Whispers of Truth

I love spiritual intersections--you know the place--where you're reading and studying one thing and God lets it run into something else that is spiritually relevant. Recently, a study group I'm in completed No More Idols by Kelly Minter, which is an eye-opening study. The truth it contains makes it worth the indigestion that follows. That study overlapped the beginning of our Sunday school study of the book of Jeremiah, which details the exile of Judah through the prophetic utterances of Jeremiah, the weeping prophet. I, too, have wanted to weep as I've seen God's yearning for His peculiar people, His righteous anger at their rejection of Him in favor of powerless idols, and His compassionate longing for their return to His grace and favor. I really want to weep when I see myself in the portraits painted for me by God through the history of His chosen people. Phrases from the book of Hosea also intersect here and jump out at me showing Israel's favoritism of idols

Maybe I’ve mentioned this before, but the clothing styles for women and young ladies today leaves much to be desired. I have noticed a significant decline in the amount of fabric used in the construction of garments. As a result, modesty and discretion are noticeably missing from the wardrobes of many young (and old) women. I thought of Paul’s words to Timothy as I walked around this evening at a large shopping center where many mannequins and young women were sporting skimpy summer clothing. Paul instructed Timothy that he wanted women “to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women making a claim to godliness” (I Tim. 2:9-10, NASB). Paul points to the importance for us as women claiming the name of Christ to cover ourselves appropriately. To cover oneself modestly is not open to interpretation or argument if we have any claim to godliness

Hope shouts to me when I read Jeremiah, and I think it is for this reason that the book resonates with me. This hope is so vibrant that it resounds even in the midst of God calling the blackest sin by name and issuing the harsh discipline required to bring his own back to him. Every child has probably heard the phrase, “This hurts me worse than it does you” as they receive discipline from a parent, but I don’t think we’ve ever experienced the extreme anguish God experiences as he has to go to such drastic measures to save some of his own from destroying themselves. Jeremiah 31:20 shows God yearning for his children regardless of the sin that he has so vocally condemned in Ephraim; God looks forward to the time he can rain down his mercy upon him and restore fellowship. He even says, “Indeed as often as I have spoken against him, I certainly still remember him” (vs. 20, NASB). I imagine that no matter what kind of trouble my children could possibly find to get into or how angry or indig

In recent years, I’ve heard many people refer to having a “life verse,” or a special verse in the Bible that has particular meaning to them. A life verse isn’t much different than anything else; because we’re human, if someone has something, we have a tendency to think we should have it too, but I’m of the opinion that a life verse chooses you rather than the other way around. This rather random thought came to me this week while studying the background for the Sunday school lesson because my life verse is Jeremiah 29:11. This verse found me long before I went looking for it or even thought deeply about adopting it as a verse to represent my life. Honestly, I wasn’t aware of the context of the verse at the time it was given to me in 1987, and I didn’t dwell much on the verse itself in any way but to think what a nice thought it was. In case you’re not familiar with the verse, it reads, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans for welfare and not for calamity to

       Have you ever prepared for one thing but been asked to do another? This recently happened to me on our trip to Nicaragua. I was studied up and prepared to teach women about consecration, service, and evangelism. I had spent countless hours reading, finding verses, creating a working outline for the time we had, and praying over the women who would hear what God had to say about these topics. However, we ended up combining the women’s and men’s classes into one and my husband taught. On the surface of things, the reason for this was a lack of enough translators, but after the first two days, it was clear that God intended (and arranged) for Greg to teach. I was really OK with that because either way, I was in my comfort zone, but I was blown away when we went to visit a school on our second day there. I had inadvertently laid my Bible on the table in the kitchen area, and I just wasn’t mentally prepared when we walked down the hall and someone turned to me and said, “You’ve got t

For the next few weeks, my church has planned some activities to "amp up the joy" during this summer month that is sometimes low in attendance due to vacations and other activities. As a result of the amped up Tuesday night activities, Sunday evenings and Wednesday evenings have been left free to meet with small parts of the body. At first, I was really bummed about missing so much church, but I've changed my mind because I have been reminded that I am meeting with the "church," which is the body of Christ. We are meeting with a small group in our home and tonight was really cool. We watched an Andy Stanley video based on difficult things Jesus said when he was here on earth. Tonight's lesson came from John 6 where Jesus referred to being the bread of life and told his followers that they must eat his body and drink his blood. The point of the lesson came down to Peter's response to Jesus when he asked the disciples if they too wanted to leave him like t

