Author: deborahreppond@gmail.com

Genesis 18:19  “For I [the LORD] have chosen him [Abraham], so he will direct [lead] his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and just so that the LORD will bring about for Abraham what He has promised him.”

For many people – Jews, Muslims and Christians – Abraham is seen as the father of their faith.  Abraham was chosen by God to be their ancestral father and from those people groups he has many, many spiritual descendants.  Abraham was very human, but the most significant thing about him (as far as the LORD is concerned anyway) was his unwavering faith in the LORD.  God told Abraham he would have a son by Sarah, and Abraham believed Him.  Abraham fathered his son Isaac late in his life through a miraculous work – Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born, and his wife, Sarah was 90 or so (well past menopause!).

Many people know the story of the LORD asking Abraham to give his son Isaac as a burnt offering to Himself…. and Abraham obeyed.  Abraham loved Isaac, but his love for God and his obedience to His command went even deeper.  As I meditated on this story, I imagined myself in Abraham’s shoes.  What horrible grief he must have been feeling as he carried the fire and the knife for the sacrifice, while Isaac carried the wood for the altar on his back as they walked up the mountain where Abraham had been commanded to sacrifice his only son.  What an uncanny resemblance to the story of Jesus’s final walk up the mount of crucifixion with the wood for the “altar” carried on his back.  Imagine the grief of his Father!  And unlike the story of Abraham and Isaac when God Himself provided the ram for the sacrifice and burnt offering… there was no one to stay the hands that killed His only begotten Son.  Isaac, unlike Jesus, was spared and lived to carry forward the covenant promises of the LORD to His people.

The LORD is our good, good Father.  What He did is radical….  He saw the desperate needs of His lost, broken, and sinful children for a Savior, and  abandoned His heaven and gave up His glory to come to earth to do what a good father would do.  Prior to Abraham, all of the men of Jesus’s lineage became fathers around the age of thirty years old (although Abraham himself did not become a father until his old age).  Thirty is also the age at which Hebrew men stepped into their priestly roles.  Jesus began His ministry at the age of thirty, and in a way, became a father to those around Him in how He led them.  Jesus, in so many ways, perfectly modeled what a good and true father does with and for his children.

Jesus’s fulfillment of the role of “father” is seen in how He sacrificed His power, glory and comfort to meet the needs of His children – the unique needs only He could meet.  In addition to everything His ministry entailed, He also modeled what a good father would have done for His children by how He related to those around Him.  He led His children (the disciples and the others who came to Him in faith) into the way of righteousness by living out what a holy life looked like in front of them. He modeled humbleness and obedience in all that He did – and by all that He said.  He was always teaching, frequently rebuking, and He loved His people with a passionate, fully intimate love.  He was entirely engaged with His children – spiritually, emotionally and physically.  He taught them the things they needed to know to become the men and women He intended them to be.  He rebuked them – some of them harshly –  so that they might recognize their failings and sins and turn from them in repentance.  He loved them enough to stay with them through thick and thin – even when they hurt and betrayed Him.  Jesus waded into our mess in order to save us from ourselves and this world.  He truly saw His children – the lost, hurt and broken people that they really were (and are).  He loved them anyway and led them in the ways of righteousness and truth.

Tragically, there are many, many examples around us of the legacies of bad fathering – children who are a “train wreck”, both emotionally and in how they live out their lives.  Bad fathers often leave a legacy of brokenness and rebellion – rebellion against the fathers themselves, but most importantly, against God.

Bad fathers don’t love their kids enough to put aside their own needs to meet the children’s needs.  They are brutal when the kids don’t do what they want them to do, or when the kids are not what the father wants them to be.

Bad fathers aren’t willing to fight for their kids – they watch passively rather than being willing to speak when they see the kids going the wrong way.

Bad fathers abandon their kids – and don’t give the kids the chance to work out their issues with their dad in a way that leads to wholeness.

Many bad fathers are full of hypocrisy – they say they believe something righteous, but their actions speak loudly of their worship of themselves or their idols.

