Category: Bruce Posts (Page 1 of 203)

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1

With the advent of the Internet and on-demand music, I’ve gotten into the habit of just listening to whatever song randomly pops in my head. The other day this little beauty, from 4Him, the Christian quarter-pop band from the 90’s… “Where there is faith…”

The chorus kept churning in my heart, it goes like this:

Where there is faith
There is a voice calling, keep walking
You’re not alone in this world
Where there is faith
There is a peace like a child sleeping
Hope everlasting in He
Who is able to bear every burden
To heal every hurt in my heart
It is a wonderful, powerful place
Where there is faith

If you’d like to listen or watch the song – click here

As a young believer, faith was one of the first things discovered, taught and practiced. I believed, I trusted, I stood on promises. My faith in God was the proverbial mustard seed, something very small that quickly became transformative, infiltrating my life and becoming an essential part of my relationship with God. My faith re-interpreted the world around me and how I lived within it. My faith, like my emotional and physical maturity, has continued to form, to mature and deepen over the years.

Our faith is designed to take root, and hold on to what brings us the most life, stability and strength.

As a new believer, my root system spread out in a multiplicity of directions, clamoring for anything and everything that seemed to offer nutrients for my new relationship with God. All of us can look back, I’m sure, and recognize the things we first believed and first accepted from others. The more I read scripture for myself, and meditated on the life and teachings of Jesus, the more my faith found it’s primary root in the revealed personality and character of God.

Faith also, for me, moved from a focus on my own ability to embrace or believe these ideas or truths (although some of my truths needed a lot of reworking), to trusting in what God had already actualized in human history. In a very real sense faith moved from my faith, to a participation in the Christian faith. Faith started as a focus on positivity, more of a mental exercise , an avoidance of negativity. There were even times in my earlier journey that faith seemed to be more of a force, like a Star War’s like metaphysical woosh with the wave of a hand. Much of these faith roots have dissolved, been purposely hacked off, or at minimum taken a back seat and now serve as a supporting root in my faith journey.

Our faith evolves like the roots of a tree, and are continually looking to root in the most nourishing, sustainable places.

Recently, I’ve been reading some posts from friends, and having some engaging discussions on the nature of faith. So many during this time of upheaval in the world, particularly for Ukrainians, are turning to God. In doing so, good folks are exercising and displaying in word and action various forms of faith. This post is a response to offering what I would encourage new believers to aim towards.

Our faith should be rooted, I believe, in three primary places for our souls to remain nourished, protected, and anchored in our journey through this world into the next. They are the life of Jesus, the suffering of Jesus, and the resurrection of Jesus.

I’ve found it helpful sometimes to define something through negation. So, I’d like to start with three questionable roots for our faith that while not necessarily erroneous, should not serve as the primary root substitutes as we each aim toward a mature root system in Jesus Christ.

Three Places Not to Root

Root #1: Faith is not believing everything is going to work out.

If I had a dollar for every time I read or heard, “все будет хорошо!” I would be rich man. It means everything will be OK! Well before the war, particularly among believers, and especially among the western charismatic influenced, believing and stating a situation is destined to work out is a sign of strong faith. To question, or to doubt, well that’s simply lack of faith.

This is essentially faith as optimism. Who doesn’t prefer to be around optimistic people? I try to be the glass half-full type most of the time. If I sneeze, and people look, I’ll smile and say, “Oh it’s just allergies” and hope that’s all it is. But, faith is not simply cheery optimism. Sometimes life is hard, unfair, it’s brokenness comes at us in waves, engulfing us physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Jesus never denied reality, nor asks His followers to do so. Often, in the face of suffering, new believers, or the religious types, utilize optimistic language as a way of diverting attention from the very real challenge, or even internal anxiety one is experiencing.

In a strange turn, this overly optimistic approach is ultimately a lack of genuine faith. It is at best a weak place to root our faith as it’s unwilling, and unable to work in the real world. It’s a faith in one’s own faith, ineffectual, and rooted in the person’s ability to remain positive.

Sometimes, as with all three of secondary roots, it can be quite fatalistic as well. It’s confessional in a sense, as if what’s happening in the present is not important and is void of any redemptive learning or growth. If one can just mentally ascend above and beyond the present situation, says the confessor, we’ll be protected from the realities we are facing.

