Day 30: of shrubs and trees

{Last time I wrote, I mentioned fear. Today, I came across this post. How timely! This woman has a seriously disabled little boy. I'm falling apart at having a healthy one; I can't imagine I'd be able to hold it together in her situation.}

I've been thinking about changing my project. I have in practice, if not in description. My original goal was the read the whole Bible in a year. It's a great goal, but I need to work on some things in my life, and this has become part, or maybe is symptomatic, of what ails me.

See, Jeremiah 17:5-10 describes two people, one cursed and one blessed. And as I read the passage, I burst into tears...because although I want everyone to think I'm a tree, I am a shrub:

“Cursed is the man who trusts in man
    and makes flesh his strength,
    whose heart turns away from the Lord.
⁶ He is like a shrub in the desert,
    and shall not see any good come.
He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness,
    in an uninhabited salt land."

I trust in man (myself) and I make my own flesh my strength. It means I've been turning my heart away from the Lord. And you know what? I do have trouble seeing any good in my life. (I know this passage probably really means that good things won't come his way, but that's not how it hit my heart.) 

The next part of the passage just filled me with longing. I love it. This is who I want to be:

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
    whose trust is the Lord.
⁸ He is like a tree planted by water,
    that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes,
    for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of drought,
    for it does not cease to bear fruit.”

I especially love the parts about fear and anxiety being non-existent for the one who trusts God, not men. That's something I would love to see in my life.

So part of what I am doing is to evaluate my expectations of myself. So much of what I am doing is just striving to be holy--and failing, because I'm doing it apart from His strength and mercy. And when I fail, as I inevitably will, I fall apart. My heart is lying to me and telling me that what God wants most from me is to be a godly Christian, to be more like Jesus. And I've been working so hard at that. 

But I've come to realize that I'm wrong. And that's why I'm tired. I need to pare back my expectations of myself and evaluate which are good and right, and even what my motives are. So I need to get back to the basics--an intentional relationship with God, where I look to him from day to day for the strength I need for whatever tasks I have to do. 

That's why my challenge for this year will be simply this: Read and/or meditate on God's Word a few times each day, and pray to Him each day.  There may be days where I can't find the time to sit and read a big chunk of Scripture. Maybe on those days, I will find my strength in meditating on one verse or short passage, or singing His Words to myself in Bible songs or Psalms. And if I let those words sink in and feed my soul, I will be that tree planted by the water. That's much better than a perfunctory reading of a big section of the Bible that's done out of an outward behavioural expectation.

So that's my new adjustment. My One-year Bible might take me a few years. I'm going to start by reading the Psalms and Proverbs portions of that Bible. 

I'm learning that sometimes my expectations may seem good, but they are really all about the externals, and that's not good. God isn't glorified in that. I want my goodness, my Christ-likeness, to flow out from a heart that is resting in His promises and His daily mercies. Then I'll be that tree with roots spread out, that never fears and is never anxious. What a glorious picture.

Day 27: Redeeming a failure

Sigh.

That's pretty much it!

I started this post resigned to two days of failure, but the day is not over yet! So I will turn this into just one day of failure by reading the Bible and praying before I go to bed tonight.

It's been an introspective week. I've been writing down a list of all the different expectations I have for myself. It's exhausting, and the list is not even exhaustive yet. (See what I did there? Good one.) Tonight I'll be reading a passage from Jeremiah, as part of my homework assignment. I'll report on this maybe tomorrow, but I'll be reading it with this question in mind: How are my expectations of myself offensive to God?

Good question. It's not something I ever thought about as being offensive to my Lord. Sometimes I think the word 'sin' is even a euphemism; it's a word that, in Reformed circles, we are very comfortable with. We're sometimes proud to be able to call sin, sin. But to say that my high personal expectations are actually offensive to God? Well, that sheds it in a different light for me. It's pretty heavy, and I've been avoiding this task. I'm afraid of...what, exactly?

Okay, I'm afraid of being sanctified. For real. Recognizing my offences against a holy God for what they are requires me to change for the better. It requires me to be transformed! I'm scared of that. What will I look like? Obviously, the Bible tells me I will look more like Jesus, which is awesome, and deep down what I really want, so why am I so scared?

It's like I'm trying to convince myself to let go of my old self, but it's just these tattered little pieces that I'm clinging to like my old security blanket. I cried about losing that blanket when I was ten, but managed to do fine without it the next night. And God is sending me all these troubles to show me that my old self, my old life, is junk and I don't need it. I need Him, not this crappy security blanket that just causes me heaps of misery.