Every family has a different story, and every parent/child relationship is uniquely their own.  What are the legacies of your father and your grandfather? How have their legacies played out in the lives their children and in your own life?  Do the legacies have “good fruit”?  Are their children and grandchildren people of integrity and wholeness, or are their legacies full of tragic stories of unfulfilled promise – full of hurt, suffering and disconnection from the LORD and from relationships with other family members?

A good father leads his children well.  He models sacrificial love for them – putting aside his own needs and desires to serve theirs.  A good father fights for his kids and speaks truth – even when the child does not want to hear it.  A good father stays in relationship with his children – pursuing them even when they reject his pursuit – in the hope that in his pursuit the child can work out its issues with him and become more whole and healthy.  A good father’s words and actions may not be perfect but are usually consistent and truthful.

A good father invests deeply in his children and sees them as a blessing from the LORD.  Through his relationship with his children, a good father grows in holiness and fulfills the task the LORD has given him in leading his family well. Through this, he too is blessed.

Jeremiah 29:11-14a
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you,” declares the Lord….

The first time the LORD lifted a Scripture off of the page and said to me, ‘this is for you’, Jeremiah 29:11 became His promise to me. What an incredible promise… and what a joy to know that His plans for me are for good and not to destroy me – the lie I had been believing for most of my life was that He was out to get me… and not in a good way! A while ago, the LORD said to me about Jeremiah 29:11 – ‘you need to keep reading….’. As I read on, the rest of the passage and its promises spoke to me as well. “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.”

This morning I woke up with this question in my mind: LORD, please show me what it means to truly seek You with all of my heart…. How do I do that? Honestly, I feel like I am seeking Him with all of my heart… my question to the LORD is: how I am missing the mark?

My reading today in the Psalms was Psalm 106:10-31, and in it God describes His unfaithful people who are doing the opposite of what seeking Him looks like. As I read, my question came to mind…. What does it mean to truly seek You? From that passage, I got the following:
1. Believe His Word.
2. Sing His praise.
3. Remember His great works in my own life and in the lives of others.
4. Wait on Him and His counsel.
5. Remember Him all of the time.
6. Glorify Him alone.
7. Believe in His great promises.
8. Have faith in His promises found throughout His Word.
9. Obey His voice (His commands).
10. Intercede (pray) for those who are in sin and are falling away from the LORD.

Oh, and the last thing is…. Do not complain – EVER! His plans and His work are working a good thing in me and in His people…. His promise in Romans 8:28 says so. He is trustworthy – and He will work all things for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

My life has felt a bit like a Chevy Chase/National Lampoon movie in the past couple of weeks…. Not so sure what the LORD is up to, but oh my! The drama has been pretty amazing and crazy.

Let’s start with 2 ½ weeks ago (drama #1)…..
The backstory…. Ben and I have been praying about what the LORD would have us do as far as buying property here in Montana. We saw a property a couple of months ago and had been dreaming about it and praying for the LORD’s direction about whether it was the property we were to buy and develop. The property backs up on a huge wilderness area, and consisted of a finished log house (albeit pretty rough), and an unfinished log house with great “bones” – with doors and a few windows installed, and sub-flooring, but no heat, no power, no plumbing, no water. We were dreaming about buying it and finishing the second home beautifully and renting out one of them on VRBO as an income stream (there is a lot of that here in Bigfork).

Spencer (our 21 year old son) had been visiting us for a bit. It had begun to get warmer and we had a couple of days of bright sunshine and up to 80 degrees. We decided to put the awning out on the RV Tuesday, May 30. It’s a bit challenging – it’s heavy and a bit cumbersome. We hadn’t really worked with it much, and were not particularly proficient in getting it out (or in), but we eventually got it set up. The following day, we went to look at another property local to where we are staying in the RV. As we returned, we saw the ugliest and most threatening cloud I have ever seen to the south of us (toward where the RV is parked). It looked like the ugliest bruise you can imagine… browns, yellows, blues, blacks and it stretched from the ground to as high as I could see. It was moving our direction really fast.

