GREEN-LIGHT revolution

Last post I discussed a change in our Christmas traditions in delving deeper into the Christmas story by looking into different perspectives.

A second Christmas change was reflecting over what we felt God has shown us in the past year.
In my reflecting over the past year, my first thoughts were over all the things I wished I would have done in my relationship with God. What I should have read, how much I should have prayed, people I should have ministered to, etc... all my so-called failures.

Then I actually thought about the question: "What has God been speaking to you over the last year?" It wasn't "What did you do for God this year?" Not "How good were you this year?" Nothing that reflected me. I was not the focus of the last year. God didn't send His Son to earth because I was good enough, pretty enough, did enough things right... He did it because He loves me. He loves me just as I am. That's what He's been teaching me. A while ago he gave me the verse Song of Songs 4:7 "You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you."

It's so hard to remember that in this time of singleness when so many around me have gotten married or engaged or pregnant in 2011. It can be so easy to think "why not me? when's my turn? what's wrong with me?" The truth is that Nothing is wrong with me. God made me just the way I am for a purpose. I am worth it. I am worth waiting for. And Jesus loves me unconditionally. The Author of Love chooses to love me... just as I am, because he knows me inside and out. My so-called flaws... which don't really exist as defined by Songs 4:7.

I am loved by the King... and that makes 2011 and every year worth living.

Going green,
Jenny

A belated Merry Christmas and an early Happy New Year to all you ladies!

Christmas-time is full of family traditions. In my family, all of us kids get together when we wake up and wait for mom and dad to give us the go-ahead, then we run to our stockings just like we did when we were little. After we have sufficiently emptied our stockings and laughed at all the little gifts, we have a full breakfast together and read the Christmas story together. Then we exchange the rest of the gifts and Christmas is considered over with at that point.

This year we did a few things a little bit differently.
The first was: When we read the Christmas story (Luke 1-2), we each took different perspectives and thought about what they were thinking in that moment.

Joseph: what faith to take a woman who was not pregnant with his child against the rumors of society and love her to the fullest...

Mary: what a responsibility and a blessing to stand against society's rumors pregnant yet still a virgin (who's gonna believe that, right?) Did she know the fullness of what this child would do? Luke 2:19 says "But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart."

The shepherds: minding their own business and this impressive figure comes in the sky and starts talking to them out of nowhere.. but "Do not be afraid"... yeah, ok, sure... and the depth of what they heard. Multitudes of angels singing "Glory to God in the Highest" What would that have resonated in their souls? Who would believe them when they went and told all they saw that it was all true? That they found a baby in a manger who is Christ the Lord.

The angels: 1 Peter talks about the angels longing for what has been revealed to us. What was it like for the angels to be a part of the declaration of Jesus coming? What it a normal thing for them? They are in the presence of God all the time, yet for a brief moment they left heaven to tell the lowest of the low (the shepherds) that God himself had come to earth. Were they all jumping at the chance to come, that's why there were thousands that lit up the sky?

How often do I take this story for granted? Growing up in the church, it's told all the time that Jesus came to earth to become a man to live a perfect life, to die an undeserved death on our behalf, defeating the sin we placed upon Him, so we could live in eternity with Him. How often do I overlook the gravity of His sacrifice? How did His coming directly affect those immediately around Him? How does it affect us today and every day?

Going green,
Jenny

When I say, "I am at home here," what I mean is: I am secure. I am in such a state where I am free from danger or risk... a state in which I experience freedom from anxiety or doubt... a state in which I possess well-founded confidence.

One of the reasons I would like to be married is that I love what marriage symbolizes: the relationship between Jesus and the Church. To work with another person at representing this relationship seems like a privilege and a joy. It is easy for me to grasp the value and importance of marriage. However, I’m not married today. Today, I am a single woman and I wonder, what's the value in being single? Are there any big truths about God that my life can demonstrate?

Yes, actually, and that leads me to the topic of the final post in this series: why God values singleness and subsequently, why we should, too. In my last post, I wrote about singleness as a tool for our sanctification and for building the church, and those purposes certainly add value to singleness. I also believe God values singleness because, like marriage, it has the potential to uniquely display significant truths about Him. Here are four examples:

1. Singleness demonstrates that relationship with God is the most satisfying relationship of all. I see this lived out in my circle of single friends. They are feasting with God regularly and finding that he supplies all they need. They do not see themselves as incomplete until they find spouses but rather, are rejoicing in how wholly satisfying God is.

2. Singleness demonstrates that God grows his kingdom not through physical birth but through spiritual rebirth. Under the Old Covenant, God's people increased in number as women bore children and families grew. We are now living under a New Covenant in which His kingdom no longer multiplies through childbearing but through spiritual rebirth and the adoption of sons and daughters from many different families. People who have never borne children can still participate in adding people to God’s family.