I think this is part of why I haven't been dedicated to Bible reading and prayer. I'm avoiding some of the things that will sanctify me. How messed up is that? By committing to a year in the Word, I'm opening myself up to mega conviction about the sins in my life, and mega transformation into a child of God who actually bears more than a passing resemblance to her Dad. Overcoming this fear that I recently identified is a big part of what I'm doing in this project.

More on this another time, I think, after I've sorted through some of it. I'm still ruminating on my expectations and what they actually mean. I think this is going to be epic. (In the proper figurative sense as a 'task of great magnitude', not the hyperbolic sense that the kids use these days.) Pray for me!

Day 25: Life making demands

I still haven't been doing a great job reading my one-year Bible, although I have been reading the Bible each day. I need to find a good time for it. Although I think my priorities are often wrong. Right now, I am juggling this with a game of Candy Crush Saga on Facebook. Smart one, Steph.

Sometimes there are valid reasons that I never seem to find the quiet time to sit down and read. Kids, the home, and these things are demanding. It seems like these are important things to tend to, and they sometimes are. But I need to remind myself that the real demands in my life are from God--and He has a right to demand them from me, because he bought my life with the blood of Jesus Christ.

For me, I need the first thing I do to be Bible reading and prayer. I have to nurse my boy first thing, and waking up early doesn't seem to happen.

Sigh. Excuses are easy to find. I don't know if I'm just being hard on myself (I tend to do that) or if it's a real part of my life where I need to be ruthless about my morning activities.

Yesterday I read the story of the wise and foolish builders in Matthew. My counsellor talked about how this story seems to be about salvation (and I think it is), but it also has another level about sanctification. That sand is those little idols we build up in our hearts that keep us from standing strong in the Lord. When the storms come (like postpartum depression), they wash away some of that sand. Right now, God has washed away all of the sand. I can see now that I wasn't resting in the Lord, but in my own strength. It was quite a revelation, and meditating on that passage was pretty helpful to me.

I'm thankful that God has kept me on track so far with this project!

Day 21: A retrospective

So, three weeks into this project, and how is it going? I have realized a few things:

1. Prayer needs to be an essential partner to Bible reading. I haven't made prayer a priority and I find myself stealing moments of prayer here and there. But I think I need purposeful prayer. There are so many things I need to pray for about God (thanksgiving and praise), about myself (patience, joy, kindness, unselfishness), and for others (my husband, children, friends, people in the world I don't even know exist). I also need to pray God's promises back to him. Will the transformation I am looking for happen without real communion? I don't think so. So this is important. I am missing it and I may soon be adding another element to this project.

2. Satan really doesn't want me reading the Bible. Okay, this always sounds dumb: "The devil made me do it!" and that's not what I'm getting at. But really, there are a million distractions, little and big, that will tempt me to put my Bible reading off--and Satan will capitalize on those. I need to be vigilant. I think leaving my Bible reading until the end of the day is bad news. I've been good about reading Romans 8 this week, but I haven't been about my day-by-day Bible reading. I am disappointed in myself because I know there are a few hours each day I spend in doing things that aren't Bible reading. Areas for improvement.

3. I haven't really found the joy I'm looking for yet. I'm not at the point where I crave Bible reading. They say it takes 21 days to make a habit, and I haven't been consistent enough yet. But I don't just want to do it out of habit, either. I want to hunger and thirst for God's Word, like the psalmist in Psalm 42 whose soul pants for the living God. (When I read Psalm 119, I usually feel incredibly guilty, because I don't usually feel that way about the Bible.) I think I have conditioned myself to not love reading the Bible. I've made it boring and dutiful in my mind. I need a change of attitude, but I think that will only come through actually being in the Word, and through prayer (see #1). Lord, give me a desire for Your Words of life.

So, that sums up three weeks of being in the Word. No discernible change that I can tell yet, but I know God is faithful, so I will keep at it. This can't possibly be anything but good for me.

Day 20: Being sad

I was just reading this series on counselling Christians with depression. It raised many good points and issues that made me cry, because I saw myself in them so much. This week, my counsellor told me it's okay to be where I am--to just let myself be sad. That's hard: aren't Christians supposed to be joyful and happy? We've been saved from such a horrible fate!

This author pointed out that life is sad, and the world is not the way it's meant to be, so it's okay to be sad about things. (He also mentioned studies showing that mildly depressed people are the most realistic about the world, including their own strengths and weaknesses and those of others, which: Boo-yah.)

