Two Kingdoms Collide

We just spent 3 days with family at Disney Land in California. The weather was perfect, the lines were pretty short, and we all had a blast.

We got to see Mickey

and Donald

and Minnie

and Goofy

even Mary Poppins and her beau

Kezi was in awe of Aurora (Sleeping Beauty)

and Snow White

and Cinderella

and Belle

Disneyland in California is often called "The Happiest Place on Earth" and the place "where all your dreams come true."

Disney World, in Florida, is also known as the "Magic Kingdom."

And they DO make it look magical and wonderful...it's easy to imagine life being perfect and all my dreams coming true in that fairytale world.

But God's been teaching me over the last year more about His kingdom and what that looks like here on earth. It's not picture perfect palaces and pretty princesses. It's not the amazing World of Color water spectacular or diverse unity in The Small World.

The Kingdom of God is real.

It's also contrary to the ways of the world, which makes living it out difficult, messy, painful. Take 'love your enemy as yourself' for instance. That's not 'happily ever after' in most people's books. Most of us want to condemn our enemies, avenge ourselves on them, or at least cut them out of our lives. Forgive them? Forget it.

Then there is 'do unto others as you would have done to you.' How many of us actually live like that? The tendency is 'me first, and if there's anything left, I might share with you, if I feel like it.'

I'm not judging anyone here...just observing life. I'm right in there, too...trying to bring God's Kingdom to come in my life, failing miserably, falling at the feet of Jesus once again and saying, "I can't do this without you. Would YOU bring your kingdom to come in my life. Would YOU let your will be done in me."

It's not about my best efforts...it's all about God's grace, and me walking in faith knowing He can do it in and through me as I keep my eyes on Him and let Him be my shepherd.

I was thinking about the idea of Disney being the place 'where all your dreams come true.' It was the last day of our 3-day pass, and we were just about to get on the roller coaster for the last ride of the day, when I heard some commotion behind me. I looked back and saw John carrying Noah, both of them covered in blood, and Noah crying, "I'm dyyyyying, I'm gonna dieeeeee!"

Noah had tripped on the stairs and landed forehead first. Blood was pouring down his face. One of the ride attendants was spinning in circles going, "Okay, it's gonna be okay, alright, okay, what do I do, okay, it's gonna be okay." One of the others was a little more proactive and brought a stack of paper towels and some ice cold water, so after several cold compresses we were able to stop the bleeding and assess the damage. It turned out to be a pretty small cut, but you know how head wounds bleed.

They brought a nurse who cleaned it up a bit better, put a bandaid on and pronounced us good to go. Noah was allowed to go on the roller coaster since it was our last ride, and we managed to get home without further mishap.

My point is, it wasn't our dream to have our little boy crack his head open and bleed all over the place on the last ride. It wasn't the Grand Finale we had in mind. And there's no guarantee that anyone anywhere can make all our dreams come true.

But when we live in the Kingdom of God here on earth, letting Him be King in our lives, and letting His dreams become our dreams, then it IS possible to see our dreams come true. The plans of God will never be thwarted.

May He give us the grace to let Him put His dreams in our hearts, and give us the faith to trust Him to make them come true. And may we all see the Kingdom of God coming more and more in our lives.

Wilderness lessons: 3 – Blessedness of Spiritual Poverty

As I experienced the brokenness of God, and came face to face with the ugliness of my heart in His “holiness mirror,” (see lesson 2), I gained a deeper understanding of the term “poverty of spirit.”

Jesus said,
“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
(Matt 5:3)

Jesus had just been moving throughout Galilee, teaching and preaching The Gospel…the good news…”the Kingdom of Heaven is near!”…and healing the sick, and now He sits down to teach His disciples just what that Kingdom of Heaven is all about, and His first recorded words are this:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Darrell Johnson says that poverty of spirit is the first mark of a “gospelized” person because it shows we have truly encountered Jesus. “When we encounter Jesus as He really is, we automatically see ourselves as we really are…woefully falling short of who He created us to be.”

This realization was incredibly painful to me, as it can only be. I had thought far too highly of myself, until God showed me the true colors of my heart. Then I went into a tailspin, agonizing over the junk I saw in myself, and wondering how on earth I was ever going to become like Jesus with all this rubbish in me.