3. Singleness reminds us that Jesus is waiting for his wedding day. More than you or I long to wear a pretty white dress, He longs to meet his Bride at the altar. Singleness is an opportunity to grow in our longing for that eternal Wedding Day while we hope for an earthly one.

4. Singleness highlights the fact that marriage on earth is temporal and in heaven, the only covenant that remains is the one we have with Jesus. Whether you are single or married on earth, neither will last forever. They are temporary states intended to prepare us for our eternal Groom, Jesus. And when we are joined with him, that will be forever.

Going green!

Lynn

The first time I saw a tire gauge I had no idea what it was. A pen missing the ink cartridge? Some kind of stirring apparatus? I could tell by the look on my dad’s face that I wasn’t even close. Once I understood what a tire gauge is and how to use one, I was thankful to have it. Understanding the purpose and function of that funny-looking piece of metal made all the difference in my appreciation for it.

God has purpose for our singleness, too. He considers it a valuable tool in his Kingdom and has given us instructions for how to use it . Paul highlights two of God’s intentions for singleness in 1 Corinthians 7:

But I want you to be free from concern. One who is unmarried is concerned about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and his interests are divided. The woman who is unmarried, and the virgin, is concerned about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit; but one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how she may please her husband. This I say for your own benefit; not to put a restraint upon you, but to promote what is appropriate and to secure undistracted devotion to the Lord. (1 Corinthians 7:32-35 NASB)

First, the unmarried person is meant to be “concerned about the things of the Lord” (vs 32) in order to “promote what is appropriate and to secure undistracted devotion to the Lord” (vs 35). The way Paul sees it, one of the premier advantages of singleness is the freedom to be heavily involved with the Lord’s affairs, the things going on in his house (the Church). That means our singleness is not intended merely for our pleasure. It is meant to contribute to the joy, progress, and strengthening of others.

This is one major difference between why our culture celebrates singleness and why Christians celebrate it. Magazines and TV shows, when they are not lamenting the lack of romantic love in a single woman’s life, portray the benefits in a purely selfish light. Singles can spend all their money and time on themselves. Singles can stay out late and nobody cares. Singles can pour all their energy into their jobs and pursue success without distraction. That is not what Paul had in mind, and it is not how Jesus lived his life as a single person.

At the same time, using our singleness as an opportunity to be devoted to the Lord’s work is not drudgery. One of the delightful discoveries I’ve made is that my desires for home and family can be fulfilled by directing them towards building up God’s house. Rather than lament the long wait for these gifts, the Lord has allowed me to exercise my desires for family and home now by getting involved in the affairs of Jesus’ household. His home is big and it’s always busy. He has many children, young and old, who need care. There is immense joy and satisfaction found in being "concerned about the things of the Lord.”

The second purpose Paul identifies for singleness is that it sanctifies us: “that she may be holy in both body and spirit” (vs 33). For me, the absence of a spouse has given God unique opportunities to demonstrate that he is my provider, my comforter, my leader, and my closest friend. Our singleness affords not only the extra time to spend pursuing God but also many opportunities to trust him. Elisabeth Elliot says that God will use the matters of the heart to sift our hearts, and that has been true for me. In fact, most of the posts on this blog are stories about how God is teaching us, challenging us, and encouraging us through singleness--basically, they are accounts of God making us holy in body and spirit.

God uses singleness to build his Church and to make us holy, and in my concluding post, I'll list a few more reasons why God considers singleness a valuable thing.

Going green!

Lynn

One blessing that comes with a long season of singleness is having time to contemplate what Paul could have possibly meant when he called singleness a gift. This designation puzzled me for years. I remember sorting through a stack of books at Barnes and Noble and finding one titled If Singleness is a Gift, What’s the Return Policy? I laughed. But I could also identify.

When Paul writes about singleness as a gift in 1 Corinthians 7, he uses the Greek word, charisma. The root of this word is charis, which means grace. Paul saw his singleness as an extension of God’s grace to him; not as a problem, not as a punishment, but as the overflow of God’s unmerited favor toward him. That challenges me.

What is the gift of singleness? What do we mean by that phrase? A few years ago, I sat in a classroom at Bible college listening to a professor teach on this topic. He distinguished between two different forms: a lifelong gift of singleness and a gift that lasts only until you get married. Others say there is one spiritual gift of singleness (celibacy), it lasts your whole life, and everyone who doesn’t have it will probably get married. Some see singleness as a season, a context, a set of circumstances that everyone finds themselves in for some portion of their life. I have agreed and disagreed with all of those views in turn, and I’m not sure which to recommend to you, friends.

