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When God Changes Our Plans

by | Jan 28, 2020 | Caregiving, Devotional, Gospel Coaching

When God Changes Our Plans

​This month, as we complete our series on planning and as I recover from hip replacement surgery, I am sharing an excerpt from The Waiting Room: 60 Meditations for Finding Peace & Hope in a Health Crisis.

 ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord. ‘They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.’ Jeremiah 29:11, NLT

  • I was planning to write a devotional or perhaps a book on how to keep a prayer journal.
  • Our son was planning to move to Ithaca, NY to begin a masters program in vocal performance.
  • My husband and I were planning to travel to New York City to celebrate our 35th anniversary.

Before the CT that changed everything, we had plans, and they weren’t bad plans. But God had something different in mind. There is nothing like a health crisis to redirect our attention from our plans for life on this earth to God’s plans for our eternal lives, starting…now. As 88-year-old J.I. Packer, renowned theologian, affirmed after learning that he had macular degeneration,

“God knows what he’s up to…. And I’ve had enough experiences of his goodness in all sorts of ways not to have any doubt about the present circumstances…. Some good, something for his glory, is going to come out of it.”[i]

I’m afraid we too often quote Jeremiah 29:11 and its hopeful note of “plans for good, plans with a future and a hope” without considering the context in which it was written. The Israelites, God’s people, have been exiled to Babylon from their home in Jerusalem after repeated disobedience and multiple warnings to repent. The Lord directs the Israelites to seek and pray for the welfare of Babylon, to build houses and marry and have children there, even as they wait for the Lord to return them to their home. The stint in Babylon was all part of God’s greater plan to bless the Israelites and to bless the world.

Just as God planned redemption and restoration for the Israelites, he has worked his redemption plan for Christians. The plan is for our Christlikeness to be magnified and for his gospel to be multiplied. If we trust in God’s plan, we have hope when disaster apparently befalls us. We are to continue seeking his face, even in the exile of the waiting room. As we wait, we know that God is completing the good work that he has begun in us (Phil. 1:6), and that one day soon Christ will return and restore all broken things. Such are God’s glorious plans for a future and a hope that we are looking forward to as we wait.

Prayer

Lord, help us to understand that our plans too often focus on building “houses” here: careers, families, wealth. Your plans far exceed ours, as you are intent on building us into a temple, a people who glorify you in all that we are and all that we do. Thank you that you have a better plan for us. Amen.

Further Encouragement

Read Jeremiah 29:1-11; Philippians 1:6, and 1 John 3:2.

For Reflection: What plans of yours or a loved one have been disrupted? Ask God to help you trust him as he works his good plan in your life.

[i] J.I. Packer, in interview with Ivan Mesa, J. I. Packer, 89, “On Losing Sight But Seeing Christ,” Gospel Coalition, January 14, 2016, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/j-i-packer-89-on-losing-sight-but-seeing-christ/. Accessed May 2, 2018.

A Good Read for Hard Times: The Waiting Room Devotional

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Live by Every Word: A Meditation

by | Oct 22, 2019 | Bible study, Devotional

Live by Every Word: A Meditation

Dear Friends, I am privileged to be leading two workshops at the PCA Women’s Leadership Training February 20-22 in Atlanta. The overall topic of the training is Refreshed: Help and Hope for the Suffering. I’ll be teaching one on how God’s Word is so very near in suffering and another on grieving with hope as we wait. This training is open to everyone. Today, I’m sharing an excerpt from The Waiting Room: 60 Meditations for Finding Peace & Hope in a Health Crisis which reminds us of how God works through his Word in our suffering. I hope you enjoy it.

Yes, he humbled you by letting you go hungry and then feeding you with manna, a food previously unknown to you and your ancestors. He did it to teach you that people do not live by bread alone; rather we live by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Deuteronomy 8:3, NLT

Anyone who has spent much time in the waiting room knows the humbling that comes during a health crisis. Stripped of the familiarities on which we often depend for comfort, we learn that we do not, in fact, live by bread alone.

