VSF Church Camping 2012

Awesome foggy sunrise at the farm!

Ann Voskamp - What Every Hard Week Needs to Know

No one knows but you do war every single day with the slanderous voices in your head and you wrestle a bit with the death dark that encroaches around the edges of everything and you’re never the only one: anyone who gets up has to push back the dark.

I’m standing there in front of the mirror.

Standing there, looking right into me and the abyss of the mess of me that I’ll never get all right. And it comes down to this: Christianity is the only hope for this broken world because there’s no other way for the broken to get the Nails they need to rebuild.

That’s what this week needs, that’s all this week needs most:

More than needing schedules and productivity, this week will need a Savior and prayer. God’s not asking me to produce– He’s asking me to pray. God’s not asking me to climb ladders — He’s asking me to kneel and let go. Right there at the mirror, right at the beginning, the week begins to unfurl in slow, in hope.

And that’s what I whisper into the mirror:

His grace will be more than just sufficient — His grace is guaranteed to actually save. Time, me, the week, all redeemed and miracles happen in mirrors and to people we know. When we know Christ, we always know how things are going to go — always for our good and always for His glory. The sun flashes blaze in the mirror.

The week has this written all over it: God only allows pain if He’s allowing something new to be born.

a holy experience Ann Voskamp 

I love how she says this. My struggle with darkness is a normal struggle; one that each of us faces every day.

Harvest Celebration

Each year, we at Valley Springs Fellowship come together to celebrate God’s work in our lives over the past year. Over the years, these services have been both enjoyable and/or provoking for me.  

This year’s Harvest Celebration service has been fast approaching and I have been trying to ready my heart. I’ve wondered over the past couple of weeks what it means for me to not only physically show up but to also wholly participate?

At times my biggest struggle with church has been in just showing up and I have not even asked the question of my participation. The truth is, I can be physically present and not actually be a participant. In fact, I have become rather good at shutting my heart down. I know that I can come to church Sunday, talk with friends, sing, pray, give money & even take communion without ever opening my heart up to worship God.  

But don’t I have much to celebrate?

Each year we are instructed to not come empty-handed, but for me there is a deeper longing to not come empty-hearted. I want my singing, my reading scripture, etc.; to become a reflection of my heart. Perhaps simply starting with the act of offering something can become the path to Him. Perhaps, the posture of bended knee and hands raised opens my heart to greater things.

Because I do have much to celebrate!

This year has been a hard one. I have come to understand how I use abandonment in my friendships in order to control relationship. It has always allowed me to justify my anger at friends and to protect myself from feeling little or any responsibility for distance in our relationships. When relationships have felt too hard or I have felt inept, I flee.

It has been hard for me to choose not to flee; to stay in relationship, especially when I feel conflict. It has been hard to see the value of these choices when it leaves me with such angst. Staying has opened my eyes to how I manage relationship. It has made me realize how much relationship scares me. I feel so inept. I am so inept. We all are inept.

It has also made me grateful that God is not this way with me. 

I have come to see that God’s faithfulness is GREAT!

So this year I am coming to our Harvest Celebration service because I know I really do want to be there despite anything I might be “feeling” to the contrary. I will be singing, reading scripture and participating, knowing that each choice brings with it a painful dying to self. But, there is also an awakening joy and a growing hunger & thirst for him.

(One Thirst by Jeremy Riddle so describes what I feel at the moment about Harvest Celebration.)

Gazing

The truly saved have eyes of faith and lips of thanks. Faith is in the gaze of the soul...

Who can split open the eyelids but Jesus? He tears the veil to the Holy of Holies, gives me the only seeing I have. I have been lost and now I am found and I sing it softly, before the flying of the flocks south: "Be thou my vision, Oh Lord of my heart..."

one thousand gifts, Ann Voskamp 

Life is a Beach

There is an old phrase, "Life is a Beach" which obviously refers to the sand and sunshine associated with going to the beach. I experienced a rather different beach this weekend on my visit to South Haven, Michigan.

It was a gray sky that greeted me as I headed into town for the evening. I grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed out to the pier hoping to beat the incoming storm. The wind was already blowing pretty hard as the sun was going down. The waves were coming in and crashing up against the side of the pier. The wind was blowing sand into the air; it was stinging my cheeks and filling my ears.

But there was such beauty in the brewing storm, it drew me out onto the pier for about 30 minutes as the sun set. The power of the waves, the play of limited light in the clouds; all beautiful to me.

There is a lighthouse at the end of the South Haven pier, a point of safety for boats coming into the harbor. I realized later that you don't really need a lighthouse without the darkness or the storm. I wondered if it isn't like that for us. If our days were all sand and sunshine we would never have to look for the light.

So when it seems that the sands of this life are stinging my face and the waves are crashing up against me, I can be reminded to look up for the light so that I can find safe passage through the storm.

"Life is a Beach" but the beach isn't always calm.

Remembering Back to 1999

We are starting a Harvest series in church tomorrow where we are being asked to remember events that have spiritually shaped us over the years. I know in fact, that the single most significant event for me occurred at the beginning of 1999.

To begin with, I looked at my stack of sermon cassette tapes and I found two sermons on brokenness for May of that year. But if I remembered correctly it was a sermon on sin that had challenged my thinking. So I pulled out my journals and began piecing together 1999.  

I didn't remember at all that this sermon was a part of the Revelation series our church did in first half of 1999. In fact it was a sermon on Revelation 3:14-22.

To the Church in Laodicea (NIV)   

"To the angel of the church in Laodicea write:  These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.  I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.

Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me. 

To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat down with my Father on his throne. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

I found a date and notes written in my old NIV Bible showing the sermon to be on Revelation 3:14-22. I wrote in the margin: We use circumstances as excuses not to look at our sin / DISCONNECTED FROM GOD. That fit!

I knew that there were circumstances in my life that I was using as an excuse to protect myself from further pain. These circumstances were keeping me at a distance from God and from others. I was so torn up internally after this sermon and although in the weeks following I would confess this to a couple of friends, it would take most of the year to walk through the incredible internal pain I felt to some sense of freedom.

When you have a life changing experience like this, it is easy to claim it as an completed event. In fact, those circumstances no longer haunt or control me, but I wonder what circumstances I am using today as an excuse for my sinful relational choices. What is keeping me disconnected from God & disconnected from others? I think these are questions worth pondering again.

I did listen to the sermons on Brokenness as well. We don't talk as much about brokenness and sin any more. We talk more about God's goodness flowing out of us despite our sinfulness.

It was good for me at least to revisit this topic. To hear again that brokenness is the letting go of things we cling to for life. What am I clinging to for life? How am I denying, justifying and blaming others? How am I using self-hatred to keep from looking at my sin?

In the 1999 sermon, Kent said, "It is at the point of where God backs us into a corner, and shame in inevitable, that finally God creates a space in our soul so that His life can flow out of us…"

I still don't go there very quietly. I tend to kick and scream the whole way. Perhaps that is the only way that I can see my anger and demand for God to make life work for me the way I think it should work. There is so little peace in the process of brokenness. Perhaps that is why we are actually willing to be broken, because in  finally giving in we find the peace, joy and endurance we so desperately need to survive.

Deep down I really do long for God to create a space in my soul so that His life can flow out of me.