The Divine Echo

“Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.’ Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man." Genesis 1:26, 2:7, 2:22

I have had such a precious month getting to know my new granddaughter, Emry Rose. It had been 13 years since held a grandchild as a baby. It has been such a privilege to watch my older grandchildren grow and mature into the image of their parents. As I search every detail of Emry’s little face, I see reflections of both my daughter and son-in-law. I see tendencies of both personalities. I see the outflow of the love they both are pouring into this tiny human from the beginning. Seeing her is also seeing the goodness and love of them.

In a way we are like Emry as people look at us. They search us to see who we reflect… the world or the One who breathed life into us. Like Emry we pour out what has been poured into us. We reflect the personalities and attitudes of what we have spent most time in the presence of. As the daughter of my parents, I have not forgotten one day who I am in that regard. As their daughter, I have never forgotten how much I am loved and I see how much I am like them. So how is it that we forget who we are in God when the challenges of life find us? When things are so difficult sometimes the easiest thing to do is to remember the simple truth…I am loved by God…I am God’s chosen child…I am a reflection of His greatness. Just as Emry has been made in the image of God and the reflection of her parents, we were made to reflect God’s image.

‘We aren’t just dust and bone. We aren’t what we’ve done or what’s been done to us. We aren’t the worst of what others have said about us. We are the very breath and touch of God. Designed and loved by God. A reflection of the glory and goodness of God… Remember who you are. This is the Divine Echo.’ Seeing Beautiful Again, Lysa TerKeurst, p. 192

Time to Pause

“Then the LORD said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast…if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.’” Genesis 4:2-8

Fewer things are more exhausting than waking up in the middle of the night with something on my mind and allowing it to consume me. There is no doubt that the enemy does his best work in the dark of the night. I can go to bed with something as small as an irritation or frustration and by the time I drift back asleep I have exalted it to an immovable mountain. It astonishes me how the mind can dictate our emotions if not submitted to God. Cain was filled with anger after God favored his brother Abel’s offering over his. God loved Cain so much that He initiated a conversation regarding his anger, and warned him to not let it rule over him. Cain had a choice at that very moment. Would he humble himself and ask God to help him do what was right or would he allow his anger to consume him? We don’t know how long Cain considered the words of God, but we do know the choice he made…to orchestrate and carry out the murder of his brother.

Emotions can be posers and liars but only if we give them access to our mind. God gave us our emotions but they come with a warning like every other blessing He has given us. We cannot give our emotions the license to dictate our actions. ‘We must always remember that we can acknowledge our feelings…but not be ruled by our feelings…I must get intentional when I go to bed every night…As the sun is going down, I pray that we remember it’s time to pause and let God tend to any strong or potentially damaging reactions to hurts that could consume us…Remember, our ability to forgive others rises and falls on whether we lean into what Jesus has already done for us.’ Seeing Beautiful Again, Lysa TerKeurst, p. 181-182.

On those nights, when my feelings begin to morph into anger I purposely begin praying for others. Through the spirit of prayer God settles any unresolved emotions and gives me rest. I am certainly far from perfect but taking captive those thoughts and replacing them with prayer is my best weapon against the enemy.

Dreaming in Reverse

“The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” Psalm 34:18

There are few phrases that impact me the way ‘crushed in spirit’ does. Sharon Gearen describes our spirit as our inner light, our power source…that which connects to God, to ourselves, and all those around us. She offered an image of a crushed spirit that really resonates with me this morning. She wrote that a crushed spirit is like a hammer coming down on a rose. While the carnage of the rose lays in fragments, the crushing of it actually releases an aroma touching all in its presence. The perfume of the rose transcends the crushing and moves beyond the pain to heal. The petals have been damaged but the vine remains strong.

Death of a loved one is one of the most crushing events that we experience. We all have been there if we have walked on this earth for any length of time and we will experience it again. Grief is the price we pay for love. ‘When you are grieving over someone or something that was taken away, you wish you could go back in time…Grieving is dreaming in reverse…Healing feels impossible, because circumstances feel unchangeable.’ Seeing Beautiful Again, Lysa TerKeurst, p. 159.

