very hard-hitting questions. One of Lindsey's answers I particularly liked, as it was pretty thought provoking for me too.

"DW: I have three younger sisters. One of them is nine and I’ve always wondered how do you leave behind a legacy not of physical beauty but of spiritual beauty, a beauty that does indeed come from the heart. Any thoughts on how we as girls can influence our younger sisters?
Lindsey: Oh, that’s a convicting one. I have two younger sisters also (ages 12 and 8), so this question really resonates with me; I’m always asking it too.

As the oldest, it’s been so important for me to recognize just how much our younger sisters do imitate us. We even have the potential to set the mood of a day by our example!

I’ve found that it also means a lot to my sisters when I spend one-on-one “sister time” with them. Sometimes that involves chats in our beds (we’ll share a room), delirious late-night fits of giggling, and serious conversations with probing questions to get beneath the surface. (Spilling my own guts makes it easier for them to show the same vulnerability, too.)

We can take initiative with prayer, reading the Bible aloud, discussing biblical truths and principles throughout the day, encouraging them for fruit in their lives, sharing new truths that God is teaching us, listening to them, and– this one has proved so important with my sisters and I– being quick to acknowledge personal failure. It’s humbling when I have to apologize to my eight-year-old sister– but it’s so necessary, and the softening results I’ve witnessed are immediate.

Our younger sisters don’t expect us to be perfect or want us to pretend we are. Actually, on the contrary, I think it’s a far greater, more influential witness to the power of the Cross for them to see our reliance on God’s grace slowly transforming us more into His image. The main thing, I believe, is simply to live with obvious, genuine, consuming passion for Christ and the Gospel.

Our family members are the ones who can really tell who (or what) we love the most, and it won’t escape our sisters’ notice if they see us delighting in God more than anything else. We won’t be able to keep it from keep from spilling out into our conversations."

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of the interview on Real Teen Faith.

Reminder!

2009-05-19T13:44:00.000-07:00

This is the last week of our Doing Things Right in Matters of the Heart book giveaway! For entry details, click here.

2009-05-19T07:20:00.000-07:00

Nancy Leigh DeMoss has posted what I think is the best summation of the Carrie Prejean controversy. Even if you're tired of all the news stories surrounding Miss California's stance on marriage, Nancy pulls out a lot of great truths in her post.

Here's an excerpt:

"Carrie Prejean’s story should cause us to be on our faces crying out to God over the extent to which the church today has accommodated to the world. It should cause us to plead with God on behalf of our children and grandchildren, and then to get up off our knees and go out and engage this younger generation with love and grace and truth and to become agents of redemption in their lives."

Read the full version.

[HT: The Purple Cellar]

Death Is Not Dying

2009-05-18T08:00:00.000-07:00

"Is death better than life? Is departing to be with Christ better than staying here? ....If I didn't believe that, how could I dare to aspire to the role of pastor...? "Death makes visible where our treasure is. The way we die reveals the worth of Christ in our hearts. Christ is magnified in my death when I am satisfied with Him in my dying--when I experience death as gain because I gain Him.... Christ will be praised in my death, if in my death He is prized above life."

-John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life

Reading that quote, I'm reminded of Clayton McDonald and his radically eternal perspective just before his death at eighteen years old. Is death truly death, when in dying we get to be with Christ? I have to wonder too--do I value my life on earth so highly (and value Christ so little) to think of death as a dreaded thing?

John Piper's book is also among the Book List offered by Rachel Barkey, a woman who has given a profound testimony in the face of terminal cancer. Speaking for the women from her church, Rachel said,

"I have known the searing pain of loss with the death of a loved one. I have been diagnosed with cancer twice now and this second time, barring a miracle, will end my life before I reach my 38th birthday.

"I have learned that being a Christian is not just hope for the future, though it is most definitely that, but that it is the joy of trusting a God who is loving and faithful not matter what the circumstances. So when I say that 'death is not dying' --[I'm saying] death will not kill my soul."

The full video and audio of Rachel's message is available here.