Brennan Manning wrote, “The poor in spirit are like survivors of a shipwreck. Out at sea, all the things they used to rely on no longer matter. All that matters is this passing plank to which they reach out with the desperation of the drowning. Adrift on an angry sea, the shipwrecked never ask what they did to merit the plank…they simply receive the plank like a gift knowing there was absolutely nothing they did to deserve it.”

The plank…the cross. When I saw the true nature of my heart, I had to accept that there was nothing in me that merited the cross, and still nothing that deserves God’s daily grace over my life.








“Poor” in the Greek translation used for this beatitude is ptochoi which means abject poverty, or destitution. Standing before God, the poor in spirit know that they bring nothing in their hands that God needs and nothing in their hearts that compels God to accept them. They bring their poverty, hoping for sustenance. Their ptochoi –– poverty of spirit –– has broken them, making them fertile soil to receive God's blessing.

I came face to face with my destitution.







Watchman Nee describes this process as the discipline of the Holy Spirit and says it is the greatest means of grace. When all kinds of problems and all sorts of people are pressing in from all directions, God is at work trying to break the things to which we are bound, that quench His Spirit and hinder Him from working in and through us.



Nee says, “The supply of the Word, the grace of prayer, the fellowship of the believers – none of these can substitute for the discipline of the Holy Spirit. This is because you need not only to be built up; you need also to be destroyed, to be delivered of all the many things in your life that cannot be brought over into eternity.”




The discipline of the Holy Spirit…the greatest means of grace. And now we understand, as Johnson pointed out, the heart behind the famous lyrics of Amazing Grace:

“Twas grace that taught my heart to fear”…because grace first helps us see how wretched we are apart from grace. Yes...the holiness mirror. God’s grace showed me what I am really like apart from His grace.

Yet, in His amazing love, He doesn’t leave us there…”twas grace my fears relieved.” God shows us the poverty of our spirits and says, “Those who recognize that apart from me they can do nothing are the very ones to whom I will give the Kingdom of Heaven.”




Johnson says the poor in spirit die to self-sufficiency and self-saviorship, but since self-sufficiency and self-saviorship are illusions, this death is a birth. The poor in spirit open up their empty hands in gratitude, and God gives them the Kingdom.




I love that Jesus starts His teaching with this first beatitude...to be like the "kingdomized" people of God that He describes in the rest of the Sermon on the Mount is only possible when we have reached that place of destitution. We finally give up leaning on our own understanding, trusting in our strengths and behaving as if we have a better plan than God. We finally say, "Let Your will be done, let Your kingdom come, in my life, and on this earth, just as it is in Heaven."




May God’s grace enable me to walk in that place of recognizing my desperate need for Him, today and always, so that His Kingdom may fully come in my life, and He may reign in everything I do and say.



There is none like Him, and He is worthy of my life laid down.






(Highly recommended resources:
Darrell Johnson, “Living in Sync: Studies on the Sermon on the Mount”, Regent College audio series, www.regentaudio.com
Watchman Nee, “Release of the Spirit”)

Wilderness Lessons: 2 - Brokenness

The distilled essence of brokenness is simply this…

apart from God I can do nothing
(John 15:5).

Nothing of any lasting value. Nothing that will go through the test of fire and survive (1 Cor 3:13-14).


In my own strength, with my own wisdom, I am simply building castles on the sand. One minor storm washes them away.





Brokenness is the place where I realize all my efforts without Christ are futile. My ‘great intellect’, which I once prized and believed was somehow better than many others (this idea highlighted by years of winning contests, receiving scholarships, etc.), really IS foolishness in the Kingdom of God.


Towards the end of last year, God led me down a path towards this revelation, but instead of seeing it for what it was, I strove harder, pushed myself more, gritted my teeth and will-powered my way through, refusing to ‘give up’, refusing to concede defeat. Sheer stubbornness, that was.

But my strength gave out, my emotions capsized, my mask of capability melted into streams of tears running unchecked and unexplained. I was finished.

