Like Apples of Gold

“But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger.”  James 1:19

There I was, doing it again – interrupting to make my comment before the other person was really finished speaking.  When I realized it, I was so embarrassed!  I wished I could take back those words and just be a better listener.  Not that there was anything wrong with my comments – they were fine.  It’s just that by not letting the other person finish before I spoke, I was in essence communicating that what I had to say about the topic was more important than what they had to say. 

As I reflected on why I so often jump in and interrupt before others are finished, I concluded that I am all too eager to offer my two cents worth because I want the other person to think I’m intelligent, witty, amusing, or even interested in them, and in my effort to avoid awkward silences I sometimes go to the opposite extreme and speak when I really should be silent.

One day, after I had already been pondering these things, I was listening to the radio and heard someone commenting about how nice it is to meet people who are good at listening and who wait to speak until they have really listened and have something truly insightful to say – not just mere words to fill up the silence.  This reminded me of Proverbs 25:11, which says, “Like apples of gold in settings of silver is a word spoken in right circumstances.”  It’s better to say nothing at all than to speak at the wrong time or with careless words!  Sometimes silence is refreshing and speaks louder than many words ever could.

So the next time I am tempted to jump in and make a comment on something that the other person is saying, I need to stop and make sure that I have truly listened and that what I am about to say is really going to improve the silence!  Does the other person need my witty remarks or my listening ear more?  Have I taken time to think through what, if any, response would be most helpful?  Am I communicating that I care about what the other person has to say, or that I am eager to make myself heard?

Lord, please help me to practice being quick to listen and slow to speak today, and that I would truly listen with a genuine interest to what others are saying, without always feeling like I have to have some comment to make about it!  May the words that come out of my mouth always be edifying to the hearer and glorifying to You, and may I be careful to avoid idle speech that is of no profit!  I want my words, as well as my silence, to bring healing, encouragement, and grace, so that I might better be able to share the love of Christ with those around me!

To God be the glory - great things He has done!

Somewhere around the middle of 2012 was when I first began to realize that something might be wrong.  There were no major symptoms, but just a series of incidents that were significant enough to begin to cause some concern, such as some memory loss, a couple of severe headaches, and a dizzy spell or two that all seemed unusual.  From the very beginning, God’s hand was amazingly evident in every detail!  First of all, our family has a friend who is a neurologist, and she was the one who, after hearing about the incidents I had, was able to get me a referral to see a neurologist in Des Moines in early October.  He did an EEG and an MRI, which revealed a small mass in my right temporal lobe that was causing some minor seizure-like activity in my brain.  He was of the opinion that it needed to be removed, even though it appeared benign, and he referred me to Dr. Matt Howard at the University of Iowa Hospital in Iowa City, because of the world-class excellence of the neurosurgery department there.  I first saw him on October 22, and he was able to get me scheduled me for surgery on November 14.  God graciously allowed me to continue teaching right up until the day before my surgery and make preparations for my aid, who took over the classroom in my absence.  Shari was another clear evidence of God’s sovereign provision, since she has been a part of our classroom since the beginning of the year and works wonderfully well with the kids! 

The surgery lasted 7 hours and went very well, however they had to leave a small part of the tumor, because it was located so near to the brain stem.  We had been told that very likely I would have to do further treatment at some point or possibly have another surgery later in the future.  I was released from the hospital 4 days after surgery and permitted to go to Ankeny (where my family lives) for the recovery time.  God’s timing was so perfect, as the time recommended for recovery took me right up to Christmas break, and it was such a blessing to be able to be with my family during that time! 

When the pathology report came back, I was told that it was the best possible news I could have received!  Not only was the tumor benign, but amazingly they do not believe that I will ever have to worry about it again, even though they couldn’t remove it entirely!  I was totally overwhelmed by God’s goodness and mercy in giving me such complete healing!  The prayers of so many people on my behalf during this time were truly humbling and encouraging, and it was wonderful to be able to share this news, for when many people pray, many thanks can be rendered to God for His answer!

