The Lost and Found

Six days before the Passover, Jesus arrived at Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Here a dinner was given in Jesus' honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus' feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, "Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year's wages," He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.

"Leave her alone," Jesus replied. "It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”

-          John 12:1-8

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More than ever I feel like my heart resonates with this, with her, with Him. 

I can imagine what this night was like for her.  I can imagine her heart racing as she knew He would be coming to visit with them again – her close friend.  She had in the past sat expectant at His feet one night as she waited to hear His heart’s outpour and was accused by her sister for not working.  She had wept at His feet on another occasion as her brother had died four days before yet was resurrected by His healing hand.  I can imagine her pacing and preparing and waiting and wishing because this man who was coming to sit in their home once again was the promise maker and promise keeper that had set her free.  More than anyone else in the world, He understood her. And she had seen His very words speak life where there was none. She knew He was coming and she didn’t know when He would come again.  She knew the room would be full of people, and that there would be cooking to be done and people to be tended to.  Hospitality should have been at the forefront of her mind – a table full of men to be served. 

But she couldn’t.  This was about more than that. 

He arrived and He sat and she waited and she knew all that she had to give.  With a dinner party in full swing, the appropriate thing would be for her to be busy about the work of a woman.  But more than the appropriate circumstance, she didn’t know when this moment – this hour – would arrive again.  She grabbed a basin and her most expensive possession, walked to the One who had walked on water and poured out her life’s contents over the feet of her Messiah.  

In a moment where she knew she would be questioned, and she knew she was acting out of her place, she knew that nothing mattered more than Him.  Mary understood that there is no better time and place than here and now to give Him all she had. She knew that He could see her heart, and that in a room full of people who wouldn’t understand and with glares blaring at her back, He was all that mattered.  With tears filling with confusion mixed with trust and loss mixed with love and an abundance of the human soul that can only be described as the heart of worship - she washed His feet.   

And I can’t help but feel like I know her heartache.

The heart break found in loving such a relentless God is something I so struggle to articulate into words.  I’m drawing closer to Him now than ever, and the more that I do the more I see that this journey is far from easy.  It will never be comfortable or simple or painless.  The more I have tried to seek His face over the last few months the more I am finding Him walk me through the excruciating process of showing me parts of my heart that are not yet surrendered to Him.  In friendships, relationships, finances, my education, my career, my everything – it has all been high value perfume set on high shelves.  

It is so easy to live a day to day life that is surrendered to Him, when minimal things come up and it is easy to make a choice to live a Christian life. But God is after so much more than the surface of our lives and our affections, and we are well aware that there is much more to who we are than that.  Choosing to go to church on a Sunday morning rather than sleeping in can easily put my conscience at ease in feeling as though my life is centered on Him, but He is bringing me through this bare and raw season of showing me how little trust those surface sacrifices actually display.  Mary could have chosen to wash Jesus’ feet with soap, water and tears and it still would have appeared that she was desperately trying to serve Him and honor Him. But what sacrifice would that show when perfume was sitting feet away and she chose to sacrifice the lesser?  I’m so thankful that God draws us into a love that is so much deeper and more extravagant than that. A love that sent His only son to die for us and a love that calls us to see that He is all we need.

For years I’ve been coming to Him, with soap and water and tears aplenty. With time given in church and at bible studies, tithes donated, worship music sung and daily devotionals… I have felt like I was seeking Him. And I was; there is value in that.  But little did I realize how much I was keeping from Him, and little did I think that He would do when I got on my face and prayed a prayer months ago asking Him to shatter the parts of me that I was not completely giving to Him. What did those things I was doing mean if it was out of obligation and not out of love – out of choosing Him when it was easy? When it comes to laying people and things and dreams that I greatly treasure at His feet with full knowledge that this is the best I have and what I value the most and that after I give it to Him, it will be gone – there is no greater heartache and no greater healing. No greater collision of spirit and flesh.

But I wouldn’t trade this season and these moments for the world.  Because though my flesh clings on with clenched fists to these treasures that I’ve gathered and kept tucked away, far from surrender, there is no greater joy than to pour out this blessing on the Lord. Despite the strange looks and the questions and the accusations that the world has emptied, I know that my faith and my Advocate will stand and call it worship. There is really nothing more beautiful and intimate than these moments where I can look at Him and declare that I choose Him.  That I love Him and desire Him above them, above all, above myself. That I trust wholeheartedly that His love is greater still and His ways are higher. 

