Patience

We've been going over the fruits of the Spirit in church for the past little bit. Three weeks ago was peace, which I missed. But that's OK. The one I really knew I needed more than any other was patience.

So I eagerly went to church two weeks ago, ready to hear about patience. And it turned out to be a missions Sunday, no sermon. So I thought, "Aww man, I have to wait to hear about patience!" Then last week I went and it was a 4th of July sermon. No patience. Again, I couldn't stand waiting. But I guess the pastor was (unintentionally) making me be patient for the sermon on patience.

So finally, yesterday, the day arrived. The sermon I'd waited impatiently for as proof that I needed to hear it. Here are some things that stuck out to me.

First of all, one of the ways he defined patience was "a calm assurance based on the certainty that God is in control." This really struck me because I thought, If patience is trusting that God is in control, maybe my impatience is rooted in trying to maintain control. And of course I can't have assurance with myself in control...I know I'll fail! I need to grow in trusting God and giving him control. I need to rely on this so much more.

The thing with the fruits of the Spirit is that they aren't really things you can push yourself to grow in. They aren't commands we're to strive to obey. They're fruits. Fruit just grows. If we're rooted in the Holy Spirit, the fruits grow. So my lack of patience demonstrates that I'm not abiding in Christ the way I need to. It all comes back to a lack of trust and letting him have the control that he really has anyway.

Here's the other thing that stuck out to me: Romans 5:3-5. Because sometimes I feel like one of the hardest thing about patience is uncertainty. How can you be patient for something you want or hope for when you don't know if you'll ever even get it? What if you're being patient for nothing? I actually wrote something along these lines in my sermon journal before the sermon started.

So when the pastor read Romans 5:3-5, I realized that patience yields good things even if we don't get what we're waiting for. Troubles produce patience, which produces character, which produces hope. I want a strong character. I want to be full of hope. So if I wait patiently for something I never attain, I still come out a winner.

Rejection

I've had my fair share of rejection in my life. Maybe because I've always been so bluntly honest. (My name does mean Truthful.) Whenever I liked a guy, I always ended up telling him, usually to find out that he just saw me as a "sister." And despite the fact that a couple of these guys even said things like "any guy would be nuts not to like you," I guess they identified themselves as nuts...because they didn't reciprocate my feelings.

But this never really got me down longterm. Of course, the sister line was heartbreaking in the moment, but it never made me feel more guarded in the future. My policy has always been to just be honest. If nothing else, it alleviates the game playing, the wondering, the ambiguity. Even the rejection provided a closure for me, a chance to know "nope, this isn't happening, so I can start to get over this now."

But things are different now. I realized recently that I'm much more guarded than I used to be. The rejection of the end of a marriage is far different than telling the guy who sits next to you in chapel that you're into him and having him say he's not into you. Even though in the case of my marriage, I was ready for it to be over, whereas with chapel-guy I didn't want to hear his rejection...it's still somehow harder this time.

Because when I got married I thought that was it. I was playing for keeps. This wasn't something that would end in rejection. This was for life. Or so I thought. To know that even my supposed life-long relationship ended in rejection left me a little more guarded. A little more jaded. A little more hopeless. Could I ever find a guy who likes me for me...even when the butterflies fade? (And yes, Bachelor and Bachelorette contestants, butterflies fade. Sorry to be the one to burst your bubble. No one lives happily ever after all the time.)

Most of this post-marriage period has been so good for me. So healing. Such a wonderful journey of empowerment and self-discovery. A journey toward a wholeness that I never had before. But then there's this part. This part that leaves me a little paralyzed, a little more fearful. A little less honest-ol'-Ali and a little more reserved, guarded Ali. It's a wound that may never fully heal.

But this is where I've been relishing: Ephesians 1 says that God chose me. In love he predestined me to be adopted. And get this—not just for my sake but for his pleasure. God delighted in me so much that he wanted to choose me. There will never be any rejection from God, of that I can be sure.

The End

Here's something that's captured my attention: John 11:4. Upon hearing that his friend Lazarus is sick, Jesus tells his disciples, "This sickness will not end in death."

