March 18th, 2011 by Kristi Stephens

The Child's Caress - from http://www.marycassatt.org

Yesterday was epic – our first trip to the zoo, just me and the three kids. Between stopping to admire lions and jellyfish and red pandas, I found myself constantly observing other mothers around me.

The boy, about 6 years old, runs down the rope bridge, pushing little ones out of his way. He loses his shoe in the middle of the bridge and begins to scold my 3 year old LB, accusing him of causing his shoe to fall off. I retrieve the shoe and remind him to watch out for the little ones playing around him. He looks up to me and says he needs help getting his shoe on. I tell him to find his mom. He wanders to various mother standing in the area, asking for someone to help him with his shoe. Where is his mother?

Meanwhile, another mother has her cross-hairs fixed firmly on the boy. Her voice is shrill. “Would you PLEASE get away from my TWO YEAR OLD child and stop PUSHING her? Come on, girls, we’re leaving. We’ll have to come back when THEY aren’t here. If his PARENTS were WATCHING him maybe he would stop PUSHING and you could play.” I understand her feelings – seeing my children get pushed around riles me up like few things do. But I wonder, does she have no compassion?

We kept walking, I kept watching, thinking. Our issues seem to be in full and radiant color when we become mothers. Selfishness evidences itself in being absent, uncaring, unaware of the way we wound our children or leave them vulnerable to danger. Pride rears its ugly head as parents valiantly try to show their children as smarter, more talented, more valuable than those around them. Second generation vanity demands the most expensive stroller, most stylish diaper bag, expensive boutique clothing on a child stomping through a muddy zoo. Laziness makes a subtle appearance, showing as lack of discipline, unwillingness to deal with behavior and intentionally teach our children.

Motherhood is hard. Sinful, imperfect women make sinful, imperfect mothers.

I am one of them.

I wonder how many times others have watched me in the store, in the park, in the zoo – how often have they seen me snap too quickly, scold too harshly, respond to the grueling days of motherhood with selfishness, laziness, pride, vanity? My heart aches at the thought.

God has given us an incredibly difficult job, ladies. We cannot do it on our own. I cannot imagine attempting to parent without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

We need to ask Him to cause us to mother selflessly, to enable us to say “follow me as I follow Christ.” And in the meantime, when we watch the broken, sinful, imperfect parents around us… may God give us hearts full of compassion and grace. May we be quicker to pray for them than to sit in judgment, may we remember where we would be but for the grace of God.

March 15th, 2011 by Kristi Stephens

If you have followed this Abide series, I hope you have heard glimmers of my own story throughout each post.

I want to love God, and I often don’t.

I want to abide in Him, and I often fail.

I want to run hard after Him, and I often lose my focus on Him, start thinking about myself, and trip on my own feet.

Can you relate?

I hope you have also heard echoes of what God has been teaching me – I can’t love Him in my own strength. I can’t will myself to abide in Him. If I try to serve Him in my own efforts, my priorities and perspective will mess it all up.

We need to stop trying in our own strength and ask Him to cause us to love Him, pursue Him, abide in Him. Reading these quotes this weekend in Crazy Love resonated deeply with me [can you tell I'm enjoying this book?] :)

O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, so that I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, ‘Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away.’ Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long.

-A.W. Tozer

Jesus, I need to give myself up. I am not strong enough to love You and walk with You on my own. I can’t do it, and I need You. I need You deeply and desperately. I believe You are worth it, that You are better than anything else I could have in this life or the next. I want You. And when I don’t, I want to want You. Be all in me. Take all of me. Have Your way in me.

-Francis Chan

When I don’t, I want to want Him.

My friend, I challenge you to consider how to still the frantic pace of your life to enter into His presence regularly and richly during this Lenten season. Hear me: I am not saying try harder, do more, pray longer. I am saying this: we need to create time and space in our lives to commune with God, to ask HIM to pursue US.

He wants you to abide in Him. He wants you to love Him. He knows that you are “but dust” (Psalm 103:14). Stop trying – and come to Him today in your weakness, in your failure, in your brokenness, and ask Him to cause you to love Him, cause you to want Him, cause you to abide in Him.

The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.
He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever;
he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.

Psalm 103:8-14

All of the posts in the Abide series are indexed here.

March 14th, 2011 by Kristi Stephens

Image via Wikipedia

There is much discussion these days about theology, about what God would or would not do, of how God would or would not judge – as limited human beings we kick against Scripture that describes a God who is bigger than we can understand, more wrathful at sin than we feel comfortable with, and at the same time more gracious than we can fully comprehend. We reinterpret the Bible to make it comfortable, to reduce God to a size more understandable, to try to represent Him in ways that seem more appealing to a culture repulsed by the idea of being told our sin makes us deserving of punishment.

Here’s the thing: I do not understand God.

Yesterday I sat in church and rejoiced with our body as we welcomed a pastor who has obviously been sent by our sovereign and gracious God into our midst. He has heard our prayers. He has seen our need. He has provided. We worshiped Him with glad hearts and recognized His very tangible work in our midst.