I do, however, recommend that we bet our lives (and our love lives) on this: God is happy to meet our every need, he withholds no good gift from those he loves, and he has freely given us the blindingly beautiful righteousness of Christ to wear as our own. Meditating on those truths, it becomes less important to identify whether I have a spiritual gift of singleness or whether singleness is merely the context I am living in or how long this is going to last. The Holy Spirit is a river running from the throne room of God to my heart and he is constantly (daily, hourly) transporting the goods I need to to be fruitful, content, and pure as a single person. I’m not sure how to label this transaction, but I know it’s good.

In my early twenties, I could say, “Singleness is a blessing,” in the same way that I could recite, “Exercise is good for me.” A known truth, but not a felt one. Two things changed: I got a better understanding of God’s intentions for singleness and a better understanding of why He values it. I plan to share more about what I’ve learned regarding those subjects in my next two posts. Until then...

Going green!

Lynn

"Don't bother too much about your feelings. When they are humble, loving, brave, give thanks for them; when they are conceited, selfish, cowardly, ask to have them altered. In neither case are they you, but only a thing that happens to you. What matters is your intentions and your behaviour." - C.S. Lewis

When I first read this quote, I thought “What do you mean don’t bother too much with them?! They are a huge part of who I am!” Because it seems I am always feeling something, even if I'm not consciously paying attention to how I'm feeling! I might feel efficient at work, or tired hitting the mid-afternoon slump, or excited about my birthday, or fustrated with a friend. I actually found myself a little annoyed with good ol’ Clive Staples saying that they weren’t me.

What I did like about this quote, however, is that he describes feelings as a tool I was talking about in my last post: an arrow. Humble, loving, brave…give thanks. Conceited, selfish, cowardly…ask for help. God gave us feelings not to understand ourselves, not to dictate how our mood would be, but to point us back to them. Yes, they are our feelings, but they are not actually about us.

I don’t believe C.S. Lewis was trying to be dismissive of our feelings, I think he was trying to help us understand our feelings aren’t our identity. Martin Lloyd Jones contends that one of the causes of spiritual depression is putting too much emphasis on emotion. It’s NOT that emotions aren’t real or aren’t present or aren’t wonderful/painful, but our identity is Christ. We ARE His living temple. Thus, we can’t claim the emotions as our identity. God doesn’t look at us and see our feelings, He sees Jesus. He gives us feelings to point us back to Him (a behavior well worth developing).



I don’t know about you girls, but I can put a lot of focus on my feelings, even with good intentions. I usually think I’m doing the right thing by trying to understand them. Most of the time, I generally only get more confused. He is fully capable to then fill my heart with gratefulness if the feelings are glorifying to Him, or lovingly reveal a lie or attitude that is not producing good fruit in my life. Either way, I don’t need to try to figure them out, I just need to let them be a tool to further propel me into dependance on God.



Going Green!


Martha

Hi Green Light ladies! It’s good to be back here; it’s been awhile..in fact, since the last time I posted, I have graduated college, started a new job, and gotten married. Whew! Needless to say, I’ve been busy in these months..and in these months, I have experienced a roller coaster of feelings.

Samantha’s ‘Exposed’ series last week completely resonated with me, and was definitely a platform for what I had on my heart to share this week. This past year has been one of the hardest times in my spiritual life, and I made friends with a lot of lies too. I think with a lot of women, lies start as thoughts, but soon take over an emotion or feeling. And since we are the one who FEEL the emotions, the feelings belong to us and are about us, right? Actually, wrong. I read a quote from a random blog not to long ago that said this: ‘Our feelings are not about us; they are pointing us to the One who made them, feels them, and can heal them.’

I’ve long believed the advice that you can’t really count on feelings, because they are fickle and change, & that we have a choice in how we’ll respond. While I knew that, I still thought the fickle feelings ended with me. They showed something about ME, they explained ME, they are an issue in ME.

I thought over my past year and the various feelings of disappointment, fear, elation, anxiety, excitement (there were a lot, I’m telling you) that I felt, and how I internalized them. I asked myself what seemingly is a good question, “Ok, what’s this emotion telling me about myself?” thinking that would help me understand WHY I was feeling anxious, frustrated, etc. In reality, the enemy just used that to keep my eyes on me. This is something I am recently learning & understanding.

What would my life look like if I took everything I felt as an arrow to the One who knows the whole range of emotions that a human can feel? What if I took something that is so core to a woman, her feelings and emotions, and instead of claiming them as my own, acknowledging that they are a wonderful tool to point us to the Maker of them?