I was reading Romans 8 again last night, which I've been doing each day this week. I was really caught up in the section about suffering and freedom from it. And this is it, right? We suffer with Christ while we wait for God's creation to be redeemed:

^"18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. ¹⁹ For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. ²⁰ For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God."

I think here I can see how it's okay to be sad about the state of things. A life full of disappointments, in circumstances, in others, and in myself, is normal. But I know I have hope, that creation (and I) will be finally set free from all this sin and misery:

" ²² For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. ²³ And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴ For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? ²⁵ But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience." (ESV)

This is so me, that bolded part--inward groaning is my hobby. And that's not necessarily okay if I dwell and ruminate on sadness and disappointment all the time. When I'm feeling blue, I need to remind myself that I'll never be disappointed with God, because I have to believe that God will keep His promises. Redemption and freedom are on their way; just be patient and wait a little bit longer.

Now, I know all this rationally, but sadness is not always rational. So I guess that's part of what I'm working on as part of this project. I'm tired of being sad; it really drains you. I know how energetic and good I felt on antidepressants, but I want to fix the problem, not use a Bandaid. I'm hoping that soon I'll be able to be realistic but joyful--finding joy despite sorrow.

Day 17: It's Here!

My Bible-in-a-year arrived today; the One-Year Bible compiled by Crossway. I'm starting on the right date, because otherwise I won't be able to keep on track. So I jumped right into November 13. I'm in the middle of Ezekiel, Hebrews, and there is a psalm and a proverb each day.

Ezekiel was a bit out of context, so I'm going to have to do some reading about the book to sort it out. I read Hebrews 11 today, about the faith of the patriarchs and Rahab. That was pretty inspiring. I especially thought about how Moses denied the privileges that came with being a prince, so that he could be faithful--to Christ. Even though he didn't know who Christ really was/would be, he was trusting in God's promises of a saviour to come and gave up all of that wealth, power and prestige. I know who the Saviour is and what He's done, and I still choose the way of sin so that I can have accolades from the world. That was pretty convicting.

I read Romans 8 last night and focused on the question, Who does this passage say God is? It was pretty eye-opening. It really brought home to me the familial in having a relationship with the Lord. He's my Father...through the Spirit who intercedes for me, I am a joint heir of His kingdom, with Jesus! I'm not just a nobody, even though I feel sometimes like I'm just a loser. No matter what the world thinks of me (or what I think of myself), I'm an heir to God's kingdom. In God's eyes, I have eternal significance; I matter to Him. It was pretty overwhelming, and comforting. It reminds me of why it's so important to my mental health to read His Word. This is something I need to tell myself every day. And it's not a self-esteem thing at all--that's all about 'learning to love yourself' or some such Whitney Houston-esque sentiment. It's really about finding my entire identity in the Lord who bought me with Jesus' blood. It's completely external and it's all Him, but it lifts my spirit like nothing else.

Day 16: Blogging is a lot of work!

Finding time every single day to sit down and write a blog post is a lot of work! I have been reading the Bible while I nurse many days, which means I can't jot as I go. I think it's important to keep going, though!

In the past several days, I've missed three days of Bible reading. I get frustrated at myself when this happens, but I'm gotten back on the horse, which isn't usually what happens when I start forgetting Bible reading. (Or, let's be honest, just moving it down my priority list. I always find time for Facebook every day, so no excuse.)

The problem is, since I missed the three days, I haven't been gleaning very much from what I have been reading. I'm hoping that this week I can have a renewed desire to find little treasures in the passages I read. Today I haven't read my Bible yet, but I will be. I have some homework from a counsellor. I'm meeting with her to help get over my postpartum depression. We uncovered a few really bad thought patterns and emotional patterns in my life, and she assigned me to read Romans 8 every day this week. So that's what I'll be reflecting on here. Stay tuned!

Day 10: The end of the world

It's been a few days since posting. I hope that when my reading guide arrives I can be a bit more consistent! But that head cold attacked, and then laundry, home schooling, baby....I have been reading, but not posting.

Today I grabbed my old Bible that I received back in '94 when I finished Sunday School at church and graduated into 'big people' church. (I'm glad I no longer go to a church with what basically amounts to kids' church. I love how at my church we have kids in the service with us! But that's another topic altogether.)

I flipped it open to a page I'd bookmarked about 10 years ago, when I first tried a read-the-Bible-in-a-year program. I don't often think of reading prophetic books when I'm randomly picking passages. I usually pick psalms, I think because they are short and self-contained in a sense. I like context and don't really like just reading anything. But this bookmark was in Isaiah 64, and I had made some notes and underlining.