Jesus entered our world, becoming materially human flesh. Like a rock, or a tree, or a blade of grass, you could touch him with your hands. He entered our time and space, our reality. This means God redeems from within, he’s not outside our reality, but enthused within it, now today through the Holy Spirit. In theological terms, this is called panenthesism; God within all things. He is in us, in our situation, present and near, waiting for us to find him even in our suffering. We need a better root system if we’re denying what’s smack in front of us in our daily lives, closing our eyes and clicking our heels like Dorothy from Wizard of Oz, with, “There’s no place like home” claims.

Now, without qualifying ad-nauseam, I will say that we can all come to this place of believing “everything is going to be OK.” However, this is a result, a product, a grace that comes to each heart from something completely outside of oneself, namely, the work of Jesus on the Cross and his resurrection. I’ll get to that in a minute when we move to three healthy places to root our faith. For now, re-consider faith as simply being positive.

Sometimes the stronger, more mature faith is moving into fear and doubt, lamenting and asking, “God, where are you?”

Root #2: Faith is not believing God has a purpose for everything.

We’ve all said it, believed it, claimed it, trusted in it. Yet, I no longer believe that simply trusting in God’s providence, or extreme ideas of sovereignty is the place to primarily root our our faith. Usually, this statement is used when life doesn’t make sense, or when bad things happen. It’s supposed to be a badge of faith to throw one’s hands up and exclaim, “God’s ways are higher than mine” and default the situation to a hidden plan of God.

I will admit, trusting God when things aren’t making sense, can be beautiful, and an act of faith. I said can be. It can also be a blanket statement for pinning everything that is wrong in this world on God. Whether we realize it or not, it’s a hyper theological statement, and more accurately, a systematically driven statement to claim the doctrine of providence as faith. We may personally believe that God is working out a cosmic, detailed plan, down to the movement of every atom, but that isn’t a place to root our faith. At best, this is simply faith in our theological and philosophical framework. It may be right, but these roots don’t save, nor promise to secure us through life’s windy seasons.

The consistent, logical consequence of ascribing everything to God’s hidden purposes ultimately relegates evil to God, at some level. This is the catch 22 of holding providential consistencies too tightly. If the so called blessings are God’s plans, then so are the so called curses. By ascribing destruction, oppression, murder and all that we understand to be injustice to a working out of God’s perfect plan declares to the world that God is at best unloving, and at worst, the devil himself.

His ways are above ours, His thoughts far better, and they are good, loving, peace making and sacrificial.

We should be careful rooting our faith in theological streams, knowingly or unknowingly (why we need to study for ourselves) that elevate themselves over and above the revealed life of Jesus. When we do this, we run the danger of being idolatrous; creating mental models of a god that doesn’t exist but fits our vision of what we would like a god to be.

We may really dig the idea that God has a plan for everything, but rooting our faith there can cause even more questions when life truly falls apart. I believe that whatever the situation, God has the power to bring redemption from within it, from ashes produce beauty, from a cross produce a crown. This is much different than the temptation to blindly close our eyes to evil in our world while pinning it all on a divine playbook that ignores the character assignation we’re giving our loving, holy, and good Creator.

We can take refuge personally that no matter what the circumstance, God has the power to redeem and form us more into the image of Christ. Jesus interaction in the world, as we take the Gospels as a whole, reveal something very different than divine conspiracy at every turn, so we should find a better place to root our faith than, “God has a plan,” which most assuredly he does and his name is Jesus!

Root #3: Faith is not asserting, “God Knows”

Back to being a rich man for another infamous faith claim statement, “Бог знает.” The omniscience of God, his ‘all-knowing’ capabilities are surely part and parcel with the historic Christian faith, and I would be no means challenge that God doesn’t know all things. It would be silly to suggest otherwise. If God exists, created this universe and all that dwell within it, then God would be all knowing, easily, and without effort.

However, rooting in omniscience, much like omnipotence (all-powerful) isn’t necessarily the place to weather life’s storms, and find a place of nourishing. So what if God knows? He knows you have cancer? And? He knows your marriage if falling part, or you lost your job.. and? How does God’s knowledge of all things necessarily encourage your soul or root your faith? Think about it. If I, being a father, know that a disaster is about to fall upon my family, how does this encourage you to hold on and trust me? Would it not be my actions that flow from my character that reveal whether I’m trustworthy? Simply knowing, or simply having power, those are surely magnificent attributes one would expect from the Deity of the universe, but they don’t solicit a volitional, loving surrender and relational worship.

The same can be said for God’s power. God having the capacity to coerce or manipulate the cosmos without the loss of energy, this says nothing about the personality or character of God himself. He may as well be Zeus, or Thor for that matter.