As I daily recovered my strength, it was great to be able to resume more and more normal activities, and when school started back up in January, I was able to go back to teaching.  It really only took about a week before I really felt like I was back into the swing of things, and in fact, in many ways I felt even better than I had before the surgery!  God has continued to give me many opportunities to share what He did through all of this, and to Him be all the glory for everything, for He is truly sovereign in every detail of life and wonderfully good in everything that He allows!  I would not trade this experience, because I learned so much through it – especially about what the Body of Christ looks like when it is truly functioning as God intends it to, the nearness of God that we can most fully experience when we are hurting the most or feeling the most needy, and His absolute sovereignty in every detail of our lives!  I praise Him for entrusting me with this small trial, so that I can be better able to be an encouragement to others with the same comfort that God gave to me during this time!  One of the verses that became especially precious to me through all this is Psalm 59:16 – “I will sing of Your strength and will joyfully proclaim Your faithful love in the morning.  For You have been a stronghold for me, a refuge in my day of trouble.”  Truly, God is my strength, my joy, and my refuge, and life’s trials only serve to make that truth more real and more precious than ever!

 

 

Do I Let Others See Christ in Me?

“Father, please use me in some way to be  testimony for You right now to whomever I might meet in here today.  Just help me to represent You well, so that even without knowing my name they might see evidence that I belong to You!” I whispered as I got ready to walk into the fitness center where I had been working out regularly for some time.  I longed so much to be able to be a witness to someone, but time after time I walked out without ever having a chance to talk to anyone.  “Lord, I want so much to be a witness for Christ, but it’s so hard to have a chance to talk to anyone, even though I see these same people on a daily basis here!  Why does it seem so hard for me to connect with people, when others seem to be able to do so much more naturally?”

As I continued praying daily about this, I realized more and more that my greatest desire is just to be like Jesus to the people that I meet, but as a girl living in 21^st century America, sometimes I struggle so much to know what Jesus would do in my place?  How do I connect what I know about His life with my own reality day by day?  What does it look like for me to become like Him to the people I interact with?

In Sunday School about this same time, my Pastor had been doing a series on growing in sanctification, and one Sunday his study on Paul’s desire to be conformed to Christ’s death really hit home with me (Phil. 3:10).  The more I desire to be satisfied in Christ and become more like Him, the more I must become conformed to His death, and this means a willingness to humble myself as He did and to actually die to myself, so that I can serve others (Philippians 2:5-8)!  Matthew 20:28 tells us that Jesus Himself “did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”  If I am to live like Him, I must be willing to put self to death in order to be a servant to others and to love others.  In addition, Jesus told His disciples in John 13:35 that “by this all people will know that You are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

So I began to ask myself, what would it look like for me to love those people that I see on a daily basis, even strangers, and how can I put self to death in order to reach out to others around me and show the love of Christ to them?  One thing that God began to impress upon my heart was that it might just be something as simple as making eye contact with people and smiling at them.  So I started making it a point to do that as often as possible, with people I saw at the gym and even people I passed while out on walks or at the grocery store.  It wasn’t much, but it was a step towards learning to notice people around me and show love the way Jesus would do.   Even just a smile can go a long way towards encouraging someone, while at the same time communicating a heart of joy that comes from delighting in Christ, which can lead to opportunities to share with them the source of our joy!  Why is it that so often our faces reflect so little joy, and we walk right past people without even so much as a glance in their direction, as if they were completely invisible!  I know that we live in a culture where people keep largely to themselves, and personal space is guarded carefully, but I think most people appreciate friendliness more than we realize, and it can be a great way to show our distinctiveness as Christians!

As I continued to pray for opportunities to be used of God to minister to people I meet in my day to day, I decided that loving others might take me out of my comfort zone sometimes, but that I needed to look for opportunities not just to smile and be friendly, but to talk to people.  If you know me at all, you know this is not natural for me, especially with strangers, but I decided that part of dying to myself in order to love others might be pushing myself out of what is comfortable and looking for ways to start conversations with people.  I started trying to say hi to people that I came in contact with, especially at the gym, where I see the same faces every day and have at least one thing in common with everyone in there – a commitment to exercise!  Then one day God gave me an opportunity to have a real conversation with a lady that I had seen many times before in there but had never actually talked to.  We were working out next to each other, and I decided to take a risk and try to start a conversation, so I just asked her if she had a regular routine that she did every time she came in to work out.  I discovered that she was very friendly, and we got to talking for several minutes!  It wasn’t much, but it was a start, and who knows how God might use even that simple gesture of friendship?  She would not have thought it unusual or rude had I not spoken to her at that time, but I couldn’t let the opportunity pass by, even though talking to strangers has never been comfortable for me!  I realized again that we have opportunities all the time to choose to put self to death, as my pastor had been talking about, but how often do we instead choose what is most comfortable and pleasing to self, and in so doing miss out on opportunities to be a blessing to others!

