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Surrendering the Battle Plan

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This is one of those verses where I want to lick my finger, make a mark in the air and ‘count it’.  Peacemaker.  Got it.  I can do that.  And it is especially ‘easy’ when we think of peacemaking as being something required during times of great tumult - wars, family feuds and soap opera-type marital strife.  But when Jesus whispered these words to His friends on that hillside, He didn’t say, ‘When you are on the verge of divorce, be a peacemaker’ or ‘during wartime, seek peace’.  In fact, He said it blankly, as if it were a way of life.  Everyday life.  And to make this is even harder, He didn’t say “Be a peacemaker” which would give us ‘do-ers’ something to check off.  He said, blessed ARE the peacemakers.  His words make me think of peacemaking not as crisis management but more as a way of life.  To add to this idea of peacemaking, He promises happiness to those who live as peacemakers – every day, all day.  So, I am left asking myself, how can I live a life as a peacemaker? 

As I have chewed on this, I have felt more and more exposed.  I see how much I want to be right, I see how much I want to win, I see how much even my ‘good’ motives are bound by things going according to “my” plans.  If I honestly examine my calendar, my conversations, and my thoughts, I do not see a life lived making peace.  Instead, I see a BATTLE PLAN.  I humbly confess that the blueprint of my mind and heart reveals a strategy complete with weapons of mass persuasion through which I intend to grow my faith, teach my kids, bless my husband, serve my community, and enjoy my life.  And if there is an interruption to my battle plan (usually in the form of a person), do you know what I do?  I get huffy and puffy.  I might make snide comments.  I may choose to arrogantly dismiss that person. I may manipulate the situation, so it works better for me and my people.  I avoid her or him entirely.  Who can live as a peacemaker when they wake up each morning armed with an iphone, an inked-in calendar, a gassed up Suburban and a Battle Plan bent on one mission:  getting my life done according to my well-intentioned but enormously self-serving plan? Pardon me as I experience extreme shock and awe at my war-mongering tactics. 

So, how do I unpack this?  This is a life long practice.  Asking me to engage every interaction with my husband (nearly perfect though he is), my middle school son, my in-laws, the carpool line, and my community from a place of promoting peace rather than executing my well-thought through and good intentioned plans – well, this requires some sort of radical REBOOT/RESET of my… everything. 

Lindsay taught this lesson to our Monday Manna group and gave us so much wisdom on what this looks like lived out in our lives.  What I have gone back through again and again is this practical list of ways we can seek peace in our daily lives.  This is big stuff and requires radical faith to believe that God does indeed have our best interests at heart, that He sees what is fair or unfair, and that He will bless us and prosper us as we surrender our Battle Plans.  The truth is, most days I don’t have that kind of faith.  Lucky for us, we don’t have to. There are no battle plans required in growing faith.   We cannot muster up our own jumbo-sized faith.  He shows us where we need it, so that we will ask for it. He Himself is the Author of our faith.  And so, we must return to Him – face to face, heart to heart – and ask Him for it. 

Father, help my unbelief.  Take my pea-sized faith and grow it.  I want to live as a peacemaker but it feels foreign in my day-to-day life.  Help me see Your way, and create in me a desire to live according Your plan.  Amen

8 Qualities of a Peacemaker:

1.     Don’t speak. Overlook an Offense.  Our words are frequently the fuel for conflict. Many disputes are so insignificant that they can be resolved by quietly overlooking an offense. This is a form of forgiveness, and involves a deliberate decision not to talk about it, dwell on it, or let it grow into pent-up bitterness or anger.

2.     Realize our first inclination is to direct the blame (point our finger) at someone else. Matthew 7:5 “Get the log out of your own eye.”  Ask yourself ‘what have I done to fuel this conflict?’

3.    Reconcile. It is always our responsibility to humbly go and seek reconciliation. Matthew 5:23 and 18:15. Bridge the gap no matter who caused it.

4.    Peacemaking can be laying down rights or exercising rights.  Pray about when it is a time to lay down our rights and when is it the time to exercise our rights. 

5.    When we have been offended, find the positive and go out of your way to make peace.

6.    Forgive.  Even though Christians have experienced the greatest forgiveness in the world, we often fail to show that forgiveness to others. (Col. 3:12-14).

7.    Diffuse peace wherever we are, out of the endless peace God has given us.  Be selfless, lovable, approachable.  Think of those scented diffusers that change the fragrance of a room.  Diffuse grace and peace as you go about your day. 

8.    Accept differences in our world.  Differences provide beauty, but also conflict. Model kindness and charity across deep differences without sacrificing our faith.

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Sanitizer for the Heart

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I am going to make fun of my friend for a second here.  She is a lovely, beautiful, Godly germ freak.  I always knew this about her, but I saw it in action last week when my daughter and I traveled by train with her and her daughter.  As I happily sipped my coffee and my daughter played with her doll ON THE FLOOR OF THE PUBLIC TRAIN, both of us oblivious to the presence of germs, bacteria or other such toxins, my friend was in full-on battle mode.  She was relentless in her attack against impurities.  Hand sanitizer everywhere!  I had no idea my exterior surroundings could be so toxic.