Remember, the RV awning (effectively, a sail) was out…. The storm hit when we were about 2 blocks away with 50+ mph gusts of wind. We arrived and jumped out of the car to wrestled with the awning – trying desperately to get it retracted. The wind was howling and a torrential rain began and lightning streaked overhead. Spencer climbed up onto the top of the RV (a metal box) and was wrestling with the awning (attached to metal bars) while Ben and I struggled on each support trying to get it put away. Lightning and a human lightning rod (on the roof of a metal box, no less), and Ben and I fighting to keep the awning from tearing off and sailing away while holding on to metal poles. Hmmmmm. In retrospect, pretty stupid. We got the awning tethered (not put away) but at least flat against the RV. Spencer came down unharmed and we got into shelter and watched the lightning play and listened to the thunder and watched the torrents of rain.

I know I can be pretty thick headed, so I spent the time that evening asking God just exactly what He wanted me to learn. Whatever it was, I really, really wanted to learn whatever it was (so we would not need another “lesson”!).

As I prayed, I thought about our prayer for His direction about what we should do about the property we had been dreaming about. We have lived in the RV twice – 3 months last summer, and a week (at that time) this summer. We have yet to really get up to speed with the relatively simple control systems of the RV.  We’re getting better at doing things like the sewer connection and stuff – but there are still aspects of how it works we have yet to spend time with figuring out. The property we have been dreaming about has a lot of pretty complex systems – septic, well controls, a heating system we’ve never dealt with before – and we were dreaming about adding a whole lot of other new systems with the unfinished structure. Hmmm. We don’t really know the systems of our relatively simple and small living place – are we really equipped to deal with 10 acres and the many systems required, and the other variables such as downed trees and lots of wild creatures such as grizzlies, mountain lions and wolves? As I pondered and prayed, it came to me that the LORD was showing us what we were not really willing to see… that we are not equipped to handle that kind of project.  And He helped me see that this RV debacle was an answer to our prayer for direction – and that His answer was a very loud and clear NO.

I’m so grateful that the LORD knows us… and He knows how stubborn and hard-headed I can be when I want to do something. Sometimes it takes a severe blow to my, oh so hard head, to get something through it. Praising God that none of us were struck by lightning! And for the clarity we have about this issue.

The saga continues….. (drama #2)
Ben left for Seattle June 4th and I followed on the 6th. (As an aside… our RV’s electrical/heat/hot water systems quit working entirely Tuesday morning prior to my flight to Seattle! )

Our daughter, Elise was graduating from the U.W. Friday, June 9th and we were excited to be there with her. While there, we planned to see friends, and then to head to Olympia to pack our stored furniture and household stuff into two 26 foot U-Haul trucks to drive it to Montana for storage closer to home. Our pack on Monday went fine (although it’s amazing just how much stuff we have!). We finished up and headed out planning to make it to Moses Lake that evening.

About 4 miles west of Ellensburg, Spencer (who was following Ben and me in the other truck) called my cell phone. The road noise was pretty bad and I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I told him I couldn’t hear him and that we could talk when we stopped for dinner. He shouted louder and wouldn’t let me hang up. Finally, I heard him say, “SMOKE!”, just as Ben and I saw smoke pouring out of our engine and all kinds of alarms and lights erupting from the dashboard. We pulled off and immediately a state patrol car pulled in behind us. He told us that he’d seen a big fluid spill a couple of miles back, and had driven looking for someone to be broken down at the side of the road. I’m so grateful that the engine did not catch fire!!!!!!

We called U-Haul and it took a really long time for them to figure out what they wanted to do. Eventually, they offered to put us up at the Red Lion in Ellensburg, and we settled in sometime after midnight. I was awake when the banging just outside of our ground floor windows began at 6:15 am. However, Spencer (in the room beside ours) was not, and I did not want him woken up. I dressed, looked outside and saw two roofing company vehicles outside our rooms. Management got them to stop work until 8 am – and I went to the restaurant to study for a while. Ben came after about an hour, but I was on the phone with a friend and he simply waved and smiled and went away. He returned after my call and asked me to come with him to the room…. He had something to show me.