And then God showed me the most frightening thing I’ve ever seen…He showed me my heart apart from Him. It was as if He lifted my covering of grace and held a mirror to my face and let me see the depth of depravity in my soul. No love, hard heart, selfish, hateful, vengeful, bitter, critical…utterly petrifying.

I found a description of this experience in R. Loren Sandford’s Renewal for the Wounded Warrior. He called it the ‘holiness mirror’ and, referring to St. John of the Cross’ ‘dark night of the soul’ said:

“The dark night of the soul will expose everything about you as defective. You will appear stripped of every virtue. The dark night enables a complete and accurate assessment of your own total depravity that sharply accents the depth and magnitude of God’s grace to cover it.”

Oh, so that was what that was all about. Well, scary as it was, I felt relief that God had a purpose in showing me the nastiness of my heart…brokenness.

“The dark night of the soul brings you to the cross where you cannot escape until you learn that you have nothing in yourself and that He has it all. The dark night burns away the flesh until you know that only the Spirit makes you live."

“Until that point, you can do little more than hold your heart open to the searingly bright light of His presence and choose to endure the pain and brokenness his purity creates in your flesh. When you know your condition and understand God’s grace in relation to it, nothing remains to be threatened. You can fully rest in Him only when you have despaired of yourself.”

Watchman Nee said, “Anyone who serves God will discover sooner or later that the greatest hindrance to his work is not others, but himself. He will discover that his outward man and his inward man are not in harmony…his outward man is unable to submit to the spirit’s control, thus rendering him incapable of obeying God’s highest commands.”

There is only one process that can enable man to be useful before God: brokenness.

But going through this process isn’t easy. At first, the person being led into brokenness doesn’t know what’s happening; friends and family struggle to know how best to respond.


Sandford explained:

“Profound loneliness fills the dark night. No one understands. No one hears. Well-intentioned fools give shallow advice based on hurtful misunderstanding and shallow theology. To avoid the sting of their misguided wisdom, you begin to hide from people. Friendships gradually erode. In the face of their own powerlessness to help, people flee.”

Alone, misunderstood, avoided…finally I got a little piece of understanding about what it means to share in the suffering of Christ. Just a little, tiny piece.

Sandford says:

“These people have been driven into the wilderness while everyone else was having fun. They have worked through a personal depth of sharing in the cross of Christ and His resurrection, becoming more one with Jesus both in His death and in His life than they had ever before understood or experienced.”

Madame Guyon wrote, “The true land of promise always lies beyond a vast wasteland.” In this wasteland of loneliness and confusion, God does the purifying work of brokenness.

Yes, it’s painful. Yes, it’s scary. But without this process, our spirit will not fully yield to the Spirit of God within us. We will not produce the fruit of righteousness we so crave. We will always be doing what we don’t want to do, and not doing what we want to do.

Watchman Nee says, “It is vital that we be broken by the Lord. It is not that the life of the Lord cannot cover the earth, but rather that His life is imprisoned by us. It is not that the Lord cannot bless the Church, but that the Lord’s life is so confined within us that there is no flowing forth. If the outward man remains unbroken, we can never be a blessing to His Church, and we cannot expect the Word to be blessed by God through us.”

I imagine this is not a popular concept. Most people don’t pray to be broken…actually, we pray quite the opposite. Like the prayer of Jabez. We don’t like pain. And brokenness necessarily involves pain…that’s just a fact.


But don’t forget the Promised Land waiting on the other side of that pain. We must lose our life in order to save it.


If we truly hunger and thirst for righteousness; if we seriously seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, the only way for His Kingdom to fully come in our lives is to allow Him to break down the things in us that are contrary to His kingdom.

Those who retreat from the refining fire will wander in the wilderness, griping and complaining and wishing they were back in slavery.

Those who surrender to the process and allow God’s gentle hand to lead them through this wilderness will rejoice in the joy and abundance of the Promised Land. They will be set free from striving, competing, and manipulating, and will be a tool in the hand of God, set apart and useful for noble purposes.

May God give us the grace to trust His tender hands.

Wilderness Lessons: 1 - What it means to care

Towards the end of last year, I lost my vision.

Not physically, but spiritually.

I felt no love towards anyone. I didn’t really care anymore. I had reached the bottom of whatever well of compassion there was in me, and nothing came in to fill it back up.

