glenna marshall

God’s Word is Good For You

I spent most of my twenties not reading the Bible.

I was a Christian, I believed in Jesus, and I was even a pastor’s wife for the second half of that decade, but I did not have any regular habits of Bible reading. Like many churched folks, I knew that I should read and study Scripture, but I struggled to make it a priority in my daily life. When I look back at those days spent living undernourished and spiritually anemic, it’s difficult to understand why I would cut myself off from God’s appointed source of growth. Having spent all of my thirties and forties thus far with my face pressed into my Bible every morning, I know now that my ability to persevere in the faith is rooted in the sustaining grace that God gives us through His Word. To abide in Christ means to let His words live in you and to obey his commands (John 15:7, 10). If I want to remain in Christ, bearing fruit and glorifying the Father, I must live closely to Scripture.

So for such a long time, why didn’t I?

Maybe it was laziness. Perhaps it was the illusion of self-sufficiency. But boiled down to its basest form, the problem was unbelief. If I had truly believed what Scripture says about itself—what God says about His Word—then I would have bent over backwards to make sure I was saturating my heart and mind with it regularly. But I was either ignorant of its claims or doubtful of its promises—or both. Either way, if I had truly believed that God would change me through His Word, I would have read it. Though I wouldn’t have articulated it this way, deep down, I just wasn’t convinced it was that life-changing. And so, I bumbled through difficult seasons of life, unprepared for suffering and ill-equipped for perseverance. It wasn’t until I hit rock bottom and had nowhere else to look for truth that I finally opened my Bible and gave myself to what God had to say.

I know I am not unique in my struggle to make regular Bible reading a priority. And I wonder if, like me, the Christians who know they should read Scripture but don’t are, at their core, doubtful about its benefits. What can really be improved by reading old words day in and day out? Reading God’s Word doesn’t seem to bring about immediate change, so why bother? In this culture of on-demand, always-streaming, one-day-delivery gratification, we are primed to expect instant results for minimal effort. And yet, sanctification doesn’t work that way. Growth in Christ is a lifelong process that takes time and patience and the work of the Spirit through our obedience to His commands in Scripture. It necessitates a long view of faithfulness. It means committing to read your Bible with the understanding that the benefits aren’t produced or seen instantaneously. We must walk by faith for a long time in one direction, believing that God will finish the work He began in us. The issue here is what it is in every part of the Christian life: faith. We must believe that God’s Word is effective in changing us at our core, and that it is no empty word for us but our very life.

If we really believed that, we would read it.

Because God is kind and fully aware of our propensity to doubt His word, He has given us an entire chapter in the Bible devoted to the merits and value of Scripture. Psalm 119 is a celebration of Scripture. Again and again, the psalmist draws our attention to the merits, benefits, and joys of living life closely to God’s Word. Because it is such a long and thorough psalm, I could write several posts listing all the reasons why God’s Word is vital for the Christian life and still not cover them all. For now, I’ll distill them into seven reasons why God’s Word is good for us.

person holding bible

God’s Word revives us when our hearts are cold and dry.
If you’ve ever gone through a spiritually dry season, you know how tempting it is to abandon daily Bible reading. If your heart can’t feel anything towards the Lord, what’s the point? But, the best way to persevere through such a season isn’t to refuse the cure but rather to drink it down deeply. “My soul clings to the dust;” the psalmist writes. “Give me life according to your word!” (Ps. 119:25). God’s Word revives our hearts when we are fainthearted or weary. We can’t expect to feel affection for the Lord if we are not giving our hearts reasons for that affection. Meditating on God’s Word will, in time, revive our hearts and restore our affection for Him.

God’s Word comforts us when we are suffering.
When nothing else in life is certain, God is true. We can’t hold on to a promise that our suffering in this life will end when we want it to because we don’t have that promise. But we do have promises that God will be with us, that He will sustain us, and that He will use our suffering for our good and for His glory. “This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life” (Ps. 119:50). When we turn to Scripture for comfort and strength to endure, His Word gives us the hope we need. He also gives us hope in His Word that our eternity with Him will be free from any and every sorrow.

God’s Word reorients us to what is true about God.
When we distance ourselves from Scripture, we tend to process our life circumstances or societal events in a vacuum. It may be that the only voice we listen to is our own. (Or worse, the echo chambers of social media pundits.) It becomes easy to look at the world and believe lies about God. But when we view the world through what God has said about Himself, our vision is clearer and sharpened by eternity. “You are good and you do good; teach me your statues” can become the grid through which we view our lives and the world, anchoring our perceptions in God’s truth about God’s character (Ps 119:68).

God’s Word makes us wise no matter our level of education.
The psalmist writes: “I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts” (Ps 119:99-100). I love this encouragement for there is a great difference between knowledge and wisdom. Wisdom comes from God who gives it generously to all who ask, and His Word applied makes one wise for life. Living closely to God’s Word shapes your character and the way you think, which then informs the way you act, react, and live.

God’s Word helps us discern what is true so we can avoid what is false.
“Through your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way” (Ps 119:104). Sometimes what seems right to us may, in fact, be untrue when laid next to the plumb line of Scripture. You’ve likely heard the analogy before: to train a bank teller to identify counterfeit bills, you make them study the original. Similarly, the way we will identify false teaching is by studying the true gospel regularly. When we know what is true, we can steer clear of believing what is false.

