Raising Ebeneezers

I am poured out like water,

and all my bones are out of joint;

my heart is like wax;

it is melted within my breast;

Psalm 22:14

Have you ever gone through a season in your life that downright sucks? I have and I'm going through it now. I have definitely been struggling with some spiritual warfare. This has played itself out internally and also externally into my relationship with my husband. I must admit that during this time, I have not always looked to God for comfort and strength when I should have, in fact I have been pointedly having short conversations with no depth with Him because I honestly have no idea what to say. I have been spending most of my time trying to find my own way out of this hole I dug for myself feeling spiritually dry and abandoned.

Yet, while I have been ignoring God, he has been speaking to me so loudly that I can no longer ignore what He is trying to tell me. In my women's bible study, we have been going through 1 Samuel. A few weeks ago we were in chapter 7 where Samuel places a stone of help or Ebeneezer as a monument to what God has done for His people. Similarly, last week at church, we discussed the life of Joshua, particularly chapter 4 of the Book of Joshua in which the Lord commanded him to have the men take and make a tribute of the 12 stones in the middle of the Jordan river where it had been cut off so that they could flee.

And he said to the people of Israel, “When your children ask their fathers in times to come, ‘What do these stones mean?’ then you shall let your children know, ‘Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground.’ For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you passed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we passed over, so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever.” Joshua 4:21-24

Over the past few days, the idea of monuments to God's faithfulness have stuck in my head. I am so forgetful that in the valleys of my life, I forget to revisit the gifts that have been given to me by God when in fact I should not only be revisiting them, but sharing them with others to declare God's love and faithfulness. So the past few days I have been coming up with a few memorials of my own and here they are:

I met my husband when we both were not Christians,  when he left for Ranger School, we were still not Christians, God used the next 6 months of separation to place people who spoke Truth into our lives and lead us both to Christ separately, yet simultaneously. One of my sweetest memories is the first time we prayed together, I had tears streaming down my face.

When I was at my lowest and extremely critical and cynical, God placed a community of Christians who loved me despite my unbelief and who spoke and continue to speak boldly to me about my need for Jesus

A week before our wedding celebration, Brendan and I made the decision to get baptized. He was baptized first and then as the leader of our Christ-centered family, baptized me.

After moving to Fayetteville and leaving out church family in Georgia behind, we wondered if we would ever find a church as special as Crosspointe. It just so happened that the first church we visited in North Carolina has become our home and family. It's filled with other followers of Christ who encourage us and spur on our pursuit of the Gospel.

I need to point out that all of these amazing testaments to God's love for me have happened within the past year, yet somehow along the way I forgot about them. I am going to make it a point to continue to place memorials of God's faithfulness in places that I can go when I am feeling empty, and encourage you to do the same!

Love Actually

One of the hardest, yet most important things that God commands of us is to love people. This is difficult because He isn’t commanding us to love the people that we like or people that we feel like we can even tolerate. He commands us to love all people, even the people who we normally can’t stand.

Last year, when I was just beginning my walk with the Lord, I noticed that I have a tendency of dehumanizing people that I don’t like. I found myself just being annoyed in general with people if they rubbed me the wrong way. I had no compassion nor was a genuinely happy for anyone else’s joys. I was stuck between indifference and jealousy.

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Matthew 5:43-48 ESV

In the weeks leading up to Easter last year, I decided to read the gospel of Matthew to gain a better appreciation for how Jesus lived and died. As I read The Sermon on the Mount, I was struck by how my actions were going against the commandment of the God I so deeply yearned to follow. I began to pray for God to open my heart and show me how to love people as He loves them. As I prayed, He opened my eyes and made me aware of the struggles that these people that I was writing off as rude, or “just not my type of person” were going through and I began praying for these people. As I continued to pray for them, I felt myself growing fond of them.

It was a phenomenon for me as I felt myself genuinely caring for those who I had never cared for before and realized that God commands this of us to transform us to become more like him. Charles Spurgeon wrote this in his book Morning and Evening about the subject:

“He who dares the most, shall win the most; and if rough be thy path of love, tread it boldly, still loving thy neighbors through thick and thin. Heap coals of fire on their heads, and if they be hard to please, seek not to please them, but to please thy Master; and remember if they spurn thy love, thy Master hath not spurned it, and thy deed is as acceptable to him as if it had been acceptable to them. Love thy neighbor, for in so doing thou art following the footsteps of Christ.”

Loving those who we find it hard to even like, might seem like a struggle; but when I think of my worst moments and deepest secrets and realize that Christ would have still sat at the same table as me for dinner despite my failings, I realize just how deep God’s love is for us and feel compelled to try to show the love that He has for me by loving others.