As I now giggle thinking back on our trip, I can’t stop thinking about that hand sanitizer.  I wish I could do what my friend did with her hands to my heart.  I want to squirt a big glob of it in my heart, and then I want to really rub it into all the gunky crevices where impurities like jealousy, bitterness and selfishness live.  This verse says plainly that the pure in heart will see God, and I want to see God.  I want my faith to be real.  I want my God to be more than an invisible idea that I visit silently on Sunday.  So, how do I do the pure in heart part? 

Well, anyone who has ever gone to Sunday school knows that the answer to just about any Christian question is “God”, “Jesus” or “the Bible”.  And I think that is true here. Still, in the wake of Easter, we have to look back at the religious leaders who studied scriptures day and night, who built a nation bent on looking for a Savior, who believed whole-heartedly in God.  And when the Jesus stood before them - so closely that their spit would land on His face - they said, “Crucify Him!”

They believed in God, they knew scripture, but they did not see.   Their hearts were not pure.  So, when I look at this verse, and I wonder HOW, how do I get a pure heart?   I have to look at two things: my motive and my obedience. 

First, motive.  In all the Christian/God stuff that we do, what is our motive?  Is it to feel good about ourselves?  Is it because we are good Christian women and that is just what we do?  Is it something we need to check off to feel productive?  When I sit to have my quiet time, when I go to Bible Study, when I serve those in need – why am I doing it?  Is the truth of it that I want to see myself in a better light?  Or is it because I want to see God?  God tells us, “You will seek me and you will find me, when you seek Me with all your heart.”  Let’s be clear: God can be found; He wants to be found.  This is not a spiritual game of hide-and-seek where you are always “it”.  God is in the business of revealing Himself.  The question is, are we truly seeking Him?  In all that we do in our Christian realms, are we seeking Him or are we seeking a prettier version of ourselves?

The second heart sanitizer is obedience. I really, really stink at obedience.  I am good at reading God’s word and making notes about its poignancy in my journal.  I can even write about it… like…I …am…doing…right…now.  But doing what it says is far harder.  I get up, put the Words down, go about my day, and wonder why my heart is so grimy.  Have you ever gotten a pump of hand sanitizer and not rubbed it in?  I rolls right off.  It may cleanse that spot where it landed, but that’s it.  My friend rubbed her hands raw getting that stuff in every crease of her skin.  God’s word is not meant to be doppled on the top of our hearts.  It is meant to be massaged all into our hearts.  We do that by obedience.  Scripture tells us to be careful with our words; and as we obey, it is like the sanitizer begins to wash away the part of the heart that is critical.  Scripture tells us to honor our parents, and as we do that, His word begins to wash away the part of our heart that is breeding resentment.  Our obeying is the massaging of the heart, and massaging done by Holy words purifies.

We can be so topical in our faith – showing up at events, reading our devotions, singing our songs.  And we wonder why we don’t see God, why our faith feels empty.  William Barclay says we can only see what we are able to see.  If I go for a walk down a country road, I am likely to see a bunch of weeds, maybe an odd wildflower, some vines.  But if a botanist walked down the same road, he might see plants that could be eaten, maybe some exotic herbs.  He may notice a flower that is a rarity in that it typically blooms in countries far away.  He sees what I don’t see because he has spent years looking and testing and studying and thinking about plants. 

The same is true with God and His word.  We will see what we are able to see.  And we are able to see more and more as we take His word into our hearts.  We hear His word, we study His word, we rub His sanitizing Word into the dark corners of our hearts as we obey His word.  We think about Him, we abide in Him, we love Him,  and then we get up and we walk through our lives LOOKING for Him.  

The more we look for Him, the more we will see Him.  CS Lewis said, “It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to.” 

Let’s be women who live wanting to see God

Sitting with Jesus - 4th Sunday in Lent

Church Family –
 
Below is a prayer for the 4th Sunday in the season of Lent.  Being a church that celebrates communion each week, this prayer is especially meaningful for us.  I pray that as we take time to sit with Jesus this week, our hearts would realize we need him not just every week in worship, but every moment of every day.

“Fourth Sunday in Lent

Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which gives life to the world: Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us, and we in him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.”
— Book of Common Prayer
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Another's Skin

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Do you remember the last weeks of grade school each year?   It is hot outside, your brain is fried, and the swimming pool beckons.  Surely, you’ve learned enough already?  Time to wrap up the year, and flip flop on home.   I confess that in my enormous impatience and big-headed pride, I get that way with scripture.  In truth, I had gotten that way with the Beatitudes.  In my heart, I was saying, “Yes, yes… Poor in spirit was tough, mourning and meekness were deep, but I get mercy. That’s straightforward. Be merciful.  Done.”