We can trust that it is here on our knees that He will meet us.  I know He is here and I know that He is bigger than it all – and my heart is overflowing with thanks. It is here in full surrender, completely self-lost that He will be our anchor and our hope. And it is in the giving up control that His sovereignty shines brightest.  I know this is the place that we find abundant life and abundant joy – the promise keeper is for you, He knows you, and He has already placed a crown of victory on your head. Be seeking Him and drawing ever-closer to His heart. In the process of losing it all for Him is when we gain what matters most. Redemption is a greater gift than we could have ever dreamed.  Our worldly sacrifices yield heavenly reward from a Father who is the giver of all good things, and the blessing to be found simply in choosing Him is more than enough to be worth the cost.  

We bring Him shattered pieces from a broken world and He makes us perfect. He is worthy. He is Holy. He is trustworthy. He is faithful. He is Love.

 

O God, you are my God,

I earnestly seek you;

my soul thirsts for you, 

my body longs for you,

in a dry and weary land

where there is not 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

Bind My Wandering Heart to Thee

I call to you, Lord, come quickly to me;
    hear me when I call to you.
 May my prayer be set before you like incense;
    may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice.- Psalm 141:1-2

Every morning is the same.

Coffee is brewed. Music fills thick the atmosphere. The sun rises. My bible opened wide before me and prayers set surrendered at His feet. I wait.

I wait.

Time ticks by quickly as I sit in His presence and it is sweet and refreshing.  I bask in His light until the very last moment and then I get on with whatever is planned for that morning.  I leave pleas and promise-filled scripture jotted down on lined paper and know that these words will be manifested one day into what I’m hoping and believing for.  

That leads into running off to work, then to church, then to rushed coffee with friends spent trying to reassure those close to me that I’m trying to make time for them.  The day is gone before I even knew it began. I hurry home trying to do laundry and straighten up whatever belongings were frantically thrown in the morning frenzy to get ready and out the door, then try to catch a few moments of peace within the covers of a good book or few late night texts to friends touching bases and sharing stories. I toss and turn trying to sleep but the rest never comes and my eyelids tire of being forced shut. My mind raises with the things that didn’t get done and the growing to-do list that never gets shorter, with the conversations that should or shouldn’t have happened and the tortured taunt of should-of-could-of-would-of banter with past. Before I even realize I’m falling asleep my alarm blares early, and the snooze buttons and alarm settings sit cozily next to a few statistics from my app that like to remind me that for the last 4 months that I’ve been using it I only get an inviting average of 5 hours and 48 minutes of sleep a night.

And I’m worn. But I throw the covers off.  Coffee is brewed. Music fills thick the atmosphere. The sun rises. My bible is opened wide before me and I set prayers surredered at His feet. I wait.

My God, my God, my heart aches for you.

There is nothing quite like this season that I have been in.  There are no words to well articulate the past few months of my life, but just to say that I have been here - waiting.  Waiting at His feet.  And there has been no other time in my life that God has made it quite so apparent that without Him – I am nothing.  Without His direction and His presence, my soul withers.  I have spent months now just pressing into His promises and seeking His will.  I’ve spent months drawing close to His heart and searching for that still, small voice.  This has been a journey for a years now, yes, but the last few months of my life have been unmoving.  

Have you ever groped around blindly in a room, searching for the light? The Lord has made it so clear to me just how blind we are. I often feel so lost within what I’m doing, letting my flesh intertwine and choke out the soft-spoken and restful reassurances of His love.  I can get so caught up in over thinking and planning that I forget about the sovereignty of His hand.  This has been a season where He has let my flesh run rampant in showing itself blind.  Its pride and its arrogance began this journey sure that it was capable of handling life on its own, needing God’s occasional direction but more than competent of marching boldly ahead. God is loving.  God is kind. God is breaking down my pride. Before when I was certain I could see a mile ahead in my future, He has made it plain that the mile I imagined was far from reality. He’s giving me reality – which is I can’t even see a second in front of my face.