The profound hope of Deuteronomy 8:3 is that God did not merely humble his people, but he also fed them. He fed them physically with something called manna, a word that in the original Hebrew literally means, “What’s this?” It was a food unlike anything the Israelites had ever heard of, seen, or tasted. It fell from the sky, and it looked something like Frosted Flakes but was a lot more nutritious!

God fed his people physically with this strange food, and he fed them spiritually with his Word. As we do our time in the wilderness of waiting, we are humbled, and our hunger and thirst for good news intensifies. More precisely, more powerfully than any IV fluid, God’s Word drips into our hearts and minds to slake our thirst, to energize us with the faith, hope, and love we desperately need.

Our faith grows strong muscles as we drink in the stories of miraculous deeds God has already done, such as…

  • plastering the land of unbelieving Egypt with frogs (Exodus 8:2).
  • knocking down a city wall with trumpet blasts (Joshua 6:1-6, 20).

Our hope is fattened up as we eagerly digest words like, “This is a spiritual refining process, with glory just around the corner” (1 Peter 4:13, MSG).

Our love is energized to flow outward as we taste the goodness of the Lord’s delight over us and the comfort of his nearness to us:

“The Lord your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing” (Zephaniah 3:17, ESV).

Throughout our journey in the waiting room, I was often asked about my apparent calm. I could only explain it by pointing to three essentials: prayer, The Word, and community.

Dear friends, take up and read this marvelous Word; you will find there the sustenance you intensely crave.

Prayer:

Lord, we thank you for feeding us what we most desperately need – your Word. Not only did you provide the Scriptures, but you made the Word flesh, and you sent Jesus to dwell among us. Help us by your Spirit to meet Jesus in your Living Word day by day, moment by moment. Amen.

Further Encouragement

Read Deuteronomy 30:11-14; Romans 10:8-10.

Listen to “The Word Is So Near” by Michael Card, https://youtu.be/biXrKOaIJq4.

For Reflection

What verses have encouraged your faith, hope, and love during this season? Write them out in a journal, on a card, or on a note app on your phone.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

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A Good Read for Hard Times: The Waiting Room Devotional

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Be of Good Cheer: Hope for Recovery

by | Oct 1, 2019 | Bible study, Devotional

Be of Good Cheer: Hope for Recovery

These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” John 16:33 NKJV

Hurricanes and Other Disasters

With the descent of Dorian, hurricane season has launched, tossing its mighty winds and roaring waters through our mind’s eye, arousing fears of future devastation and memories of past disasters.

It’s been about fifteen years since Hurricane Ivan wreaked its havoc on our hometown, Pensacola, Florida, leaving a morass of blue roofs in its wake.

  • Fifteen years since…
  • The fall our children and I lived with my mom in Atlanta for three long weeks.
  • The weeks my husband sweated through a restless sleep at our home and rode his bicycle to the hospital for work.
  • The year I entitled our Christmas letter: “living in a landscape of loss.”

Recovery

It’s been so long ago now that the primary impact has faded, and we’re left mainly with the memories, the funny (now) stories of how our fifteen year old son, who had only had his learner’s permit for a month, drove my mom and our other children to Atlanta to evacuate because I was away for a grad school class. The story of my husband riding his bike home after the storm, stopping to climb over piles of trees blocking the road, finally arriving at our home, only to realize he had left his house keys in his car at the hospital. We can laugh now. I guess you could say we’ve recovered from Hurricane Ivan.

We’ve recovered. But some never did. Some lost homes, businesses, even families to the disaster. They may have found a new home or started a new business, but the heartache of the catastrophe lingers. Maybe you haven’t been hit by a hurricane; maybe it was a divorce, a sudden revelation of a spouse’s affair. Maybe you were slapped with a devastating cancer diagnosis. Or maybe your 23-year-old just disclosed that she “identifies” as transgender.

The hard reality is that many of the disasters we face in our lives deal us losses we may never fully recover from. What are we to do? How can we live in a world in which some losses will never be recouped?”

