How Sweet the Sound

And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)

God's grace is sufficient; it's enough for you and me.
What is it enough for?
For whatever you need it to be! Do you need grace to deal with emotions that are erratic, children who are exhausting, a spouse who is unpredictable, a boss who is grouchy?
What about grace for your fears for the future or worries for today? There is plenty to cover every need. 
There is not one area of our lives -- past, present and future -- where God's grace is not sufficient for us.
Sufficient means enough, or, as the Merrriam-Webster Dictionary says: "occurring in such quantity, quality or scope as to fully meet demands, needs or expectations."
God's grace can provide a life where your needs and expectations are fully met every time. That's the kind of grace I want to learn how to access!
The key is that God's power (His grace working on our behalf) is activated through our weakness. Uh-oh. Weaknesses are something we humans don't like to own up to. We like to hide our weaknesses, cover them up, refuse to admit them. That comes naturally to us, but that will frustrate the grace of God on our behalf. Instead, we not only need to admit our weaknesses, we can revel in surrendering areas we have been trying to control. (Did we really think we were in control anyway?) We give up. We say we can't do it, we can't fix it, and we are desperate for help. We reach out to the Creator as a little child in need, trusting that He is there to help us, trusting that He does not find fault with us when we ask Him to pour out grace on us.
We become God-needy instead of self-sufficient.
How many times a day should we look for God's help? As many times as we want grace to cover our lives. If we only want grace in the really tough places, if we only want our needs and expectations fully met at those crises, then only look to God at those times. But if you want a constant flow of God's grace for every moment of your life, then develop a continous looking to Him for His help, His wisdom, His nearness, His friendship.
His strength will be made perfect in your weakness, in your inability or unwillingness to handle life on your own. It is not irresponsible, it is the smartest thing you can do.
God's grace -- how sweet the sound!

Full and Great

The Lord is gracious and full of compassion,
Slow to anger and great in mercy.
9 The Lord is good to all,
And His tender mercies are over all His works. (Psalm 145:8-9, NKJV)

When I first got serious about meditating the word of God (see my previous post), this is the portion of Scripture that first came to my thoughts. 

• The Lord is gracious -- When I think of someone who is gracious, I think of the perfect gentleman or gentlewoman. A gracious person puts you at ease with his manner. This person smiles at you with kindness and benevolence as though you were the only person in the world. Your comfort and needs being met are that person's top priority. What a picture of our God!
• The Lord is ... full of compassion -- Picture a container filled with water -- there is no room for anything else! Fullness speaks of every available area of space being taken up. It also speaks of the possibility of spilling out, of overflow at the slightest bump. What is our Lord filled with? Compassion. That characteristic speaks of His oneness with our suffering and his yearning to see us relieved of the pain we live in. Certainly it was this compassion that ultimately sent Jesus to the cross to die for us and give us new life. This is the emotion that God has toward us -- in such a degree that He is filled to the brim with compassion to us and ready to overflow at the slightest provocation.
• Slow to anger and great in mercy -- Like a lumbering giant, God's anger is extremely slow to ignite. However, his mercy springs into action at the drop of a hat. What makes God great? What is He known for? His mercy, not his anger. He is defined by his mercy, his love, his forgiveness. He longs to show mercy. He would much prefer to be merciful than to be angry towards anything that He has made. It delights Him to be merciful.
• The Lord is good to all -- The Lord's goodness can't be reserved for only those who deserve it. No, His goodness is to ALL. His goodness has no boundaries and is like the ocean depths, that can't be fathomed. There is so much goodness available to each and every person, with none of God's limitless resources being exhausted.
• His tender mercies are over all His works -- God tenderly cares for all that He has made. He is not negligent about any of His creation, from the most minute particle to his crowning creation, mankind. I love the word "tender" in this passage. As if His mercies were not enough, there is also protective and affectionate tenderness toward us, like a mother toward her child. How can we doubt the love and care of such a God?

Sweet Meditation

I'm convinced that most of the stress we experience in our lives is from trying to live primarily out of our heads rather than out of our spirits, which is the true core of our being. People were not designed to live according to their own finite understanding, and it's exhausing when we try to do so. Decisions that continually come from own limited knowledge will often be flawed and take us in the wrong direction.
All this means that we tend to live stressed out lives trying to fix the messes we've gotten into or figuring out how to stay out of them in the first place!
Unfortunately, I've been schooled very proficiently in figuring things out and relying on my own understanding. If I were to draw a picture comparing the strength and size of my mind and my spirit, my mind would be grossly out of proportion to everything else because it gets so much exercise! It goes and goes and goes, like the Energizer Bunny, and only gets a break when I fall asleep.
On the other hand, my spirit doesn't get nearly as much exercise in a typical day. The Holy Spirit brought this thought to my attention recently, and I was faced with this startling fact: As a new creation in Christ, with my heart indwelt by the Holy Spirit, my spirit contains limitless resources to draw on. Why would I rely so much on my limited understanding and ignore the riches of wisdom residing within me?
Only because I would have to admit I don't know how to access that knowledge consistently. How can I exercise my spirit so I will rely on it more often rather than relying on my own thinking?
Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit is our Helper, so when I feel stumped, that's the Person I go to for help. The answer I got was a simple instruction that anyone can do and which can easily fit into any person's schedule. God is so practical! 