But as I mulled over what “being merciful” should look like in my life; I realized it wasn’t quite so simple.   The thing about mercy is that it is not a natural human response. Our human minds will always function based on what is fair, what is deserved.  While being unjustly wounded, it takes an interruption from outside our humanity, to make us stop insisting upon what So-and-So deserves and to instead offer a second chance, an unmerited pardon.   We cannot manufacture mercy.  Mercy is God’s invention.  He is the source of all mercy.  So, we cannot offer it to someone else without God having first offered it to us.  I cannot check off the box of “being merciful” until I have sat face-to-face with Christ.   In short, I need summer school.

Days after succumbing to further study on this mercy business, my cherished friend told me in shattered brokenness that her husband had an affair with another woman.  My response was a full body cyclone of rage with heart, mind and soul swirling and trembling in anger, bitterness, resentment and even hatred.  I could see nothing beyond the duplicity of this wretched man who betrayed my friend.  Truth be told, I would still be ravaged by uncontrollable emotions if it were not for what she said to me next.   "Katie, I need you to forgive him.  Your anger does not help me.  God is at work here.  God is changing his heart and my heart and our marriage is going to heal."  Silence.  My mind reels.  How can she ask this of me? How can this possibly be the right way forward?  She is obviously not thinking clearly.  This isn’t fair.  He is a liar and a fake and a phony.

Flunking summer school at this point, I must dig deeper.  In the Hebrew form, mercy is ‘chesdh’.  It means the ability to get right inside another person’s skin until we see with their eyes, think with their mind, and feel with their feelings.   It is the ultimate form of compassion.   And then it hit me.  I am no different than my friend’s husband.  When God sent Jesus to this earth, He put on my sin skin.  He walked in my shoes.  He saw what a phony I am, what a liar I can be, how fake and shallow my faith can run.  In so many ways, I cheat on my God.  I deserve judgment.  But He offered me mercy. 

BECAUSE OF JESUS, we don’t have a God who sits on high sternly judging without any understanding of our wayward ways.  We have a God who sent His perfect son to put on fleshly skin like mine, and my friend’s husband’s, and like yours so that He could offer compassion, understanding, mercy.  When we cheat and stumble and fall, we have chesdh.  In the midst of my infidelities against God Himself, Jesus turns to His Perfect Father and says, ‘Yes, but she is mine and I am not finished with her yet.  Just wait and see.’    

While I was still a sinner, He died for me.  Knowing I would go through this life so prone to wander, so prone to stray from the God I love, He offered mercy.  He offered forgiveness for the debts I did not even know I would have.  In one act, on one cross, on one day, all of mercy was offered.  It was showered down, all of it, enough for all time, enough for you and for me. 

And so, I am left with this: 

“What if being merciful is not conjuring up a forced forgiveness for another but instead making myself FULL of the abundant mercy that has already been offered to me through Christ?

What if my ability to show mercy depends on my willingness to receive mercy?

And what if my willingness to receive mercy depends on my understanding of my enormous need for it?”
Father, let us be women FULL of your Mercy.  Mold our hearts and minds so we don’t just read about mercy, but let us live saturated in it.  Let us live our lives up close and personal with You, the Source of all mercy.  Let us live seen, understood, loved, forgiven, redeemed by You.  And then, make us reflections of your perfect mercy to everyone within our reach.  Amen.

Sitting with Jesus - 3rd Sunday in Lent

Church Family –
 
Below is the prayer for the 3rd Sunday in the season of Lent.  It is a most fitting prayer for us this week on the heels of the Noah story, us thinking about our own salvation and asking the ‘Why me?’ question.  This prayer reminds us that we cannot help ourselves and that our only hope is in the Lord.  So we cry out to him…
 
I pray that it will encourage you as you sit with Jesus this week.

“Third Sunday in Lent
Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”
— Book of Common Prayer

In addition to our weekly prayer, I wanted to also offer a thought that has been helpful for me, as I've sat with Jesus over the past week.  It is an excerpt of a Tim Keller article from the Gospel Coalition. This helped me structure my devotional time in a meaningful way this past week.  It’s simple and timeless…

‘Meditation is actually a middle ground or blend of Bible reading and prayer. I like to use Luther's contemplative method that he outlines in his famous letter on prayer that he wrote to his barber. The basic method is this—to take a Scriptural truth and ask three questions of it. How does this show me something about God to praise? How does this show me something about myself to confess?How does this show me something I need to ask God for? Adoration, confession, and supplication. Luther proposes that we keep meditating like this until our hearts begin to warm and melt under a sense of the reality of God. Often that doesn't happen. Fine. We aren't ultimately praying in order to get good feelings or answers, but in order to honor God for who he is in himself.’

If you are interested, the entire article can be found here.
 
I pray that these encourage you today and strengthen your walk with the Lord throughout this week.
 
- ford

Sitting With Jesus - Second Sunday in Lent

Church Family –
 
Below is the prayer for the 2nd Sunday in the season of Lent.  It is a beautiful Lenten prayer in that it reminds us of how gracious the Lord is to receive us back after we have gone astray.
 
I pray that it will encourage you as you sit with Jesus this week.

“Second Sunday in Lent
O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: Be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways, and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of your Word, Jesus Christ your Son; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”
— Book of Common Prayer