God’s Word helps us say no to sin.
Little has helped me personally in my fight against sin like memorizing Scripture. The psalmist tells us plainly that treasuring God’s Word keeps us from sinning: “I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you” (Ps 119:11). It’s not enough for us to stick our fingers in our ears, close our eyes, and say “I’m not going to sin!” over and over again. We say no to sin by saying yes to God’s Word! As we fill our hearts with Scripture, the desire to sin weakens, our love for worldly things is diluted, and our hearts are shaped to love what God loves instead.

God’s Word gives us joy.
“Your testimonies are my heritage forever; for they are the joy of my heart” (Ps 119:111). Sometimes we view Bible reading as a task of drudgery—another thing we have to do but don’t really want to. But anyone who has spent years faithfully abiding in Christ in the Word will tell you that Jesus was speaking the truth in John 15 when He talked about this obedience being for our joy. It took years for me to see the benefits of Bible reading in my life, but I can tell you with certainty that little else brings me joy like meditating on God’s words to us. In thinking deeply about His character, His plan for redemption, His promises to keep us until He sends Jesus for us—my heart is enriched with joy that transcends life’s sorrows. Scripture is His story. And His story brings great joy!

God’s Word does more for the Christian life that I can encapsulate in one article, not least of which is that it makes us wise for salvation. Jesus said in John 5:39 that all of Scripture testifies about Him, and reading the Bible with a gospel lens will deepen your understanding of God’s love for you in sending Jesus. If we really believe that His Word is good for us, we will read it. Not to check a box or to consider ourselves holy but to remember that God is good and He has already made us holy in Christ.

If we really believe that His Word is good for us, we will read it. Not to check a box or to consider ourselves holy but to remember that God is good and He has already made us holy in Christ. Share on X

Photo by Joel Muniz on Unsplash

Make Me a Tree

The tulip trees in my backyard need to be trimmed. There’s a branch growing against our detached carport, and it’s pushing the shingles off the roof.

I have measured my life in the blooms on those trees—nineteen years in this house and nineteen turns of the calendar. Nineteen springs, summers, falls, and winters charting the changes in my life by the dressing and undressing of the two trees towering over my backdoor. I used to sit on the couch in my living room with my Bible in my lap, wishing my life was different. Just outside the windows, the tulip trees bore witness to the passage of time, and with it, I ticked off the years of my life in two-week increments. I was ever and only in one of two frames of mind: trying to get pregnant or mourning that I wasn’t.

Another spring, another summer, another fall, another winter. Never pregnant. Always barren.

pink tulip magnolia tree against blue sky

I wrote about the tulip trees in one of my books, measuring my infertility by the season on the trees. Not long after the book was published, my husband came home from the grocery store with a strange story. A woman he didn’t know had stopped him in the store—”Are you William? Your wife’s a writer, right?” Ever the extrovert, my husband introduced himself and shook her hand. She smiled with tears in her eyes. “I used to live in your house.”

She was one or two owners removed from the ones we’d bought the house from. The house is nearly a hundred years old; it’s contained a lot of living. We’d never met this particular previous owner, but she’d read my book, and I think if I knew that the person who lived in my house twenty years after I did had written something, I’d read it, too. The curiosity would get to me. She knew all about the tulip trees—maybe she’d even planted them? I can’t remember. But she’d walked the road of childlessness for many years, and she wanted William to tell me, “I understand about the trees.”

They didn’t talk long in the grocery store; they were both there with a shopping list. I can’t even remember her name, but I think of her from time to time. All her years watching the tulip trees and wishing life was different. All my years doing the same.  

And now, I’m firmly planted in middle life and contented in the way God meant for me to be, not in the way I imagined I’d be. The trees over my back patio continue to grow, bud, blossom, leaf, and drop their year’s work to the ground. They’ve weathered long droughts and suffocating Missouri humidity, fierce summer storms and historically icy winters. One year, we got a record breaking three inches of freezing rain, and every branch was thickly encased with ice. The trees bowed low to the ground, frozen in a bent position. When the ice melted, they recovered and grew upward again with only a few broken branches to mark the storm. Years later, you can’t tell that anything ever happened.

 

In Psalm 1, the author compares the righteous man to a tree firmly planted by a stream of water. Getting its nutrients from the riverbed, the tree was always fruitful, flourishing in every season. The righteous man achieved a similar fruitfulness by embedding himself in God’s Word morning and night. Scripture had an anchoring effect on his soul, pinning him to his God in every season. I have long wanted to fashion my life after this man. “Make me a tree, Lord!” I’ve prayed. I’ve learned in my years of walking with Jesus that if I want to live far from sin, I have to live closely to His Word. If I want to be a tree by the river, His Word has to live in me.

A few days ago, I flipped through the psalms at random. My brain was fuzzy in the early morning hour, and I couldn’t seem to focus on prayer. When I can’t think, I pray the psalms. Not only does praying Scripture focus my mind, it also leads my thoughts in the direction they need to go. I think less about my randomly pinging thoughts and more about the characteristics of the Almighty. The psalms are good for that.

Landing on Psalm 92, I began reading slowly and praying through each verse. I paused and grabbed a pen when I got to verse 12. “The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green, to declare that the Lord is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him” (Ps. 92:12-15). Here was another picture of the righteous man, once again a firmly planted tree that wouldn’t grow fallow. It flourished because it was planted in the presence of God. And though it is old, it still bears fruit, full of sap and life. The purpose of the long-standing tree? To declare the goodness of the Lord.

