Tag Archives: Sin

What do You want me to say, Lord?

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Papa's Horses

Hello friends!  I pray that you have had a wonderful couple of weeks, as have I.  God’s been challenging me in new and exciting ways, as I continue this journey of drawing closer to Him.  I’m excited to share these new insights with you over the next few weeks, but God is still growing them in me.  So, today, instead of going terribly deep, I thought I’d share a simple, yet deeply profound discovery.  I pray it blesses you.

 This discovery started a couple of weeks ago when I was fretting (I do this way too much, don’t you!)  I had the children’s sermon in church.  I worry every time I have it because, first, I want to share something that will impact these children and perhaps give them a clear memory that God will use in their lives, and second, I want to remind the adults in the congregation of the simple, yet profound, joys that God shares with us.  These building blocks are so important.  I feel sometimes we lose track of them as we get older, and being reminded of them is a gift.   So, I feel a deep obligation to speak what God would have me speak.  In other words, I put a lot of unneeded pressure on myself.  I usually try to do an object lesson and have something to give the kids that reminds them of that lesson; however, after a long hard week, Saturday arrived and I still had no idea what I was going to teach about.

I was so tired—as I have been frequently lately—and my husband, daughter, and I were grabbing a quick bite to eat out because I didn’t want to cook.  (On a side note, my husband has taken over the cooking this week because I’m still feeling very tired.  I have to brag on him and how good he is to me.  He works the evening shift and isn’t home when we have supper, but he’s put things in the crockpot, pre-cooked meat, and even purchased all our groceries this week!  I am one blessed woman!)  When I shared my dilemma, Mattie, my sweet daughter who is incredibly horse crazy, piped up: “You could teach about Muley!”  Muley is a horse her Papa is giving her at the beginning of summer break.  I laughed because I knew she was going to say this.  We don’t go a single day without at least 15 questions about her new horse.  My response to her suggestion: “Mattie, I know you love Muley, but how can I share about God through that?”

Isn’t it so amazing how God works?  Jason said, “I’m sure you can think of something that horses do that you can use to teach the kids about God.”  I paused, and asked God, “What do you want me to say Lord?”  I immediately got the picture of an old rickety bridge not far from my childhood home, and a memory surfaced.

When I was young, not much older than my daughter is now, I used to ride my horse Chata down the road by our home.  About two miles down this road was a very old bridge.  The bridge was low to the water and often when it rained the water would wash over the top of it.  This made holes in it where the cement and gravel had washed away, and you could see the creek beneath.

One afternoon in the spring I was riding Chata, and we came upon this bridge.  The water was up, but it wasn’t rushing.  It was more like a gentle stream over the top of the road.  We’d been here often enough that I knew where to cross to avoid any washed out portions of the bridge.  I clucked at Chata, but she balked.   I couldn’t get her to go through the water.   After a couple attempts, I got off her back and walked her across the creek—getting myself wet in the process, but earning her trust.  We came back to that creek many more times as I got older, and she never balked again.  She trusted that I knew where to lead her and she would be safe.

I once asked my dad why horses feared water like they do.  He explained that horses have little to no depth perception.  A horse can see the water, but it can’t see how deep it is.  So, while I could see that the water was only a couple of inches deep and not dangerous, she couldn’t.  She didn’t know that she’d be safe until I got off  her back and led her through her trial.

God whispered, “That just like you.”  Immediately I saw the world through Chata’s eyes.  With God as my rider, guiding me through the crags and snares of life, I’ve learned to trust His design.  But, oh, how many times have I balked.  I come across a trial, and I can’t see the depth of it.  I can’t tell if I’ll make it through to the other side, or if it will swallow me whole.  But, God can.  He knows where the holes are.  He knows how deep it is and how long I’ll be in it.  I just have to learn to trust him—like Chata learned to trust me.  How many times has He climbed out of the saddle to walk beside me and coax me through life?  How many times have I slowed a blessing because of my fear and unbelief?  I need to completely surrender control to my Rider, and trust that He will keep me safe.

Amazing.  God always has a plan.  It’s a blessing to have a horse-crazy daughter after all.  The neatest thing is that I remembered that my sweet Chata, who passed away my freshman year in college, is the grandmother to Mattie’s Muley.  How precious is our God.  Things have a way of coming full circle.  The blessings from the Lord are immense and beyond my understanding.

Lord, thank you for giving me such wonderful reminders of who You are.  Thank you for being a faithful friend and rider. I surrender control to You and trust that, even when I don’t know the outcome, You do.  You give me so much more than I deserve.  I love You.   Amen.

