In the comments on Monday, my dear friend Carol Boley said: It is only in the desert that we learn how precious the water really is. While in our humanity we would never choose to go there, good things happen in the desert.
I think that, for those of us who are sitting in the desert right now, it’s good that we’re feeling the dryness. It signals that we are alive and healthy and longing for God. I mean, imagine it – if you were distant from God and you didn’t miss Him. That is honestly the worst place to be.
Over the next several months, I am going to be working on some of the spiritual disciplines – not out of obligation, but out of a thirst to know God and his Word better. If it’s something you would like to journey with me on, I would love to have you. (I’m not leading this per say. I just would love to have some traveling partners.) I’m going to be exploring the disciplines using two different books: Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster and Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life by Donald S. Whitney (I’ve included the Amazon Link if you’re interested.) I’m hoping for a week a month on the blog we can talk about that month’s discipline and how it’s lived out in your and my life. Later this month I’ll be looking at Reading God’s Word as my spiritual discipline of the month.
Thanks for hanging with me this week and being an encouragement. I’m blessed by each and every on of you.
Thanks to all of you who have sent notes of love, grace and encouragement. My inbox has never been so full of love and peace. I will get back to each of you soon.
Last night, as I was sitting down to do my blog, I found myself in the doing mode. “I need to write my blog post because I said I was going to write my blog post…” But I was tired after a long day of traveling and speaking and meeting some other needs. Then I thought to myself that all of you, who have written such great words of love and peace, would extend that to me as I laid down last night, read Jesus Calling, and rested. Thanks for the grace.
When it comes to the blog, I can skip a day and none of us are the worse for it. (Actually, I gave you the gift of one less email to open. You’re welcome.)But when it comes to digging in with my relationship with God, “skipping” is how I found myself in the desert place.
No one heads for the desert. What does happen is we lose the things that point us to God and that is just where we end up. There are a few things that, when I’m missing them, I start to wander in the sand:
Bible Study: With my job, it’s hard to find a day and a time to do a proper Bible study (you know, the kind with Beth Moore and coffee cake…) But as I was sitting here in my own little sand pit, a couple of friends who live in other parts of the country asked me if I wanted to join their study via Skype. I love God’s timing. Find something that works for you and then make it work. I’ve had studies on my lunch hour at work, during play group at my house, or even (gasp) at another local church while a sainted woman taught my kids science when I was a homeschooler. (Actually, I would have cleaned the churches toilets while some person besides me taught science, but I digress.)
Prayer: Start small if you’re in the desert place. Have other people pray for you to start praying more. (It really does work.) Be gentle with yourself and ask God to help you want to want to pray. Do short 15 second prayers of love and thanksgiving. Be gentle.
Quiet time: I asked one of my employees, Bronwyn, what is the hardest thing to do when she is in the desert place. I love how in her discussing her quiet time struggles, she compares her relationship with God to her relationships with others: “OK first to admit when I am alone, especially in the early morning when the house is still asleep I want to just sit quietly and drink my coffee. Just a vegetated like state soaking in nothing, enjoying stillness and calm; perfect time to talk to God, right? I should want to soak Him in, diving into His word and letting Him seep into all of me….
All this can sound crazy; you may think I am nuts…but like any relationship my relationship with God can falter too. I am never a perfect wife, mother, friend or daughter. They all take work. It requires I give, give more than I want to at times. It requires I do things I may not feel like doing at that moment. Quiet mornings sipping coffee alone without distraction or hurry are great. I love those times. Reading a great book, getting lost in the story of the characters is fun and a much needed break at times. But when they outweigh the times I spend with God, in His word, learning and studying more about Him and who He wants me to be and what he wants me to do is not a good balance. It is not putting Him first, when it comes down to it that is all he has asked me to do, put Him first.”
I’ve found that for prayer, quiet time, and studying my Bible on my own, having a spot – a cozy chair or in the other three seasons of the year, a sunny lounge chair in the back yard – helps greatly settle my mind and focus my attention on Him.
Where do you do those thing that connect you with God? Do you have a chair, a desk, a kitchen table? Where is your place to connect with Him?
This desert place isn’t new to me. I’m a frequent visitor. I know how it feels, I know how it smells, and most of all, I remember the way to get here.
Most of the times I find myself back in the dryness of the desert because I’ve let the world tell me that it’s where I belong. It starts innocently enough. I do something with some value, with some meaning, and when someone says, “Hey, good job!” I enjoy the hit. Yep, some people are addicted to drink and drugs, but for me? Approval and food are my drugs of choice most days.
So someone says something nice, and I want more. I want to hear what I do and how I do it matter. I start to act in ways that get me that approval and start to seek it out. And for a while the whole system seems to be working. I do good stuff, people say good stuff, and then I do more good stuff. And it works. Until it doesn’t.
Because the world stops cheering and reminds you pretty quickly about everything that isn’t so OK about you. The world has a long memory about your past, reminding you about all your failures and false starts. Maybe you were an addict, or lost your temper with your kids. Maybe you weren’t the kind of wife you wanted to be, or maybe there were people who you’ve hurt. The world is in the remembering business, but not really in the grace business.
That’s why we need to remind ourselves, and those around us, how God sees us. No matter where I’ve been or where I am today. Whether I’m in my addction or out of it. Whether I’ve loved my neighbor or pretended not to be home when they came knocking. God is the one who is in the grace business, and I need to remember what I look like to Him. Especially when I’m sitting in the middle of the desert.