Contest Winner (Week #2)

2009-05-16T01:17:00.000-07:00

The winner of this week's Doing Things Right in Matters of the Heart book giveaway (courtesy of Crossway Books) is Gina, from Indiana. We hope you enjoy it as much as we have, Gina!

We're giving away the final copy next week, so be sure to enter the contest.

Feminism's New Idea

2009-05-13T07:59:00.000-07:00

The rest of the world is now beginning to suspect that there’s some strange chemistry between women and the home. As feminism prodded women to leave the home altogether and disregard homemaking as a vocation, women found themselves strangely empty. For instance, Rebecca Walker, the daughter of the famous feminist author, Alice Walker, came out and wrote an article admitting,

“My mother's feminist principles coloured every aspect of my life. As a little girl, I wasn't even allowed to play with dolls or stuffed toys in case they brought out a maternal instinct. It was drummed into me that being a mother, raising children and running a home were a form of slavery. Having a career, travelling the world and being independent were what really mattered according to her.”

Rebecca’s young adulthood was a model of feminism. She had an abortion by age fourteen and now lives, unmarried, with her partner, Glenn. Yet as an adult, she’s found one of her greatest joys is raising her son, Tenzin:

“I know many women are shocked by my views. They expect the daughter of Alice Walker to deliver a very different message.

"I meet women in their 40’s who are devastated because they spent two decades working on a PhD or becoming a partner in a law firm, and they missed out on having a family. Thanks to the feminist movement, they discounted their biological clocks. They've missed the opportunity and they're bereft.

“Feminism has betrayed an entire generation of women into childlessness. It is devastating….I don't want to hurt my mother, but I cannot stay silent.”[i]

Rebecca's story isn't that new--her article was published last year. But I was reminded of it recently as I stumbled across another article on a similar "shocking" new development in the feminist movement. An online newspaper posted this just the other day:

“Michelle Obama gave up her highly-paid job to support her husband Barack through his presidency. When she stepped down from her $273,000-a-year job with the University of Chicago Hospitals to help her husband on the campaign trail, she was earning twice as much as the man who would become America’s first black President. Unlike one of our own recent first ladies….She wants, instead — feminists hold on to your hats — to be a mother, a wife and to support her husband in every way she can in his job as President.

Despite this, she has not been berated by furious post-feminist women as a traitor to her sex. Quite the opposite. She is, perhaps, the perfect example of a new kind of career woman who, instead of wanting it all for herself, wants it all for her family…. It’s not what Germaine Greer and her ilk had in mind for this generation of highly educated, successful, independent women. But it’s a lifestyle choice at the heart of a new theory expounded in Megan Basham’s book, Beside Every Successful Man."

The author of Beside Every Successful Man, who is described as a “dyed-in-wool feminist,” explained:

“‘What my friends had in common is that they left school planning to spend most of their adult years working in their chosen fields, and expecting always to derive a lot of satisfaction from their careers. ‘Several years ago, I started to notice that among many of us, as other areas of our lives expanded, the enjoyment we derived from our jobs began to shrink. Work began to seem more like an intrusion on our real lives than a vital part of it.’ She and her successful career girlfriends wanted to spend more time enjoying being mothers and wives."

She said that the biography, John Adams, inspired her to pursue this idea further:

“‘While everyone else was caught up by the relationship between Adams and Jefferson and Washington, I was fascinated by the relationship between Adams and his wife. He relied on her in almost every aspect of his work — and in the midst of the goal-setting and strategic planning they wrote each other intimate, teasing and tender love letters that revealed the sweet partnership they had in all things.’”[ii]

Now, ladies, I hate to break it to you--but that doesn't look a whole lot like feminism to me. It looks more like an expression of one of the oldest ideas in the book (the Good Book, that is.) Women finding influence and fulfillment supporting their husbands and working in the home is nothing new.