God could be, for all those who take solace in primarily rooting in God’s knowledge or power, an egotistical, power hungry, angry jerk. It’s God’s loving action in the world that bring definition to these attributes, and solicit our love. Sometimes, the most callous thing someone can say in a time of suffering or loss, is “God knows.” At once someone is saying, “I think God knows and did nothing (or won’t) to help you in your time of need.” Without rooting in the life of Jesus, but simply clinging to theological attributes in God, we’re acting more like functional deists rather than Jesus followers.

In summary, when we root our faith in our own sense of optimism, ascribe everything to divine conspiracy, or God-like characteristics that may as well be any divine being without reference to a revealed personality, we can do more harm than good for others and ourselves. Life being what it is, there will come a time when our root system needs to grow, go deeper and find a lasting place that can weather the storms ahead. It needs to be focused on the person of Jesus, his life and work on the cross for humanity. Let’s review three good places to root our faith for the maturing believer.

What Christian Faith is

There will undoubtedly be evangelically formed believers reading that will turn to scripture for this definition. So I’ll quickly mention the most popular biblical definition:

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen

Hebrews 11:1

This is simply stating the nature of faith, but for Christians, we need to insert the object of our faith. We trust, we hope, as I’ve hinted at above, in something, and Someone outside of ourselves, namely, the Person of Jesus Christ.

What does this mean though?

Over the years, as I’ve mentioned, I’ve become increasingly, singularly focused on the revelation of Yah·weh. The incarnation is something so spectacularly outrageous, so central, so exclusive and defining. You see, it’s not about the nature of our OUR faith that’s critical, but rather where where we find ourselves aiming our faith.

I will outline three principles for securing a satisfying, transformative, and life-giving faith for the Christian. These come from my own journey, and are not meant to be exclusive but to simply go deeper for the new believers or religious that find themselves unsatisfied by their own faith as either self-generated optimism or cognitive adherence to doctrine.

Root #1 – Faith in the Life of Jesus

Jesus life spoke, it was his greatest sermon. He embodied the be-attitudes. This is important and missed by so many among the religious elite of the past and present. Humanity needs a Savior, but it was given so much more. More than simply coming to die, Jesus came to live. God, the Eternal Son, incarnated and walked this earth. God came into His own creation, among us, as one of us. Do you believe this? Is this part of your faith, truly?

If God was in Christ, when we read scripture, every word that flows from his lips is delivering both God’s instruction and expectation for His creation. If God was in Christ, all of our ideas of God, and the historical intellectual groping of humanity is brought into subjection against his life’s revealing.

I think of when our cars wheels go out of alignment, we take them to a tire center for service. Jesus is for us, the alignment center. Whatever malformed, out of whack ideas we have about the Creator are set against Jesus standard, his perfect revelation of the nature and character of God as Logos. (See Hebrews 1:1-3, Colossians 1:15-29, John 1:18).

So what is the primary revelation of the life of Jesus? What have the Old and New Testament ultimately worked towards revealing about God? This lead us to the second faith principle that brings satisfaction and life.

Faith #2 – Faith in the Suffering Jesus

If the loving life and teaching of Jesus wasn’t enough for humanity to catch the divesting (Gr. ἐκένωσεν – from Philippians 2:7), self-emptying heart of our Father, the events on the cross should seal it. Or you’d think!

The cross wasn’t simply an action that God initiated to atone for sins, as much as the Protestant Reformation would lead us believe. Throughout church history, followers of Jesus have been marked by the influence of God’s self-sacrificing nature. What actually occurred on the cross has been nuanced, parsed and debated since the earliest days of the church. What is not unclear, is that this Jesus, this God, lays down his life for humanity, at the hands of humanity!

The cross is a pattern for us to follow, and invitation. Faith is embracing what Jesus did for humanity, as humanity and allowing this event to crown the Father’s revelation project.

Jesus gets to define God, not theologians, pastors, or priests. We serve a God that looks like Jesus, and a faith rooted in the life and suffering of Jesus is a place where we lay down our arms, willingly, gratefully, and embrace the fullness of the character of God. For many, myself included, we’ve wrestled with the harshness of the Jewish scriptures, the God of Israel, Isaac, and Jacob.

We see Jesus, the long awaited Messiah, on scene, finally, and his loving, sacrificing way destroys our rebellion if we allow it. Faith, then, is rooted in the life of Jesus goodness, and brought to full definition through the Cross. The life of the faith-filled believer never ceases to plunge the depths of these truths, and these truths never cease to shape our relationship with the God of the universe.

The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.