My prayer from Psalm 1 bubbled to the surface again. “Lord, make me a tree!” I want to be the tree by the river nourished by God’s Word in every season of life. But I also want to be the tree that still blooms when I’m old, full of faith in God’s goodness and anchored in His presence. I want to stand firm through every drought and storm, surviving every trial and tribulation, thriving in the aftermath of suffering. Somehow. If possible. But would Psalm 1 and 92 exist if it weren’t possible?

I used to look at the tulip trees over my back door and mourn what was becoming of my life. But now, I watch them and think, I’m still here. Seasons come and go, but God is the rock that keeps me faithful. He has never done anything wrong in ordering my days. I have grown in the droughts and the storms, my branches pushing out despite the wind, the ice, the heat. I’ve learned in twenty years of infertility that seasons are merely that—seasons—and they come to an eventual end. Life might seem to pass you by as you pray decades-old prayers with deferred hope, but I’ve learned that trees still grow in winter, and faith still grows in lack.

Lord, make me a tree, I pray in the mornings when the weak December sun rises over the tulip trees. Keep me close to You, keep my face in the pages of my Bible, my heart turned to Your purposes. Make me a tree that doesn’t bend with temptation or fear or doubt. Twist my roots down deep in the soil of Scripture so that when I am old, I am still green and full of faith, my branches singing the praises of a God who does all things well.

 

Life might seem to pass you by as you pray decades-old prayers with deferred hope, but I’ve learned that trees still grow in winter, and faith still grows in lack. Share on X

Author’s note: All photos are mine. The trees are actually tulip magnolias, but we call them “tulip trees” around here—not to be confused with tulip poplars. 

Why Am I So Spiritually Dry?

The leaf crunched under my foot with a satisfying crispy sound. The gray sky was heavy with clouds that looked ready to unload their contents on the dry, autumn day. I opened the Spotify app on my phone and selected a piano and cello playlist as an ambient backdrop to my “thinking walk.” Slipping my phone into my pocket, I asked the Lord the question that had been burning in my heart all weeklong: “Why am I so spiritually dry right now?”

I couldn’t think of any particular trigger. No big reason stood out to me that would explain why everything felt stale and stagnant inside. I’d opened my Bible out of habit that morning, combed the verses for truth and meaning. I made a few obligatory notes in my notebook. I prayed, woodenly. I stared out the window and wondered why nothing hit very deeply and hadn’t for weeks. Later, on my “thinking walk,” I posed the question to the Lord and pounded the leaf covered sidewalk as I tried to superimpose my answer over His. If there was a reason I could fix, then I could end the dry spell. I could do it.

But as I crunched my way through my neighborhood and watched the clouds for rain, I realized that dry seasons can be for our good. Sometimes spiritual dry spells come with a diagnosis and sometimes they don’t, but the only way through them is through them.

Is My Spiritual Dry Spell My Fault?
Maybe. But maybe not. For those of us who grew up in Christian circles that pushed good, moral behavior in lieu of keeping God’s favor, our first question to any trial or obstacle is usually tied to our actions. If something isn’t going well, surely it’s because we did something to make it so. The problem with this kind of assumption is that we’re rooting our understanding of both salvation and God in our ability to earn His favor, which we cannot do because He chose to freely give it to us in Christ. What’s true of salvation is true of sanctification—it’s by grace through faith in Jesus.

That said, we’re still guilty of questioning our relationship with God with every changing circumstance. We assume that God’s blessing always equals favorable circumstances and outcomes. But when you look at passages like James 5, you see that the blessing isn’t always removal from tough circumstances but rather steadfastness through it.[1] The promise isn’t the absence of valleys but rather God’s presence in them.[2]

The trials and challenges we experience aren’t always the result of our sin. But sometimes they are. We do feel the consequences of disobedience to God’s commands. If you are pursuing sin right now, you can know for sure that your spiritual dry spell is tethered to your disobedience. You can’t love God with half your heart while enjoying sin with the other half. God will not share His glory, and we’re never better off when we split loyalties. Half-love is full idolatry. Sin will always lead you away from God, never toward Him. Examine your heart, confess any sin. Know that repentance is the way forward through your spiritual dry spell.

But what if you aren’t purposefully pursuing sin? What if you are trying to live your Christian life with faithfulness? What if you’re still practicing your spiritual disciplines and seeking the Lord, and you still feel apathetic and dry?

Well, your spiritual dry spell may not be your fault. It may actually be God’s good purpose.

How can God deem it right for you to go through a dry spell? You might think He’d rather you be naturally bursting with joy and love for Him without long gaps of disaffection. But a spiritual dry spell can be a gift if it teaches you perseverance and dependance on Him.

fall leaves

Dry Spells are for Perseverance
I don’t know about you but whenever I encounter a new trial or a season of spiritual angst, my first thought is to wonder how long until I can get out of it. But, trials, suffering, and dry spells cultivate the fruit of perseverance that can never grow when life is easy and smooth. Perseverance by nature is learned in hard seasons. It grows in dry soil. James said to “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”[3]

I love that James assumes the reader knows why trials should bring joy. “For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.” It’s as though James is reminding the complainers that the trials that test our faith are working for our good. They’re teaching us to wait, to trust, to keep our hands to the plow of faithfulness no matter what. You don’t learn to plod on the mountain top. You learn to plod in the valley when every step feels hard.