I must say, this last article has me feeling pretty psyched. The fact that today God’s design for womanhood is still ringing true, even with countless voices of opposition, speaks volumes of God and the amazingness of His plan. Knowing that women who probably don’t know or care what the Bible says about gender differences, have suddenly “discovered” happiness at home—it’s as they just stumbled across something knitted deep within their DNA long before culture or feminism held its sway. That’s pretty cool to me.

Other blogs on femininity:
"A Desperate Housewife To Be?" a post by Hännah Schlaudt
"It Was God Who Made Us Different" by Hannah Farver (with Elisabeth Elliot)
Radical Womanhood blog, by Carolyn McCulley
Joyfully Home by Jasmine Baucham
Girl Talk blog, by Carolyn Mahaney, Nicole Whitacre, Janelle Bradshaw, and Kristin Chesemore
Gender Blog
The Empowered Traditionalist blog

Precious

2009-05-11T10:38:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of this sermon is a beautiful example of Christ's love for the church. It's only about four minutes long, but will be stuck in my mind for a while.

A couple o' quick reminders:

If you're planning to attend either of our summer conferences, we recommend you register beforehand. (Ticket prices go up at the door.)
Don't forget to enter in our book giveaway!

Enjoy your day!

Contest Winner (Week #1)

2009-05-08T12:20:00.000-07:00

The winner of this week's Doing Things Right in Matters of the Heart book giveaway (courtesy of Crossway Books) is Ana from Seattle, Washington. We hope you enjoy the book, Ana!

We're giving away more copies in the next two weeks. Be sure to enter the contest!

Miss California, Meet "Miss Beautiful Morals"

2009-05-08T12:03:00.000-07:00

"When I saw the headline, I had to click and see. A beauty pageant entitled, "Miss Beautiful Morals?" Could this be real?" Read the rest of the article at The Christian Post.

God Likes Me

2009-05-06T08:00:00.000-07:00

There is a phrase that I’ve struggled with, but only recently have found the guts to say:

God likes me.

Wait. Don’t click away from this page yet. I’m not about to jump onto the Let-God-Be-Your-Valentine bandwagon any time soon, and I won’t quote any Hallmark cards. Promise.

The truth is, I’m usually very much repulsed by phrases like “God likes me,” or “Jesus is my homeboy,” or “Yay God!” because they seem…so…irreverent. They make it sound as if God is my cheerleader, my boyfriend, or my equal. Yet in reality, the Psalms state that He is the One “who looks on the earth and ittrembles, whotouches the mountains and they smoke,” and Isaiah said that the angels around His throne have an extra set of wings just for shielding their face from His blindingly-bright holiness. God is not my equal, and I don’t want to downplay Him by adopting a phraseology that forgets who He is.

At the same time, zeal for recognizing God’s holiness and immutability can’t replace our knowledge of His love. I’ve read books on God’s praiseworthiness that repaint His love as duty. They say, “God’s love for you is solely a choice He’s made to stick by you even though He doesn’t like you much," just like a man who stays married to his wife because it’s right, though he loathes her—it doesn’t make sense.

God does love because it’s His choice, He does love because it’s His nature, and He is revolted by our sin. Even wimpy human psyches can process that. The part of His love that gets incomprehensible is the extravagance--the idea that God actually has affection for us, and ties up His happiness in our own.

I really appreciate what Tim Challies wrote on this recently:

"I thought about this a short time ago when I was considering how God feels about us, how he feels about me, how he feels about all of his children. I guess I often go through life thinking that God is generally displeased with me. I see my sin, I see my failings, I see my heart. At the same time I see from Scripture God’s majesty, his holiness, his perfection. And when I put these together I suppose that God must be looking at me with at least some level of disgust….

But I’m starting to think that I’ve had this all wrong….Maybe it was my recent studies in the parable of the Prodigal Son. Maybe it was my reading through the prophets, seeing how God hates sin but loves his people. Maybe it was just talking to my mother who came to this realization, I think, long before I did. But somehow I am starting to see that God hates my sin but that he loves me. God despises the evil that lurks within me, but is extravagant in his grace. He actually, really loves me.