In today’s verse, God does not say He comforts those who are crushed in spirit although He does. He offers more than just comfort…He offers rescue and a life redeemed in spite of our grief. He fully understands the pain you are going through and His will is not for you to remain crushed and broken. Like the rose, beauty can still transcend the pain and frame a new birth of something up ahead. We can praise God that He won’t leave us in our pain and that He alone has the power and healing to turn our face to the future. We can agree that some things on this side of Heaven might never be understood. Lysa writes that ‘Knowing why something happened will never help if we wouldn’t agree with the answer anyhow.’ She encourages us to invite God in to the unknown gaps of our lives.

God honors our reversed dreams because they helped write our story, but He has future dreams for our lives to finish out our story.

The Courage to Color

“As God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” Colossians 3:12

When I was a little girl one of my favorite things to do was to color in coloring books. I could absolutely lose hours just sitting there choosing the colors that spoke to me about the picture in front of me. I would always outline the lines of the picture as if it was a guarantee that I couldn’t go out of the lines. The contrast between the heavy outer lines and the soft markings within the lines created my favorite finished picture. A while back our granddaughter, Kherington was spending the night with us and I had bought a book in which to color. We worked for over 3 hours each on one picture due to its intricate lines. At the end of the time, she gave her picture to me and I gave mine to her. We both fully understood the sweat, time, effort, and work that went into the experience. In its simplest form, this is compassion at its finest.

‘God wants us, His creation, to connect with others and bring them light and life with the brushstrokes of compassion’ Seeing Beautiful Again, Lysa TerKeurst, p. 174-175. He hands us a blank picture with each experience and has already drawn the heavy lines in which we are to color. As we walk through our experience some days we color within the lines with intentional and peaceful colors while other days we choose the colors of black and gray. It all forms a realistic picture, one that God encourages us to share with others who need compassion as they color their own picture. ‘Who do we want standing near us in those moments dripping with disappointments and saturated with sorrow? It’s those clothed with garments of understanding. They have personally experienced how excruciatingly painful it can sometimes be to simply be human,’ p. 174.

I don’t know about you but I want that person to be someone who will share their coloring book with me. I want someone by my side who has been heartbroken but was willing to embrace healing. I want to color next to someone with a picture that resonates with me, and who is willing to share their colors. Whatever you are going through in this season, don’t leave your book blank but crack open the crayon box and have the courage to color.

Fixing our Eyes

“We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.” 2 Corinthians 4:18

In 2015, the New York Times ran an article written by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz who wrote of his experience when he questioned people on social media about questions they had regarding God. The third most expressed question was heartbreaking - ‘Why does God hate me?’ It proves to me that the power of emotions will always threaten the power of truth. Feelings are wonderful indicators, but never were they meant to be dictators. How is it that truth so easily gets lost when the marriage ends…the partner dies…the diagnosis comes? God never intended for us to co-exist with sin and sickness; we can thank Satan for that. When did we start assigning God’s goodness based on our desired outcomes?

In Seeing Beautiful Again, Lysa TerKeurst writes, ‘The most devastating spiritual crisis isn’t when we wonder why God isn’t doing something. It’s when we become utterly convinced, He no longer cares…What makes faith fall apart isn’t doubt. It’s becoming too certain of the wrong things’ p.145. As if our pain isn’t enough, we compound our suffering by diminishing God’s character. There is no greater grief than the grief we feel when it seems God has let us down. We take our limited perception of our life and convince ourselves that because God didn’t say yes to one set of circumstances, that He cannot be trusted in any of our circumstances. Our battle cry is ‘God is good’ when things are going well. But when they don’t, the temptation is to give God the grade according to our feelings. If we feel our situation is an ‘F’ we give God an ‘F’.