Unless He grants the vision.

Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path. – Psalm 119:105 

 I love that we serve a God whose love is so relentless and whose ways are far beyond our own.  Each day we find ourselves in the midst of an unraveling of beautiful new wisdom in which we’ve never caught eye of before.   Our hearts and our minds try to be captured by temptations to control and temptations to make our own way. We become visionless and unsure. Unsteady. But then He leads us down a new way, and we find that as soon as this new path illuminates that this was what we were really longing for all along.

We thirst. We scavenge. We disgrace ourselves in the searching, like Esau to sell his birthright.

He leads us to still waters.

The past few months has been a scramble of over-packed schedules and busyness for me.  It has been a rush to make decisions and to try and find the next step, trying to grope for a light switch and finally be able to move on to the next area.  My mornings are spent in peace as I sit and wait at His feet. I worship and pray and read and write. I pour tears over psalms again and again and again, waiting for refuge from this season where I feel like I don’t know quite who I am or where I’m going. I plead promises of finding identity and course in Him.  I proclaim declarations of victory over the name of Jehovah Nissi, my God, my Banner. I pour out my heart and I wait for direction. New fire. New passion. I’m so tired of this song and dance of feeling like each day is full to the brim only to leave each evening with restless dreams and feelings of inadequacy. I’m worn.

But the still waters are there, and His name is faithful.  Jehovah Nissi is my banner but His name also reigns true as Abba. Abba, our Father.  And I’m so thankful for that.  It is in the moments when my heart clings to that name that it finds peace and its thirst is quenched by the still water of that promise. That love. My Father.  This season really has been a season above all else where I’m learning that His love is never going to be conditional upon His emotions or my performance, but that it is an unconditional love lavished in the cross. I’m thankful that He never gives up on teaching us new things about Himself and that if we don’t get it the first time, He is happy to try and try again. He is faithful to love and faithful to turn the lights off and let me keep feeling my way along this darkened room. 

He will let me keep searching until I can realize and internalize that this was never about a destination but about the journey. The more He I search for His direction the more I simply fall in love with the intimacy of the searching.  The depth of the pursuit.  My flesh keeps trying to find its own way, but I love that He has led me here. I’m thankful that I’m certain by now I’ll never find a light switch, but I’ll find His hand. Praise you, Lord, for knowing me far better than I know myself.  Thank you, Father, that you will not relent. Abba, Father, Your will, not mine. – Matthew 26:39

Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

To All My Single Ladies

To All My Single Ladies,

It can be so easy.

Right?

So easy to see the circumstances of others. So easy to turn over and over in your own thoughts.  So easy to discontinue the reassurance from friends and family. So easy to watch too many movies, listen to too many songs.  So easy to let media convince you that something is wrong.  They’re all just paint splatters against your own blank canvas.   It can feel like you will wait an eternity before your own picture is painted.  Your picture perfect life has been shaped in your mind since the age of nine, and things don’t seem to be going quite like you planned. Anxiety and manipulating memories of past experiences can leave you feeling breathless and wondering if you’ve made the wrong choices.  If you were more aggressive then you could have found what you are looking for by now.  If you were ready to compromise or wear your shirt a little tighter to please his eyes, you would be happier. You would be complete. Your mind can slip into a verdict telling you that if your waist was smaller or your hair was straighter or if you would laugh at the right jokes then maybe… If your standards were lower or if you settle then maybe… maybe he would be here by now.

Comparison truly is the thief of joy.

But in trusting our Jesus is the abundance of life.

I’ve spent so much time thinking about this topic recently.  It only takes a split second of lost focus for your own flesh and the world to slip in and overwhelm you with doubt.  In every other area of life it can be so easy to trust God because we can keep tabs on what He is doing.  In our educations, our jobs, our finances, our friendships – we can see those things and how they are changing as we continue to pursue God’s will in them.  We have what we can perceive as tangible evidence that everything is in our favor and under control.  We can trust God in those areas but we can rest at ease because they are at least slightly based within our own investments and productivity.  They are products of God’s grace as He moves through us to change our lives and the lives of others.  Jesus can still have his hands on the wheel and His foot on the pedal. We can still sit there like little girls in daddy’s lap in the driver’s seat and feel like we at least get to have some part in the driving with our little hands safely covered by His as we pretend to steer. 