When you feel like reading your Bible is work, that’s because it is work. If all the things you learn from God’s Word could be absorbed by osmosis, you’d skip the process of character development and sin-killing that comes in the daily obedience of opening the Bible, praying, reading, and learning. God is at work, even if you can’t feel it. He is at work even if it feels as though your heart is one big chunk of impenetrable ice. Don’t wait until you feel inspired to meet Him in His Word. Keep going no matter how you feel about it. God is teaching you perseverance, and He’s growing faithfulness in your heart. One day, the ice will melt. Your emotions will catch up to the truth when you warm your heart each day with the living and active Word of God.

Dry Spells are for Dependence
I’m the epitome of the Type-A person. I make to-do lists for every day of the week, I live by both a paper planner and my iCalendar, and I do not like to ask for help. I have been an “I can do it myself” girl since I was old enough to tie my shoes (without any help, thank you). But you know what I can’t do? Make myself holy. I can’t sanctify my own heart. I couldn’t save myself from my sins, and I can’t finish the process of growth that God has planned for me. No, I need Him to do it. I need Him to finish the good work He has purposed in my life. I need Him to call the shots and to drag me along because I will always mess up the plan and reduce sanctification to a to-do list  if given the chance.

Anytime I find myself slogging through a spiritual dry spell, I am forced sit with my open Bible and admit my helplessness to the Lord. I know how to do the spiritual disciplines. I know how to check the to-do list of faithfulness. I know how to dig into God’s Word for answers, how to promise to pray for people—and follow up on it. I know how to lead Bible study and discipleship groups. I know how to walk the Christian walk that keeps my heart in line. But, without the Lord’s help, without His Spirit working in me, without His leadership, I can do nothing to bring about growth.

Obedience is good and right, and I must obey by plodding when I don’t want to. But if I assume my obedience will manipulate God into making my heart what I want it to be, I’ve missed the point.

Sometimes, God brings about a spiritually dry season to open our eyes to our weaknesses. The mornings of wooden prayers and fruitless-feeling Bible reading reveal that our hearts will stay as dry and crunchy as the leaves on my neighborhood sidewalk unless God is our helper. We can do all the right things, but if we are the source of our strength, we’ll not find that joy and warmth we’re looking for.

If you’re feeling spiritually dry today, let it drive you to the Lord. Let it humble you if you’ve been proudly running your race without the Lord’s help. Let it drive you to the Lord when you don’t want to open your Bible. With the Lord’s love and care, the dry parched ground in your soul can become a garden where dependence and perseverance bloom.

What can God do with your dry spell? He can use it to make you grow.

You don’t learn to plod on the mountain top. You learn to plod in the valley when every step feels hard. Share on X

[1] James 5:11
[2] Psalm 23:4
[3] James 1:2-4
Photo by Seth Doyle on Unsplash

We Need Every Word

I talk to myself in the grocery store.

It’s not a conscious habit, but it dawns on me occasionally that I’m mumbling when other shoppers give me strange looks or smirk a little as I pass by. But I can’t help it. When I’m shopping for groceries, my mind is focused on my list, my weekly meal plan, my budget, my family’s requests, and my kids’ favorite snacks.

As a mom, I spend a lot of mental energy thinking about how to feed my family, how to nourish their bodies at meals, and how to make food enjoyable. Every weekend, I make a meal plan with an accompanying grocery list. On Mondays, I do the shopping (and one person dialogue), the putting away, the washing of produce. I pack lunches every morning at 6:15, usually calculating things like protein, carbs, healthy fats, treats, and sending my kids a little love in their lunchboxes to let them know mom is thinking about them. In the late afternoons, I defrost the meat and chop vegetables, putting together a meal that will both nourish and bring some pleasure to everyone’s palate. Here lately, I’ve been baking snacking cakes so my kids can have a little dessert on ordinary weekday nights. A lot of my life and mental margin revolves around feeding my family.

And sometimes, there are complaints. Too spicy, too much green stuff, not as good as last time. It’s the nature of raising and feeding kids to get some negative feedback from time to time, but unless I messed up and the meal is truly inedible, I don’t give my kids a free pass to skip a meal just because they don’t like it. 

I explained it to my young son one night last week when he complained about the spinach in the soup: “The spinach is in there to give you the nutrients you need from a green vegetable. But there are also sausage and lentils in there, which you like. Sometimes we eat the food because it’s good for us, not because it’s our favorite. There’s cake for dessert, and you’re welcome to have it, but I want you to eat the nourishing food your growing body needs first.” Eventually, he plowed through his soup and then (not surprisingly) demolished the cake. His older brother, a teenager with a mighty metabolism and a driver’s permit, has long passed this stage. He eats everything on his plate and then some. (And then some more.) I know that with time and patience my eight-year-old will follow in his brother’s footsteps and learn to value food for the energy and strength it gives, not just its pleasure.

hands holding bowl of soup

Spiritually speaking, I am my young son sometimes. I want to feast on the Bible passages I love, the ones that make me feel some note of pleasure or comfort. I want the reminders that I’m loved, the encouragements to hold fast, and the songs of praise that remind me of God’s faithfulness. I don’t always want the lists or the history or the stories that don’t seem to affect me. I’m tempted to skim the laws in Leviticus, the names of people I don’t know in 1 Chronicles, the geographical boundary-setting of the conquest in Joshua. I want to speed through the confusing descriptions John wrote in Revelation. Or the hard truths about apostasy in the epistles.