Oh, the joys of those who do not
    follow the advice of the wicked,
    or stand around with sinners,
    or join in with mockers.
2 But they delight in the law of the Lord,
    meditating on it day and night.
3 They are like trees planted along the riverbank,
    bearing fruit each season.
Their leaves never wither,    and they prosper in all they do. (Psalm 1:1-3 NLT; see also Joshua 1:8)

God's instructions are to meditate on His Word as much as possible, and the promise is to prosper in all that I do. Meditation is not memorizing Scripture or having Bible study. It's not prayer, as good as all of those spiritual disciplines are. It can best be described as savoring the Word of God -- chewing a small piece of it slowly and getting all of the nutrition and nourishment and taste out of it as possible. Just as someone can savor and enjoy a fine wine or a delectable dessert, you can savor and get the most out of what God wants to speak to you each day and make it personally nourshing to you.
I don't want to give you a formula, but I will share how this exercise works for me. In the morning after first awakening, I get into a comfortable position and close my eyes. (Best to do this after being well rested!) I ask the Holy Spirit what He wants to speak to me from His word. I quiet my mind and look inside my heart ... and wait. Before too long, words will float up to my mind. Sometimes they will be a verse I've read -- even from a long time ago -- or sometimes just a phrase.  
I repeat those words to myself several times, letting them roll around in my heart. I am not trying to analyze them or memorize them (that takes too much brain power), just let them say what they need to say to me. During this time I feel as though the Holy Spirit and I are sharing a secret. He is imparting to me things on His heart about the Word of God that He knows I will need for my journey. It is a relaxing time with Him. There is no pressure to perform, no goal I have to meet. My mind gets a much-needed rest, and I can feel my spirit being exercised and gaining strength through use.
It's the easiest, most pain-free, exercise I've ever done! 
Throughout the day, when my mind is free from other things, such as when I am driving, I let my thoughts return to those words. I find it helpful to write them down in a journal to refer to them again. Sometimes I will look up what some of the words mean in the original language in order to get more "food" to meditate on (this is easy to do using internet tools, such as Strong's Concordance). Before I fall asleep at night, I try to repeat my exercise of the morning with these same words from heaven. It's a wonderful way to fall asleep in peace! 
If you have ever gone without food for an extended time and then eaten a delicious meal, you will get an idea of the satisfaction that this type of spiritual exercise brings. For someone who has overworked her brain for so many years, it is a much needed rest that has brought a new level of peace and serenity to my life.  
Isn't it just like our loving Father to make spiritual exercise an absolutely delightful experience?
During the next few weeks, I'll share some verses that I have been meditating on and some of the nourishment I have received while doing so. I invite you to join me. My prayer is that you will begin asking the Holy Spirit how you can meditate in God's Word and enjoy these benefits for yourself!

Without a Doubt

Ever hear the saying, "Doubt and go without"?

I think that Jesus originated that saying. You might recognize it better in context. He said in Mark's Gospel, chapter 11, after cursing the fig tree. "Have faith in God!"

Then:
"I can guarantee this truth: This is what will be done for someone who doesn’t doubt but believes what he says will happen: He can say to this mountain, ‘Be uprooted and thrown into the sea,’ and it will be done for him. That’s why I tell you to have faith that you have already received whatever you pray for, and it will be yours."

A promise that even mountains will obey my words -- wow! That sounds too good to be true. There must be a catch.

There isn't a catch, but for many years, the part of Jesus' words that tripped me up was what He said about doubt. Anytime I tried to believe God's promises and then later experienced thoughts of doubt and fear in my mind, I thought I had lost my faith and gave up on my request. It was discouraging because it seemed I couldn't keep those doubtful thoughts from coming, so I always had to keep starting over in my petitions to God. 

But that is not what Jesus is saying. Another passage about doubt in the book of James (chapter 1) is helpful. James defines doubt as wavering back and forth between two decisions instead of staying fixed on one direction. If you started down a path toward your destination, and then halfway along decided to stop or turn around and go back the way you came, you would never get to where you're supposed to be going.