Phillips Brooks (1868)

Faith #3 – Faith in the Resurrection and it’s Promise

Finally, then we find ourselves at the blessed hope, the resurrection. Jesus not only reveals the Father for us, but invites us to participate and join in His undying, eternal love! Our faith would be useless, a fools errand had not Jesus rose from the dead. Jesus resurrection is what has held the Christian faith together since the first century.

Hope is rooted, then, not in our capacity to initiate enough faith. Faith is a gift, but doesn’t itself have the capacity to do anything on it’s own. It’s Jesus life, his cross, and his resurrection that emphatically stamps a Creator’s finished work for humanity. It’s believing that God told the truth, became the truth visible for us that saves us (Rom 10:9 etc). Jesus was moved by those that believed his words were true, and put their trust in his origins.

Trusting in God’s resurrection is a trust in personal participation and union with God for eternity. If Jesus rose, we’ll rise. This life is temporal, but we’re now united in the Father, Son’s and Spirit’s ongoing love that is life.

In Conclusion

I set out to share what I consider to be a satisfying faith. God wants us to believe in the right things. When we place our faith in ourselves, or attributes of God that aren’t clearly reveled in Jesus life and work, we’re more likely just being superstitious.

He wants us to cling to his heart, his promise, and not anxiously repeat silly things, deny the harshness of reality, or place too much emphasis on a particular attribute of God. These things may be helpful, and even bring temporary relief, but there’s nothing that can substitute for the joys of resting in the covenant keeping promise of our loving God in Christ. Over time, I believe our root system looks deep and wide, with auxiliary networks and support systems. Much like the forest itself, there’s more going on below than we could ever imagine.

Even the faith roots from the previous generations are linked, supporting, and giving us identity and meaning through the lineage of God’s people across time, space and culture. We, the followers of Jesus Christ, the resurrected Son, the image of the invisible God, we are participating in the life of God and bringing this life to our world. We take his nourishment in, his goodness, and love. When the wind blows, when the water dries up from above, our deep roots in the love of God hold us firmly, protect us and continue to produce fruit for others.

Life is hard, and we’re all wrestling through battles, and for some even physical war! It’s always a time to surrender to the love that is in Jesus, and place our hope in ultimate beauty, that is, the Person of God. May your faith roots continue to reach for Him, and find rest in his finished work.

I remember when the big Atlantic trips were exciting, full of nerves, a little last minute panic, and Walmart runs. As we age, and traveled so much, it’s quite chill in the Crowe house. Suitcases are out days before departure, Deb is the consummate packing professional so I just try to stay out of her way. We’re a tag team, as most marriages become. I’m fixing lamps, painting rooms, installing some security cameras at our house in Pennsylvania.

Deb has the final loads of laundry running, and organizing closets for cleaners and prepping the house for renters this year. Our house has been such an amazing, providential blessing, bought just two months before the war broke out in Ukraine, online, without ever seeing it. How we ever qualified for a mortgage without having any credit left in the US and without enough US income, it surely one for our book one day.

God has blessed us, we feel it, we are humbled by it, and now as we leave to venture back to Romania and a world that functions much different than North America. We somberly pack, hearts both heavy at the reality of Ukraine still, and the groaning of our bodies, aching a bit more and contesting the travel ahead. It’s an odd season, our motivations have changed a lot, we’re not missionaries saving the world, we never really were. We’re just available, asking, seeking, knocking. W want Creator’s joy to be our strength. So much transformation needs to happen for that to be genuine. Lord have mercy, help us (me) to be like our kids in that regard.

That’s not to say we’re not anticipating good things. We are excited to be with Broderic and Kristen, to come alongside them as their family explores and grows. We have friends to see, to listen to, to hug and love spending time with. We have community in both Romania and Ukraine. We have borders to cross, and people to serve, teams coming in this Spring, and friends planning visits to Romania this summer.

I have been wrestling the past month, for sure. Wrestling with a vocation, a calling that has seemed to go completely sideways. God moved on us as young adults to live toward the East, and Russia specifically. Even in Ukraine, all these years, we never looked West, always East, curious as to what Lighthouse, what our widows ministry, or business ventures might mean for Eastward movement of both our family and the movement of the Spirit. Now I find myself laying my own narrative down, my identity, my sense of belonging and purpose in the kingdom. I am free, I feel this, like a wagon unhitched from the horse, but the horse (I’m the horse in this odd metaphor) isn’t moving from the wagon too far. I may be free, I may be able to live into new spaces of influence and relationships, and even enter a new phase of life as an older man, but I can’t help but sense God redeems, He renews, He doesn’t just give another plow after your entire life was grooving the handles of one vision. I like my wagon, I feel God’s heart towards the East. Yet, is it time for us to refocus on new? Can this horse walk away from an old wagon if there’s a new one God has prepared? Maybe we can connect them all like the old tomato wagons pulled by our tractors on the farm. Sometimes they’d have even 3 wagons back to back, as I kid I thought it was the most amazing thing ever.