‘It’s hard when we are living in that space where our head knows God can do anything but our heart is heavy because He’s not doing what we are hoping for, what we’ve prayed for, what we’ve believed for, for a long while’ p. 146. We walk a prideful path when we determine how God should have responded…when God should have responded…how God better respond. God sees the full story of our lives and fully understands the experiences we need to live out His best will for our lives. We can only partially see what good is ours up ahead while He sees the completed and actual good that He is bringing about. The unseen is full of the greatness of God… the unseen is complete in its perfection…the unseen is the finished work of a Father who planned meticulously and lovingly since our first breath. We will walk in the freedom of truth when we can utter ‘God is good’ even with tears streaming down our face.

Surviving the Whiplash

“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts…you were called to peace” Colossians 3:15.

Have you ever been in the car with someone else driving and they suddenly slammed on the brakes? There is not a greater rush of fear than that moment with all it's uncertainty and jolt. I was reading this morning’s devotional from a wonderful book written by Lysa TerKeurst called Seeing Beautiful Again. I will caution you that a large part of today’s ELM will be dedicated to her words because both you and I desperately need them. Right out of the gate she caught my attention with this sentence, ‘It was like life just slammed on the brakes, and we were all reeling from the whiplash’ p.139. While she was talking about COVID-19 from last year, I couldn’t help but to think of that statement in broader terms.

How many of us are walking around with emotional whiplash? What circumstances have us believing we are destined for despair...paralyzed in our grief…terrified of our future? We all must be courageous enough to process our disappointments and disillusionments to come out on the other side both emotionally and spiritually healthy. Lysa encourages us to frame the loss by remembering the good we do have so we don’t get consumed by what’s been taken. ‘Be honest about what you need. And be mindful that though COVID [fill in your blank] changed a lot for us, it did not change God…His character…His love and care for His people…His plans to take everything we face and use it to grow us, mature us, and make us more prepared for a good future’ p. 142.

Another of Lysa’s encouragement is one we can all relate to in thinking about our circumstances. ‘Resist the temptation to write out worst-case scenarios. It can be so easy to let today’s disappointments get blown out of proportion and make you expect the absolute worst for tomorrow…mentally running too far into an unknown future and writing a script of a worst-case scenario. My negativity pulls me away from trusting God, loving people, and enjoying what today offers’ p. 143.

I can’t think of a better way than to turn tomorrow around by applying these attitudes today. We were created for peace and we will be void of peace until we allow the love of and trust in Christ to be the ruler in our hearts, especially when life has slammed on brakes.

Interrupting the Spiral

“He says, ‘Be still, and know that I am God’” Psalm 46:10.

Last Sunday while sitting in church listening to a sermon on humility the most powerful thing occurred. One of our pastors was delivering the message and seemingly needed a moment to gather his thoughts. He is an incredible speaker and never uses notes but, on this morning, he paused the message to personally speak to us. He admitted that his thoughts and emotions were suddenly filled with anxiety. He suggested that we stop and pray so that the Lord could settle in his spirit to continue bringing the message to us. As a full worship center of people joined him in prayer, I could barely contain myself from sobbing. You could hear the whisperings of different people lifting their individual prayers for him. You could hear the sniffling of the congregation realizing that the very topic of the message was being exemplified by the speaker. I don’t know what the chatter sounded like in his head prior to the prayer, but I know what power was revealed in our church…on that stage…in our hearts after the prayer. Without our pastor’s true humility God’s power would not have had the beautiful vessel through which to travel.

“Humility is impossible unless we quiet the chatter and the noise and sit with Jesus. Silence, in itself, is the most basic and intimate form of humility. We lay down everything and just stop…We recognize our spirals and naming them is the first step to interrupting them. That’s why the enemy wants to fill our lives and our heads and our hearts with noise. Because silence with God is the beginning of every victory.” Get Out of Your Head, Jennie Allen, p. 62.

There has never been a truer statement that ‘Silence is golden’ than when our silence is a result of our stillness with God. Silence ushers in praise, prayer, and power. It teaches us the person of God and fills our lives with the benefits from God such as peace, calm, wisdom, and weapons against the tempter.

When we are our most exposed and vulnerable God is His most powerful and faithful.