I am not trying to minimize or degrade emotions; I am simply suggesting the notion of changing their function in my mind from showing me about myself, to showing me God. Because you see, God is an emotional being, and understands them so well. When we take them to God, He’s able to help me understand what’s my heart much more clearly & quickly than I could trying to understand myself.

I’ll be back later this week. Until then,

Going Green!
Martha

I've struggled with knowing exactly how to end this series of thoughts on my experiences with God exposing sin & lies in my heart. I want to look to the future; to what my life might look like as I continue to walk hand-in-hand with God into new freedoms and deeper revelation of the identity He's given me. But the truth is, only God really knows what the future holds. However, I've learned some things along the way that I think give me a pretty good idea of what I can expect to some degree. Here are some things that I know:

- God doesn't change. He's the same yesterday, today and forever (James 13:8 ESV). If He's been faithful, trustworthy, determined, powerful and kind to me in the past, then I can be sure that He will continue to be those things in the future.

- There are a lot of things about God that are a mystery to me. However, I've never known Him to be elusive, unknowable, or vague. Anytime that I sit and listen to Him, He's faithful to show me more of who He is, what He's doing and what part He wants me to play in it.

- God likes to make promises. He is very capable of doing everything He says He will and has every intention of following through on His word. He's given me some pretty outstanding promises both in His written word (i.e. Jeremiah 29:11-14, Deuteronomy 31:8, Hebrews 7:25, and on and on) and in the words He speaks to me personally.

- God is who is says He is: "The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness..." (Exodus 34:6 ESV). That mercy, grace, patience, faithfulness and unwavering love make up the foundation on which I stand throughout every situation.

- My sin, my compliant and active rebellion against God - past, present, and future - has been pardoned. My debt wasn't just cancelled; it was fully paid by the blood of Jesus. That blood was valuable. It wasn't all that valuable to me at the time because I was dead. But it was valuable to God and He agreed to accept that precious sacrifice as payment for my life. This is a reality I can't dwell on enough, and one I can't act on enough. Why would I ever take God's exposure of my sin and pain as malicious acts of vengeance? The vengeance has already been taken out on Jesus. He exposes sin in my life out of love: a deep and jealous love for the life He bought at a very high price.

So, in short, I know that God never makes a hole in my heart by uprooting a lie or a sin without then filling it with His presence. He never exposes what's in me without also exposing what's in Him. And that's really the most important thing I need to know about my future.

Going Green,
Samantha

God is so amazingly patient and kind. Here I was standing face to face with my Rescuer, my Knight on a white horse come to free me from captivity and what happens? I freeze up from spiritual Stockholm Syndrome.

God has been so faithful over the years. I think that I can sometimes expect Him to so badly want the sin, lies and fears out of me that He'll remove them like a surgeon not using anesthetic. He doesn't do that, but neither does He give in to my whining and pleading to keep things that aren't from Him. He very gently takes my hand and walks me through the whole process.

In this case, He exposed how I had attached my identity to the lies that Satan, life events, and sometimes other people had told me about myself. Remember how I described those lies as being friends? I'm the kind of person that is pretty loyal to her friends, and also pretty proud to have them in her life. I treated these lies the same way. If God would pull me away into His truth and the lie jumped up to pull me back, my loyalty would kick in. I would think, "Oh yeah. Life experience and relationship [with the lie] have taught me that I'm supposed to be like this, or act like that." And if God, or anyone else, tried to speak truth into that area, I would feel offended, thinking, "Hey! That's me you're talking about!" unable to separate myself (who God declares me to be) from the lie. I wore the lie with pride and, like an old tattoo it seemed forever imbedded in me.

I'll say it again: God is so faithful! He's never given up on me. Even when I haven't known exactly what He's been doing and even though I haven't always been on board with His methods, He has been hunting down those filthy little lies and killing them one by one. His chief weapon has been a massive sword of love, followed very quickly by a powerful punch-in-the-face of truth, sending it into oblivion. (That's how I like to imagine God fighting.) Many battles have been won and I can honestly say that God has, and still is, transforming my identity. Not only am I no longer friends with the lies, but I grow in my hatred of them day by day. I don't know for sure how many still remain, but God does and He is faithful to complete the work that He starts! (Philippians 1:6)

In many ways, exposing the lies and replacing them with truth has only been the beginning of this massive identity transformation. God has also been showing me how my response to the lies and hurts of my past have many times been sinful and have led me into patterns of sinful thinking and behavior. But I no longer fear the exposure like I did in the past. I'm grateful that God doesn't leave me wallowing in the muck. Now the question is, am I going to let Him pick me up and carry me out of it, or am I going to try and do this one on my own?

...to be continued...

Going Green,
Samantha