The key word being end. Because it does result in death, for a few days.

And most of the time, death is the end. So what the disciples understood, then, was probably more like, "Lazarus won't die." You've got to wonder what the disciples thought, then, when Jesus later tells then Lazarus is dead. What did that do to their faith? Did they think he was a fraud? Did they think he just didn't really know what was going to happen? He told them he was going there to wake Lazarus up, but the sleeping metaphor had already confused them. And Thomas said they should go die with him...so perhaps they just thought death was a metaphor. But what about when they got to Bethany and found out he really was dead? What was going on in their heads?

Well, we just don't know. But I can tell you that trials much less final than death often feel like the end of the world to me. So often I lose sight of hope, of the future, of God's promises. So often I don't see how they could possibly be true. How could it possibly be true that Lazarus' sickness wouldn't end in death, when here he was, dead? How could it be that God is with me when sometimes, I just don't feel like he is? How can God really be victorious over Satan when sometimes his temptations reign so strongly in my life? How can God make the impossible possible when it really feels like the end of the story?

Lazarus' story reminds us that sometimes, what we think is the end is only the middle of the story. And the real end? Just what I recently reflected on in Philippians 3: "Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, Christ Jesus our Lord."

This trial, this struggle, this temptation: it's not the end. It's just the middle of a story with a fabulous, glorious ending, already written by the God of impossibilities.

Finishing Well

Lately I've been thinking about finishing well in the faith. I spent June reflecting on Philippians 3 and things like this stuck out to me: "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow to attain the resurrection from the dead."

And this one: "I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

And then I launched into Ephesians yesterday and was struck by the fact that God has given me "every spiritual blessing."

After reflecting on that one, I kept thinking of the song "Give Me Jesus" by Fernando Ortega. I downloaded it and have been listening to it a lot.

So often my mind is consumed by "earthly things" as Philippians 3 calls them. But when it comes down to it, Jesus is every spiritual blessing I need. I am so complete in him. I just want to run toward him, to know him, to "gain Christ and be found in him." To be more like him. To reflect him to everyone around me.

I don't mean to sound cheesy. I'm just more in love with Jesus than ever. The leader of my DivorceCare group talked about how post-divorce was such a rich, sweet time for her faith...and that is so true for me, too.

Tonight I was listening to "Untitled Hymn (Come to Jesus)" by Chris Rice, and aside from the contradiction in the title (I never understood how he can call it untitled and then put a title in parentheses), I was near tears as he sang the last verse:

And with your final heartbeat

Kiss the world goodbye,

And go in peace, and laugh on glory's side

And fly to Jesus

Fly to Jesus

Fly to Jesus and live

It made me think of this assignment I had in college to write a biography about a Christian role model. The rule was they had to be dead or "close to dead" so that we knew they finished well.

This made me think about Asa (I know, my mind is quite the path to follow), a king in the Bible (1 Kings 15; 2 Chronicles 14) who loved and honored God almost his whole life. The Bible says his heart was "fully committed to the Lord all his life."

Except then in the 36th year of his reign, a battle is looming and he makes a treaty with another king instead of relying on God. In his 39th year he falls ill and the Bible says he did not seek help from the Lord, but only from his physicians. Two years later, he was dead. A lifetime of following God. 5 years of turning aside, and that's how he went out. Asa didn't finish well.

But someday on my deathbed, whether that's tomorrow or in 70 years, I want to be singing "Just give me Jesus." I want to fly to Jesus. I want to always be as in love with him as I am right this moment. And in between now and then, I don't want to let anything distract me from loving and honoring him.

Wildfire

Ever since High Park Fire started, I've been praying for it. I'm so excited to be able to say that it is now 100% contained, three weeks after it started. What an amazing accomplishment for the firefighters who tirelessly worked on it.

As I've been praying for it, I've been thinking about what lessons the fire carries with it. I reflected on James 3 one morning and it took on new meaning as I was seeing firsthand the devastation a wildfire can cause. The fact that my words can have that kind of devastating impact? Convicting.

