Whispers of Truth

          Since I earned my teaching degree twenty years ago, many students have crossed my path, and many have left deep impressions on my soul. Recently, one seared a lesson into my soul that I hope I won’t forget any time soon.           This particular student, who I will call Cynthia, had struggles that were foreign to me, not only as a student, but also as a child. A severe lack of self-confidence and a struggle to connect in any appropriate way to anyone impeded her learning and growth to the degree that the child was removed for a time from the normal school setting for one that was pronounced more appropriate for everyone involved.           After a time, when the trial period was over and progress was deemed suitable by the powers that be, she returned to school, facing the same gigantic obstacles as before, only this time she did so with a n...

          As I write this, I hope you understand that there I mean no disrespect, but I’ve been pondering the notion that living the Christian life is somewhat like playing a Scrabble game. In this kind of word game, the players are dealt seven random letters to be used in forming words to play on the game board. Of course, there are restrictions and rules that make it impossible to play certain words, which is terribly frustrating. Another complication is that sometimes forming a word to connect to the board is extremely difficult because of the limitations of the letters you are dealt--the letters seem to be everything but what you need. For example, if you have vowels, but need consonants, it seems that all you are dealt is more vowels, and vice versa, while the one who has the Qs and Xs and Js (all high value letters) seem to have no trouble making more. Frustration also occurs if you have the perfect word and no place to play that word. ...

Grace is simple, but it is also an extremely difficult concept to grasp. As our children have gotten older (15-18), we have tried to make Christmas not so much about getting as giving. As a result, we’ve tried to avoid giving meaningless gifts just to give gifts and we’ve tried to give more. As a mom also known as the “Christmas grinch,” I have to admit that it has been rather appealing to me; the older I have gotten, the less inclined I am to enjoy the trappings of commercial Christmas, thus the lack of inclination to put up a Christmas tree and buy an obligatory gift for anyone and everyone has earned me this moniker. I could be pious and say that the cause of all of this is an appreciation of the grace bestowed upon me by Christ, but I won’t because it really isn’t true. The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know about grace. One of the children came home from winter retreat to find that my husband and son had put up a Christmas tree this year (because they liked it and ...

I have been silent for a long while and with good reason—rebellion is never an easy road to travel, and I’ve been walking on it for a while. This year has brought much change to my life. As the year began, I found a renewed interest in the Word and stepped out and took a risk at the urge of the Spirit and began blogging about what I was reading and what God was working out in me. A short six weeks later, He placed a new call on my family’s life, and I don’t for one minute believe that it was incidental that the call came at a time when I felt the power of the Spirit moving strongly in my life. As a believer, Christ has called me to take up my cross daily and follow Him. Christ struggled under the cross He carried to Golgotha, but for some reason, I expected mine to be a lot easier to bear. Change is never easy, and I didn’t expect that this change would be, but it became overwhelming for me when my focus shifted from the call to the difficulty of carrying out that call. As a result, w...

Moses had issues, but let it never be said that Moses lacked passion for his people and God. Even though was raised as an Egyptian by necessity, he knew his Hebrew heritage, and when he saw that his people were mistreated and suffered at the hand of their Egyptian taskmasters, he killed an Egyptian and tried to hide him in the sand so that no one would know what he had done (Ex. 2:12). The very next day he saw two of his Hebrew brothers fighting against each other and tried to intervene to bring peace. They promptly set him in his place: “Who made you a prince or a judge over us?” (Ex. 2:14). Moses, fearing retaliation, fled Egypt and escaped to Midian, where he met Jethro and his daughter Zipporah, whom he married. When God called Moses to lead his people out of Egypt, Moses temporarily left his family behind. When Moses led his people across the Red Sea and the Egyptians washed upon the seashore, Jethro heard what God had done for Moses and His people, and he met him in the desert wi...