But, the truth is, I need all of God’s Word to feed my soul. All of Scripture is breathed out by God—it all comes from Him, and with purpose. All Scripture is useful, too, for teaching us who God is, for rebuking our sin, for correction so we know how to walk closely with Jesus, for training us to live as people who belong to Him (see 2 Tim. 3:16). We have everything we need for life and godliness in God’s Word. Not one word is wasted or unnecessary. God gave all of Scripture because He knew we would need all of Scripture.

Those passages about the conquest speak to God’s attention to detail and to His meticulous promise-keeping nature. The laws were grace to help His people know how to live and solve conflict and flee idolatry and remember where they came from with His deliverance. Those laws also paved the way for the Messiah, the only One who would keep the law perfectly. The names were people God chose to call to Himself and involve in His kingdom. He knew them intimately. We may not know them, but He did. Doesn’t He also know us intimately? The visions in Revelation warn us about judgment and falling away while also dazzling us with the glory of a Savior who will return to make all things new.

We need it all. The parts that go down easy and the parts that stick in our throats. The comforts that taste sweet like honey and the rebukes that sting with correction. God loves us too much to leave us ill-equipped to walk in faithfulness to Him. Every verse of Scripture can, with the Spirit’s help, nourish our overall spiritual health. That book or chapter of Scripture you’ve been avoiding because it’s hard or confusing? God can use it to produce a lot of growth in your life. Don’t skip the parts you don’t like. We need every word. 

That book or chapter of Scripture you’ve been avoiding because it’s hard or confusing? God can use it to produce a lot of growth in your life. Don’t skip the parts you don’t like. We need every word. Share on X

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Bend Me Toward the Light

Every Thursday, I water my indoor plants. I’ve got a fiddle-leaf fig tree (a plant well known for its finicky nature and a proclivity to simply die without warning) standing tall and proud by a window with southern exposure. I’ve noticed, though, that this little tree bends itself dramatically toward the window even though it’s placed squarely in the light at all times. It gets the best light in the whole house. Still, it bends and reaches for the sun—so much so that I’ve taken to giving the pot a good quarter turn most days.

In my backyard, the previous owners planted a slew of azalea bushes—all kinds and colors—in the beds surrounding the patio. They were planted decades ago, so they’re large and mature, producing brilliantly colored blossoms every spring. Because of the shade provided by the densely leafed tulip trees overhead, the azalea bushes grow horizontally rather than vertically. It’s the strangest thing, all those branches growing sideways. But when the sun is at its brightest in the middle of the afternoon, it’s obvious what happened to those azalea bushes. They’ve bent and grown toward the light.

My plants are doing what God instructed them to do. Written into creation is God’s plan for growth. Sunlight is essential, as is water. When our plants die, it’s often because of lack of light or moisture. So, if one of those things is less accessible than it should be, a plant will lean toward what it needs. We humans, on the other hand, will bend toward whatever gives us the most pleasure, physical comfort, and approval, no matter how it affects our health and growth. I see it in myself all day long. When I feel a bit bored or am standing in a line at the pharmacy, I reach for my phone to mindlessly scroll social media. When I’m anxious, I want to numb my mind with television and a snack that gives my angsty hands something to do. Some of us lean towards more dangerous things to soothe an internal ache. Alcohol or substances. Maybe excessive shopping or expensive vacations.

While the things we lean toward for comfort won’t give us what we need, they will shape our hearts in worldly ways. The more we self-medicate with television or movies, the more our thoughts will align with our secular culture. The more we give ourselves to food or drink, the more we will desire food and drink beyond their normal benefits. The more we build our lives around luxurious living or extravagant purchases in a desire for fullness, the more we will expect a life of ease and comfort. At times we lean toward what we want more than what we need. And what we want in our flesh cultivates a love of this world rather than a love for Christ and a commitment to His kingdom.

house plant next to window

It’s no coincidence that Jesus called himself the light of the world. In John 8, Jesus says that those who follow Him will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life. Back in John 1, John calls Jesus “the true light” that shines in the darkness, never to be overcome by the evil of this world. Following Christ, then, means living in the light—leaning toward the One who gives us peace, life, growth, faithfulness. Knowing Him in the Word, time spent in prayer, fellowshipping with the saints, meditating on Scripture—these acts of obedience will not only satisfy our hearts but will shape them to be like Christ’s. God has always had a plan for our spiritual growth.

Sometimes I get bogged down in everyday living and I find myself desperate for distraction. I can get sucked into a Netflix binge just as easily as the next person. And I find that what I lean toward, I become like. Rather than having my thoughts revolving around Christ and my purpose as a Christian, wife, mom, friend, and church member, I get wrapped up in the fictional minutia of entertainment. I’ve watched others fight the same kind of unhealthy bending in different ways, all of us trying to live on what will never nourish our souls. I’m not saying that every form of entertainment, every vacation, and all kinds of shopping are all inherently evil. I gladly enjoy God’s common grace in the forms of rest and humor and something that adds to the hominess I try to cultivate in my house. We can enjoy good things on this earth. But anything can morph into an idol, churning worship out of our hearts when we bend toward things that can never satisfy us but which always shape us in their image.

