Category Archives: Obedience

Maintenance Chores

Posted on by

This week Louisa, our cosmetologist and hair stylist, kept her scissors snipping by giving haircuts to 6 family members. She’s good at what she does and has an endless string of clients because of it. The littler the customer, the more difficult the task, and she cut two preschoolers this week. Working with sharp blades on a moving target isn’t easy.

All of us spend a great deal of time on life-maintenance, just to stay even, and it’s not only haircuts. If we listed every daily stay-even chore we shouldn’t miss, the list would be arm’s length and would include everything from brushing teeth to changing diapers to walking dogs. Yet these things have to be done. If we fall behind, the consequences pile up much longer than an arm’s length, and we pay a high price for neglecting what would have been manageable on a daily basis.

The opposite is true, too. If we tend to something every day, with time our goals can be met. For example, Nate was a big reader but felt compelled to spend most of his reading time on professional work and 4-5 daily newspapers. But just before bed each night, he’d open what I called “pleasure reading,” books so thick we used to use them as booster chairs for young children. By reading several pages at a time, day in and day out, he completed hundreds of challenging books.

The simple truth of tending to our lives bit by bit, day by day, applies to our spiritual lives, too. If we’ve always wanted to read through the Bible but the project seems too daunting even to begin, we never will. But if we read even one page a day, in time we’ll finish.

In another example, if we crave conversation with God but don’t carve out time to pray, we’ll be sacrificing an important supernatural dialogue. If our relationship with the Lord is the “some day” kind, by the end of our lives we will have forfeited something precious and life-shaping.

Once in a while the relentless nature of daily tasks seems overwhelming, because they never end. I’m sure when Louisa packs her hair-cutting equipment at the end of a busy work week, there are times when she thinks, “I just can’t get away from it.”

But interestingly, God rewards our patient persistence to do the right thing. He likes that character quality, and when we work at it, he lets us get better and better at whatever we’re trying to do, especially if it’s in the spiritual realm. And best of all, he lets us know that we’re pleasing him.

When Louisa willingly gives one haircut after another, approaching each new cut with eager interest, the people she works on are drawn into her good cheer. And I believe God is nodding his approval, too.

“Patient persistence pierces through indifference.” (Proverbs 25:15a)

Cast your bread.

Posted on by

I cut my spiritual teeth on the old King James Version of the Bible, so most of my memorizing as a youngster was done in old English. I related best to the many word pictures in Scripture, and one of them I still recite goes like this: “Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.”

Mom explained it this way: “You should throw your bread on the water, and eventually it’ll come back to you… buttered.”

That didn’t clarify a whole lot for me, but I figured if God could smear butter on wet, soggy bread and send it back, he must be an incredible guy.

I was close.

The bread-verse is simply God’s unique way of saying if we let go of something we want to control, willingly putting it into his care, he’ll eventually put it into better condition than it was when we let it go. And today I had a buttered-bread-back experience related to this little blog site.

After the Lord prompted me to start posting 3 years ago, he morphed the site into a blog that encouraged widows, then caused a widow-friend to tell another widow about it, who contacted me about writing a book. She “happened” to have influence at a publishing company and put me in touch with an editor, who coaxed me to ask for endorsements, which put me in touch with Nancy Leigh DeMoss, who today recorded a week’s worth of radio programs (with me), challenging widows to seek encouragement through my little book and offering it as the resource on her radio broadcast, “Revive Our Hearts.”

Nancy Leigh has a global listening audience of multiple thousands, which means widows all over the place will be encouraged, and suddenly I understood about the buttered-bread. Embarking on widowhood was a project I never wanted, but as the above chain of events began to unfold, my nervousness pushed me to hand the whole lot over to God (i.e. casting it on the waters), knowing that if I didn’t, I would surely make a mess.

And so it became his blog, his book, his broadcast, his everything. In my ineptness, I knew I could trust God to take care of the things I knew I couldn’t. And as he always does, he followed through exactly as he said.

The Lord is teaching me to put whatever I “have” into his care, without hesitating. But so often I waver. How come? It’s probably because I want to retain control. Of course none of us has the control we think we do, whether it’s our schedules, our investments, our influence, our children, our husbands, or anything else. We don’t control them today, and won’t tomorrow.

Maybe the smartest thing to do, then, is to throw it all on the waters and trust that the God of buttered bread will do the rest.

“Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.” (Ecclesiastes 11:1)

Turned Upsidedown

Posted on by

Today while running 9 errands against my will, I was muttering to myself about how much I hate to shop when something happened to yank me out of my misery. I got a compliment.

The 20-something check-out girl at Home Depot smiled as she handed me my change and said, “I really love the color of your shirt. That blue looks pretty on you.” Then she turned to her next customer.

As I walked to my car, I thought about how good that felt, 10 seconds of kindness. She’d gone above and beyond the norm while I was operating well below it.

When I had started my errands, all of which were overdue and half of which were complicated enough to fail, I’d been irritated. By the time I got to Home Depot (errand #5) I was scowling. But by #6, two things had happened. My downward spiral was on the up-swing, and I’d been convicted of my poor behavior.

Not only had I ignored the blessing of being able to run errands (having transportation, time, money, etc.), but I’d abdicated quite a few opportunities to be a blessing to others. Focusing on self had prevented the lifting up of others.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the earthly life of Jesus, especially his human side. He sure didn’t have it easy and had unnumbered reasons to dwell on the negatives.

Most likely he was poor, without any luxuries or privileges, and it’s probable he lost his father as a youth. Also, after beginning his ministry, he was continually on the move without a home-base. And daily he dealt with opposition and criticism. Worst of all, though, his own death hung over him like a sledgehammer. Yet he persevered in helping others and in accomplishing the tasks his Father assigned him… with joy.

So, what tasks has God assigned to me? One thing I know he hasn’t assigned is for me to pollute the general public with grumpiness and frowns. How difficult would it be to model my behavior after the check-out girl by bringing good cheer to strangers? Not very.

Then why don’t I? Good question.

Jesus told his disciples he was joyful, and he also gave them the key to owning that same level of joy: obedience. Submitting to him causes us to be surrounded by his love, which in turn fills us with joy. It isn’t complicated. It’s just choosing the right mindset, which is a determination to do things God’s way.

As my day ended, all 9 errands had been successful with the last several being downright joyful. As we used to say when we were kids, “A smile is just a frown turned upsidedown.”

“When you obey me, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father and remain in his love. I have told you this so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow!” (John 15:10-11)