I loved reading this chapter! It's so dramatic, and I don't think in Isaiah's context it was apocalyptic, but those overtones are definitely there: "Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you" (v.1)! There are days I feel like that. Like I am weary of this world and its hard work, and ready for the rest of heaven. It's not like I want to die, but I'm definitely waiting for Jesus to return. I know I won't enjoy having my sins exposed to the world; even my righteous acts are like filthy rags (v.6). Isaiah asks in verse 5, "How can we be saved?" To have Christ step forward and claim me as his own at that moment will be amazing. What a blessing to be living after Jesus' life, death and resurrection! I have the whole picture. It's a shame that I don't live like it more.

As post-election day #1, it's interesting to read the last section of this chapter. "Our sacred cities have become a desert; even Zion is a desert, Jerusalem a desolation...all that we treasured lies in ruins" (v.10-11). I'm convinced that our way of life in the west is coming to an end in the next couple centuries, if not sooner. So much of what we treasure is showing itself to be fake or ruined already. So what is the church in the west resting in? Our democratic governments? Democracy is great, but it won't save us. The reality is, our 'sacred cities' are now deserts because we've abandoned the Lord God of the Bible. We're in a post-Christian world. I know Canada is probably a bit worse on the social scale, but it bothers me to hear people call the USA a "Christian" nation. (If you know your history, it honestly never really was.) Believing in God and/or calling yourself Christian doesn't make you one. Resting in the sacrificial blood of Jesus Christ to cover our sins is what makes us Christians. I think it's safe to say that's not the case for the majority of North Americans.

The New Testament is pretty clear that the end times are 'always'; everything that needed to be accomplished by Christ has been. We should always be ready for his return. Even though our world is a desolation, it is awaiting renewal with Christ's return, which will be the most dramatic event in world history in a couple thousand years. I think that's something worth looking forward to. It will be a terrible day, in the old literal sense, but also the most joyous.

Lord, help me to keep this life and world in perspective. You have numbered its days already, and the governments of this world can't help our biggest problem--sin that leads to death. Help me to look forward to Christ's return, and also not to fret about anything that happens in the governmental affairs of the world. Let me rest in nothing but Christ crucified.

Day 6: Fail

Okay, so I need to figure out busy Saturdays. Sigh. Today is the Lord's Day, though, so I will have plenty of time. Looking forward to worship.

Day 5: The Christian and depression

While I am beginning my new life of reading the Word daily, I decided to re-read an influential book in my life, Christians Get Depressed Too by David Murray, available here at Reformation Heritage Books (it's also in eBook format if you search). Dr. Murray spoke on this topic at a Reformed Christian teachers' conference I attended last winter. So much of it hit home that I was trying to hide my tears most of the time--someone was finally telling me it was okay to be depressed! So I bought this book at the table outside and read it that night. What a help it was to me! I really encourage you to read this book if you think you might be suffering from depression, or if you know someone who is.

Anyway, all this to say that I chose a Scripture reading for today from this book, just to uplift and encourage as I battle my head cold with my little stuffed up baby and 5-year-old. I read Psalm 77.

I think this will have to be my go-to psalm when I'm feeling particularly down. The psalmist is obviously in the depths: "I remembered you, God, and I groaned; I meditated, and my spirit grew faint." But what does he do for help? He remembers what God did in times past: 

To this I will appeal:
    the years when the Most High stretched out his right hand.
¹¹ I will remember the deeds of the Lord;
    yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.
¹² I will consider all your works
    and meditate on all your mighty deeds.

God created the earth, He has performed great miracles, the greatest of which is the redemption of His people. I have so much to be thankful for in this life, but even if all I can do is remember God's care for me and His sacrifice for my soul, that is more than enough. It means so much, and it means that even if I have nothing of value to give back to Him, I can be joyful and serve Him with all my heart. 

On another note, I think reading the Bible each day even just this week has helped me to think about God more often, and be more patient. I did the 'sit-down piano practice' today with Maire, and I didn't even get mad! (Okay, I got a little frustrated, but I was really careful not to let it show, and that's where turning a sin around starts!) I'm thankful to see God keeping His promises in even this little way. It's really significant for me.

Day 4: Getting it done

Tonight (Thursday), I read Psalm 93, which is a favourite. I am also coming down with a giant head cold.

So I don't have much to write about Psalm 93 today. (I'll get to that when I read it in my reading program, anyway.) But you know what? I read it, and I thought about it, and I prayed through it. And I have to say, that did me a lot of good.