Being Real vs Being a Doer

I'm going to start this weeks blog with an apology.  When I was writing this I was on day two of a full blown migraine.  I ended up sacrificing the rest of my "computer day" to sit in a dark room.  What it taught me was this.  Oaths are important.  The temptation to run to the computer to "make up" the time I missed was strong.  Instead, I chose to keep my word before the Lord.  What I commit to Him is important and He thinks it's important.  The scripture is clear about keeping our oaths, especially the ones you make to the Lord.  We sometimes fall into the trap of putting the old testament in a category of "not applicable".  For me, it was more important to let my yes be yes on this matter.  So I'm going to post a little late today, I'm going to leave the rest of the post in its original state, and I'm not going to worry about it.  It's not professional, but it is real. 

~

One of the great things about being on "A mission from God" is that He will keep encouraging and reinforcing the message He wants to communicate.  Just like He does in the Word.  If something is important, God keeps saying it.  Have you ever noticed that when you're reading scripture?

God has really been encouraging me about rest.  Sunday, we bumped into a couple God had on my mind all week.  I shared, and she shared, and she encouraged me.  "I was at the place this summer, cutting out social media and releasing, to just be.  Being present in the moment instead of trying to figure out what I can do."

At yoga a few days later, the focus was rest.  Laying down everything and only picking up what God gives you.  Songs, scripture, fellowship...all of it has been pulsing with the message, "Yes, Rest".

So I decided to go back to the Biblical reason why I focus on "do" and figure out what it really says.

James 1:22 NIV
Do not merely listen to the Word, and so deceive yourselves.  Do what it says.

 So, what has God told us to do?  In this context (James):

• Watch your tongue
• persevere
• be quick to listen, slow to anger 
• purge moral filth and evil from your life
• look intently into the perfect law
• love your neighbor

The funny thing is that the only part that comes even close to what I self defined as "do" was to care for orphans and widows in distress.  I condenses an entire book of the Bible into one word that threw my life out of balance.  This is part of the reason why it's important to keep reading the Word of God.  In the larger sense, there is a lot that the Word, or Scripture, tells us that we should be doing, not just nodding our heads at.  The above list is from one small book of the Bible and James (inspired by God) repeats them.  If you haven't read James lately, I recommend reading through it.  

Rest you Say?

This weeks blog is going to be...different.  If this is your first time here then you won't notice so ... sorry for when things go back to normal, I guess.  If you read last weeks blog, What is Rest, then you'll know that I am on a break, a sabbatical if you will.
 

I know, you're confused now.  How is there a blog?  Why has there been a post reminding me that this little slice of blogdom has been launched?  All good questions.  When I set off on this adventure last week I asked myself some questions and I had some questions asked of me.  Walking away from technology and noise can be interpreted as throwing the baby out with the bath water. So I wanted to do two things on the blog this week. 

1. I wanted to share the plan
2. I wanted to share what I did 

First, the plan

I do not plan on becoming a hermit.  I tend towards being a recluse as it is.  No, my goal was to be open for fellowship.  In my opinion, placing rules on a time of companionship is very counter productive and very hipster christian.  So, I didn't require others to go noise free to be around me or even mention to my friends and family that I was going on a technology and noise fast.  This isn't supposed to be about what I can do.  So I'm trying to stay very un-rigid.  I also decided to give myself one day of computer time and see how I did with that.  This was partly because I meet with a writing group one day a week and partially because I wanted to see if I could treat my time with technology in a healthy way.  It would force me to prioritize what I was going to do on my computer day.  So that was the plan.  In my time alone; no noise, no computer, no TV, no search engines.  I wanted to give myself a little boredom, a lot of quiet and the practice time I need to be still.  If the blog looks a little boring today and lacks the fanfare of social media posts to announce it....well, that's because I had to set some priorities.  I chose companionship over tasks and I practiced letting go of what I thought should be done.

Second, what I did

I wanted to spend a lot of time in God's word.  That's a given.  I started out working on my current studies but one of the questions really drew my attention to the question, what is rest?  What does God mean by rest?  Normally, we would assume it means you don't work but scripture also talks about allowing yourself to take care of what's needful during sabbath (ie rescue your donkey).  So what is rest?  That question led me on an old fashioned word search thanks to the back of my Bible and not any fancy website or search engine.  I didn't even ask *insert random gender non-specific robot voiced assistant*.  So, I thought I would share where that led me and what I learned.
The verses that started it all were Psalm 37: 7-11, 34.

        Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices!  Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath!  Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.  For the evil doers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the Land.  In just a little while, the wicked will be no more; though you look carefully at his place, he will not be there.  But the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace.  Wait for the Lord and keep his way, and he will exalt you to inherit the land; you will look on when he wicked are cut off.

Be still, wait patiently, don't fret or be angry, hope in the Lord, keep His ways.  From here on, I'm going to give you the scripture reference and what I learned.  Like I said, I'm prioritizing my time.  Please look up the verses, or do your own word study on rest.  I think you'll be surprised.

