He is Able

I found myself a couple days ago saying how in the world am I going to fix the sin I’m in? How in the world am I ever going to learn how to rely on Christ alone and not myself? How will I ever be Spirit filled and live a daily life truly for Him?

After asking those questions to myself, and with help from this week’s Lord’s Day, He has shown me that in order to do those things there must be complete submission and obedience and He will do the rest.

Feeling dirty and defiant to the Lord I entered church service knowing that I was going to be spoken to. Knowing there would be conviction and knowing that stuff in my life had to change.

I found myself sitting on the front row surrounded by sweet college girls and one of my favorite families in the whole world. The man of this family was encircled by three brothers that were a friend of his sitting at a table across the way in our worship service.

The boys, crowded around this man they love, are beautiful and fun as well as rowdy and a challenge. Just like every other kid, getting them to mind the way they should is a task. As the service was beginning the middle brother peeked back and saw his mom at another table and turned to the man and said, “Can I go sit by my momma?” The man said back, “is there a chair beside her? Of course you can go. Thanks so much for asking!”

I don’t know what emotion it was that hit me, but seeing this picture of love and positive reinforcement completely broke me! All I could think about during worship is that man’s love for that boy is like our Father in heaven’s love for us! Only God’s is O so much more!

I am defiant and disobedient just like the defiant and disobedient child who wants his way when he wants it. And that man was happy and pleased just the way God is happy and pleased when I obey Him.

Now if that wasn't all this heart could take before the sermon, our pastor announced that a man in our church who is almost 80 would be getting baptized along with one of my sweet twenty year old friends. 

Hearing that those baptisms would be taking place after church hit me again with unexplainable emotion like a ton of bricks.

What obedience! All I could think of when hearing this was how much I would love to see the face of the Lord as He is pleased in these two for their obedience in being baptized!

As our service continued I was in tears as I opened the word to Psalm 145. Psalm 145 tells us of God’s wonderful greatness. It tells of how faithful and kind, gracious, merciful and loving He is! Vs 17-20:

The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works.

The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.

He fulfills the desire of those who fear him; he also hears their cry and saves them.

The Lord preserves all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy.

So the questions I was asking myself last week about what is it I need to do to fix this life of mine… I think there is nothing I can do. I think my work is pointless and in vain if I try to fix the sin I’m in alone. It is not me who fixes this life of mine, nor anyone else. It is God my Father who is abundant in goodness, slow to anger and abounding in love. It is He who has the power to save all who call on Him. He doesn't need us. We need Him! God wants all of us to obey Him. He doesn't desire to see His children stuck in sin or on an ocean of constant good and bad waves. He wants our submission so that he can take our dirty heart and turn it into obedience reflecting Him.

Like the little boy he wants us to seek Him in our wandering. Like the two who got baptized He wants us to read his word and do what it says. Like the scripture we studied in church, Psalm 145, it is God’s grace and mercy that allows me forgiveness and change. Jesus Christ is enough. I am not. He is able!

-LauraLBrown

Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves,

you are slaves of the one whom you obey,

either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?

But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin

have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching

to which you were committed,

and having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations.

For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity

and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness,

so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.

But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed?

For the end of those things is death.

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God,

The fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end,

eternal life.

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 6:16-23

Love One Another

I have a confession:

I need to learn to love one another.

Let me explain… I got to spend my first two college summers learning how to share the gospel in some pretty neat places. I’ve learned how to be bold in my witness and not waste relationships made. I’ve learned to quickly turn a conversation into telling the most important thing about me and that is that Christ is my savior because I am a sinner. I’ve learned to take it further than my testimony and quickly share truth about the bible from beginning to end.

To me living out the gospel is sharing the gospel.

It’s being bold and risky.

It’s taking initiative and building relationships.

It’s living out loud so people can hear truth proclaimed and not worrying about the toes that might be stepped on.

Sharing the gospel to me has always been the above list of qualities. And though those are true and those things are needed, I’ve recently realized the list also includes the quality of a simple word I’ve failed to remember to live by, love.

Ya see, anyone can share truth of a bible story and force it into someone’s brain, but if you don’t do it in love… what is it for?