Here are a couple of things that help me:
Saturate myself with words of grace.Like the video, (Jason Gray – Remind Me Who I Am) I am God’s beloved. God leads with grace. Hang out with people who speak grace. If you currently hang out with people who use God’s word to hit you over the head, may I humbly suggest you find some new friends. Listen to music that deals with grace. Spend some time with kids (ones you like,) and remember this is how God sees you.
Read about how God sees you. When I feel like God’s words are bouncing off my chest instead of penetrating my heart, I pull our Jesus Calling by Sarah Young (you can find it here at ChristianBooks.com ). This book speaks grace over me and talks to me as if God were siting directly across from me.
When you are in the desert place, how do you remind yourself of God’s abundant love, even when you don’t feel it.
Isaiah 43:19 See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.
It’s been a long few months.
It all started with a busy schedule. A busy, “Look how many places want me to speak!” kind of schedule plus a book deadline (neither of these things were a surprise), that were both great for the ego (amazing actually…). But as you well know, the ego is a tricky thing. You can be busy doing God’s work, all the while, convincing yourself that working for Him and being with Him are the same things.
So, take some busy, and then throw in:
not spending enough time with God
a strained relationship with one of my kids
my mom’s cancer
and (just for fun) whooping cough
This? Right here? Is the perfect Food Network recipe for a full blown meltdown.
OK – so I haven’t taken to sitting in a corner and drooling into a tin cup, but I have sat in the parking lot of many a speaking engagement and cried and cried for one reason and one reason only: I felt like a fraud.
For the past four months, I’ve felt so raw and exhausted that I swing wildly between two extremes: either I can’t crack a Bible without going into a full-on ugly cry or the words on the page feel like they are written to someone else – in a foreign language – in invisible ink. Either I can’t sit through a worship service without having complete strangers come up to me and ask if there is anything they can do. (That is the complete strangers who aren’t avoiding my gaze because who wants to interact with the crazy woman…) Or I just sit there, listening to the words of the music and the preacher thinking, “OK, that may work in theory, but not in my life, apparently.”
How are you supposed to teach God’s Word when you feel like you will either fall apart on stage or that every encounter you’ve had with God recently felt dry, formal, and awkward. (At this point, all you leaders who have me booked to speak at your event are carefully consulting your contracts on how to get out of having this wacko speak at your event. Sorry – you’re kinda stuck with me. But don’t worry. I’ll pull myself together before leaving the parking lot…)
This is not a fun place to be in – the desert place. Yes – it’s true – we all spend some time there. Those times when everything feels wrong and out of sorts. Those times when picking up your Bible feels like the hardest thing you will ever do. Those times when you wonder if God is really there, and if so, why isn’t He doing some of the talking.
I’m starting to see my way clear. I’ve been here before. It feels like it should be so easy: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” John 7:37-38 I’ve flowed before. Why not now?
I know what I have to do. I’ve got to do the things I don’t feel like doing. All week I’ll be talking about where I am and what I’m doing. I hope you’ll come with me – even if you’re not in that dry place, that desert place right now, let me tell you something – it could be just around the corner. Right?
So now that I’ve told you where I am, my question is – have you been there? Have you been to the place where maybe you are in ministry, or your ministry is your home, and you feel like your relationship with God is like your best friend from high school – you have great memories, but you haven’t had a good talk in a long while. Have you been in the desert place?
Tell me about that time – what were the symptoms? When we all know that we all know we go through it, we don’t have to put on our church face or our Bible Study Lady face. We can just sit in the desert, love on each other, offer up some tea, and guide each other out. So tell me about your desert.
My friend Robin sent this to me. She has seen this several times around the Internet , but it was a first for me – and I love it.
I will not apologize for trying to keep Christmas well-planned. But that ‘s because I want to do my part to experience the Peace that passes understanding. Prayer, peace, and a little planning.
I’ve printed it out and put it in my holiday binder.
Christmas- 1 Corinthians 13 Style
If I decorate my house perfectly with plaid bows, strands of twinkling lights, and shiny glass balls but do not show love to my family, I’m just another decorator.
If I slave away in the kitchen, baking dozens of Christmas cookies, preparing gourmet meals,
and arranging a beautifully adorned table at mealtime but do not show love to my family, I’m just another cook.
If I work at the soup kitchen, carol in the nursing home, and give all that I have to charity but do not show love to my family, it profits me nothing.
If I trim the spruce with shimmering angels and crocheted snowflakes, attend a myriad of holiday parties, and sing in the choir’s cantata but do not focus on Christ, I have missed the point.
Love stops the cooking to hug the child.
Love sets aside the decorating to kiss the husband.
Love is kind, though harried and tired.
Love doesn’t envy another’s home that has coordinated Christmas china and table linens.
Love doesn’t yell at the kids to get out of the way.
Love doesn’t give only to those who are able to give in return but rejoices in giving to those who can’t.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures allthings. Love never fails.
Video games will break, pearl necklaces will be lost, golf clubs will rust. But giving the gift of love will endure.
In the comments on Monday, my dear friend Carol Boley said: It is only in the desert that we learn how precious the water really is. While in our humanity we would never choose to go there, good things happen in the desert.