We walked into the room and he walked over to the window which was covered by the curtains. He motioned me to come over and pulled back the curtain to show me the lower window which was shattered, but had two knife-like shards of glass sticking up from the lower frame. Ben explained that he had sat down in the office chair adjacent to the window, tipped the chair slightly and went over backwards. His head shattered the window as he fell headfirst to the asphalt outside (remember it was a ground-floor room, thank the LORD!!). He told me that the curtain had wrapped around his head and neck as he fell – and that curtain protected his neck (read carotid arteries) from the knife-like shards, and also cushioned his head as he hit the pavement. He had carefully drawn himself back into the room, and was not cut by the broken glass. Truly it is miraculous that he was not killed – by the knife-like shards of glass, or by cracking his head on the pavement outside. I have been praising God since that Ben survived… and that I did not return to Montana as a widow.

Honestly, I am not sure exactly why we have had such drama this past year. When we moved into the RV last June, Ben had a freak accident in which he accidentally accelerated into our parked RV – totaling his car and very nearly totaling the RV on the very first full day we were in it. That same afternoon, he fell from the top step of the RV onto the concrete pad below. He was pretty bruised, but thankfully, he did not break any bones, and he did not crack his head open on the cement.
This entire year has been full of “growth opportunities” (read challenges)…. I am praying that the LORD continues to protect us, and that He shows us His purpose in all that we have been through.

This year I have studied the Gospel of John. It has been so beautiful. What a Savior we serve! I am amazed at how good our God is!

When Mary Magdalene went to Jesus’s tomb on the Sunday following His crucifixion, she saw that the stone had been rolled away, and the tomb was empty. She ran to tell the other disciples and Peter and John raced to see. They looked into the tomb and….

John 20:6b-7 He [Peter] saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen.

As I was thinking about this Scripture, and was trying to picture in my head what John and Peter would have seen, I thought about the 75 pounds of spices wrapped with the linens around Jesus’s body. The linen was lying where Jesus’s body had lain, and I pictured it as if He had simply passed out of them when He resurrected from the dead.

I remembered something my teacher had said, “the physical often points to the spiritual” (and this has often come to mind this year when I have seen the beauty and majesty of God’s creation – how for example, His faithfulness is demonstrated each morning with the rising of the sun).

I thought about how the linens and spices around Jesus in the tomb would have been much like a cocoon, and how before a caterpillar enters its cocoon, it is a “worm”. (Psalm 22:6-8 “But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads: ‘He trusts in the LORD; let the LORD rescue Him. Let Him deliver Him, since He delights in Him.”) The words of these verses in the Psalms sound uncannily like the way Jesus was treated as He was tried and hung on the cross. Jesus was, like a caterpillar, probably pretty grotesque looking after His brutal flogging, beatings and enduring the nails being pounded into His hands and feet. After He died, His body was “cocooned” in linens and spices – just as a caterpillar’s body is cocooned in its silk. During the caterpillar’s time in the cocoon, it is transformed into a glorious new creation which emerges to fly in its beauty into the sky. Jesus, too, emerged from His “cocoon” in His glorified and transformed body…. and He, too, “flew”/ascended into the sky/clouds in His return to heaven.

We serve such an amazing God!!! How gracious He is to us – that He points to Himself in creation in ways that make His reality and His glory undeniable!

Psalm 86:1,3-7 “Hear, O LORD, and answer me, for I am poor and needy. Have mercy on me, O LORD, for I call to You all day long. Bring joy to Your servant, for to You, O LORD, I lift up my soul.

You are forgiving and good, O LORD; listen to my cry for mercy. In the day of my trouble I will call to You, for You will answer me.

(11-13) Teach me Your way, O LORD, and I will walk in Your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear Your Name. I will praise You, O LORD my God, with all my heart; I will glorify Your Name forever. For great is Your love toward me; You have delivered me from the depths of the grave.”