I sat in my seat and pondered: God is good, yes. He absolutely is good and gracious and a God who hears the prayers of His people. He is also the sovereign and omnipotent God who is with our brothers and sisters in Christ who are suffering unimaginably in Japan. The earth is groaning, His people are crying out to Him, they are learning to worship Him from a place of lamentation and loss. His goodness, His character is not different in different parts of the world. His strength is not limited. We are no more deserving of His grace and care than anyone else.

I do not understand God.

There are many things I cannot fully explain to you about my God. I cannot wrap my feeble, small mind around His bigness. But I can know with certainty what I read in God’s Word.

I open my Bible and read of a great God who is unlimited in power and knowledge, unbound by time and space. I do not fully understand, but I know it with certainty to be true: His Word says it clearly.

I read of a God who is one and also three, who has existed from eternity past and will never end. When I ponder these things my brain hurts. I cannot wrap my mind around it, but I know it with certainty: His Word says it clearly.

I see in His Word and His plan that He is utterly and unspeakably holy. That no sinful man can stand in His presence. The descriptions of His holy wrath and judgment against sin make me shudder in awe – I cannot fathom this kind of holiness, this consuming fire that is my righteous Creator, but I know it with certainty: His Word says it clearly.

In my Bible I find a God who loves the lowly creatures He made. That even when they outright rebelled against Him He refused to turn His back and abandon them to their chosen path of rebellion. I meet a God who would provide a shocking way to pay the penalty for sin that His holy nature demanded, as God the Son willingly wrapped Himself in limited flesh and sacrificed Himself on our behalf. What kind of loving God is this? My heart aches at even the glimmer of recognition of this kind of love, but I know it with certainty: His Word says it clearly.

I do not fully understand my God. I cannot understand or put into words exactly how God’s sovereignty and man’s choice intersect, nor can I fully grasp the weight of eternal punishment for sin that our Bibles clearly describe. I cannot completely explain why God would allow devastating natural disasters like what we are witnessing in Japan.

But there is much I know: My God doesn’t just do good things – He IS good. My God doesn’t just love us – He IS love. He is a just, righteous, merciful, holy, sovereign, omniscient, omnipresent, indescribably awesome God. Through Him all things hold together and have their being, and nothing, NOTHING, is out of His control.

I don’t understand Him. I open my hands to Him and accept with deep gratitude the gracious gifts He has given us. We do not deserve firm ground beneath our feet and safe families more than anyone else. I do not understand why He has chosen to bless us in this moment and why His plan includes such deep suffering in Japan. I do not understand. But I trust Him. I know with certainty that He is a trustworthy God.

I’m glad He is too big for me to fathom. A God small enough for me to understand… would not be God at all.

March 11th, 2011 by Kristi Stephens

{This was originally posted in March of 2009.}

As I mentioned in Lent, Fasting, and Other Outlandish Ideas, I am fairly new to the world of fasting and incorporating this spiritual discipline into my walk with the Lord.

I said in that aforementioned post that Richard Foster points out that fasting reveals what controls us. I must attest that this is true! I was thinking this morning that the I fast are often the roughest with my children. They’re irritable, I’m irritable, it’s often not a pretty sight. It’s hard not to get short with them when they’re following me around wining that they want a snack (after eating a whole bowl of something or another); I either catch myself eating a handful of something with them without thinking about it (Arg!) or somehow begrudge them that graham cracker as I hand it over!

I know that food is more than a survival necessity for me (unlike my husband, who doesn’t really care about eating. Seriously!) I eat when I’m bored, I eat when I’m frustrated, I eat when I’m lonely or sad… somehow we seem to use food to stuff down emotion. I often remark when we watch Biggest Loser that the trainers have to also be half-therapists for the amount of counseling they end up doing at the gym! Take away our comfort food and push us outside of what we feel capable of, and we lose it – all those emotions that we’ve expertly stuffed for so long are raw and exposed!

I’m realizing that, in a less dramatic way, fasting does this for me. When I get frustrated with the kids or start feeling trapped in the house, what do I do? Grab a snack. If I’m concerned about something or upset, what do I do? Grab a snack! Take away my snacks, and I get irritable! Not only am I hungry, but now I’m just stuck with my irritation and upsetting emotion with nothing to stuff it down with!

I had already been thinking about this today and then came across one of my favorite Psalms during my devotional time; this has always been a special passage to me, but it means even more with this framework of where my satisfaction and comfort is coming from.

O God, you are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you,
my body longs for you,
in a dry and weary land
where there is no water.
I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.
Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.
I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands.
My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise you.
Psalm 63:1-5

How often do I come to a place of realizing that I am empty and incapable, and instead of realizing that the hunger in my soul is for God, I stuff a cracker in my mouth? When I am emptied of myself, do I long for His the comfort of His presence, or for an oreo as my comfort food?

Obviously physically our bodies need food and water to survive. But are we eating to satisfy legitimate physical hunger, or are we masking the symptoms of spiritual longings for His presence? Only God can satisfy our soul “as with the richest of foods.”

How blessed is the one whom You choose and bring near to You
To dwell in Your courts
We will be satisfied with the goodness of Your house,
Your holy temple.
Psalm 65:4 (NASB)

*Picture from wikipedia.org