I receive no life from geopolitical history on it’s own, or current events either good or bad. The life I live is rooted in the Creator behind the freedoms given to all of humanity. His life is good, pure, and I can see it coming through the contours, the edges, persisting through the shadowy corruption of humanities actions, words, and way. We are living out either God’s reality, His vibrant loving way, or we’re so absorbed in this world that we fight within it, we fight over worldly words, meanings, ideologies.

I have this sneaky suspicion that for many Christians, we’re so de-tuned from the beauty of Jesus Kingdom, and His vision for humanity, that the best we can do is fight for outward preservation, for outward behaviors, for morality of the past, and not the underlying beauty of the present that’s so yearning to break through. Maybe I’m not making sense?

I guess what I’m trying to say, is that returning back over to Romania, nearer the war and Ukrainians that are suffering from it, I can’t get sucked into the reverberations of the physical, material when it’s the spiritual, the principalities and powers behind the scene marring and destroying the good of this world. The battle is there, and the battle is already won. Jesus, our redeemer and King, with a robe dipped in His own blood, riding on a horse, our sacrificing God who would rather be slaughtered on a Cross then coerce humanity into puppetry obedience: This God is worthy of our lives, my life. His loving, divesting way, is the way to victory for the believer. The way of the lamb, the sacrifice of God in Christ, is our resurrection victory over death and all this world might bring to us. Without this experienced reality of God’s conquering love, I’m quickly buried in a sea of apathy, and sucked into battling physical fights, unkind words, and exchanging the mystery of God’s love for the certainty of feeling smart, right.

We’re packing up, not really moving home, nor leaving home. We’re sojourners at the moment. Truly, we all are, all the time. This world is not our home, yet our hearts hope for home and enjoy the brief tastings of belonging. I’m ready to see what God has for us. We are open, positioning ourselves for several possibilities beyond this year. Not far from our mind the reality that we’re aging, we’re dying, yet coming alive to the best things in this world. It will continue fighting, will we surrender to love? It will entice and deceive, will we find our hiding place in the safety of Christ’s power, the gift of sharing in His holiness?

This week my close friend, Dima, was issued conscription to join the war in Ukraine. Throughout Ukraine over the past couple of weeks, the net has been widening toward those who haven’t yet ‘volunteered’ to defend Ukraine from the Russian invaders.

Dima has served with us at Lighthouse for +5yrs with his wife Lena as youth leaders. He’s been such a blessing, and friend. Someone we’ve leaned on for taking care of the property while representing integrity and diligence for the cause of Christ in our community. He knew this day was coming. Just last week we zoomed, and he was already mentally preparing for the inevitable. He was at peace then, and had resolved in his heart that he will trust the Lord, His God, for whatever comes.

It’s one thing to send humanitarian aid to hot-spots, to pray ‘over there’ for peace. It’s been difficult to see some of our youth from Club 180 dressed in army gear and holding weapons on social media. It’s been heart breaking to watch school teachers, mechanics, and retired neighbors called into action, leaving families behind to fend for themselves, some returning home only once or twice in the past year! It’s admittedly quite different, when your close friend, your brother in Christ, is called into something so evil, and blatantly unnecessary.

My prayers solicit tears for Dima. Tears of aching pain for his wife, for his family, for a man who has given himself to loving others, bringing the hope of Jesus kingdom each day in his community through his smile, laughter, and optimism. I grieve today, not because I think Dima might be thrown into the front, or lose his life imminently. I grieve because this war, this sinister brutality, interrupts what is beautiful. Dima and Lena had just bought their first home, they were planting flowers, fixing bicycles and growing their own hobby business. Lena is now thrown into independence. Lena has been the main leader at Lighthouse throughout the war, and now has lost her best friend to wake up to each day, her capacity to care for others diminished as she’s forced to shore up the home front.

The trickle down effect of war is devastating to neighborhoods, the local economies, the schools, and structure of society. Even if the war stops today, Russia has successfully crushed the economy, expunged the brightest young women and families from it’s borders, and instigated limitless forms of trauma upon the next generation from their relentless terror. Those things are facts to the rest of the world, data in the annuls of history with the other wars. But for me, today, it’s about Dima, my friend, one that is intimately part of my own story, who’s influenced the way I see the world, and act within it.