And maybe in that way God isn’t so different from the pastors I see at conferences. He loves us. He loves me. And more than that, he’s proud of me. He isn’t petty, filling his mind with all those things I’ve done wrong, but rather he is gracious, seeing all those evidences of his grace in my life....Maybe we can be so careful in (rightly) understanding God’s hatred for sin and his desire for holiness that we forget about his great love for us despite the sin that still pollutes us. Maybe we forget that God truly does regard as children—children he not only loves but children he also genuinely likes."

I’m realizing that love that doesn’t like the beloved is only a step or two higher than contempt. Real love finds something to love in the beloved—and if the beloved has nothing to even slightly admire, the lover sets to work—to make in the beloved something admirable.

God loves you. He loves me. It wasn’t my charms (ha) that caused His love. I’d say with election before the foundation of the world, He preceded any charm. I was a wretch when I claimed me and am wretched still. But He’s working in me, loves me still, and loves what I will one day become.

J.I. Packer explained it this way:

“God was happy without man before man was made; He would have continued happy had He simply destroyed man after man had sinned; but as it is He has set His love upon particular sinners, and this means that, by His own free voluntary choice, He will not know perfect and unmixed happiness shall be conditional upon ours. Thus God saves, not only for His glory, but also for His gladness….The thought passes understanding and almost beggars belief, but there is no doubt that, according to Scripture, such is the love of God.” (Knowing God, page 113)

It’s flabbergasting—and would sound utterly man-centered and arrogant if it weren't written clearly throughout the Bible. You are a sinner, and God hates sin, but He does not hate you. In fact, He's for you.

"Once God has spoken; twice have I heard this: that power belongs to God, and that to You, O Lord, belongs steadfast love." (Psalm 62:11,12a)

Book Giveaway

2009-05-04T07:00:00.000-07:00

Every Friday for the next three weeks, we'll be giving away a copy of John Ensor's excellent book, Doing Things Right in Matters of the Heart--courtesy of Crossway Books.

“John Ensor provides a radically biblical alternative to the supposed wisdom of our age. Though sometimes raw, frank, and frustrated, Ensor is always sanctified and often poetic. He celebrates differences, bringing into clear focus the oft-disputed fact that God created men and women to be equal and symmetrical but not identical....”-Tim Challies, www.challies.com

“Doing Things Right in Matters of the Heart defines and describes biblical masculinity and femininity for single adults. I would also encourage those who are married to read it. John Ensor is a creative and theologically astute writer. I have thanked him for writing this book and you will too.” -C. J. Mahaney, Sovereign Grace Ministries

About the Book:
John Ensor 's little book tackles several enormous topics--and does so with Scripture, Shakespeare quotes, and uncommonly good sense. (It was his book we quoted in our recent post, "What Then Happens.") I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who wants clarification on purity, relationships, and the different roles of men and women; however, due to the maturity of some of the subject matter, I could only feel confident recommending it to older teens. If you fit that category though, don't let my caveat deter you from reading. This book is now officially a beloved member of my bookshelf.

Want To Win a Copy?
We're trying something new for this book giveaway. To enter, simply link to BeautyfromtheHeart.org on your blog and email us the link. Your name will then be entered in a drawing for the book. Mention our conferences on your blog as well, and we'll enter your name twice (doubling your chances of winning.)

Don't have a blog? You can still enter in the drawing. Just shoot an email about BeautyfromtheHeart.org to a few friends, forward us the email, and we'll add your name to the drawing entries. (Mention our conferences in your email and we'll include your name in the drawing twice.) All entries can be emailed to contact[at]beautyfromtheheart.org.

Note: Contest only open to U.S. residents. Contestants are welcome to enter once per day. The contest winner will be requested via email to send us their shipping address. If contest winner does not comply, contest winner does not receive foresaid prize. 'Tis the nature of the postal system.

Have you recently read any books that have impacted your view of God or the Christian life? We're always eager to hear about good books. Drop us a comment with your recommendations!