But the thing that has really stuck with me is that rain is usually used as a metaphor for troubles. Michael W. Smith sang of the death of a loved one when he sang, "Into every life a little rain must fall, and losing one you love is like a storm." And people speak of troublesome times by saying things like, "when it rains, it pours."

And yet here I was, just praying for rain. Praying hard. On my hands and knees, begging God to send rain. And I still am - the High Park Fire may be fully contained but others still rage...and rain will help keep new fires from starting.

It finally started raining this week, during my church's VBS. Normally churches pray that it won't rain during VBS. But no one was praying that at my church this week. And when the rain interfered with our programming, the children's director thanked God for the rain and noted it was no big deal to rearrange our plans...keep the rain coming. Kids, volunteers, were dancing in the rain, standing out in it and catching it on their tongues, basking in the glory of rain. We all let out a cheer when one person got a phone alert about a flash flood warning. I'd never seen a reaction like that to rain before. Especially rain that happens during VBS.

I've always liked rain. I don't even own an umbrella because I like getting wet in the rain. But I've never realized how needed it was until now.

It kinda snuck up on me. Maybe the fire officials and such were more aware of the impending danger of our dry state. But me? I knew we hadn't gotten as much snow this winter, I guess. But my sprinkler's been keeping my lawn nice and green, my showers have been plentiful...so it just didn't feel "droughty" to me.

And then High Park Fire started. And soon others. Some by things as simple as a tire rim falling off a car and causing sparks to fly on the road. A tire rim. That's how dry it is.

And in all this I realized...if rain is a metaphor for troubles, we desperately need them. We can so easily become complacent in our faith when there's no rain falling. This was Satan's premise for testing Job. Satan believed that it was too easy for Job to worship God - everything was going well for him.

But the fact is, if we don't have troubles to test our faith, our faith becomes as dry as a forest of beetle-killed trees. And the damage that can happen when a little spark starts will destroy lives. We need the rain to keep us humble and prevent much greater destruction.

So whether you're experiencing rain in your life right now or you do in the future, remember how valuable that rain is. It might just be preventing devastation to your faith that is so great, you couldn't even imagine the damage.

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance." - James 1:2-3

"I pray for rain to come,
And wash away what has made me numb.
I pray for a raging storm to drown the sin in me.
And the rain comes in the nick of time,
I swallow hard 'cuz my throat's been dry.
The rain comes beating on my skin,
'til I'm washed away, nothing left within,
When your rain comes.
Your rain comes."

- PFR

Prayer

I've got to be honest. I'm feeling a bit discouraged by prayer right now.

You see, the High Park Fire has been torching tens of thousands of acres west of Fort Collins for over two weeks now. And ever since it started, I've been praying fervently for it. Not half-hearted prayers. Bold prayers. Prayers backed in faith that God can answer them. Prayers that God would drench our state. That he'd lower the temps and the wind, raise the humidity, and pour forth rain. I've been praying Scriptures about rain. Reading about Elijah and the cloud the size of a fist that brought forth a crazy amount of rain in a land that hadn't seen it for three years, and envisioning that as I prayed it for my state.

And yet the past week has been marked by record-breaking temperatures. So far in June, the area where the fire is has received .06 inches of rain. Total. Containment on Friday dropped by 15%.

I've been praying for the firefighters for strength. Then I read that one was medavac'ed on Friday due to dehydration. I've been praying for homes to be spared. 57 more homes burned this weekend.

I've been praying that God would prevent more fires from starting. This weekend, new fires began to pop up all over the state.

There've been other fires nearby. The one near Carter Lake last summer. Hewlett Gulch just a month or so ago, just north of where High Park is. And I never really followed those too closely, just whatever I read on Facebook. But somehow this one struck my heart from the very beginning, when I first heard about it and it was just 50 acres. With this fire, I felt compelled to follow it, and to pray.