I was just empty and dry.

And then I became angry. I don’t know why exactly, but everything made me mad. Or irritated me. And I couldn’t be bothered to work up the patience and tolerance to deal with people or problems.

I was finished.

People call it a wilderness season, a time in the desert, a mid-life crisis…whatever the name, the symptoms are the same…depression, doubt, angst, exhaustion, grief.



I cried easily for no particular reason...rather embarrassing, really.



The only possible way forward was to withdraw…take time out with God…

go into solitude.

So I pulled out of the leadership team, out of ministry, even out of team meetings. The only commitment I held onto was being a mom and a wife, but every other thing I put on the back burner for about 2 months.

One of the things I am most grateful for during that time was the nearness of God…I never felt like He wasn’t there. He didn’t go quiet on me. Rather, He was the One who called me to ‘go up the mountain’ and spend time just with Him.



I learned many things during that time…God was extremely faithful to teach me His truths on multiple levels. Some of them I will share on this blog in the days/weeks to come,

others are for Him and I alone.

But one of the first things I learned about was ‘caring’. Our society is programmed to cure, not to care. We want quick fixes. We want people to try this or try that to get over their depression, be free of their anger, come out of their slump. We find it hard to wade through pits of despair with people…we just want them to pull up their socks and get on with it.


And yet, sometimes God has a purpose for those pits that won’t be realized unless the pit-dweller remains there for a season, embraces the darkness and confusion and pain, and allows God to minister to her in that place. There is a refining process that can take place in the pit if we will surrender ourselves to the Lord, trust Him to do what He needs to do, and allow Him to bring us out of the pit in His perfect timing. It’s a tricky balance between wallowing when God says, “Come out,” and climbing out before His sanctifying work is done.




And the key lesson I learned about ‘caring’ as it relates to 'the pit', is that the people who really care are the ones who climb into the pit with you and just sit there, holding your hand, assuring you with their presence but refraining from fixing it all and trying to pull you out. I just read a passage from Henri Nouwen’s Out of Solitude which summed it up best:




“…when we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief or bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness,

that is the friend who cares.”

This pic says: "To be with you is all I can do."

I am blessed to have friends who, although having their own challenges in life, willingly agreed to walk through this wilderness with me, to read my rantings and ravings, my musings and doubts, my questions and ponderings. They held me up with their prayers, they didn’t shy away from the dark places I wandered, they didn’t judge or criticize the ugliness of my heart as I laid it all out there. They were safe, faithful, present. They were the friends who cared.


I’ve learned from this walk in the wilderness what those suffering in the dark places of their souls need most…a caring friend to share in the fellowship of suffering with them. Not one of Job’s unhelpful advisors, not abandonment… just the simple presence of a fellow sojourner who acknowledges her own inadequacy to fix the problem, but trusts God’s unfailing love and is ready to stick with her aching friend through the long haul as God works out His good purposes in her life. After all, God's Word says that sorrow may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning. However long that night is, the friends that are with us in the darkness will celebrate with us that much more in the joyful morning.

Care.

It’s really rather simple when you experience it.

And now having experienced it, may God grant me the grace to extend that same level of care to whichever hurting friend may need it next.

A mobile zoo in Arua!

Aidan came out of school last week saying, "Mom, there are animals at the golf course! They have lions and they're going to let a goat loose and let the lions chase and kill the goat!"

Yeah, right, I thought.

"Who told you that?" I asked.

"The teachers. They said we should go see the animals and it only costs 1,000/=. Can we go? Pleeeeeeaaaaase, Mom?!"

"Well, let's drive by the golf course on our way home and see if there are any lions chasing goats," I said. So we made a slight detour and went the longer way home.

All along the edge of the golf course there was nothing but the usual cows trying to find something green in all that dried brown grass, and women washing their clothes at the little stream.

When we got back up to the main road, I said, "Sorry, Bud, but it doesn't look like there are any animals there."

As we headed home, though, and passed the top part of the golf course that borders the main road, sure enough we saw a long stretch of tarpaulin that wasn't there before, and just peeking over the tops we could see the edges of cages.