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.  By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  John 13:34-35

Cultivating a Heart of Joy

As I was recently reading through the book of Psalms in my personal devotions, I found it very interesting how often the theme of joy kept coming up, and so I decided to make a list of every reference to joy or delight in the book and then look for common threads.  I found that there are over 110 references of this kind in the book of Psalms!  That, in and of itself, reveals to me that joy was truly characteristic of the human writers of this book, but I also found it to be very instructive as to the secret of true joy, not only for these writers, but for us as well!

As I began to examine these many references to joy or delight, I found that the overwhelming majority of these verses express the joy of the psalmist in God Himself and in spending time in His presence (4:7; 9:2; 16:11; 17:15; 21:6; 32:11; 33:1; 33:12; 34:2; 34:5; 34:8; 37:4; 40:4; 40:16; 43:4; 63:5, 11; 64:10; 65:4; 66:6; 70:4; 84:4; 85:6; 97:12; 73:25-26; 104:34; 105:3; 144:15; 145:16, 19). David declares that he had found joy in God’s presence (16:11) and calls God’s people to rejoice in Him, too (33:1). Truly, all who will seek God will find Him to be completely satisfying, and thus they will discover in Him the truest joy possible to man (34:5; 40:16)!

Before a person can have a right relationship with God and live in His presence, however, it is necessary that their sins be forgiven by God, and thus Psalm 32:1 expresses the joy of being forgiven by a holy God.  This is possible only through faith in the blood of Jesus, which completely paid the price for our sin and provided for those who place their trust in Him to have a restored relationship with God (Rom. 3:23; 1 John 1:9). 

Once we have entered into a right relationship with God through Jesus Christ, it is necessary that we walk in obedience to Him in order to experience the blessing and joy of fellowship with Him (Ps. 1:11-12; 40:8; 112:1; 119:1-2; 128:1).  So important is this that the psalmist can even say that “happy is the man You discipline and teach from Your law” (94:12).  When we are walking in disobedience to God, this can bring nothing but grief, and God lovingly disciplines His wayward children in order to bring them to repentance and back into fellowship with Him, the place of greatest joy!

Another thing that stood out to me is how many times the idea of joy is linked to praise and thanksgiving to the Lord for Who He is and what He has done. In Psalm 71:23, the psalmist writes, "my lips will shout for joy when I sing praise to You." in 92:4, we read "You have made me rejoice, Lord, by what You have done; I will shout for joy because of the works of Your hands." Again, in 103:2-5, he says, "My soul, praise the Lord and do not forget all His benefits," then goes on to list several specific ones, including that "He satisfies you with goodness." In Psalm 9:14; 13:5; and 35:9, David praises God specifically for His salvation and deliverance; in Ps. 31:7 and 59:16, he praises God and rejoices in His faithful love. In all of these examples, the psalmist's joy is directly linked to his praise of God.  When our hearts are full of praise to our great God, they will naturally overflow with joy in all that He is and has done for us!

In Psalm 119, we see something else that brought great joy to the heart of David – the Word of God!  In fact, nearly every verse of this psalm mentions God’s Word, though David uses many different terms for it (translated decrees, commands, precepts, statutes, instruction, etc.).  David found immense joy, not just in reading, but in constant meditation upon God’s Word, which he had memorized extensively and continually brought to mind.  In the book Living the Psalms, which I quoted from in my last post, I found an interesting insight on the word "enthusiasm" that I thought was really neat! Swindoll entitles his study of Psalm 119 "The Grind of Low Enthusiasm," and he points out that the word "enthusiasm" comes from two Greek words meaning "in" and "God," and thus we see the idea that "enthusiasm" is found in God and comes from being "in God," or spending time in His Word.

