My Refuge, My Strength

     Does it ever feel like the trials in your life are going to crush you? Events that make you want to run away from everyone and everything; to hide among a crowd where you are unknown, or find isolation where no one can see your pain and you can cry your heart out. That was me yesterday, last week, last month and even last fall. All of a sudden I found my life, which seemed in line and on track in God’s will, crumbling before me. The death of my grandmother in November, the rock, and matriarch of my family ripped apart my heart. In witnessing her struggle to trust God in her death, clinging to every last breath, I also found myself in my own battle with trust. A battle to trust God is in control. A battle to trust God loves me and is good. A battle to trust God to redeem and heal my heart. Trusting God is my beautiful fight. Through the last few months, I have wanted to retreat from everything; from my family, from leading within church, from friends, from any sort of focus on anything outside of myself, my needs, my dreams and goals, my pain. Then yesterday while leading other women in their journey to trust God, He demonstrated His love for me by allowing me to truly experience how to trust Him, depend on Him and seek refuge in His arms.

     It’s not like God just told me what to do, I am learning He is a teacher of experience. His gentle hand was guiding me the whole way with challenges He knew I could and would lean into after I got over my own self and my own pride and my own sinful temptation to seek comfort and others’ approval. What I wanted to do was run, pack my bags and go. Check out. Seek refuge in my own home, with my own children and husband where I feel absolutely safe to be me. But I ended up in a public restroom. Sitting in a stall trying to muster up my own strength and gather my emotions and broken pieces that had shattered to the floor. Fighting the urge to run. I felt so weak. God reminded me of Psalm 91 which I actually read and processed in my journal that morning. When I read this Psalm just hours before my bathroom retreat and noticed all of the specific nouns describing God like “refuge” and “fortress”. I noticed all the action ascribed to God like “rescue” and “protect”. Glowering, I reread my part, the steps God was calling me to words like “trust” and “call” on God. Then I rewrote the psalm replacing all the pronouns to place myself as the author, not David, that had written the Psalm. At this point, I am in battle, distrusting that this Psalm is even for me. God knew what He was doing though as He spoke so tenderly to my heart through His word. He had already gone before me, preparing the way for me to walk in His light later in the day. To trust Him. To bring glory to His name.

“Because you love me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue you; I will protect you, for you acknowledge my name. You will call on me, and I will answer you.” Psalm 91:14-15 (emphasis mine)

     Tears fell to the tile floor in the bathroom.  I was resistant to carrying out what I had been called to, unsure how to follow His lead when I felt so weak. I didn’t want my weakness exposed in fear of what others might think. God reminded me of 2 Corinthians 12:9 (and confirmed it through more than one person that morning), “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” So I gathered myself together with a little bit of confidence, not in myself, but in my God, and walked out of the bathroom, obediently stepping into what He has called me to do. Of course, I didn’t step out of the bathroom onto cloud 9, filled with joy, peace, and happiness. Oh no, I continued to cry, but instead of packing my bags and leaving, I pressed in. Pressed into the scripture placed on my heart.  Pressed into the hearts surrounding me desperate to also trust God. Pressed into what God had for me in these moments; that He is my refuge, my strength, in whom I trust. Glory to God in the Highest.

Blessings,

Tami Ingalls

Alpha

You can yell, you can scream, you can mumble in the dark,
 With a silent whisper at work, with your kids at the park,
 Abba Father--
Just waits. If you're singing on your mountaintop or drowning in the valley,

 Hands held, circled up at God's table,
Blessed because we're able, to meet here together to say these words out loud,
Safe and secure, sharing our story.
The questions are our journey.

We look up from our blue seat to see we're at Jesus' feet,
We follow, we seek: week to week, finding our way,
 Our alpha is today.
HE is THE way.
 Every morning God's graces are new--for me, for you, for all who except,
For all who believe. Simply receive.
 All is not lost. Terra incognita, but I am known.
 He says be still and know. Be still and know.

Even with arms crossed, eyes closed, feeling sad, confused, even angry,
 Those who are further down the path and others just testing the waters,
 Glancing shyly up to their heavenly father.
 For in His light, we see light--we are His delight and we delight in Him too,
For prayer activates peace. Sweet release.

Vulnerable, intimate conversation.
He needs no polish quotation, no preplanned alliteration,
 makes no notation of your denomination
Declare celebration. Adoration for the source of our salvation.
Adoni--
Thy kingdom come,Thy will be done.
 The way you taught us to pray,
 Yesterday, today and forever. Amen.
 YOURS is the power and the glory. Mandatory for my story.