When I find myself spending copious amounts of time pursuing distractions, my prayer has become one of crooked house plants and branchy, horizontal azaleas: “Lord, bend me toward the Light.” Distractions are just that—distractions. We aren’t meant to spend our time and mental margin on things that do not feed our souls. We’ll wither up and die without spiritual nourishment, especially if our flesh is yearning for what the world offers. So, these days I’m praying to stop the scrolling and swiping and episode-bingeing by bending toward Christ. If my heart feels anxious, it doesn’t need Netflix. It needs Jesus. “Lord, bend me toward the Light.” I can open my Bible and meditate on my daily reading. If I can’t seem to focus on work, my mind doesn’t need Instagram. It needs Jesus. “Lord, bend me toward the Light.” I can pause to pray and work on memorizing a verse of passage. I need His words, prayer, and time with Him in all the parts of my day, every time my heart and mind are seeking fulfillment. He satisfies. He is the light that dispels darkness, shaping us to be like Him as we bend in His direction. Growing toward Him means we will become like Him. In a world that screams for every moment our attention but robs us of true rest and growth, may the Lord bend us toward the Light, the true Light.

In a world that screams for every moment our attention but robs us of true rest and growth, may the Lord bend us toward the Light, the true Light. Share on X

Photo by Roosa Kulju on Unsplash

The Fruit of Discipleship

When I was growing up, my mom kept a large bowl of fruit on the kitchen counter. Every week when she did her grocery shopping, she bought apples, oranges, and bananas to refill the bowl. I remember her polishing each apple individually to make them look appealing. There were no rules around snacking when it came to the fruit bowl. My brother, sister, and I emptied it faster than she could refill it, it seemed. Somehow, she kept some fruit hidden from us, and every Sunday after church, she instructed me to make a fruit salad. She taught me how to do it when I was pretty young, and by the time I was ten or eleven, I had complete confidence in my ability to turn a few apples, oranges, and bananas into a special Sunday treat. While she prepared the main after-church meal, I chopped apples, peeled bananas, and dissected oranges before mixing in an entire carton of whipped cream. (Maybe this was a southern thing, but you just can’t go wrong with fruit and cream.) I loved that fruit salad and looked forward to it every week. There were never any leftovers.

But, I also loved the daily access to the fruit bowl on the kitchen counter. I grabbed an apple or an orange whenever I walked through the kitchen nosing around for a snack. We had other snacks in the house, of course, but the fruit bowl was always my mom’s first choice for us because the fruit was more nourishing than cookie or chips. The accessible nature of the bowl meant that we often reached for fruit first. It’s hard to say which we kids enjoyed more: the fruit bowl or the fruit salad.

That overflowing fruit bowl has followed me into my own motherhood. Each week, my family goes through two bags of apples, two bags of oranges, a bag of grapes, and a few pints of berries. I keep the bowl placed on the middle of the table in the dining room, a high traffic area in our house. And a couple of years ago, I bought a set of kid-friendly knives and taught one of my sons how to make fruit salad, which everyone looks forward to for the happy collision of sweet and tangy flavors.

fruit bowl

I was washing fruit and refilling our fruit bowl yesterday and thinking about the way we nourish our souls. Weekly church attendance is a lot like the fruit salad with whipped cream that my mom taught me to make every week. We need the sweet gathering of God’s people, the preaching of His Word, the time to worship and fellowship together as a spiritual family. The author of Hebrews tells us not to forsake meeting together as some do but to encourage one another more and more as we near the coming of Christ.[1] We’re also exhorted to take advantage of the body of Christ as a means of both encouragement and protection from drifting away from the faith. “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”[2] All of the one-another commands of the New Testament show us how the body of Christ is to serve and love one another, aiding each other as we walk the path of faithfulness to Christ. The gathering of the church is both nourishing and profoundly sweet. I look forward to it all week, and I pray that my kids do as well. Church is an integral part of our family culture because we follow Jesus, and the more we grow with our local church body, the more we long for the fellowship and camaraderie. That weekly fellowship gives us a taste of what’s coming when Christ returns to set up his forever kingdom. We need those regular gatherings as God’s people.

Yet, we also need daily connection with Christ—regular faith conversations and encouragements. We need the daily apple, the afterschool pile of clementines, the evening bowl of strawberries throughout the week. We need Scriptures read around the table, conversations about faith and the gospel in the carpool line, prayers for others before bed, requests for forgiveness over coffee, verses memorized and remembered in the middle of the night, discipleship over morning cereal, loving correction in our living rooms. My husband and I are still learning what it means to parent our children in a way that encourages love for Jesus, but we’ve learned that it’s the cumulative effect of reaching for discipleship opportunities that produces the most fruit. We may not see spiritual growth or interest in the things of God after one week of family devotions, but we will after ten years of reading, praying, and singing together. We may not feel the nourishment of a conversation about biblical truth and cultural lies with our teenager after one conversation—one grab from the fruit bowl—but we will after months of deliberately talking and asking questions.

All of life as a believer is lived coram Deo, before the face of God. And I think that the key to discipling our children or the loved ones in our home is to blur every delineation between sacred and secular. Our faith conversations aren’t limited to devotions around the dinner table. They often start there, but they can’t end there. All of our conversations and attempts at resolving conflict are opportunities to make much of Christ, to remember God’s Word, to pray persistently. When God commanded his people to keep his Word ever before them, he told them to teach his Word diligently to their children, “to talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”[3] I love that picture—it’s a never-ending discipleship conversation. In our homes. In our churches. In the car. At work. At school. In the morning. In the evening.