Hope

Jesus, in his final discussion with his disciples, anticipated this question. Shortly before his brutal crucifixion for a made-up crime, he prepared his followers for the disasters that mark life in a fallen world:

“In the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.”

Many of us in western culture struggle to understand Jesus’ words, because our culture wants us to believe a lie: that the world is good, and that the things in it are here to make us happy. The message of the Bible contradicts this lie: humans were created “very good,” in the image of God, but when the first humans, Adam and Eve, tried to take things into their own hands, tried to steal glory from God, life on this earth unraveled. Now, every human comes into this world seeking to satisfy self (Psalm 51:5). Now, in this fallen world, creation groans, and we groan along with it. (Romans 8:23).

Thankfully, the story didn’t end there, with a weeping creation that would never fully recover. It didn’t end there with selfish human beings who would never learn how to love others and love God again. Thanks be to God.

And that is what Jesus is trying to explain to his disciples. It’s okay, he assures them. Yes, in this world, on this earth, you will suffer. I’m teaching you how to live in my world, my kingdom. Not only that, when I die and am raised again, you will have the resurrection power to live a different life, a new life, to recover some of what was lost in the fall. You will still struggle; you will still suffer, here on this earth. That’s okay. That’s to be expected. But if you remember these things I have told you, you will have peace. Not only that, you can be “of good cheer,” “take courage,” “not be afraid,” “take heart,”

Because “I have overcome the world.”

One day, not yet, but “soon,” I will come back. And I will take you to live with me in a new world, the world you were really made for. In that day, all of the pain, the pain of being betrayed by the one you gave your heart to, the pain of seeing your home ravaged by a storm or flood or fire, the pain of losing the business your grandmother built…all that sorrow will be washed away. All the sin—the clawing to get your own way, the clashing against loved ones over small differences, the clinging to things you think will satisfy you—it will be over. Overcome. Defeated. By me, your King. Love, Jesus.

There is something better that awaits. It is not recovery. It is restoration. It is renewal. It is reunion. It is reconciliation. Cheer loudly and long. Jesus has overcome the world.

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Freedom from Shame: What Not to Wear

by | Jul 16, 2019 | Devotional, Learning Story

Freedom from Shame: What Not to Wear

for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation;

he has covered me with the robe of righteousness. Isaiah 61:10

It sort of seeps over you like an ugly rash, sometimes starting with a few small red bumps then spreading wide and purple and making you crazy with the itch and desire for relief. Shame, burning and raw. Do you know the feeling?

Guess what? The good news of our freedom in Christ is that we have something better than calamine lotion for stopping the spread of shame—the gospel! Today I’m sharing an old story about a time I felt shame and insecurity and the hope of freedom I discovered.

(Also, there’s more gospel good news—I am seeing growth in this area! My husband and I recently attended another tennis team reunion, and I hardly worried at all about what to wear!)

In Christ, we never have to wear shame again! #gospelgoodnews Share on X

Being a freelancing mom who works out of my home, I have a very basic wardrobe suiting the four most common occasions in my life:

Activity or Event

1. writing, cooking, grocery store, and some retreats I lead

 

2. teaching at the jail or a weekend retreat; church

3. church, weddings, graduations

Outfit

1.jeans or shorts, t-shirt (long or short-sleeve depending on season), and boots or clogs or Chaco’s in the summer

2. chino capris or a casual skirt and a blouse

3. a few nicer dresses

The problem arises when there is an event that falls outside of these three wardrobe options. Many years ago, my husband and I were invited to attend a 90th Birthday Gala Celebration for his former tennis coach at the University of Georgia. It would be more than a birthday party; it would be a reunion of his former teammates and their wives.

I first suspected shame when I whined to my husband, “I don’t even know what to wear.”

Being a normal man who has little concern about clothing-performance issues, he failed to recognize my remark as a subtle invitation to reassure me, “Oh honey, you’ll look great in anything.” (Even if he had, I wouldn’t have believed him. Such is the nature of shame.)

He did kindly volunteer to ask one of his former teammates what his (glamorous) wife was wearing.