When we encounter anything contrary to our comfort, for most of us the knee-jerk reaction is to complain about it to anyone and everyone who will listen. We complain loudly and bitterly and often. Even if complaining really doesn’t change anything, it gives the illusion of action—not passively taking whatever is troubling us lying down. The children of Israel had the act of complaining down to an art. A mere three days after seeing Pharoah’s army drown in the Red Sea (Ex. 14), they found themselves at Marah, where the water was bitter and undrinkable (Ex. 15). I can almost hear their reaction: “Moses! What are we to drink? This stuff is nasty! What are you going to do about it?” Fortunately for them (and us), God is gracious, and when Moses cried out to him for help, he showed him a piece of wood to throw into the water to make it palatable. Act II of the same play occurs midway through the second month after fleeing slavery in Egypt. While in the Desert of Sin (been ...

While we know few things in life for certain, we live as if we do. If we were really honest with ourselves, there is nothing about the physical world in which we live that is absolutely certain. I think about this sometimes as I drive across the longest curved truss bridge in the U.S., Tallassee’s Benjamin Fitzpatrick Bridge, which was dedicated in 1940. Other bridges like it, built in the same time period, have collapsed or been torn down, and the amount of traffic flowing across our bridge simply weakens it over time, but I take it for granted that each time I make the trip that it will offer safe transport. God is the only One who knows anything with certainty because He is God—sovereign and omnipotent and omnipresent and all the other qualities that we as humans are not. In Genesis, when speaking with Abram before cutting covenant with him, God tells Abram that he can “know for certain” that the nation that would issue from him would be enslaved, that the nation that ens...

As much as I could wish it were true, life does not get easier with age, and Christianity is not a panacea either…as much as I would like for it to be. Wrestling with God over issues and circumstances seems a necessary part of walking the road of faith because events and people inevitably enter our lives and wreak havoc in places that we could never have foreseen. Sarai did not wrestle with God physically, as Jacob did, but she wrestled with Him spiritually in regard to the promised heir. Honestly, just reading about Sarai makes me feel tired because I see so much of myself in her. She knew God’s plan was for Abram to bear a son, and she knew that God had closed her womb, and yet she decided to take matters into her own hands in order to make something happen (Genesis 16). The resulting chaos has echoed through the ages, and all of Sarai’s manipulations did not help one bit; in fact, it made things far worse. I can relate to Sarai in many ways. Like her, I am sometimes seeming...

(from The Revelation to John) 1. The time is drawing near. (Rev. 1:3b) 2. Jesus has the keys of death and hell. (Rev. 1:18b) 3. The overcomers get to eat of the tree of life with God’s permission. (Rev. 2:7) 4. Did I mention the tree is in Paradise? (Rev. 2:7) 5. The one who persists and overcomes won’t “be hurt by the second death.” (Rev. 2:11b) 6. I’ve always wanted to eat manna. (Rev. 2:17) 7. He’ll give me a white stone with a secret new name written on it. (Rev. 2:17) 8. I’ve always been bossy, so authority over the nations sounds like it might be right up my alley…(Rev. 2:26) 9. He’ll give me the morning star. (Rev. 2:28) 10. Jesus will confess my name before God and His angels. (Rev. 3:5) 11. So that no one will take my crown. (Rev. 3:11) 12. God will make me a pillar in God’s temple, and I’ll get to stay there, and God will write God’s name all over me, as well as the name of God’s city, New Jerusalem, and Jesus’ new name. (Rev. 3:12) 13. Jesus says I can sit down ...

Lately it seems that my life has a theme: the costliness of following Christ. Maybe that’s not the theme so much as it has been where my focus has been. I know I’ve mentioned it before, but I am really not into conflict or pain or hardship and deprivation-- comfortable suits me just fine. Fortunately for me, God hasn't left me to my own limited idea of what my life should be. He challenges me (constantly it seems) in order to cause me to grow and to cause me to realize that I must depend on His strength because I have absolutely none of my own. These are lessons worth learning, and the reminder Jesus give s His disciples in Mark 8:34 is timely: ‘“And He summoned the crowd with His disciples, and said to them, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me”’(NASB). As I've studied Kay Arthur's Covenant over the last five weeks, she has made it clear that the covenant relationship we have with Christ is a "walk in...