So it's hard not to feel like my prayers have not only been ineffective, but like God is just doing the opposite of what I ask. It's hard to keep faith when the first fire I pray regularly for turns into the 2nd largest fire in Colorado state history. It's like when you tune into a basketball game halfway through and learn that your team has been winning the whole game, but as soon as you start to watch they start losing. And even though you know that it couldn't have had anything to do with the fact that you were watching, it's hard not to feel like you're a curse.

Only this isn't as frivolous as some basketball game. This is people's homes, even a life. And I know that a LOT of people have been praying. It's hard not to feel like God isn't listening to any of us.

I was just about to log into Blogger to write this blog when I read this Tweet. "RAIN!!!! RT @COEmergency its beginning to rain out off CR74E and Boy Scout Road (68C)"

It's 16 days in, but it's a glimmer of hope. A glimmer that God is listening. That somehow he will work good from this. And that he is in control.

Promise

This evening as I drove home from work, I thought through all the things I need to accomplish within the next week. And I wondered if it was humanly possible. I began to feel like I was drowning. Like all the organized planning in the world won't be enough to get me through this.

And then I noticed that there in the sky in front of me was a full, beautiful rainbow. And as I sat at the red light, admiring this rainbow, I prayed, "OK...so you promised not to flood the world again...can you promise not to flood my life?"

Well, I don't know if that's the new meaning of the rainbow, but I do know one thing. That rainbow was a reminder to me that I'm not in this alone. It's not a matter if it's "humanly" possible to do everything I need to do. With God, all things are possible. And as sure as the sun is there even when it's raining, God's there even when I feel flooded—causing a beautiful rainbow to shine out of my life.

Numb

This blog is going to be pretty personal. But hey, I tell it like it is.

Growing up, I was always a pretty emotional person. Just ask my high school best friend, Scott. He'll vouch for me. So would Jane, my college roommate.

And somewhere in the last 6 years, that changed. It was a gradual process, so much so that I didn't notice it happening until people close to me started saying they wished I'd share my feelings more. It baffled me when they said that. Me? Not sharing my feelings? That's like saying I don't eat enough cookies. (Don't worry, I do.)

But when I took a closer look, I realized they were right. And I realized why. My marriage was painful for a long time. And I'm not putting all that blame on my ex, I'm just saying it was hard. And at some point I developed the ability to become numb to it. I'd never had the ability to numb my emotions before, but I guess when you hurt enough it turns into a callous. So it wasn't that I wasn't sharing my feelings...it was that I wasn't feeling them very often in the first place.

But you know how in the movie Click, when he starts fast forwarding through the negative things like fights with his wife and his kids annoying him, he finds that the remote is automatically skipping times with his wife and kids? Even the good times? That's kind of what happened. When I learned to become numb in the area of my marriage, I didn't just become numb to the pain. I became numb to the relationship. I think that's one reason the divorce process was so much easier for me than it is for most people. Someone in the video at my Divorce Care class said, "You only grieve for the things you care about." And that summed it up for me. I wasn't grieving because I didn't care anymore.

That's not to say I'd given up or stopped loving my husband during the marriage. I was doing what I could to fight for us. It's just that I was doing it numbly. Like drinking a glass of water when your mouth is still numb from the dentist. You can get the water into your stomach, but you haven't enjoyed the refreshment of the cool water.

Anyway, I came to this realization several months ago, it's not new to me now. What is new is that I started to see this habit of numbness creeping up again when something was starting to feel painful. Only it wasn't painful enough yet to become calloused, so I couldn't really numb it. But I found myself subconsciously transferring my emotion of pain and disappointment to anger. Because anger didn't feel quite as bad. So if I could make myself feel that instead, that would be an improvement.

Fortunately, I recognized this in myself within a couple of days. And I'm giving it to God and asking him to help me be emotionally healthy. Not oversensitive, but not numb, either. Because I don't want to become so emotionally numb that I can't feel joy anymore.

Individualized Faith

I've blogged before about how I think Jeremiah 29:11 is overused and more importantly, mis-used. And one thing I didn't really get into in that blog that is a common misuse of a lot of verses is the way we individualize things.