Staying Alert in Christ,

Megan

Playlist:

“You Lead” Jamie Grace http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFmSzL2ppvg

“Keep Making Me” Sidewalk Prophets http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGkmPeVpBbI

“Speak Life”  Toby Mac http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeBv9r92VQ0

“Love Take Me Over” Steven Curtis Chapin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8DiZhNVu1I

Lord, It’s Time to Clean House…

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Create in me a clean heart

I hate cleaning.  I admit it.  I loathe it.  There is true enmity between dishes and me.  It is the thing I put off the most, and the thing I most need to do.  I have to be very intentional about making myself keep up on my cleaning duties.  Most of the time I fail, but I give it a valiant effort.

This last weekend I set about the task of getting two things done.  I wanted to get my house, “back in order,” as I like to say.  In other words, I had a week’s worth of dishes and laundry and clutter to deal with.  And, I wanted to start to clean out our basement.  Ugh.  The basement.  Two years ago it flooded.  We stacked up furniture in a dry corner and pulled up carpet in an effort to save as much as we could.  That time we did, but since then it’s flooded every third time it’s rained.  It’s awful.  So, I knew I need to just pitch most of what’s down there, and like all housework, I’ve been putting it off.

When my husband and I went down to start organizing things, we knew we had a big chore ahead of us.  What we found was not as bad as I’d imagined, but a whole lot of work.  The biggest issue is the mildew.  It’s growing in a lot of places and it’s going to be a battle getting rid of it.   It’s attached itself to things we treasure and we’ll have to clean.    We’ve lost a lot of things—nothing that can’t be replaced but still it was hard sorting through some of it.  It also hit me, “why have I been holding onto this stuff?”  Much of it I haven’t used in years, and it really didn’t need to be kept to begin with.  I just didn’t want to see it go.

The song “Whatever You’re Doing” by Sanctus Real kept running through my head as we took on this monstrous task.  The specific lyrics that resonated were:

“Time to face up,
Clean this old house
Time to breathe in and let everything out
That I’ve wanted to say for so many years
Time to release all my held back tears”

As I worked on the two cleaning tasks I undertook this weekend, I got to thinking, “What sins and issues have I been putting off dealing with?”   I began to ask God to show me things that I had been avoiding cleaning out in my heart.  And, just like I asked Him to, He delivered.

The biggest sin He showed me just reared its ugly head a few days ago, but it was characteristic of something I don’t like admitting I struggle with—my temper.  This last flare-up was about something very dear to me—my Bible.  You see, since I’ve been working four jobs, I’ve had to grab my quiet time on the go.  So I’ve kept my Bible in my car’s passenger seat so it’s easy to grab.  The other night my daughter left something in the backseat, and for reasons that make no sense to me, she opened the front passenger door and climbed across the backseat to get it.  Her hands full, she carelessly didn’t close the passenger door behind her.  The result was about 6 barn cats climbing all over the seats.  And to top that off a thunderstorm came through.  The seat was drenched…and so was my Bible.  I have years of notes in the margins, and memories that go with them stored up in that volume.  And it was drenched.  I suppose I should thank the barn cats for setting off the warning lights or I’d have never gone out to check it until morning—by that time my Bible would have been ruined.  When I came back in, I was heartbroken.  I sat down and cried that something that was so precious was damaged—at the time I believed beyond repair.  (After a lot of work, I was able to salvage it.)  What made me mad though wasn’t that my daughter had carelessly caused this catastrophe, but rather her response to it.  She said it, “wasn’t her fault.”  I blew up.  I chewed her up one side and down the other.  I hurt her feelings the way mine were hurt.  I was so wrong.  I damaged her because something I loved was damaged.  How wrong of me.

God began to show me that, even though she was wrong in what she did and said, so was I.  My overreaction did not give her a good role model for dealing with adversity.  Instead, I was showing her that throwing a fit when something upsets me is acceptable.  It’s not.

“It’s time for healing time to move on
It’s time to fix what’s been broken too long
Time make right what has been wrong
It’s time to find my way to where I belong”

When we avoid sin it begins to turn into a similar scene as my basement.  We hold on to things we don’t really need—things that can cause damage if they’re left for too long.  They begin to mildew and break down.  They aren’t any good to us, so why do we keep avoiding dealing with them?  The worst part is that the sin we’re holding onto and not confronting can cause damage to other things that are of worth.  The mildew of it grows on the things we treasure—like relationships with our family, and with the Lord.

Avoiding sin is easy.  We just keep living upstairs and keep it up and running, but underneath, in the basement of our hearts, it’s still there, it’s not going away, and it’s destroying us little by little.

“Time for a milestone
Time to begin again
Reevaluate who I really am
Am I doing everything to follow your will
or just climbing aimlessly over these hills
So show me what it is you want from me
I give everything I surrender…”

Lord, show me what I can do to fight off this sin nature that I detest so much and avoid.  I surrender…”whatever You’re doing inside of me…You’re up to something bigger than me.  Larger than life, something heavenly”  Let me be brave enough to say, “It’s time to face up.  Clean this old house.  Time breathe in and let everything out”

Staying Alert in Christ,

Megan