I love the Psalms. They speak to me and for me as I pray through them to the Lord. This Psalm in particular really met me recently. The last month has been pretty challenging (in fact this year has been!). Part of my history includes a long, long struggle with depression. That struggle ended in the fall of 2012 when I was, in a crazy, only God could do it way, healed overnight from the depression I had had since I was 12. I had been completely free of depression until recent months.

A friend pointed out last weekend that I had gotten to the point of not empathizing well with those wrestling with depression. Honestly, I had forgotten its pain, and the many, many years when I tried every drug known to try to get relief (as well as anything else I thought might help). Instead of “mourning with those who mourn”, I have been prideful and didn’t recognize just how difficult it really is to be depressed. While it is true that we are to bring everything to the Lord, He will allow us to stay in a painful place in order to grow us and refine us.He doesn’t always heal just when we ask,but only in His perfect timing and in His perfect will.

The Lord allowed me to sink into depression recently . I felt no joy, and so much discouragement, sinking into hopelessness and a sense that the circumstances of life are just too hard.

Yesterday afternoon I went out for a long walk and cried out to the Lord. I was wrestling with an issue that has remained unresolved for a long time, an issue that was taking me to an awful level of anger and grief and feelings of hopelessness – to a belief that things will never ever change. What the Lord showed me yesterday was that I was believing that I am entitled to something different than that which He has given me. He showed me that the only thing I am really entitled to (without Jesus) is having the flesh ripped from my body as it was from His when He was flogged. What I am entitled to is mocking and shame and excruciating agony on a cross just like what He experienced.

Anything of grace and goodness – ALL things are an amazing gift from my good and gracious Lord. He reminded me that my being healed of depression was all His doing, nothing of mine. He rebuked me for my pride and for my lack of love to others in their struggles. He reminded me of Revelation 3:17 where Jesus says to the church at Laodicea (and to us!), “You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But, you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.”

Without Jesus and His giving us His righteousness, we are all of those (I am!). Praising Jesus for Him showing me this! Praising Him for the depression I have had and the incredible lesson He has given me through it. Praising Him for His wonderful love and mercy – that He really is my good, good Father Who loves me enough to discipline and rebuke me. (Revelation 3:19)

Just as He says in David’s Psalm above, He has answered me in my day of trouble – just as He promised He would. I am praising Him that He is the promise-keeping Lord of the universe!!! He has given me back joy, and has brought me back to a place of gratitude for ALL that He has given me and has allowed. Romans 8:28 (another promise!) “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”

Truly, He is our Good Shepherd – watching over us, loving us, leading us, providing for us, and disciplining us when we so desperately need it. I am so grateful for His rescue of me – that He loved me enough to redeem me and make me His.

From “The Making of a Leader” by J. Robert Clinton

“God is not in as big of a hurry as you and I are. He is more interested in shaping you and me first. Submission is an essential leadership lesson.

A quote from Andrew Murray (South African Christian writer) about submission in “The Making of a Leader”:

1. He brought me here. It’s by His will I am in this straight place. In that fact I will rest.
2. He will keep me here in His love and give me grace to behave as His child.
3. Then He will make the trial a blessing, teaching me the lessons He intends for me to learn.
4. In His good time, He will bring me out again – how and when only He knows. So let me say: I am here by God’s appointment, in His keeping, under His training, and for His time.

J. Robert Clinton writes a bit later in a letter he includes in his book to a young leader…. You are in a hurry to get on with ministry. Wait on the LORD. He will lead in a plain path in His time. He also wrote:

God prepares by isolation….

You don’t know this part of my/our story, but God plucked us out of Seattle (where we had lived all of our adult lives) and put us too far away to “return to Egypt” (back home). Last summer, it was crazy. I couldn’t go “home” (although I tried a couple of times and He made insurmountable road blocks). My friends dropped off the map – not returning calls, emails or texts. Ben was busy and often away. I did a lot of long, long runs alone, and what happened was that Jesus became my running/life companion for that season. The LORD isolated me from home, friends and even family… crazy lonely at first, but Jesus truly did become my “all in all” during that time.