I take solace in the faith of my brother. I believe Dima will be a bright, ray of light and hope wherever God graciously places him. Dima knows this, and would never ask for pity. He would, however, give thanks for the prayers offered up on his behalf. You have my prayers my friend, and my tears.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things

Philippians 4:8

We’re in Texas this week. The last time we were here, war had just broken out in Ukraine and I flew over to Romania. Deb and the kids followed 3 weeks later, and we settled into a new reality, language, people. The year that was 2022 is over, but the war inside Ukraine seems far from ending. In a sense, Deb and I feel right back where we started, and it’s not a comfortable place to be – looking into an abyss of decisions.

I liked this painting, it captures how we feel. This life has been such an incredible ride for us, we’re exceedingly thankful. Being older, we’re learning to step back and just take in the wild beauty of it, even in the brokenness of it all.

When you’re young, time seems unending, the road ahead limitless. The unknown future is met with optimism, mistakes and detours not such a big deal. As we age, however, it seems we take stock in our decisions more seriously. We’ve experienced the brevity of this life, said goodbye to those that surprisingly left us, and our own bodies begin to remind us that we aren’t winding up, but down. This life is truly a breath, a fading flower, and peering down that unending road shows clear signs of an end.

As much as I wish to write that we’ve secured a plan, a place, a space for our family in this coming new season, any attempt to outline that here would be false. Falsity is a funny thing, I’m learning. I don’t actively lie, or mean to mislead, but when faced with the challenge approaching 50 yet seemingly starting over, I want to go there. I want to narrate a story that is climbing upward, attaining. I want the surprising new career path, the security of outward success. Yet, as we continue to wait, to lean into the present moment of trusting Jesus for today, Deb and I are learning to trust in the character of God as our Father, and not in any particular outcomes.

This is true, this is where my heart finds itself today. We have opportunities we’re exploring, very kind and missional people that have extended branches of fellowship and collaboration. We have dear community inside Ukraine flourishing in delightful ways, truly God has taken great care of His garden we were privileged to labor within. As we visit, speak where invited, and navigate this week here in Texas, I find my spirit oddly aware of this invitation to trust Him, to be patient, to give thanks for this place of transition rather than fret within it.

It’s wild, really, that in our most uphended seasons, we find grace to not only weather the storm, but the secret of His near presence as the end our hearts long for. God, who so often becomes our instrumented means to an end, is permitted by our consciousness to move in as the Shepherd of our soul, not just our pocket book and belly. He invites us to just remain suspended, like that cross of old. It’s a place of trust, and there we learn just how panic stricken we are at the menial things, the transient, the temporary things of this life. It’s in this place of willing surrender, I think, that death really loses it’s power, it’s sting.

Nobody wants to die and leap into eternity when we’ve secured a sense of control in our surroundings, our lives comfortable and going somewhere exciting. When we aren’t sure what is next, when we’re looking at a series of all-way-stops and forks in the road, we pause, we reckon with what is most true – and that, for us, is that this life of faith and journey with Christ is a continual invitation to live into His presence each day, to enter the suffering and joys of others when presented with opportunity, and remaining ready to answer His call.

My prayer today was this, “Jesus either fill me from the inside with the knowledge of your will, or surprise me from the outside in a way that we will know and follow you.” Either way, the promise is that His will, will be accompanied with the desire, the infilled, unmistakable desire to do it (Phil 2:13). I have grown to appreciate the freedom the Spirit gives us to navigate this life alongside, along with. However, in the end, God has led me back to that simple place of surrender, where we gratefully hand our lives back and seek to do His will above our own. Whatever, whenever, Jesus we are yours. This is the work of the valley, the upended life, and it is good.

What do you in your valley, your crossroads?

I’m learning that what I considered to be faith in the earlier years, was really an underlying anxiety to be trusting in the Good Shepherd. It’s so much easier to plan our way out of stuff, but all that planning puts us back in control, and comes with all the stress of ensuring success.

Thinking upon true things. Today is where we live, where we love, and are loved. With more questions than answers, we hold onto Jesus and learn to value His nearness more than a cool plan. I’m learning not to leap down the first available road. Lord keep us from the unnecessary detour. The road is not, after all, unending.

Let our decisions come from that deeper places of united faith, as sojourners smiling into the unknown as we bask in the warmth of your affirming fire.