          Sometimes we can feel trapped between the past and the future. I feel quite sure that David understood this. He had the promise from God that he would one day be king, but the space in between held danger and hardship and trials, not to mention multiple murderous plots on his life. Most of the trials came at the hand of Saul, who steadfastly clung to the past and refused to acknowledge God’s rejection of him as king over Israel. David found himself pursued and almost trapped by Saul many times, but several times God sent him encouragement from an unlikely source—Saul’s own son, Jonathan.           Jonathan, too, probably understood feeling trapped between the past and the future as well. His father was a king rejected by God, but he refused to let go of his own plans for his future as well as his son’s. Jonathan’s love for David and his acceptance of God’s plan for Israel placed him directly in the line of fire, but hear his words of encouragement to David: “Do not be afraid

This week’s Sunday school lesson made me wish kids came with a spiritual guarantee. Of all the legacies I could leave, I would wish to leave them a strong spiritual one. We’ve been studying the book of Jeremiah, and this week’s lesson came from chapters 22-25. Young Josiah was in his thirteenth year reigning as king when God called Jeremiah to be his mouthpiece. Jeremiah saw that Josiah, much like David, became a man after God’s own heart. Josiah worked to purge the land of idol worship and reinstitute the laws of Moses and the worship of God, which had been sorely neglected by the evil kings before him. II Kings 23:25 describes the extent of Josiah’s dedication to the Lord: “Before him there was no king like him who turned to the Lord with all of his heart and with all of his soul and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; nor did any like him arise after him” (NASB). That is a tremendous praise when you think about the comparison with David. Matthew 1:11 lists Josiah

I am always interested to see the family dynamics portrayed in the Bible. Due to the fact that I have four teenagers living in my house right now, all the information I gather can be put to extremely good use. Joseph was the next to the youngest in his family, and he got almost murderous treatment by brothers who were quite jealous of him. I’m not defending the brothers or anything, but Joseph already held favorite son status, and he seems to have antagonized them even more by tattling on them when they didn’t pull their share of the work (Gen. 37:2) and then sharing his dreams of them bowing down to him (Gen. 37:5-8 and 9-10). As a result of their hatred of him, when sent to check on them, he ended up in Egypt and they contributed to fulfilling God’s plan for good and ultimately fulfilled Joseph’s dreams of them bowing down to him. I thought about another younger brother sent to check on his siblings. He had dreams of his own to brag about as he had just been crowned the next ki

I’ve always wondered if the smell of sin in the nostrils of God is somewhat like the smell of cabbage cooking was for me when I was little. The odor is distinctive and pungent, and if you don’t like eating cabbage, I feel quite sure the smell is totally repugnant. In I Samuel 15, God has rejected Samuel from being king because of his disobedience. When called on his sin, Saul first said that he did obey God’s instructions (vs. 21), but when faced with the truth (vs. 22-23), he admitted his sin (vs. 24). Verse 23 often gets overlooked in the light of verse 22, which says that obedience is better than sacrifice, but the first part of verse 23 has a powerful message on its own; Samuel tells Saul, “Rebellion is as the sin of divination, and insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry” (NASB). Even if we manage to be free of the sins of divination, iniquity, and idolatry, which seem huge in our culture today, it is unlikely that any of us can claim to have lived a life totally devoid of reb

Christians should be joyful people, but grief inevitably enters our lives for seasons. When grief enters in, moving beyond it can be difficult, and feelings of guilt for not rejoicing in everything that God sends our way can be a heavy burden for us because we’ve been given so much and we’re commanded to rejoice (see the entire book of Philippians). I recently noticed an example of this in the Bible in a passage I’ve read many times. In I Samuel 15, Saul’s disobedience to God’s instructions about utterly destroying everything related to the Amalek nation led to his removal from the throne. Because of this removal, Samuel’s relationship with Saul was severed, and as a result of this, “Samuel grieved over Saul, and the Lord regretted that He had made Saul king over Israel” (vs. 35). Sometimes we grieve over the loss of fellowship, the death of dreams, and other plans that we’ve held dear that haven’t panned out for us, and this is not abnormal. What’s not normal is grieving excessively f

My husband and I just returned late last night from a week-long visit to Nicaragua to see his sister, Kim Pate, who is a missionary there with EMI. I am ashamed to say that it has taken us nine long years to make the trip. There have always been excuses at hand: “The kids are too young;” “There just isn’t money to make it happen,” or “We have to work.” (As if the world would fall apart if we left for a few days. . .) The timing was finally right, the budget worked out (supplemented greatly through the generosity of family, friends, and church), no baseball state tournament games, the boys old enough to stay by themselves and work, and the girls farmed out to family and friends all over the state. One of the biggest blessings of the trip was getting to experience what my sister-in-law does on a weekly basis. She has helped to plant four churches and a medical clinic and works to feed many children who might not otherwise eat in an area so poverty stricken that it overwhelms me when I