The LORD is so faithful, and He gives us just what we need when we need it. I needed to read the above…. what a good God He is.

Have you ever wondered about or been afraid of losing your “identity”? I’ve been thinking about what eternal life – that is life after I die to this life here on earth a lot lately. I’ve been wondering whether I will retain my “deborahness”, or whether I will be absorbed into a oneness with God/Jesus/Holy Spirit and will cease to be truly an individual.

In some religious traditions, it is thought that the ultimate ending of all of us is to be absorbed into the essence of all things – I think that is called Nirvana….? Others believe that there is no life after we die – that we simply cease to exist forever and our bodies return into the ecosystem. Others believe that we come back to life again and again – in a form that is a consequence of the way we lived our lives. Of course, there are others who have beliefs different even than these limited examples.
I have been feeling afraid that if I lose myself in Jesus – worshipping Him alone and putting Him first (instead of me!) – my person and identity as an individual will become nothingness and I will disappear into the vastness of God.

In His Word, God shows over and over how He treasures individual people. The Bible is some ways is what would be called a “scroll of remembrance”. Frequently, God mentions individual people – who they were and what they did – almost like He does not want us to ever forget them. In the Old Testament, there are lists and lists of His people – just their names – as if He is saying that each one of them is precious to Him. He talks about those who believe in and accept Jesus as their Savior as being “written in the Book of Life” – remembered for all time and living forever.

One of the truly challenging things about seeking to know Jesus – Who He says He is in His Word – and trying to trust Him and obey His commands, is to always worship and put Him first in my thoughts, words and actions. Unfortunately, more often than not, I put myself in first position – first position as far as getting what I want, doing what I want to do and in thinking that I know a lot more than I really do. I put “me” above loving Him and following Him and being obedient to His Word. You see, truthfully, I much prefer to “worship” me and put my thinking and desires before anything that could mean that I don’t get to do and think just as I want.

This past couple of months, I have been feeling like I’ve been in a hot oven….. nothing life-threatening, just a lot of really difficult circumstances that have been bringing me to tears and have caused me to feel so very oppressed. Another name for it would be “suffering” (although compared to what many, many face daily in our world, what I’ve been going through is really nothing!). I am beginning to look at times of suffering differently. My heart’s cry has been, “this is too much to bear!”, “please, please LORD fix this!!”, “please LORD Jesus, take this away!”. What has come out of this season has been some much-needed life lessons – ones that I would not have sought out on my own. Our LORD is so perfect – so full of love for us – He only gives us suffering that is intended to make us more like Him.

2 Corinthians 4:6-9 (NIVUK)
6 “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.
7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”

This “jar of clay” has been being fired in the kiln of life recently. God’s purpose is to make His jars of clay into beautiful treasures. A porcelain artist glazes His work and then puts it into a kiln at precisely the correct temperature for precisely the right amount of time. The intense heat of the kiln changes the nature of the clay and perfects the glaze, so that when it is removed from the furnace, the clay pot has been transformed into a treasure – a beautiful work of art. With our treasures, we place them where we can admire them and marvel at their beauty. We handle them lovingly and protect them from being chipped or broken.

The LORD is so faithful. He will not give us more than we can bear! I’ve been thinking about the story in Daniel chapter 3 about a furnace:
16 Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to him, ‘King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. 17 If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. 18 But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.’
19 Then Nebuchadnezzar was furious with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, and his attitude towards them changed. He ordered the furnace to be heated seven times hotter than usual 20 and commanded some of the strongest soldiers in his army to tie up Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and throw them into the blazing furnace. 21 So these men, wearing their robes, trousers, turbans and other clothes, were bound and thrown into the blazing furnace. 22 The king’s command was so urgent and the furnace so hot that the flames of the fire killed the soldiers who took up Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, 23 and these three men, firmly tied, fell into the blazing furnace.
24 Then King Nebuchadnezzar leaped to his feet in amazement and asked his advisors, ‘Weren’t there three men that we tied up and threw into the fire?’ They replied, ‘Certainly, your Majesty.’
25 He said, ‘Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods.’