"There they are!" Aidan shouted in my ear and then practically dove out the window trying to get a better look.

"Alright, alright...get back in here!" Sure enough there was a big sign saying that the Ugandan Wildlife Authority in conjunction with Entebbe Zoo had brought a mobile zoo to Arua.

I couldn't believe how excited my kids were to see these animals in cages, especially when we get to see them in the wild regularly on our way to Kampala as we pass Murchison Falls National Park. But hey...there's not much excitement in Arua so this was a big deal.

And actually, I was quite impressed with the mobile zoo. Not in terms of its grandeur or variety, but because of the heart behind it.

Talking to one of the animal keepers, he told me that many Ugandans still don't see the value in conserving wildlife. He said, "They ask me why we keep these dangerous animals alive...why don't we just kill them! So we have to start at zero to explain the importance of wildlife conservation in nature, and also the benefits we gain in tourism."

Huh...pretty cool, I thought. And in order to do this they set the entry fees very low so everyone can come and see...it only cost 1,000/= Ugandan shillings (about $0.50) to get in and another 1,000/= to see the animals.

The lion was a big attraction and always had big crowds around it, although in that small cage and the heat of dry season...this is how it looked most of the time.

The highlight for us, though, was the massive python that they brought out several times a day. First they gave an educational talk about it, and then 2 handlers carried it out and allowed people to touch it and take pictures with it.

Aidan and Noah were absolutely stoked! John felt sorry for the snake. Kezi watched from the safety of Daddy's shoulders. I took the pictures and tried not to get crushed as the crowd pressed in around us.

So kudos to UWA and zoo keepers for taking another step forward in wildlife education and conservation! Well done, guys!

<--- Uganda's national bird = the Crested Crane

Chasing Fireflies

If you're looking for a really good, uplifting Christian novel...

<--- read this one. (Thanks, Kathryn!!)

Chasing Fireflies is about 2 little boys...one the narrator now grown up, and the other, a little orphan who has had a heart-breakingly rough childhood.

It's also about the narrator's foster dad, Unc, and his foster cousin, Tommye (I still don't know how to pronounce that...I kept calling her 'Tommy-ey').

Anyway, it's a great story with a strong mystery to solve, 3-D characters that you can smell, and enough heart to temporarily put the worst depression on the shelf. I immediately started hounding my husband to "read this now." He'll love it, when he gets around to it.

I'm hugely envious of this guy's writing ability, and already looking at what else he's written to see how I can get my hands on it! If you're interested, check out www.charlesmartinbooks.com

Highly recommended...you won't regret it.

A Royal Retreat

We just finished a short overnight women's retreat here in Arua for our women's Bible study group. We've been studying the book of Esther,

so the retreat was themed around Royalty.

Being little girls at heart, we all 'dressed up' like queens in our royal best...for some of us this meant buying 'ball gowns' for $5 at the local second hand market.




These are the "Gold and Turquoise Girls"












For me...it meant wearing the changing dress that I wore at my wedding 10 years ago!

Yes, my hips are a bit wider and I've got lots more jiggly flesh,
but it all fit into that dress and it wasn't even too snug!
So that was already a big ego boost!

Me and Pam...the Blue Girls

We are all the "U.S. Passport holders"

Me and Cheryl

Joanna Coppedge
Our retreat leader

One of the pages that Joanna had put in our retreat package was titled A Royal Decree, and I just wanted to share it with you:

A Royal Decree

My Vow
Whatsoever Thou sayest unto me, by Thy grace I will do it.

My Constraint
Thy love, O Christ, my Lord.

My Confidence
Thou art able to keep that which I have committed unto Thee.

My Joy
To do Thy will, O God.

My Discipline
That which I would not choose, but which Thy love appoints.

My Prayer
Conform my will to Thine.

My Motto
Love to live: Live to love.

My Portion
The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance.

If I were to get another tattoo...

I would want to get that motto tattooed somewhere

(don't ask where)

Love to live: Live to love

What a goal...to rejoice in the life God has given me, and spend that life loving others. Oh that God would saturate me with His love that I couldn't NOT overflow it to others.

I have no greater wish, right now,
than to have
God's heart of love.