The Week In Words

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Welcome to The Week In Words, where we share quotes from the last week’s reading. If something you read this past week inspired you, caused you to laugh, cry, think, dream, or just resonated with you in some way, please share it with us, attributing it to its source, which can be a book, newspaper, blog, Facebook — anything that you read. More information is here.

Here are a few that stood out to me this week:

I saw this on Lisa‘s Twitter sidebar:

“When you labor to show yourself righteous so that God will accept you, you are not submitting to God’s righteousness.” -John Piper

Paul says he wants to “be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Philippians 3:9). There are whole systems built on laboring to be righteous to “gain” God’s acceptance, but even those of us who should know better tend to fall back into that mindset sometimes. I am so glad God’s righteousness is by faith.

Seen at Challies:

There can be no victory where there is no combat. —Richard Sibbes

I tend to want victory without having to expend the effort of combat, and it just doesn’t work that way.

And I hadn’t realized it t first, but these quotes might seem to be opposites. How can we expend victory by effort (or combat) if spiritual victory is by faith? Well, the first quote deals with the righteousness we need to stand before a holy God and not be condemned but rather approved, and Christ’s righteousness is the only kind that will suffice. That we receive by faith. We can’t earn it or work it up on our own. With that righteousness we can stand before a holy God without fear. But working that out into our everyday lives is what we call sanctification. Even that is accomplished by faith, and yet there are times God asks us to act on something in faith. In some of Israel’s battles in the Old Testament, God fought for them in unusual ways; in others, they had to actually take up sword and spear and shield and go to battle, yet they had no victory unless God enabled them. So even though my standing before God and his acceptance of me is by faith, in everyday battles, like, say, eating right and getting exercise, I still lean on Him for grace and strength, but I still have to expend effort: my body isn’t going to exercise itself, God isn’t going to exercise it for me, and I am not going to have any victory in weight loss without expending some effort at it. Someone once said “God will help you with your math homework, but He is not going to do it for you.”

I know many of you already know these principles, but I just felt I needed to explain further for anyone who might be confused by those two statements.

In another vein, this struck me from Warren Wiersbe’s With the Word, p. 293, commenting on Job 21, particularly Job’s “friends” trying to tell him that his suffering must be because of sin because God prospers the righteous:

If comfort and wealth are evidences of holiness, our Lord was not holy, for He had little earthly comfort and wealth, and He died a terrible death on the cross. Perhaps you need to examine your own “logic” and see if you are thinking like God or like the devil (Ps. 1:1; Matt. 16:21-28).

I don’t know how the “prosperity gospel” people miss things like that.

If you’ve read anything that particularly spoke to you that you’d like to share, please either list it in the comments below or write a post on your blog and then put the link to that post (not your general blog link) in Mr. Linky below. I do ask that only family-friendly quotes be included. I hope you’ll visit some of the other participants as well and glean some great thoughts to ponder.

Don’t forget to leave a comment, even if you don’t have any quotes to share! 🙂

Book Review: Words

Posted on May 17, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Words by Ginny Yttrup came highly recommended by Quilly, (and maybe one or two others whom I can’t remember) and her review as well as the first few paragraphs she had posted from the book drew me in immediately.

I was going to say this at the end but thought perhaps since some of you might feel the same way that I should say at the beginning that normally I would not pick up a book which has abuse a big factor because it would either make me very angry or very sad (or both), and because some books sensationalize it. But Ginny does not sensationalize: unfortunately she speaks from sad and all too real experience, yet her book is as much about healing as it is abuse.

Ten year old Kaylee has lost her words, her voice: she hasn’t been able to speak since her mom left, abandoning her to the care of the mom’s boyfriend — though you could hardly call it “care.” The boyfriend, Jack, not only neglects to take care of Kaylee, but he does unspeakable things to her. Kaylee stays because she has nowhere else to go, no resources, no help, but also she wants to be there in case her mom comes back. Meanwhile, she takes refuge in a dictionary that belonged to her mother, savoring words and their meanings and storing them up in her mind.

Sierra is a woman in her thirties who cannot forgive herself for a wayward period in her past that caused great pain to her family and the loss of her daughter’s life twelve years earlier. She tries to bury the pain that is too raw to bring to light and expresses herself in her art, but those who love her worry that she’s going to crack if she continues to keep her emotions inside. Though she has amended her ways, she has not returned to the God of her childhood.

God brings Kaylee and Sierra together in their vulnerability and works in and through each of them to bring healing through the Word, Jesus Christ.

It’s hard to believe this is Ginny’s first novel: she does a masterful job not only telling the story in a compelling but not maudlin way but also in layering various subtexts throughout the plot. The book is riveting, hard to put down, eloquent, and full of depth.

I especially appreciated one section in which Sierra realizes that oft-misapplied John 8:32 (“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”) isn’t just referring to telling personal truth, but to the fact that Jesus is the truth that heals and frees us.

This book is one of my favorites read this year, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Here is the book trailer:

And a short interview with the author:

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

If they only knew…

Posted on May 12, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Do you ever ask your kids (or even students or coworkers) to do something and then get a bit of “attitude” back? My kids rarely said, “That’s not fair!” But sometimes (not always) I did sense a bristling of indignation, especially on Saturdays. Some of them seemed to think that Saturdays were made for doing what one wanted all day without any obligations. I tried to get across that days like that are very few and far between, especially the closer you get to being an adult. A day off work (or school, in their cases) didn’t necessarily mean a day just to “play.” The Bible does say, “Six days shalt thou labor” after all, and even though a lot of us have two days off a week, one of those days is usually spent with other kinds of work: running errands, cutting grass, doing house projects, working on the car, etc. The other day for many of us is spent mostly in church, and though there is a rest time in the afternoons and then usually a relaxed evening afterward, the day has obligations all its own. They’re blessed obligations. But obligations still.

We required jobs or “chores” of our children from very early on as we taught them to put toys away and eventually expanded their skills to taking out the trash, dusting, vacuuming, unloading the dishwasher, etc. We gave them an allowance so as to help them learn to handle money, but it was only loosely tied to their jobs. We required their work mainly because that’s part of being a member of a family: everyone pitching in and pulling together to get things done. Even when the older two were in college, though I kept their school and job schedules in mind, I did ask them to take out trash and unload dishwashers when they were home, partly to keep that “pulling together as a family” principle in effect so that as they grew older and started families of their own, they’d be in the habit of contributing to the household even when the rest of life got busy.

Sometimes when I’d parcel out jobs (usually I made a list of what needed to be done and then let them take turns choosing which ones to do), one of them would ask me, “What are you going to do?”

Oh, just go to the grocery store (several times a week!), clean bathrooms (I did offer to let them clean the bathrooms if they’d rather not vacuum floors. They never took me up on it 🙂 ), cook, bake, sweep, mop, do laundry, organize, buy and mend clothes, clean the glass on the front doors, keep on top of everyone’s schedules, taxi kids around, etc. etc.

Sometimes I would just smile and shake my head and think to myself, “They just don’t understand all that’s being done for them — beyond the physical tasks there are financial and emotional expenditures, and besides all that, the love we have for them. If they did, they’d never fuss about being asked to do anything.” Not that we want “payback” as parents, but willing cheerful responses would be nice (and truly, they do respond that way many times). I figured they probably wouldn’t really understand until they were adults, maybe not until they had kids of their own.

Then it hit me just this morning: we do the same thing to God. Sometimes if I sense He wants me to do something, my first thought is, “But….I had my own plans…..I don’t have time….I don’t want to, I’d rather…..”

I had been thinking about worship earlier in the morning and the fact that we don’t worship God as we ought or as often as we should, and then remembered the vice-president of my alma mater preaching one time that we could think of “worship” as “worth-ship” — ascribing to God His worth both by what we say and what we do.

I don’t mean to compare children’s response to their parents as worship. What God has done for us is so much more than what any parent has done for any child, and kids’ attitudes towards parents should include honor but not worship.

But I did see a similar principle. We know some of what God has done for us, and we love and praise Him for it. But in some ways we have no idea of the depths of what Christ went through to secure our salvation nor even of the multitude of everyday ways He blesses and protects us. Even what we do know is plenty enough to motivate us: as the hymn says, “Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all.”

So while I took comfort in the fellowship of knowing God understands even this aspect of parenting, the greater lesson was a rebuke to me and a reminder that not only does He have a right to ask anything of me because of who He is, but in light of all He’s done for me, my response should be an obedience motivated and fueled by love.

The Week in Words

Posted on May 9, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Here are some that ministered to me this past week:

From a devotional titled The Invitation by Derick Bingham. commenting on about the Pharisees casting out the blind man healed in John 9:

The truth was that the man’s spiritual sight was now dawning. He refuted the Pharisees on their own ground but they threw him out of the synagogue. They literally excommunicated him. But Jesus found him. What a moment! Being excommunicated from a dead religion and being found by the living Saviour is no mean swap.

Sometimes the thing we lose is something dead that needs to go to make way for true spiritual sight and truth and life to dawn.

Seen at Callapidder Days:

The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s “own,” or “real” life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day; what one calls one’s “real life” is a phantom of one’s own imagination. This at least is what I see at moments of insight: but it’s hard to remember it all the time. ~ C. S. Lewis

As many times as I have been convicted of this truth, I still need to hear it. I can get so caught up in my agenda, schedule, goals, etc., that I get resentful of interruptions or other bids for my time and attention. It’s interesting to read through the New Testament looking for interruptions. Mary was interrupted from whatever she was doing to hear the news that she was to bear the Messiah. Jesus and Jairus were interrupted on their way to Jairus’s ill daughter by a woman with an issue of blood. Jairus’s daughter died in the mean time, but was raised to life — an even greater miracle. Jesus was interrupted during times of solitary prayer, travel. God works through interruptions! That doesn’t mean we don’t plan and schedule, asking for His guidance as we do, but we remain open for events He had on the agenda that we didn’t know about.

From For the mother of teenagers who aches but a bit.

“It takes all the years of making a boy into a man — to teach a woman how to be a mother.” ~ Ann Voskamp.

So true — it’s a continual learning process, and we don’t feel we’re anywhere near getting a handle on being a mother until our children are almost grown. I am thankful for God’s sufficiency in my inadequacy!

And finally, from an Elisabeth Elliot e-mail devotional:

“Pray when you feel like praying. Pray when you don’t feel like praying. Pray until you do feel like praying.”

Don’t forget to leave a comment, even if you don’t have any quotes to share! 🙂

Day of Prayer

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Today is the National Day of Prayer.

Power of Prayer

The day was long, the burden I had borne
Seemed heavier than I could longer bear,
And then it lifted – but I did not know
Some one had knelt in prayer;

Had taken me to God that very hour,
And asked the easing of the load, and He,
In infinite compassion, had stooped down
And taken it from me.

We cannot tell how often as we pray
For some bewildered one, hurt and distressed,
The answer comes, but many times those hearts
Find peace and rest.

Some one had prayed, and Faith, a reaching hand,
Took hold of God, and brought blessings down that day!
So many, many hearts have need of prayers:
Oh, let us pray!

— Author Unknown

II Chronicles 7:14: If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

The Week In Words

Posted on May 2, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Here are some that ministered to me this past week:

From a devotional titled The Invitation by Derick Bingham. commenting on John 9:1-4:

[The blind man’s] suffering was not due to sin but was in fact a conduit for showing what God can do. He was about to become a legend for the glory of God…..Your circumstance may be dire; your health may be failing, your business may be collapsing, your plans may be wrecked, your finances stretched and your cupboard bare. You may be ready to quit. Don’t. Why? Because this circumstance you are in is not because you have done wrong but because God is about to reveal His works in you.

From Women’s Ministry in the Local Church by J. Ligon Duncan and Susan Hunt:

No matter how many bowls of soup we dish up at the soup kitchen, if we do it with rebellious hearts against those God has put in authority over us, it is not pleasing to Him (p. 90).

From a friend’s Facebook:

“Every job is a self portrait of the person who did it. Autograph you work with excellence.” ~ Unknown

This is something I wish every person could imprint on their brains! And their work!

From another friend’s Facebook:

“Keep out of your life all that will keep Christ out of your mind.”

From “Meeting God Alone” in On Asking God Why by Elisabeth Elliot:

The Bible is God’s message to everybody. We deceive ourselves if we claim to want to hear his voice but neglect the primary channel through which it comes.

Don’t forget to leave a comment, even if you don’t have any quotes to share! 🙂

Doubting Easter

Posted on May 1, 2011 by Barbara Harper

A week after that first Easter, Thomas earned his nickname “Doubting Thomas” when he did not believe that Jesus had actually risen from the dead. The above video is a wonderfully written perspective of Thomas’s doubts and Jesus’s answers.

John 20: ¹⁹Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.

²⁰And when he had so said, he shewed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the LORD.

²¹Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.

²²And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost:

²³Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.

²⁴But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.

²⁵The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the LORD. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.

²⁶And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you.

²⁷Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.

²⁸And Thomas answered and said unto him, My LORD and my God.

²⁹Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

³⁰And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book:

³¹But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.

The Week In Words

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Here are some that ministered to me this past week:

From Counterintuitive Words of Comfort for the Hurting at Wendy Alsup’s Practical Theology for Women:

I am beginning to see that the primary point of long periods of silence by God during our earthly sorrows and suffering is that we show His worthiness of our belief and trust based fully on who He is and not on what things He gives us. Satan can’t believe we would trust God just based on His character and not on the blessings on earth He gives us. That’s Satan’s taunt–“They only worship you because you are good to them. They’d never worship you if you didn’t answer their prayers and take care of them like they expect.”

From a booklet titled Selfishness: From Loving Yourself to Loving Your Neighbor by Lou Priolo:

Thine own will is a corrupt and sinful will, and therefore unfit to be thy governor: What! Wilt thou choose an unjust, a wicked, an unmerciful governor that is inclined to do evil?…To prefer self will before the will of God, is, as the Jews, to prefer a murderer, Barabbas, before the Lord of life…When God is content to be your governor, prefer not such foolish sinners as yourself before Him ~ Richard Baxter, The Practical Works of Richard Baxter, Vol. 3, pp 400-401.

Very convicting and eye-opening.

And from p. 16 of the same booklet:

We are so selfish — that is, our love of self is so strong — that a love much stronger than our own is required to overpower it.

And please do comment even if you don’t have quotes to share!

Happy Resurrection Day!

Posted on April 24, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. John 11:25.

The strife is o’er, the battle done;
The victory of life is won;
The song of triumph has begun:
Alleluia!

The powers of death have done their worst;
But Christ their legions hath dispersed;
Let shouts of holy joy outburst:
Alleluia!

The three sad days are quickly sped;
He rises glorious from the dead;
All glory to our risen Head!
Alleluia!

He closed the yawning gates of hell;
The bars from heaven’s high portals fell;
Let hymns of praise His triumphs tell!
Alleluia!

Lord, by the stripes which wounded Thee,
From death’s dread sting Thy servants free,
That we may live, and sing to Thee:
Alleluia!

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

~ Author Unknown

May you have a wonderful joyous, blessed Easter remembering the resurrection of our Lord and Savior!

That Day at Calvary

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Barbara Harper

I stood one day at Calvary,
Where Jesus bled and died.
I never knew He loved me so;
For me He was crucified.
And as I stood there in my sin,
His love reached down to me;
And, oh, the shame that filled my soul,
That day at Calvary.

I knelt one day at Calvary,
My eyes were filled with tears,
To think such love I had refused
Throughout these wasted years;
And as I knelt I heard Him say,
“I did it all for thee”;
And, oh, the love that filled my soul,
That day at Calvary.

I prayed one day at Calvary,
“I’m Thine forevermore;
Forgive me, Lord, for all my sin,
My lost estate restore,”
And as I prayed, to me He gave
Salvation full and free;
And, oh, the peace that filled my soul
That day at Calvary.

~ Walt Huntley

(You can hear a snippet of this by going to this site and clicking on “That Day at Calvary.” I tried to find it on Youtube but only found a different song by the same name that was jazzier and didn’t seem to fit the words.)