A Shame Pile-Up: Country Club Casual

Her response: “country club casual.”

What???!! I really do need to brush up on past programs of “What Not to Wear” (Is that still a show?).
I now felt additional shame that I didn’t even know what this apparently basic term meant. Though I write about this with mild humor, I felt intense discomfort and considerable fear of shaming myself and my husband by wearing the wrong thing.

And then I heard that loud, clear voice, the one that asks me to live in freedom and enjoy who I am and how I’m made.

The Holy Spirit slapped me square on the back with a gospel reality that struck me to attention. It sounds so silly I wouldn’t even say it if it weren’t true:

“You are clothed in Christ’s righteousness.” (Isaiah 61:10, 2 Corinthians 5:21)

“Yes, but what am I going to wear to the Gala?”

What to Wear: Righteousness Frees from Shame

“Christ’s righteousness. You don’t even have to buy it. You’re already wearing it. You look beautiful in it. Like a princess, no, like a queen. In that outfit, you will bring beauty to anyone you meet tonight. People will be saying to themselves, “That dress is nothing special, but she is lovely. What is it about her?”

I finally chose a trendy skirt and blouse outfit my mother-in-law had given me for Christmas. She knows fashion and I figured she might even know what “country club casual” means. (Though I was too embarrassed to ask her.)

I’m not gonna lie. My stomach fluttered with mild fear as we strolled from our hotel to the event. But then, I pictured my flowing robe of righteousness. And yes, I stared with awe and a little twitch of envy at stunning cocktail dresses modeled by former beauty queens. Then I remembered, “I am a queen.” As I began to meet people and hear their delightful stories, shame subsided, and I began to enjoy myself. We had a wonderful time, and from the vast assortment of outfits worn, I never did figure out what “country club casual” means!

A Prayer about Freedom from Shame:

Dear Lord Jesus, thank you for freeing us forever from shame over our sins. Creator God, we praise you for making us fearfully and wonderfully. Holy Spirit, keep whispering into our unbelieving hearts the good news of the gospel: Free, Free, Free. In Jesus’ freeing name we pray, Amen.

 A story question:

Do you have any similar shame stories, about not wearing the right thing or fear of not fitting in? What was it like? Was there any redemption in the story? How might the story change if you see yourself as God sees you, living in the beauty of who you were created and redeemed to be?

Photo by Camila Damásio on Unsplash

The Paradoxical Freedom of Belonging to God

by | Jul 9, 2019 | Devotional, Suffering, Theology

The Paradoxical Freedom of Belonging to God

As you may have noticed, we live in a world that prioritizes autonomy, the freedom of self-rule. The mantra of the 21st century is best summed up by my children’s cry to one another when they were young, “You’re not the boss of me!”

How then, can it be, that belonging to God brings the freedom we really yearn for? The first question and answer of the Heidelberg Catechism tells us that comfort comes from belonging to a God who sent his Son to be our faithful Savior, to pay for all of our sins, and to set us free from the power of sin and evil.

In July of 2017, I was grieving many illnesses and losses of loved ones at the same time I was studying the Heidelberg Catechism. Little did I know that even as God gave me the good news about my only comfort in life and in death, I would need to believe it more than ever in a few short weeks.

Here is the exercise I did. Why not try it? Who knows when you might desperately need this comfort?

1. Read the entire question and answer aloud, slowly, taking your time.
2. Listen to the words and let them wash the comfort over you like a refreshing shower on a hot summer’s day.
3. For further comfort: Look up the Bible verses from which they are taken, which are listed below.
I pray you may find the true comfort and hope in Jesus Christ our faithful Savior.
This version is copied from Heidelberg Catechism.com

What is your only comfort
in life and death?

• 1.1 Cor 6:19, 20.
• 2.Rom 14:7-9.
• 3.1 Cor 3:23; Tit 2:14.
• 4.1 Pet 1:18, 19; 1 Jn 1:7; 2:2.
• 5.Jn 8:34-36; Heb 2:14, 15; 1 Jn 3:8.
• 6.Jn 6:39, 40; 10:27-30; 2 Thess 3:3; 1 Pet 1:5.
• 7.Mt 10:29-31; Lk 21:16-18.
• 8.Rom 8:28.
• 9.Rom 8:15, 16; 2 Cor 1:21, 22; 5:5; Eph 1:13, 14.
• 10.Rom 8:14.