Over this summer I’ve attended more than half a dozen weddings. At each wedding the various handful of preachers spoke on the same scripture: The ever famous love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13. It of course tells us how to act in marriage and what love should look like lived out. However the words of that passage are not only to be applied in a marriage relationship or in a family relationship, instead and most of all the words should be applied towards all people and all situations by people who are in the faith of Jesus Christ.   

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude.

It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing,

but rejoices with the truth.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love is a fruit of the Spirit. Love is who Christ is and why Christ was sent.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God,

and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.

Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

We love because he first loved us.

1 John 4:7-12, 19

All in all, I desire for love to be perfected in me. I desire to love because he first loved me and lives in me- so that I may share the gospel in its entirety.

Living out the gospel is to love.

Unending Housework

Something I try and do is be disciplined in staying clean and organized. Though organized doesn’t quite describe anything in my life, clean has begun to… Staying clean and constantly being conscious of picking up after myself or making my bed in the morning has become a discipline I’ve slowly learned. I know anyone who knows me can vouch and say that I have not always been a person who is self-motivated in that area- instead I used to be mom-motived. Living on my own, though, I have begun to learn that discipline. I can’t rely on my mom to do things for me that I’m too lazy to do and I can’t rely on my dad to nag me long enough to scour and straighten the bathroom to make me do it.

An observation I’ve made lately is that the work is never finished! Each morning I wake up and make my bed. I then straighten up my room and go to school. As I come home from classes and change into umpteen different outfits, for whatever the day brings, the clothes get strung and the dirt gets trudged. By the end of the day I find myself cleaning again and I find that it takes more time than the morning. Not to mention the kitchen constantly needs swept and the laundry constantly has to be washed and re-washed, as with the dishes.

Housework is never quite finished.

Y’all I’m a learner by application. Thinking about cleaning and how it is a discipline somehow, in my brain, relates to evangelism and how it is also a discipline.

I became a follower of Jesus Christ at a young age, and though I believe my salvation was real then- I was spoon fed a lot. My parents were the ones urging me to go to church. They were the ones who prayed with me in bed at night. Though the pressing feeling, from my parents, of seeking Christ might not have been as pressing as vacuuming the family living room floor, I was shown how to, and urged to, seek the Lord. Just as I mentioned in the first paragraph, at some point I had to slowly create my own walk into my own self-discipline. Choosing to wake up and preach the gospel to myself or anyone else is not as easy as making my bed. It’s not a natural habit to do.

One of my sweet friends Hannah Dancy said last night, at a girl’s bible study, something in the effect of… I know my own story of salvation and transformation so naturally I don’t think I need to tell myself every day the change that Jesus did in me. She pointed out to us Psalm 51 verses 12-17, it reads:

“Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.

Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.

Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God,

O God of my salvation,

And my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.

O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.

For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;

You will not be pleased with a burnt offering.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God,

You will not despise.”

Hannah said a few things that I don’t think I can forget. She told us how she wants to be broken for the gospel’s cause. She wants to hear Jesus’ name and it move her to do something. My heart has been going through the same thing and I haven’t quite known how to work through that conviction. But with this Psalm I can see that the word is telling me my joy comes from salvation (vs 12). With my own salvation I will be moved to share with sinners the story of God’s saving grace so they will turn to Him (vs 13). When I share I am able to rehear the gospel and, sometimes, my own story of God’s great work in my heart. With that comes brokenness and constant, consistent reminders of the gospel and what it means for all who believe in it. My brokenness leads to repentance (vs 17) which in return circles back around to the joy of salvation that moves me share.   

Being broken doesn’t always mean not being able to pick yourself back up again. I feel like in this cause, in the meaning Hannah was talking about, it’s being broken to the point of action. It’s making a conscious effort for the joy of salvation to transform our lives to the point of brokenness for those around us; so much so that we can’t help but pour out the truth of Christ on them.

I don’t think sharing and evangelism is something that can come naturally to someone. There are fears and there is laziness. In keeping with my “cleaning discipline” theme, evangelism is not something that is a one-time deal. It’s like the dirty dishes there is always more work to be done and more work that will appear. It takes time and the more you make it a habit the more you see the need for the work to be done. Working for the Lord’s cause is a discipline. It must be learned in the same way one learns to wake up and brush their teeth or wake up and read The Word. It takes practice, time and effort.  

Kingdom work is never quite finished.  

-LauraLBrown