That's what happens when we start out believing God and then allow doubt to derail us.

The opposite of wavering, then, is to be focused on your goal with determination. Faith means to stay the course, no matter what it looks like, seems like or feels like. It's up to us whether we decide to keep going forward or not.

When it comes to impossibilities happening in our lives, that resolute path means we keep going in the same direction as what we first affirmed, both with our words and our actions. The way we talk and the way we act should be aligned with what we say we believe. Our emotions may be screaming, "It's not working! God didn't hear you!" Our will may want to give up the fight. Our minds may be full of questions. It doesn't matter. We can say, like the Apostle Paul, "None of these things move me." We can focus instead on what God has promised, knowing that He cannot lie, and continue to move in the direction we started without giving up or letting go. 

Faith and doubt, then, are not so much uncontrollable feelings as they are attitudes inside us that determine if we will keep going or if we will draw back.

If we stay on the path of our belief in God's goodness and His promises, eventually those things that we continue to say will come into existence. Our words will be fulfilled.

It cannot be otherwise. Jesus promised.

Many Ways to God?

We've all heard the argument for diversity when it comes to a person's spiritual life: There are many ways to God, people say.

But God Himself put an end to that discussion when Jesus asked in the Garden of Gethsemane, before He was betrayed: "O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me ..." (Matthew 26:39)

In other words, Jesus literally begged, "Father, if there's any other way to do this, please don't let this happen to me."

If the only way for me to rescue a person who was ready to perish was for my own child to die, I would be searching frantically for another way to get the job done. I would leave no stone unturned in my quest to spare my child suffering and death.

If the mighty, all-powerful God, who can do anything, said there is no other way to do this -- as He watched His Son sweat great drops of blood in agony -- then there is no other way.

If there was any way God could have kept His Son from dying going to hell, and still erase our sin and bring us to heaven, He would have done it.

But there wasn't any other way.

With Love, From Iloilo, Part 5

On a hot Monday morning, we met up with Mark and Yen Cabag, both natives Filipinos who pastor in Iloilo. I liked the couple immediately. They both had warm smiles, joy exuding out of them mixed with unconditional love and acceptance. They were taking us to the Dorcas House, an orphanage founded about 40 years ago by a Baptist missionary. The Cabages' youngest son, Samuel, whose adoption is being finalized, had been abandoned an an infant before finding his way to Dorcas House where Mark and Yen first met him. He had somehow survived the first two weeks of his life on only the water that rice had been boiled in before receiving love and care at the Dorcas House.

Pastor Mark had not always been interested in fostering or adopting children. The couple already had one son born to them. Then God gave Mark a vivid dream where a boy was floating down a river, in danger of drowning. Mark was able to reach out and rescue him, which left a profound impact on him. The couple decided to begin pursuing adoption of orphans.

Mark and Yen's old van had no air con (as the Filipinos call a/c), but there was a pretty good breeze through the lowered windows as we traveled far out into the countryside. First, though, we stopped at a roadside restaurant that was owned by someone in their congregation. They had called ahead and ordered us authentic Philippine cuisine, including some soup (it was hard to eat soup in such heat!), chicken feet (Zak, of course, tried it), and some halo-halo for dessert, a mixture of shaved ice, evaporated milk and various boiled sweet beans, fruit and cheese. It was a little too many diverse tastes and textures in one place for Jessika and me to enjoy. Zak loved it, although he had to fight off the flies that were contending for our food in our outdoor seating.

We arrived at the orphanage shortly afterward. The pastors had brought snacks for the children, which would help them warm up to the many white people they would be seeing that day. There were six of us Americans in all.

The older children were in school, leaving only the toddlers and babies. Unlike most children I am accustomed to, these children were extremely shy and non-inquisitive. Their passivity told me that they had either been abused or neglected before coming to the orphanage, which Yen confirmed.

I did not want to frighten any of the children, so I didn’t approach them but hoped they would eventually come toward me. For a long time that didn’t look like it would happen, although I got to hold an infant for a bit, until Jessika commandeered him. Finally, after about 90 minutes, one of the 18-month-old twin girls that I had been smiling at, finally got close enough for me to gently scoop her up and hold her. She did not resist. It was time to eat the spaghetti, hotdogs and ice cream that Mark and Yen had brought, so I sat her on my lap at the table to feed her. She didn’t reach out and grab everything within her grasp as you would expect a normal toddler to. She had serious brown eyes, far too big for her face that looked at me solemnly as she slowly slurped up the spaghetti or the ice cream I offered her. I wondered what kind of trauma she and her sister had experienced in their short lives, and I was glad they were getting love and nurture now. I prayed for the right family to come into their lives.