I often tell people that discipleship begins at home but is also shared by the church. Many times, it’s the topic of Sunday’s sermon or the correction we had to offer in the church foyer with one of our kids that spurs our daily discipleship discussions. It’s a both/and situation when it comes to living a life of faith. We need the daily fruit bowl and the weekly fruit salad because we are uniquely nourished by both. How sweet to be reminded that God knew exactly what we needed for growth. I remember His faithfulness every time I refill the fruit bowl, and I hope you will, too.

All of life as a believer is lived coram Deo, before the face of God. And I think that the key to discipling our children or the loved ones in our home is to blur every delineation between sacred and secular. Share on X

[1] Heb. 10:25
[2] Heb. 3:13
[3] Deut. 6:7

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

You Can’t Measure the Most Important Things

I bought a watch last year to measure my steps and heartrate. I’m a generally a little resistant to trends and therefore usually late to them, but I felt like measuring my physical exertion would result in more of it, thus I bought a watch. Even so, I refused to spend more than $25 on the watch in case I decided I hated wearing it. As it turns out, I never stop wearing the watch. Or checking the data on the app. Or analyzing the data. I quickly discovered that more important than steps or calories or heartrate is the sleep tracker. I sleep very little anyway, but now I sleep even less because I obsess about it. I can’t seem to help it. The power to track my progress, even the lack of it, gives me a sense of control. It’s feigned control, but still. I love my $25 watch.

smart watch on arm with blue sleeve

I’ve been thinking about that tracking mechanism and how widely available it is to us. Besides the health-related things, we can track or measure our growth in an astonishing number of ways. With the ever-increasing development of apps, we can chart things like weight loss or the number of books we’ve read (right down to the page number), the hours we’ve spent listening to music or podcasts, how many miles we’ve put on our running shoes, how quickly our babies are growing or if our kids are progressing with reading and math. Think about the acquisition of knowledge. With a simple swipe or tap, we can ask Siri or Alexa anything we want and get a somewhat satisfying answer. Throw in Amazon Prime delivery, instant streaming, and grocery delivery with item-by-item shopping updates, and we are primed for a life that expects instantaneous and measurable everything.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against things like two-day delivery or groceries that show up on my front porch two hours after I’ve ordered them. I mean, I never take off that $25 watch. But, sometimes, I think about how thoroughly at odds the Christian life is with an instantaneous, trackable world. If there’s anything we can’t measure, it’s spiritual growth. If there’s anything that can’t be ordered and shipped in two hours, it’s maturity in Christ. If there’s anything that frustrates us more by its non-linear nature, it’s sanctification.

_______________

I was thumbing through an old journal the other day, trying to remember the kind of thoughts I had as a college senior on the cusp of both graduation and marriage. I felt the familiar tug of war in the neat script in the stack of spiral bound books. Most of my entries reflect an ongoing Romans 7 kind of internal reckoning: Why do I do the things I don’t want to do? Why can’t I be singularly focused on Christ? My sin is ever before me!

I flipped through the pages until my eyes caught these words:

“Tonight I felt as though my sin was magnified a hundred times over. How sinful and weak I am—and therefore inadequate to give anything at all to this church…In my negligence I have sinned greatly and if God were to chart my growth, I would be so far behind that I’d never catch up.”

I parsed the previous entry for a subtext and discovered that I’d just begun attending my fiancé’s church where I felt disastrously behind in comparison with the level of spiritual maturity I witnessed there. Though I don’t really remember feeling that way at the time, I do remember how I felt listening to the preaching at that church. The phrase “like drinking from a fire hose” had never seemed more apt. I wanted to grow but didn’t know how, felt I was behind but didn’t know exactly what it took to catch up. What I really wanted was a trackable plan with measurable results. I was frustrated that sanctification didn’t work that way, and yet I knew that somehow I’d be cheating if it did.

Not much has changed in the past two decades, really. Yesterday’s journal entry looks eerily similar to that of February 2, 2003, and yet, I’ve learned to be hopeful about such wrestling. I used to think that sanctification could be drawn in an upward, perfectly angled line. Gradual progression, no stalls, no steps backwards. Spiritual growth is forward pressing, but if you were to put it down on paper, it would probably look more like the scribbles in my kindergartner’s drawing pad than the graph I want to construct in my head. Sanctification and growth in Christ aren’t commodities to be ordered, goals to be tracked, or files to be downloaded. No, spiritual growth looks more like a crop that grows over time or a child that grows into an adult. Gradual. Slow. So slow you can’t see it happening in real time. Only after years of digging into Scripture, years of living life within the body of Christ, years of hard-fought prayer—only after years of this can we begin to see the effect of change in our lives. Years. That’s not the kind of wait time we’re prepared to agree to when it comes to investments on this earth. But it is the time we need to put off our old selves and put on Christ.

Purity. Patience. Discernment. Compassion. Love. Forgiveness. The Lord’s sanctifying work in our lives will produce a harvest of fruitfulness. We will grow. We will have victory over sin. We will become more like Jesus. God promised to complete the work He began in us when He saved us, and if He promised it, He will accomplish it.[1] But not on our timeline and not in ways that we can measure or track for optimal results. No, faithfulness grows slowly. And in the daily perseverance of drawing near to the Lord for growth, we learn to trust Him with the results. And trust is, perhaps, the point. We’re to take hold of God’s means for growth, but He is the one to bring about the growth itself. There is no app for the most important things in life. But there is a faithful God who brings about His good purposes in our lives at just the right time.