Jesus in talking to Peter in the New Testament, said that He would allow Peter (aka Simon) to be “sifted like wheat”.
Luke 22:31-32New International Version – UK (NIVUK)
31 “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. 32 But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

While the LORD allows us to be in the fiery furnace, He does not leave us there alone.   HE IS WITH US in the flames. AND when He brings us out of the trials we find ourselves in, He has done a mighty work in transforming us from a common jar of clay, to a beautiful vase to be treasured, admired, loved and displayed for His glory and for the good of His kingdom. He has transformed us into a treasure – one of immense value to the King of all creation. He alone is to be praised for His work of transformation!!! Indeed, we are “sifted like wheat”, but God is in control of the one He allows to sift us – and He is in control of the outcome.

I am comforted by all that He is showing me about His love and heart for me in becoming the woman He intends for me to be. This time of “suffering” in the fire of life has not been easy. However, I am coming to see that through this, I am becoming His treasure – one to be loved by Him, protected by Him, used by Him and known by Him. Oh LORD, it is a privilege to be Your’s…. please help me stand firm in the sure knowledge that I am safe in Your loving hands. You do not desire to erase me and cause me to cease to exist by absorbing me into Yourself. You treasure me as Your creation – a clay pot becoming a beautiful porcelain vase. I am comforted to think that I exist as Your daughter, and that I will exist forever as Your beloved.

Hello! Today is Ash Wednesday which marks the beginning of Lent – a church tradition celebrated for the 40 days prior to Easter.
This morning, I was listening to Brian Hardin on Daily Audio Bible. He did a brief teaching on the meaning and significance of Lent for us as Christians. In his teaching he explained some things that I did not really understand.

I have always been puzzled by the tradition of putting ashes on the forehead of people observing Lent. As a Protestant, that tradition was never done in the congregations I attended. Evidently, it is meant to signify the sackcloth and ashes frequently mentioned in the Old Testament (for example, in the Book of Job, Job sits in the ashes dressed in rags following the deaths of his children, and the loss of everything except his (nagging) wife). In today’s observance of Lent, people put the ashes on their foreheads in order to show their grief and remorse for their sins which sent Jesus to the cross. Lent is meant to be 40 days of contemplation of the great and unspeakable cost of our sins.

I know for myself, I often diminish the significance and weight and the incredible cost of my sin – seeing it as not such a big deal – and seeing my sin as just “little” sins without much eternal significance. This attitude in me fails to honor and recognize the tremendous and horrible price Jesus paid for my sin (and yours) on the cross. I’ve heard preachers say many times, that even one of those “little” sins would have sent Jesus to the cross — without the cross, a “little” (or big) sin makes me unholy and unable to enter the presence of the LORD – forever lost in darkness without God.

Our relationship with Jesus is deeply intimate and personal – even more loving and intimate than the relationship we have with any other person. The thought that we would treat our sin casually – seeing it as “little”, and not very significant – is a lie that dishonors our LORD and the great cost Jesus paid. He paid the price of His life to offer us restoration and reconciliation with the LORD.

During Lent, the tradition is that we fast from something that is a part of our daily life. Each time we abstain from that thing, we are reminded of the terrible cost of the cross – the darkness of sin, the weight of it in our lives, and of Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross. When I abstain, the LORD may reveal what “of the world” I am putting first in my life ahead of my relationship with Jesus – He shows where my priorities are and areas where I am out of alignment with Him.

Lent is about preparing our hearts for the right celebration of Easter – helping us see clearly our sin which necessitated the cross – and helping us understand the cost of the cross and the beauty of what Jesus has done out of love for us.

What is God showing you that may need to be removed from your life – for a season, or for longer term? Are you (am I!) willing to allow the LORD to rearrange your life in order to put Him first – fully on the throne of your existence – to make you suitable for a holy relationship with Him.