Home › Archive for growth › Page 4

Category: growth

By Posted on Posted in faith, growth, pruning, trusting Him 1 Comment

Lots of changes are going on in my neck of the woods. God is moving and doing all kinds of new things.  I always say that I love change as long as it’s my idea. That gives you an indication of how things are going here!  The Lord has been talking to me about letting go of the old, yet I find myself grieving and pouting rather than taking His advice:

“Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.

Isaiah 43:18-19

sprout fade

The trouble I’m having is that I can only see tiny little sprouts of the new thing He is bringing about. I can’t really tell what it is, or what it will look like. So I’d much rather hang on to the old thing.  It’s fully visible. It’s familiar.

Then, last night I went to bible study and heard a teaching on pruning. Suddenly, I realized that what God is doing in me right now isn’t about a “right” thing versus a “wrong” thing.  It’s not about punishment or His preference over mine. It’s not about me giving up something so He’ll give me something in return… as if I had any negotiating power.

It’s about fruit. It’s about pruning to gain more fruit.

Even though I’ve already blogged about this subject, I find myself under the Master Gardener’s care and needing to write about the pruning process once again. There are some old blooms in my life that need to be cut away to make room for new blooms…new fruit.

rose prune

Jesus talks about this process in John 15:1-2…

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.  He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.

These verses tell me that all things need to be pruned from time to time. Not just dried-up and fruitless branches, but fruitful branches must be pruned as well. There goes my secret hope that He’ll leave certain things alone in my life!!  His goal is fruit: more love, more joy, more peace, more patience, more goodness, more kindness, more gentleness, more faithfulness, more self-control. While some things in our lives can damage or inhibit our spiritual growth, it’s not always the removal of things that facilitates more fruit.

It’s the process of pruning that grows us, shapes our character,

and makes us more like Jesus — the most fruitful of all.

For those who fear the pruning process, let me be clear. He’s been tender… gently asking me to let go of things and giving me fair warning of what will be removed. But the truth is that whether or not I want to let go, He’ll eventually prune them away.

Our cooperation in the process makes a big difference.  When we stop wrestling over the thing He wants to remove, we will see that His ways are higher than ours.  We’ll see what He is really up to. He may prune out a job, a relationship, or a ministry, but what He’s really trying to root out is fear. Resentment, Selfishness. Pride. Self-sufficiency.

Can I lay down my will and my wants or will I be angry and bitter? Will I run in fear, or will I trust the Master Gardener and believe that He is doing this because He is good and He loves me? Will I learn to embrace the pruning, knowing that this process is achieving God’s dreams for me? Can I testify with certainty that pruning is good?

Holy Spirit, teach me to yield. Speak truth to me when my heart begins to fear the pruning process. Point me back to Jesus, back to the Father so that He may have His way in me. 

By Posted on Posted in grace, growth, parenting, work in progress 1 Comment

20130714-090726.jpg

Yesterday I had the privilege of going to a baby shower. The picture above features my oldest daughter with the mother-to-be. What a beautiful celebration of God’s work in a young woman, bringing her to the verge of motherhood. All of the guests were asked to give her some written encouragement or advice about mothering. As I thought about the one thing that would be most valuable to share, I decided to encourage her in the area where I have most struggled in motherhood.

My advice was to never forget that God chose her to be the mother of this baby boy. He did this, knowing full well that she would never do it perfectly. This is God’s intention: that His power would be made perfect in her weakness.

He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 2 Corinthians 12:9

Of course, motherhood is such a high calling that our weaknesses become apparent very quickly, ushering in a wave of insecurity. This is compounded by the accusations and doubts of the enemy. We wonder if we’re doing it right, if we’re doing it as well as someone else, if we should do more, read more, be more….and we often forget that the goal is not to perform, but to let our weakness be the conduit through which Christ’s power may rest on us. In essence, we have to embrace our weakness and let the Lord do His work of teaching, transforming, maturing us.

Philippians 1:6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Ephesians 2:10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

The truth is that we are a work in progress. We are not the foreman on this job; God is! What can we say about His work in us? It’s messy. It requires patience. However, as mothers, we struggle with being imperfect and unfinished. We often operate in a performing-kind-of-work rather than a surrendering-kind-of-work. We forget that God is the only one that can complete this work. We forget that He makes great preparation for this work. We forget that He has promised to finish it.

We fear that because we aren’t finished yet, our imperfections and failures will ruin our children, but it’s actually our tendency to perform and forget that we are God’s work in progress that threatens to unravel our family life.  We put pressure on ourselves to do everything perfectly and pressure on our children to respond perfectly to our parenting performance. All the while forgetting that every person involved is a work in progress. As I type this right now, I see so clearly how this has played out in my home over the last 15 and a half years.

