Whispers of Truth

Today I ran across a quote by Winston Churchill that seems particularly relevant to my life: “Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer master of the policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.” I find myself guilty of believing that the battle of my sin nature has been won and expecting my war against flesh in this life to be smooth and easy. I find myself battered against the tides of conflict and flattened by the hurricanes in my life, and I have been bewildered by them because I thought (falsely, in pride) that I was either knowledgeable enough or strong enough to withstand them. I think I need to remind myself (yet again) of some scripture that I know. The following passage is from I Peter 4:12-19 (NASB): Beloved, do not be surprised at t...

“And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God” (Philippians 1:9-11, NASB).           You either know something or you don’t—at least, that’s what I’ve always thought, or never thought about much at all. I love learning, so I’ve been an avid word-lover and knowledge-gatherer my entire life. As a result, I have spent the last thirty-three years studying the Bible and gleaning its truths. I should know a lot, but in the last year or so, I’ve learned how little I really know as I’ve faced points of application previously untested.           I think Peter learned (although to a more extreme degree) the same lesso...

          Ambition can lead us in either positive or negative directions. The word ambition is derived from a Latin term, ambio, which means to go about or seek out something, and it seems to have its origins in Roman politics: the person seeking an office would walk about, or ambulate, soliciting votes (Webster, 1828). Christians should be ambitious people, but not in the same sense as the politicians of Rome or the worldly people of today. Our ambition should be rooted in an intense desire to please God.                     Paul talks of this desire to please God in II Corinthians in a discourse about the temporal versus the eternal. As Christians, we have an expectation of an eternity spent with God; however, in the here and now, we are trapped in the flesh and have all the struggles and burdens of dwelling here, which only leaves us with the lo...

          To quote Noah Webster: “To surrender up is not elegant.” To surrender to something means to yield to a greater power. As a Christian, we are called to surrender to Christ all of us and everything we have. One of the definitions in Noah Webster’s 1821 dictionary has an interesting take on this: “to give or deliver up possession upon compulsion or demand.” I don’t always “feel” like surrendering to Christ—especially when I’m struggling with something particularly difficult. I know in my head that I should surrender, but my heart is filled with rebellion, which pulls me in the opposite direction. As a result, I have to choose with my head to surrender—in fact, I’m compelled to do so even though it seems counterintuitive to do so.           I’ve been thinking a lot about Job. When his life fell apart he said to his wife, "You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept ...

          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 ...