In Him,
Angela Scalise

Idols of the Heart

     The Bible is such a fascinating book, so much history, so many incredible and true stories, all woven together to tell the same story of redemption. I know some think that the Bible is outdated or irrelevant to today. I disagree. Many times it feels like the words on these pages are written exactly for me, in this very stage of my life in 2017. One thing I know that hasn’t changed: the same sin that entered the world in Genesis 3 is rampant in you and me today. The same sickness in all of our hearts from the very beginning. Every single one of us. The same desire we all have to be our own gods, really (wrongly) believing deep inside that we know better how to do this life than God. It’s Idolatry, and it’s just as much a part of the fabric of you and me today as it was thousands of years ago in the garden of Eden.
     What may come to mind when you think of Idolatry is the story in Exodus where the Israelites built a golden calf to worship, rather than the one true God, to go before them, to give them the peace of mind and security they wanted. Yes, that was idolatry. Yes there is still this type of physical idol worship in the world today. But what I’d like to dig into is the idols that live inside our hearts, ALL of our hearts. Fast forward to the prophet Ezekiel, and in Ezekiel 14:3, God says about the elders of Israel, ‘These men have set up their idols in their hearts and put wicked stumbling blocks before their faces.’ They were once again turning away from God to get what they wanted. We don’t know exactly what their idols were, but we know that they were ‘stumbling blocks’ in their hearts and lives, separating them from God. Timothy Keller writes in the book Counterfeit Gods, ‘(An idol) is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give.’ Ouch. So this means even really good things like family and children. Good things that we have made into ultimate things. This means things like success, romance, money, fitness, physical beauty, entertainment, perfectionism...and the list goes on forever. It could be anything that you desire more than God in your heart. You might never say out loud that this is true, but you know where your true loyalty lies in the deepest places inside of you.
      A quick Google search says, a desire is ‘a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen.’ What do you desire deep inside your heart? To be loved or respected or admired or wanted? To be successful? To feel secure? To just...feel...something? Being the broken people that we are, we often turn to sin in order to get these desires met. When I say ‘sins,’ I don’t just mean actions, but also words and thoughts that are not aligned with God’s truth. Every sin can be traced back to an idol that is in our hearts; there is some desire in our hearts that we want more than pleasing God.
     For me personally, I have many examples of this. I can think of times in my teen years when I turned to sin to achieve ‘approval of man’ whether it was through relationships or striving for some image of beauty or popularity I wanted to uphold. I had made approval and beauty and popularity my idols. I still struggle with these at times today. I also struggled with making my relationships my source of happiness, my gods. In my early 20s, when my husband and I were dating, I allowed how he was treating me to decide my happiness. I put him on a pedestal and gave him the job to make me happy. As we all know, if you put your sole trust in a person, they will always fail you. God never will. God is the only one who can fulfill our innermost desires for love and acceptance. God loves me (and you) infinitely more than any person ever could. After all, He made me. He knit me together in my mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13).
     Currently, among many, I struggle with a combination of the idols ‘ease of life’ and ‘self.’ The truth is, I want an easy life. I want things to go my way all the time. I want to have obedient children. I want a good night’s sleep every night. I want to be on time to everything. I want my husband to spend his free time in ways that benefit me. I want peace and quiet. I don’t like my plans interrupted. An example of this is when my kids are fighting while I’m trying to complete a task; I get very annoyed. Many times I turn to raising my voice at them (anger that is unrighteous is a sin) in order to meet my desire to do what I want to do. When I really think about it, when I raise my voice in anger, it is like I am a 2 year old throwing a tantrum for not getting my way. It’s all about me in those moments, not putting others before myself as God calls us to do. Not loving them more than me. It comes down to pride. Pride is a gross thing to see in yourself. It is the opposite of the humility that Jesus showed. I see it in myself most every time that I lose my cool with my loved ones. Yuck. And why do I have these expectations that things should go my way? After all, an ‘ease of life’ is not what God tells us we will get. In fact, He tells us this life will be hard (John 16:33). And amazingly, through that hardness, He promises to use it ALL for my good and His glory (Romans 8:28). He doesn’t want me to have an easy life where I get everything I want. He wants me to be more like Him, and that doesn’t come from an easy breezy life. It comes from trials and challenges and tears. The struggle is where we grow. I know this firsthand, and I’m sure many of you do too. The truth is that God is not interested in making me happy, but making me Holy. And only He knows how to do that. I do not know better than Him. He knows exactly what I need and will provide it at the perfect time. He promises that He has given me everything I need for life and Godliness (2 Peter 1:3).

Do I believe what He says? 

     Ladies, I could go on and on about the idols I struggle with. But what about you? And how do we move forward? First, we identify what we are worshiping and seeking fulfillment in that isn’t God. Ask yourself these kinds of questions to try to identify the ‘gods’ of your heart...Where do my thoughts tend to go? How do I spend my money? How do I respond to frustrated plans and hopes? What makes me respond most emotionally? What do I complain about? What do I really want in life? Fill in the statement, I could be really happy if I only ____.  Next, we must repent of this and ask God to forgive us for desiring these things more than Him. We repent of the sins in words, thoughts and actions that we turned to in order to meet these desires. And He forgives! If the idol is a good thing, like our children, we need to work to put that good thing in it’s rightful place. We need to love God more. Yes mamas, we must love God more than our children. The ones we love so much that it hurts. And finally, we must turn to God. We remind ourselves of His promises and who He is. Our Father. Our Comfort. Our Peace. Our security. He is enough. We study His word. We memorize it. We pray for strength to put Him first. We share our struggles with others to keep us accountable. Timothy Keller sums it up well to say ‘the only way to free ourselves from the destructive influence of counterfeit gods is to turn back to the true one. The living God, who revealed himself both at Mount Sinai and on the Cross, is the only Lord who, if you find him, can truly fulfill you, and if you fail him, can truly forgive you.’ Ladies, we must seek to replace (not just remove) these idols of our hearts with the one and only true God. For He alone is worthy of our praise.


In Him,

Kristi Brooks