I tend to believe that my weaknesses and failures disqualify me: from being a good parent, from being a good Christian, from being used by God, from enjoying His love and favor. However, it is only my inability to recognize my weakness that disqualifies me! God intends for my weakness to be a reminder of how much I need Him. He hopes that every time I am confronted with my inadequacies, that I will run to Him, that I will cling to Him, that I will make up my mind to hold on to Him and trust Him to work in me every moment of the day!

Friend, your weaknesses and failures do not disqualify you. Your weaknesses are part of God’s plan for your life. Stop pretending, stop performing, and begin to embrace your shortcomings (and the grace He offers) as the tether that will keep you close to God.

That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 2 Corinthians 12:10

 

 

 

photo credit: my daughter, Micah De Silvia, created the beautiful shower collage.

By Posted on Posted in God the Father, growth, marriage, spiritual lows, trusting Him 2 Comments

I use a certain phrase a lot. It typically indicates that I have reached the end of my ability to gracefully keep up with life. Sometimes it means that my sleep deficit has caught up with me.

20130711-080415.jpg

Can you relate to this illustration? Have you ever hit the wall?

Sometimes this happens to me in my spiritual or emotional life, when I feel as though I can’t seem to get past, or grow past, my current state. It means that I am in need of a breakthrough… I’ve exhausted myself trying to scale the wall and I need the hand of God to give me a boost or just knock the wall down.

I have been at the base of a wall for some time now.

I see the wounds and fears that are keeping me from the breakthrough. I see what’s on the other side. I’ve tried fixing myself and I’ve tried pretending that I’ve scaled the wall, but frankly, that doesn’t work.

So here I sit.

This week, God revealed something to me about Jesus, something that I believe is key in getting over the wall. Isaiah 53 is where the revelation came from. I’m sure you’ve read this text before:

He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
Isaiah 53:3-7

I’ve always believed that Jesus and I have a lot of common ground: Rejection. Unjust punishment. Abuse. Betrayal. Scars. These are the things we share.

Knowing that Jesus can identify with my pain has brought me immense comfort. I have gone to Him countless times to pour out my heart and His empathy has been a salve for my wounds. Identifying with some of His suffering has allowed me to let go of the majority of my anger and bitterness. Jesus and I — we’ve met on the plane of suffering and that’s where I learned to love Him.

But there is more to this passage in Isaiah. As I looked at the words again, probably a hundredth time, something new became apparent to me:

Though Jesus suffered greatly at the hands of those whom He loved,

He did not choose self-protection.

He did not choose self-protection before, during, nor after His rejection. In fact, after His death and resurrection, He went right back to loving, to being vulnerable, to putting Himself out there for others. He did not put up defenses around His heart. He did not hold people at arms length. He did not fear what would happen if He trusted others.

That is where Jesus and I vary greatly. In the aftermath of abuse and suffering, I have chosen self-protection. I have been guarding my heart since I was very young. When self-protecting behavior is so necessary at such a developmental age, it is hard to undo. Truly, If I could change myself, I would have already done it. I’m a pretty determined and resourceful person. I’ve made it through life to this point, but now I’ve hit the wall. I know that I can’t go further in my marriage or in other valuable relationships unless something shifts.

While reading that Isaiah passage, I felt a movement inside my heart. Something shifted, all right. I can’t exactly put it into words, but the tears are flowing and healing is seeping in. If Jesus can overcome betrayal and abuse, if He can love and trust again, then surely He can help me to do the same. If He can live without self-protection, then so can I. He can teach me. His Spirit can guide me step by step.

You might be wondering why is this so profound to me. This insight about Jesus showed me the lie that I have been believing. I honestly thought that I was unfixable in this area. Numerous attempts to change my ways have failed. Lots of prayers seemed answered with little to no progress. Yet the roadblock was not my wounds as much as it was my perspective.

I thought I was beyond hope.

That, my friends, is the wall I couldn’t scale. Now that I see in black and white that Jesus overcame the struggle that I face, I do have hope. I still don’t have the power to change myself, but I can yield to His Spirit and believe that He will change me.

Now the Lord is the Spirit,
and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory,
are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory,
which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
2 Corinthians 3:17-18

As I contemplate the glory of His unprecedented response to rejection, abuse, and suffering, I rejoice knowing that I am being gloriously transformed into His image: in my heart, in my relationships, in my everything.

More of You, Lord. I need more of You. Teach me more of Your loving ways. Show me what to do, what to say, what to believe. Make me more like Jesus!

photo credit: emtheartist.wordpress.com