Psalm 119 is not the only place where we find mention of rejoicing in God’s Word, though.  Psalm 112:1 tells us, “Happy is the man who fears the Lord, taking great delight in His commandments.”  To take great delight in something implies spending much time engaged in it and making it a priority.  When God’s Word truly becomes our delight, and we are spending time daily filling our minds with it, our hearts will surely be filled with the joy of learning more about the God Who speaks to us through its pages, and we will find ourselves often throughout the day bringing to mind and rejoicing in the truths we discover therein - eternal, life-changing truths!
 
Finally, I was struck by the words “I will rejoice” found several times (9:2, 14; 31:7; 35:9; 63:7; 104:34)! Those who penned these words realized an important truth that can transform the life of a Christian who is struggling to find joy in life – joy is a choice!  We have abundant reasons to be thankful - God’s presence with us, forgiveness of sins and a right relationship with Him, His character and goodness to us, His strength and help in trouble, His mighty works, and the list goes on - but we can choose instead to focus on whatever seems to be going wrong in our lives and develop a complaining spirit rather than a joyful spirit!  A joyful heart must be cultivated, as we daily make a choice to focus on and rejoice in God, His Word, and His countless blessings to us!

I came away from this study of Psalms with a renewed perspective of where true joy comes from and how I can be cultivating a heart of joy, regardless of what my circumstances may be!  I belong to a God Who has forgiven me, Who dwells with me and will never leave me, Who never changes, Who is my comfort and strength in affliction, Who chastens me in love and draws me back when I stray from Him, and Who has given me His Word so that I might learn more about Him and His will for my life!  Those are some pretty amazing reasons to be joyful, and I want to choose to focus my thoughts on these things and find true and lasting joy every day in the source of all joy Himself!

Thirsting for God in the Desert

Unfulfilled longing... it's something that most people have been able to relate to at some point or another in their lives.  For some it may be the longing for a different job or career; for others, a nicer house or more money; others, greater influence; others, better family relationships or closer friendships; still others, romance.  Unfulfilled desire can very easily control us emotionally and cause us to sink into a pit of self-pity and frustration if for even a moment we take our eyes off of the only One who can truly satisfy every longing of our heart!

Psalm 63 has long been a favorite of mine, but in recent times it has become especially dear, as I have spent time reflecting on it and seeking to discover the secret of David's contentment in God!  In so doing, God has been ever so slowly changing my heart and causing me to truly thirst for Him like never before!  I want my life to be characterized by a passionate pursuit of God, and the more time I spend reflecting on Him and practicing being thankful, the more joy I experience, and the less tempted I am to feel sorry for myself. 

I have been reading currently through a book entitled Living the Psalms, by Charles Swindoll (which I highly recommend!), and in it he zooms in on various psalms and provides a closer look at the timeless themes they contain.  One  of the psalms he highlights is Psalm 63, and I was reading through it the other day and wanted to share just a few thoughts.  In this beloved psalm, David is in the middle of a desert where there is no water, running for his life and struggling for his very survival.  Yet what strikes me most about this psalm is that his focus, what he is thirsting for the most at this time, is not what we might expect - not a cool stream of water, not delectable food to fill his empty stomach, not even deliverance from his enemy.  Notice his words in verse 1 - "God, You are my God; I eagerly seek You. I thirst for You; my body faints for You in a land that is dry, desolate, and without water" [emphasis mine].  The desert experience he was going through simply highlighted more vividly the fact that only God could satisfy His heart, and it drove him to a greater longing for intimacy with God!  It began to occur to me as I pondered this verse that no matter what my "desert" experience may be, whatever the longing of my heart, God wants to use it to help me see more clearly that HE is the one who wants to satisfy me completely, and only HE is able to do this!  Therefore, whenever I am experiencing that longing for something, I can use it as an opportunity to intentionally pursue God at that moment and seek to develop my relationship with Him the same ways I would develop any relationship - by listening to Him, speaking to Him, spending time with His loved ones, and doing the things that are important to Him (Charles Swindoll, Living the Psalms, p. 185).  What a refreshing reminder this has been, and it has the potential to totally transform my perspective if I can truly grasp ahold of it!