But being in a season of waiting on God within singleness seems like a whole other ballpark, doesn’t it? There is no seeing past the driving wheel, no hands pretending to steer, no idea of how fast we are headed towards our destination.  

There are really only two common scenarios in which the passenger doesn’t know where they are going.  As I talk to more women in this stage of life, I have found that they perfectly describe the general consensus of expectations, too.  Either you can feel like you are being taken to an exciting surprise or a dog as she is about to get spayed. 

 Isn’t that the truth?

And I don’t know about you, ladies, but it takes me all but 3 seconds of a pity-party to start to think that in this grand, blind-sided drive I am a dog waiting to arrive at a destination of disappointment and permanent removal of all my little heart wanted.  Like a dog in heat for the last time, it can be so easy for us to eagerly search out our own answers.  We can try to take matters in our own hands. We can try and make things happen in the wrong timing, and we can try to sell ourselves short of what God had planned because we think it will be better.

Believe me, I know how easy it is to think this way.  But I know our Father and I know that He hasn’t given you a beating heart for Him to short change you.  2 Timothy promises that even when we are faithless, He is faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.  I love that even in our moments of doubt it does not change the hope we can forever set in our Father and His eternal love for us.  The bible promises that God is love.  I promise you that you can trust in His definition of it and His plans for you! Our God is not the God of surprise vet-visits that leave us desperate and disappointed.  Far from it, sweet daughter, our Father is the God of gifts beyond measure.  It is time for you to lift your eyes and lift your heart, because I know whatever is waiting on the other side of this ride is more than you can imagine and more than you dreamed.  Take delight in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart, because you were fearfully and wonderfully made and He did not create you in perfection so that the life that He has planned for you would be any less.  I know we live in a fallen world, but I too know full well that we serve a perfect God.  Leave your marriage in His hands.  He is the greatest love story ever told and His love and life is available to you now. 

Waiting on God is a beautiful place to be.  Rest.  This is not in your hands nor will it ever be, but rest. Raise your head.  I love that God always so much more values the journey than the destination, because that gives me hope for this moment while we wait.  You have to realize that our fears and anxiety in waiting on God is not found in the lack of a man in our lives but the lack of trust and focused love on the One who already is. I am beyond thankful to know that God is not going to give me anything that is going to take away from my love for Him.  His grace is sufficient and His love is extravagant, and nothing else will ever match it.  Praise you, my God, that you are crafting my heart to be still ever set on you.

The great I Am is for you and has never once been against you.  The beautiful thing about God in the midst of this is that God is far too in love with you to give you anything He knows is not best for you.  He would not place a man in your life if He knew that you aren’t close enough with Him yet and that this person would become an idol of your life.  He would not place him in your path if He knew that you and he were not the people you needed to be yet to best complement one another in pursuit of the heart of God.  He will not give you that person until you have surrendered yourself to Him so much so that you will always love Him more than you could love a man.  He will not give you that person until they will love you with a heart that echoes the love of Christ.  He has plans for you to give you a hope and a future, not to harm you.  I am so thankful that we can set or hearts on Jeremiah 29:11 time and time again, because it is not a promise that is contained within circumstances or time.

But you have to intentionally trust Him.  I promise He is worthy of your trust!  The author of time uses it perfectly.  So often we can feel as though we will miss an opportunity or that our time will run short, but we cannot forget his amazing sovereignty.  His timing is perfect, always.  And the God of the Impossible will never be limited by our finite minds or circumstances.  Proverbs 18:22 promises that “a man who finds a wife finds a good thing,” and I am beyond thankful for that promise.  A man who loves you the way that Christ loves His bride is one who is meant to find you.  Don’t feel as though you have to search him out, and don’t feel as though you need to submit to anyone that steps within your path.  Your heart is more precious than rubies.  Christ’s love for His bride sent Him to die for her, and that is the love that is imparted on you.  To all of my single, beautiful, precious ladies - you are worth the wait. 

Be at rest and spend time seeking after the heart of God so that you will know how He loves you.  Do not let yourself for a moment worry about the future because here, in this moment, you already have all that you need.