In direct contrast to these children, the kids we saw both at the Sonshine Center and the Hope Center at Calajunan were energetic and warmed up to us immediately. It was refreshing to see children enjoying playtime without phones, iPads or other electronic devices in front of their faces. When we were at the Sonshine Center waiting for the Saturday children’s service to start, they played outside on the swings, in made-up games that needed no equipment, basketball or plain old tag. They were happy children, for the most part, and appreciative as well.

During the service, there was lots of high energy singing and dancing, with everybody sweating buckets. At the teaching time, the 100-plus children sat on the floor with hands in their laps, listening or responding to questions. There were no multi-media presentations, just a simple object lesson from an animated group of teen-age and adult leaders. Children who weren’t paying attention were reminded to do so by the other teens who were on the perimeter “working the crowd.” Any child who didn’t heed their first or second warning to pay attention was taken out of the room for a conversation. The children obviously knew it was a privilege for them to come to the Sonshine Center because they could be asked to not return if they did not cooperate.

Each child left with a bag of rice and a bag of chicken gumbo-type of concoction. They bit a tiny hole in the bottom of the bag to suck the soup. When I tried it, I accidentally bit a hole in two corners and so made a huge mess with chicken soup dripping everywhere. I tried to clean up my mess, but Filipinos don’t believe in paper towels, and the napkins they use for eating are miniscule! It was not a pretty sight for me to wipe up the floor with the little pieces of paper.

Fortunately, we were getting ready to go to the ocean for the youth baptism, so I would soon be able to divest myself of chicken broth that had run down my arms ...

The ever-present Jeepneys took us to the beach where 27 young people were pledging their decision to follow Christ through water baptism.

We enjoyed a home-cooked chicken gumbo meal and then listened to Pastor Brenda, the youth leader, talk to the young people about what baptism means. Both Zak and Jessika got to share their testimonies about their own journeys of coming to Christ, with Zak getting to relate his story of having been baptized only a few months earlier in the States.

Then it was time to go out to the water where the baptismal candidates were immersed one by one by those who had been discipling them. These were teens not much older or the same age as those being baptized. Everyone shouted and clapped as the follower was immersed and came out of the water, smiling happily and praising God. Their joy and excitement was contagious, and Natalie said it must be what heaven is like.

To see photos of the event, go to http://natalieamattes.blogspot.com/.

With Love, From Iloilo, Part 4

Picking up where we left off in Calajunan: The missions team from Grace Church was trying to avoid a downpour at the city dump/squatter village, while I was secretly thanking God for the rain. It meant we didn’t have to go any further on our tour and endure the flies and unbearable stench of the trash.

Abigael, our guide, was ushering us quickly toward the road. It was a long walk, so she hailed a couple of taxi trikes to get us further out where a Jeepney could take us all the way home. Our trike driver was a woman about my age and size. We climbed aboard and sped off so quickly  that even the rain drops felt cold and stinging in that hot climate. I noticed that some of the other trikes had plastic coverings for the driver, but ours did not. Although we passengers were mostly covered by the awning over us, our driver was exposed to all the elements -- the large, and increasingly heavier, raindrops splattering on her bare arms.

I thought about the lightweight rain jacket that I had brought for the trip. It was one of my favorite jackets and was fairly new, at least for me. (I don’t buy clothes that often.) Since it was the rainy season in the Philippines, we had been told to bring our umbrellas and rain jackets with us. It was balled up at the bottom of my backpack, which traveled with me everywhere I went, along with a small roll of toilet paper, a tube of hand sanitizer, and a constantly used water bottle.

I recognized the gentle tug of the Holy Spirit inside, encouraging me to help someone in need. “Not my favorite jacket, Lord!” I protested. By this time, the driver had delivered us to the main road and we were clambering out. I knew if I waited longer, I would miss my opportunity. While everyone else was looking for oncoming jeepneys, I lingered at the trike, pulled out the jacket and handed it to her. She looked confused. Then she slowly held out her hand, “For me?” she said in her careful English.

I nodded and hurried over to the others. When I looked back at her, another client had climbed aboard, ready to leave. I watched her slide the jacket over her arms, rev up her bike, then raise her eyes, locking her gaze with mine. I will never forget the wonder in her look as she nodded her head in my direction before she sped off.

I don’t know what happened to that jacket. I like to think of my driver friend wearing it in the rain and remembering that somebody saw her need and cared about her. It’s more likely that she sold the jacket soon afterward to buy something her family needed more urgently. It doesn’t matter, though. The look in her eyes of surprise and appreciation at an unexpected gift was worth it all to me.