chapters 3 & 4
the wilderness of temptation:
i love that she starts out sharing her story of how she came to know the Lord. i love hearing those stories and seeing how God can change lives. that is why i love ministry. being able to see changed lives in women who God wants to use in amazing ways that i can't even imagine.
i love that she quotes the verse from ezekiel 36:26-27. "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; i will remove from you your heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws" one of the first times i studied this verse was when my staff team was doing a bible study on covenant. it was AMAZING. i love it. i learned so much and gained such a new appreciation for the old testament and whole picture of the scripture. it was great. there is so much i could tell you about it, but that would make this even more ridiculously long than it already is going to be. so some other time i will have to tell you more about it. but anyways, this is a covenant promise. and God is a perfect covenant partner. He not only fulfills his part of the covenant but provides his spirit in us so that we can fulfill our part too!! so great. i love it.
it also makes me think of how some people think that when you are a Christian, you suddenly are this crazy person who follows all these ridiculous rules and don't act according to yourself anymore. well, according to that verse, his spirit does move us to follow his decrees. but as we see both in the scripture and in this book, it is pretty easy for us to ignore that and go our own way too. which is why i loved her earlier quote that:
obedience [is] motivated 100 percent by love. i'm not blindly following some crazy ordinances. i'm in a real relationship with the creator of the universe who loved me first and i want to return that love in some way. and so i try to obey him because by doing that, i'm able to experience a better and more fulfilling life than if i did it on my own. i wish my brothers could understand that.
Transformation wasn't and still isn't easy. I had to make a choice to pursue wholeness.
i think i'm starting to understand part of my problem. i need to make some better choices. it won't be easy. but it will be better. my heart will be better because of it. and i want my heart to feel better.
choices in my life lead to what i worship. i loved her section on worship. it was some good, deep stuff. stuff i needed to hear and consider. she quotes Louie Giglio saying "And right now, wherever you are, there is a war going on over your worship." i've felt it. so many days it seems like the easier choice would be to just give up. to do things my own way. to not open my bible. to not go to Him with my questions. to just take control.
but then she explains what worship is. (partially quoting Louie again) "Worship is our response to what we value most." I like that definition. For in it we find two important words. The first is response. Worship is a response to God for who he is and what he has done. The other word is value. Value is simply ascribing worth to something. That is what worship is--we are saying to God, "You are worthy of my life, my praise, my all."
i'm struck by the fact that He is worth it. no matter what may be going on in my life, that doesn't take away from his worthiness. His attributes are not dependent on what is happening to me. instead it is despite whatever i'm dealing with He is still worthy, because he loves me in the midst of it, he is with me in the midst of it, he is using it for good in my life. i just have to keep trusting him. which is my choice.
i also liked her definition of temptation. as she was describing the story of Job, she said:
The word temptation can be interpreted two ways in the Bible. One means incitement to sin, and the other means to test or to prove. Both definitions of temptation apply in Job's situation. Satan is tempting him to sin, while God is allowing him to be proven faithful. that helped me to understand the wilderness of temptation. to test or prove that what i have been saying is actually true of my life. even when things don't go my way. yikes. i'm not always very good about that.
when it got to the part where she starts talking about the song "Blessed be Your Name," i had one of those, oh crap, she's talking to me moments. that song holds some significant memories for me. i first heard it on summer project. that was a huge summer for me spiritually. i learned a lot. got challenged a lot. grew a lot. experienced the Lord a lot. and then had to come home and see if that was all still true in my real life. whenever i heard that song i was reminded of what the Lord had done. in moments when my grandpa died, or my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, i've had to remind myself that He is still worth that praise. so as she describes her sacrifice of praise, i've totally been right there.
I learned quickly that singing "Blessed be the Name of the Lord" is a choice of the will. To sing HIs praise and to give Him glory in the midst of heartache is a sacrifice of praise....I lifted my hands and sang the words until the storm raging in my soul was quieted by the conviction of my will. To believe. To simply believe--despite how I felt in the moment or what I could see with my eyes--that my God is good and, yes, He is worthy of my worship.
good stuff. more to come.
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