Over and over the church is addressed as a body. It begins in the Old Testament with the covenant with the nation of Israel. It continues with Jesus' teachings to the masses. And Paul's letters are mostly written to entire church bodies, rather than individuals. If the English language had a differentiation between the singular and plural "you," we'd probably recognize this more easily.

But there's only one form of "you," so we easily take verses like Jeremiah 29:11 personally, as if each of us is the only one that matters. A verse that was meant to bring ultimate hope to a nation is used to say God is going to give us as individuals hope and a future. But what we don't consider is that for most of the people who heard that message from Jeremiah, there was no personal hope, no personal future other than being in exile. 70 more years, they had in store. Which meant most of them died before this "hope and a future" ever came to light. But that was OK. Because it wasn't about some individual 40 year-old guy who'd die a captive. It was about God's redemptive plan for his people.

The patriarchs got it. Hebrews 11 lists men and women of faith and says in verse 13: "All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth."

They obeyed God because they knew it wasn't about them. God's promises to them weren't about what they as individuals would get. It was about God's grand plan for the world. Later in Hebrews 11:39-40, it says, "These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised.  God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect."

It's not about you. It's not about me. It's not even about the church body that exists today. It's about everyone who calls God their Father, those who have passed on and those who will succeed us.

It's not that faith isn't personal. It is. I'm so thankful that I can come before God as an individual, with all of my weaknesses and baggage that I don't want anyone else to see.

It's just that there's so much more to it than that. Limiting our view of God's plan to just our own lives is like watching one minute of the Star Wars movies and thinking you've seen the whole thing. (Confession: I did fall asleep numerous times so I can't say I've seen the whole thing. But, it being an iconic and well-loved series, I thought it was an apt metaphor.)

Now I don't mean to come across as condescending. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I am thinking only of myself at least 90% of the time. When I read the Bible, or just in general, it's all about me. But I think that's a problem.

I've also been guilty of complaining about the church. (Though I've also said nice things about the body of Christ.) And with the viral video "Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus," fuel has only been added the fire of this anti-church yet pro-Jesus subculture. Believe me, I've been there. But recently some lyrics in the song "The Church" by Derek Webb really struck me.

'Cause I haven't come for only you

But for my people to pursue

And you cannot care for me

With no regard for her

If you love me you must love the church

Jesus helped individuals. He took care of individual needs like restoring sight to the blind or making the lame walk. And he still does that. But his message of love wasn't just for one person. It's often said that, "If you were the only sinner in the world, Jesus still would've died for you." And maybe that's true. Maybe he would've. But the fact is, I'm not the only sinner in the world. Jesus died for a lot of people. Everyone, as it turns out.

And if I'm really capturing the beat of my heart, I'm recognizing that faith isn't about ME. It's about his great love for the whole world. And if I get to be a part of that plan, that's amazing! Because what we are capable of doing for God is infinitely greater than what you+you+you+me are capable of doing for God on our own.

Waiting

Lately I've noticed that I'm not a very patient person. It's not that patience is a recent struggle, just a recent conviction. Waiting has never been my forte.

So this morning I decided to find a verse in the Psalms about waiting on the Lord and reflect on it. And I found this in Psalm 37:34: "Wait for the Lord, and keep his way."

Now, as I started reflecting I was just thinking about wanting to learn to be patient for things I want to happen in my life. I wanted to think about waiting on God's timing for those things.

But God showed me something as I thought about that verse. He showed me that waiting for him doesn't mean setting my eyes on what I want and waiting for him to give it to me. It means just looking to him and seeing what he will do in my life. And keeping his way as I wait. Without my hidden agenda. Otherwise I'm not really waiting for him; I'm waiting for whatever is on my list.

And I realized something else, too. There have been times in my life when I've been waiting on God's timing for my agenda and what he ends up giving me isn't my agenda at all. It's something much better than what I thought of. If God isn't planning what I hope for, it's because he's planning something that's ultimately so much better.

Do I have it all figured out? Not remotely. Somehow I still have to figure out to let go of the agenda I cling so tightly to, to truly give it to God and wait for him, not for him to give me what I want.