That I am not my own, 1
but belong with body and soul,
both in life and in death, 2
to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ. 3
He has fully paid for all my sins
with his precious blood, 4
and has set me free
from all the power of the devil. 5
He also preserves me in such a way 6
that without the will of my heavenly Father
not a hair can fall from my head; 7
indeed, all things must work together
for my salvation. 8
Therefore, by his Holy Spirit
he also assures me
of eternal life 9
and makes me heartily willing and ready
from now on to live for him. 10

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When Your Longings Are Unfulfilled: A Devotional

by | Jun 25, 2019 | Caregiving, Devotional, Suffering

When Your Longings Are Unfulfilled: A Devotional

Are you longing for fulfillment? There’s good news!

What are you waiting for? A job, a spouse, a child to return home (whether spiritually or physically)? Maybe healing in a relationship or healing of a broken body? Discover the good news as you wait: one day, your longing will be fulfilled! Today, I share an excerpt from The Waiting Room devotional. Even though this was written about a health crisis, it applies to any unfulfilled longing.

Unfulfilled

And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.  Romans 8:23-24, NLT

“I’m sorry. We are unfulfilled. There is no diagnosis.”

Two days after our son’s first brain surgery, his neurosurgeon delivered this unwelcome news. The doctor had stopped the surgery to remove the brain tumor when he discovered what he believed to be a venous malformation. Further tests were done, an angiogram and an MRI, in an attempt to discover exactly what was going on inside our son’s head. The results were back, but they were inconclusive.

I loved the fact that our neurosurgeon shot straight with us: at this point, they still did not know if our son had a tumor. I hated the words, “unfulfilled” and “no diagnosis,” and the anxiety they aroused. In this life, what we most desire, what we most yearn for, is fulfillment, a resolution to the story.

Romans 8:18-25 helps to explain the tension we feel. In the fall, creation suffered extensive damage. Weeds would grow from the once-fertile ground; sin would spread in our once-glorious beings. The whole creation, and we ourselves, now long for release from the “bondage to decay” we now endure. Romans 8:22 compares the longing for that final glorious freedom to the pangs of labor. As theologian John Stott puts it, “The indwelling Spirit gives us joy, and the coming glory gives us hope, but the interim suspense gives us pain.”[i]

When the neurosurgeon first used the word unfulfilled, I thought it was strange, but now it makes sense. Because of his vast knowledge of the brain and extensive experience with diagnoses, he confidently expected that our hopes for a diagnosis and thus, a cure, would one day be fulfilled.

In the same way, we have powerful reasons to hope even as we groan for glory. We know that Christ has been raised from the dead; that knowledge gives us hope that we have been raised to new life with him (1 Corinthians 15:19-21). The Holy Spirit works in us, transforming us into new creation. This is the hope for which we were saved (Romans 8:24).

This saving hope points us toward our future hope, the day of resolution. When Christ comes again, our longings will be fulfilled. Our son’s diagnosis will no longer matter, because he, and we, will be fully released from sin and suffering, in body and soul, in heart and mind. This is the hope that helps us to wait eagerly and patiently (Romans 8:24-25).

Prayer

Oh, Lord, you hear the groanings of our hearts; you know what we long for most is you. We thank you for your Holy Spirit and your Living Word, which sustain us as we wait. Amen.

Further Encouragement

Read Romans 8:18-25.

Listen to “Our Hope Endures” by Natalie Grant at https://youtu.be/n1mu3F0dQz0.

For Reflection:

What hopes do you have that are as yet “unfulfilled”? How does the future hope of Christ’s return help you wait well?

[i] John Stott, The Message of Romans (Downer’s Grove, Il.: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 242.

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A Good Read for Hard Times: The Waiting Room Devotional

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