He is making you new, Christian, even when you can’t see it. The very wrestling you do as you long to see growth is evidence of His work in you. He will make everything beautiful in its time.

“Not that I have already obtained [the resurrection] or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way…”
Philippians 3:12-15

If there’s anything we can’t measure, it’s spiritual growth. If there’s anything that frustrates us more by its non-linear nature, it’s sanctification. Share on X

[1] See Philippians 1:6, 2:12-13

Photo by Luke Chesser on Unsplash

Losing Youth, Gaining Growth

This morning I realized a universal truth for women: under-eye concealer only goes so far.

I’ve tried a lot of beauty products over the last few years to slow the visible process of aging, but no matter what concoction I slather on my face every night or sponge around my eyes in the morning, the tiny crevices still spread and deepen. It used to alarm me, these lines and wrinkles. Without my permission, they tell others what I can no longer hide: I’m getting older. I can’t pass for twenty-five or even thirty-five anymore. I’m rushing towards middle age, and you can tell.

Everywhere I look—commercials, ads, Instagram posts—I get the message that this process of aging is something to be overcome, beaten, conquered. If I’m not actively trying to shut down this process, I must be failing my body. When the crow’s feet first began to surface, I panicked and planned a counterattack. But no matter how much money I plunk down on a beauty counter, no product on this planet will stop the process of movement toward death.

It’s Eden’s curse. We’re all slowly dying.
And we can’t make it stop.

Sometimes I don’t recognize the girl in the mirror with the lines on her face and the silvery strands springing from her scalp, but as I’ve reflected on the slow vanishing of my physical youth, I’ve watched something else slowly diminish: my spiritual youth. I can’t disentangle the two, really. Alongside the slow fade of physical youth is a similar, bittersweet release of my young years in Christ.

woman wrapped in plaid blanket

Spiritual maturity grows in long years of following Jesus. Day in, day out, ordinary faithfulness to Him. Over time, the edges of immaturity are sanded down by the cumulative effects of reading the Word, of laboring in prayer, of loving the Lord in community with other believers. The Lord keeps His promise to finish what He started in us, but He never promised to do it overnight. He promised to make us more into the image of Christ and He does it, bit by bit, from one degree of glory to the next (see Rom. 8:29, 2 Cor. 3:18).

As we grow in godliness, we’ll see certain areas of sin lose their grip on our hearts. It happens over time—incrementally, I’ve noticed. A slow scraping away of selfishness and pride, layer by layer until we start looking more like Jesus and less like us. We’re slowly decreasing, He’s slowly increasing—this is not a sprint but a lifelong race of becoming less like us and more like Him. We see better now than we did ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty. Usually, victory in one area turns our eyes to other blind spots so we can begin killing those sins, too. But it’s that daily, tandem sin-killing and Jesus-seeking that moves us from one degree of glory to another. From seed to blossom. From infant to adult. From zeal without wisdom to zeal beautifully tangled up with wisdom.

It’s a sloughing-off of the old and settling in more and more into the new. While our bodies wear down a little more each day with signs of age, our spirits are renewed day by day. We’re becoming less like the broken down, sin-laden old versions of us and more like the Spirit-filled new versions of us. As we grow in age, our bodies might be marked by wrinkles and gray hair, arthritis and creaking knees, back pain and waning vision. But as we grow in the faith, our hearts are marked by faithfulness, love, kindness, self-control, joy, peace.

Paul tells us to be encouraged by the inner work that’s happening, even as our bodies wear down: “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day” (2 Cor. 4:16). That renewal happens inwardly, not outwardly. Crow’s feet and knee pain might tell you that your body is wasting away, but inwardly the Spirit is still working to make you more like Jesus. As you grow up in bodily age, you can be growing up in faith. One kind of growth results in a diminished frame; the other results in imaging Jesus more than you did when your skin was smooth and your knees could tackle a flight of stairs without complaint. What a trade-off! If the passing of youth is a necessary loss to walk the long path of growth in godliness, I can live with that. I can age with that.

The benefits of growth and spiritual maturity far outweigh that of any investment in maintaining an appearance of physical youth. We’ll have new bodies in heaven free from the repercussions of Eden’s curse. What matters now is pressing forward in faithfulness to Christ. We can grow older with confidence that He will finish what He has started in our hearts.

This morning, I followed my normal make-up routine. I sponged concealer around my eyes and stood back from the mirror. Dabbed the places where the creases grabbed too much makeup. And I smiled a little. My skin definitely bears the signs of early aging, but I don’t mind it so much. I don’t have the skin of a twenty-five-year-old. But I don’t have the same spiritual state as my twenty-five-year-old self because the Lord is as faithful to sanctify me as He was kind to save me. He has been scraping away those layers of selfishness and pride—and praise Him—He’ll keep at it until I see Him face-to-face. The physical signs of aging can remind me that He is making me new.

Your body might bear the marks of age, but if you are in Christ, your heart bears the marks of Jesus’ redemptive work. And as you grow in Him, don’t lose heart. Your body is getting older, but He is making you new.

Your body might bear the marks of age, but if you are in Christ, your heart bears the marks of Jesus’ redemptive work. And as you grow in Him, don’t lose heart. Your body is getting older, but He is making you new. Share on X

Listen to this post:

 

Photo by Eli DeFaria on Unsplash

 

Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

Categories

Follow

Get the latest posts delivered to your mailbox: