Laudable Linkage

Posted on November 16, 2024 by Barbara Harper

I hope you’ll find something of interest in this collection of good reads.

Love the Church Like Jesus, HT to Challies. “Imagine you see a bride early on the morning of her wedding day — and she is a mess.” But she’ll look very different at the wedding, and it would be wrong and foolish to tell others how awful she looked that morning. The author provides an interesting comparison to the imperfections of the church and what it will be someday, and how we look at it as Jesus does.

Why Am I So Spiritually Dry? HT to Challies. “As I crunched my way through my neighborhood and watched the clouds for rain, I realized that dry seasons can be for our good. Sometimes spiritual dry spells come with a diagnosis and sometimes they don’t, but the only way through them is through them.”

Do You Feel Overwhelmed When You Pray? 3 Reasons not to Lose Heart. “Take heart, weary prayer warrior. When our feelings overwhelm us and the trials of life threaten to drown us, we can look to the unchanging truths of the Bible for strength and hope.”

Responding When Those We Respect Disappoint Us, HT to Challies. “While we understand intellectually that every person we meet is fallen and desperately needs God’s grace, that knowledge gets tested when someone we deeply respect disappoints us.”

The Spiritual Gift Inventory I Believe In. “In many churches, it is standard practice to have Christians take some kind of a spiritual gift inventory. Through a series of questions that probe an individual’s interests, passions, and successes, these tests claim to help people discover the ways the Holy Spirit has gifted them to better love and serve his people. Much has been written about such inventories and many people have expressed a degree of skepticism about their usefulness or accuracy.”

Marriage Happy, Marriage Holy. I really don’t like the saying that marriage is to make us holy, not happy. Scripture depicts marriage as happy. Yet when two sinners live together, they are bound to have differences and irritations. Tim Challies shares some of the surprising ways marriage can help sanctify us.

God’s Good Gift of Hobbies, HT to Redeeming Productivity. Steve Lindsey discusses many valuable benefits of hobbies. .

Why I’m Grateful to Live in 2024. Though there’s a lot wrong in the world, we’re also immeasurably blessed.

The Criticized Leader, HT to Challies. Good advice even for followers.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago Ciara Dierking, who lost all four limbs after a near-fatal illness. Revive Our Hearts has two episodes of a podcast with her. You can listen to or read the transcript of Part 1: What Did I Do to Deserve This? here, and Part 2: More Grateful Than Before, here.

He makes us wait. He keeps us on purpose in the dark. He makes us walk when we want to run, sit still when we want to walk, for He has things to do in our souls that we are not interested in. –Elisabeth Elliot, Secure in the Everlasting Arms

Laudable Linkage

Posted on April 22, 2023 by Barbara Harper

Here’s my latest list of noteworthy reads found this week.

What Do You Do When You Are Spiritually Dry? HT to Challies. “Often when we feel dry, we are tempted to neglect the one thing that will satisfy our souls. Think about it: When you feel dry, what things do you want to toss out? Bible reading, prayer, fellowship. But this is the problem. If you are dry, spiritually thirsty, the worst thing you can do is go to the desert! You need to go to the fountain! God calls Himself “the fountain of living waters” (Jer 2:13). If we do not desire God, we need to go to God!”

When We Fear the Worst, HT to Challies. “Friend, I don’t know what fears and worries weigh on your soul today. But I do know that they can feel heavy—sometimes debilitatingly so. They can nag at you and trip you up and keep you discouraged and despairing. But there is a sure foundation we stand on, a God who holds us fast even while the winds and waves beat down. And he will not let us go. Not now. Not ever.”

Where Do I Find the Grace to Forgive? “Christians should be the most gracious of people. But when we forget what we’ve received from God or minimize our need for salvation, we become bill collectors. We go through life trying to collect the love, respect, appreciation, apology, or attention we feel others owe us.”

Standing on the Promises Is More Active than it Sounds. “‘Standing on the promises of Christ the Lord/…Overcoming daily with the Spirit’s sword…’ Standing on a promise requires knowledge of what has been promised. Do you have a sufficient base in Scripture for your heart to rest upon?”

The Art of the Ebenezer, HT to the Story Warren. “He looked into the past and remembered Israel’s defeat and anguish. He wanted to memorialize their repentance, prayer, fasting, fighting, and victory. But by erecting the stone of remembrance, Samuel also looked toward the future, wanting to remind the next generations to look at that stone and remember God’s faithfulness and power when the next tough trial came their way.”

The Strangeness that Stands Out, HT to the Story Warren. “If we give up essential truths of the Christian faith in order to be culturally relevant, we make ourselves eternally irrelevant. We make the church boring. The world needs a church that does more than offer an echo of our own times.”

Ron Hamilton Has Come Forth as Gold. I wrote about Ron earlier this week, and I’m sure many tributes will be written. But I enjoyed this one from Chris Anderson about ways Ron ministered to us. And he rightly includes a note about Ron’s wife, Shelly, at the end.

Recapture Your Wonder

Posted on May 20, 2019 by Barbara Harper

Do you ever find yourself in a rut? Do you approach your quiet time in God’s Word with boredom rather than excitement? Do you find yourself taking God for granted sometimes?

I’ve experienced all of these to varying degrees. So last week while reading a post on dryness in ministry, one phrase caught my attention: “recapture your wonder.” The author referred to Jeremiah 2:19: “Consider then and realize how evil and bitter it is for you when you forsake the LORD your God and have no awe of me.” But beyond the article’s scope of ministry, this applies to so much else in our lives.

Once when reading from a devotional book about the attributes of God, instead of responding in worship or praise or awe, I thought, “Yeah, I know all that already.” I was shocked by my own calloused attitude and jolted into immediately confessing it to God. I asked Him forgive me and quicken me. Then I went back though the verses, praising the Lord for each of the attributes I read there. Then I was thankful, full of praise, uplifted, inspired…and humbled.

What are some ways we can recapture that awe of God?

Praise. So often we think we have to compartmentalize our devotional time: read for so many minutes or so many chapters, and then pray according to a list of needs we have to get through. We get lost in the minutia and forget the greatness of our God. But we can pray as we read the Scriptures. We can praise God for whatever He teaches us from the Word that day as we read. We can look up passages that exalt God and soak in them for a while, like:

Therefore David blessed the Lord in the presence of all the assembly. And David said: “Blessed are you, O Lord, the God of Israel our father, forever and ever. Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all. And now we thank you, our God, and praise your glorious name. (1 Chronicles 29:10-13, ESV)

Thanksgiving. Though thanksgiving and praise overlap a bit, I think of praise as exalting God for who he is and thanksgiving as thanking Him for what He does. Like the nine lepers who forgot to thank Jesus for healing them, we take our blessings and run off, forgetting to thank the One who gave them. All through the day when we experience unexpected blessing — an idea works out, someone is unusually kind, an accident is avoided — we can thank Him right in the moment. I’ve seen a meme going around that says, “Sometimes I just look up, smile, and say, ‘I know that was you, God!'”

Remember the relationship. Our time in God’s Word is not just about completing an exercise. It’s communication with the One who made us and loves us best. Even though we sometimes have multiple books and commentaries out while we study a passage, and it feels like homework, we can ask God to help us see Him in it all. We can leave space in our quiet time for thinking over the passage.

Remember our Ebenezers. Israelites in the OT set up a lot of stones as memorials to various events in their lives. In 1 Samuel 7:12, Samuel set up a stone to commemorate God’s deliverance of Israel from the Philistines. “Ebenezer” means “stone of help.” From this story comes the line in the hymn “Come Thou Fount” which says, “Here I raise mine Ebenezer — hither by Thy help I’m come.” A few years ago I wrote a list of my own “Ebeneezers,” times in my life when I knew God had done a specific work in helping or guiding or protecting me in some way. A few years later, I added to them. So often in the Bible, God rehearses His history with His people. It’s good for us to do the same.

All the way my Savior leads me;
What have I to ask beside?
Can I doubt His tender mercy,
Who through life has been my Guide?
Heav’nly peace, divinest comfort,
Here by faith in Him to dwell!
For I know, whate’er befall me,
Jesus doeth all things well,
For I know, whate’er befall me,
Jesus doeth all things well.

~ Fanny Crosby

Remember our salvation. Although our testimony is part of our “Ebeneezers,” going back and recounting how God led us to Himself warms our hearts. “Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the LORD: look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug” (Isaiah 51:1, ESV). If God had not intervened, my life, not to mention my eternal destiny, would have been filled with sorrow.

Remember your first love. Though God commended the church in Ephesus for several things, He had against them that they had “left their first love.” Even though they were doing the right things, their hearts weren’t in it or they had the wrong focus. Other things had come between them.

Go out into nature. Looking at God’s creation — a beautiful sunset, sun rays piercing though dark clouds, ivory dogwood blossoms against a blue sky, the ocean — inspires awe of the greatness, creativity, artistry, and skill of the One who made them.

Sing. Though singing hymns and spiritual sings is something we can too easily do on automatic pilot, when we really think about what we’re singing, it touches our hearts. A former pastor used to say that we benefit from singing three ways: reading, hearing, and saying the words, providing a triple reinforcement. Sometimes just reading the words like a poem helps reawaken me to their meaning. There are some songs that are especially meaningful for me and are my go-to sings when I need reviving.

Pray. Though I use the ESV more and more, I love the KJV word “quicken,” meaning “to make alive” in some cases, in others, “to revive.” Other verses talk about reviving or turning us. A few:

“My soul cleaveth unto the dust: quicken thou me according to thy word” (Psalm 119:25, KJV).

“Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?” (Psalm 85:6, ESV).

“Turn thou us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old” (Lamentations 5:21, KJV).

“Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord. Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens” (Lamentations 3:40-41, KJV).

We can pray these Scriptures or use our own words, asking God to show us the problem and soften and revive our hearts.

Read the Bible. Though we’ve touched on this, I wanted to emphasize that it’s the Word of God that revives us. “Unless thy law had been my delights, I should then have perished in mine affliction. I will never forget thy precepts: for with them thou hast quickened me” (Psalm 119:92-93, KJV). When we’re feeling dry spiritually, we might be tempted to lay aside the Bible until we “feel” more into it. But that’s the time we need it the most. At these times I’m likely to set aside my planned reading for the day and read and pray through some psalms or some passages that have meant a lot to me.

God is so great, so vast, and so holy, yet He cares about every detail of our lives and tenderly draws us to Himself. Taking time to think about who He is and how He shows His love for us can reinspire our awe of Him.

What about you? how do you recapture your wonder of God and all He has done for you?