• Ex 3:12-18  Rest is holy, consecrated, celebrated, a covenant, abstaining from work, a sign
• Ex 33:14  Rest is given my God, something God gives
• Josh 14:15  Rest is the cessation of conflict
• Josh 21:44  Rest is peace
• Ps 33  Rest is hope & faith in our great God, rejoicing
• Ps 62:1-2, 5  Rest is only found in God, or security and our hope
• Ps 90:17  Rest is settled upon us, seeped in, draped over, soaked in
• Ps 91  Rest is a place of refuge
• Is 30:15  Rest is quietness and trust, repentance and a guiltless mind
• Is 32:17-18  Rest is confidence, security, peace and being undisturbed
• Jer 6:16  Rest is asked for and comes from walking in God's way  

        This one I am going to write out because I want to memorize it myself.

    This is what the Lord says:  Stand at the crossroads and look;  ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will     find rest for your souls.  But you said "We will not walk in it."

• Mt 11:28  Rest is a release from burden
• 2 Cor 12:9-10  Rest is weakness, laid down in humility, for the sake of glorifying God's strength
• Heb 4:9  Rest is belief; utter, absolute belief
• Heb 4:10  Rest is ceasing from work or industry
• Rev 14:13  Rest is ceasing from your labors

This is a much richer, broader, and deeper definition of rest.  This is something I can practice.

What is Rest

I am finally going on a real adventure.  If you've been keeping up with my blog, this will sound very strange to you.  I've traveled a lot this year.  I have had tons of new and exciting things happen.  It all started when God gave me a glimpse into what He has for my future.  This doesn't happen to me very often.  God doesn't usually give me a heads up.  I know it's because I am firmly in the "Martha" camp.  When God gives me a nudge, I go into extreme prep mode.  I am so excited to have a plan to follow that I often forget my best resource and guide.  I suspect that is why, after giving me a glimpse into what He has planned, God asked me to rest.  I've talked about it on the blog, so I won't go over it again but I have been struggling this year with the question "What is rest?"  

It's been clear that God is convicting me about my definition of rest.  I fully confess that my definition of rest is "the chance to catch up".  Vacations, weekends away, I think of them as places to hide so I can finish the backlog of tasks that have built up because I couldn't say no to people.  I fear becoming lazy, or resting wrong, more than I have feared the Lord.  Over the last couple of weeks I have been having random encounters with Godly people in my life, and in my Bible study, that have brought this problem up.  

So I'm walking away.  I'm walking away from the need to fulfill any need I come across.  I'm walking away from technology.  I'm walking away from the list of things I have moved too far up on my priority list.  I am walking away from noise.  I have fasted from noise before, you can read about that here, and I expect it is going to be terribly hard.  Giving up the things I have attached my purpose and significance to is going to be hard.  That's the reason why I'm giving up all the things I distract myself with so I haven't had to address these things.  That's the reason why I have to give up these things so I can actually hear my God.

So, I am truly going on an adventure.  A quest into the deepest, darkest wilds.  I am going to leave the beaten path, the familiar trails of my life, and stop trying to make adventure happen.  I am going to dive into aloneness with intention.  To sit in the stillness.  It's going to be full of frustration, tears and sorrow but this adventure is going to teach me how to exchange those things for joy, contentment and the ability to recognize treasures of greater worth.  

Has the Lord been convicting you of something lately?  Is He asking you to do something you don't want to do?  I get it.  Let's do this together.  

Monument vs Standing Stone

Many of us look back at our lives and can pick out the bad decisions, big and small, that have become monuments to our failures. Sometimes we make the monuments so big we can't move past them.  Sometimes we miss the point of the monument altogether.  

One of my big failures was college. I knew what school I was supposed to go to since my freshman year of high school.  My mother will tell you she hated the school I chose because it was so far away.  By the time I graduated high school and headed off, I had no other direction.  I was sure that was where God wanted me to go.  I went for about a semester before I failed out and had to be shipped back to my parents in shame. There were a whole lot of bad decisions during that time but one of them has come to my mind lately because God has made me aware of the fact that I'm doing it again. I decided to go to college to become a nurse. Was I keen about caring for people, good at math and science, and excited about the field of medicine? NOPE! I didn't like most of those things, and I was not good at them. Why did I choose to pursue nursing. Because I wanted to be a medical missionary. I wanted to be ready and willing to go wherever God wanted me to go. The period of failure that followed left me angry and confused. How could God abandon me like that? I was doing all this for Him! I had to come to grips with the fact that God never intended for me to be a missionary to foreign lands, much less a medical one. I looked at the desires of my heart and misinterpreted how it would look and made the very large mistake of thinking that's what God wanted me to do. 

So often we hold onto the verses that tell us God will give us the desires of our hearts, and that's true, but we fail to remember the other parts of those verses and chapters.  We have to ground ourselves in the Lord first.  To delight in Him, then He will bring about giving us the opportunities to fulfill the desires He designed us with.  Not only that, but God is going to bring things about how He wants, no matter what we have planned.  No matter what or how we thought it would happen.  

My mother told me today that she never understood why I went to college to pursue something I hated. I was momentarily stunned as I said to myself "I was pursuing what I thought God wanted me to do" and I realized I can remember three distinct times when I have said that. College, adoption, and writing. Three major turning points. I don't know if I was supposed to go to college but I can tell you I met my lifelong best friend there. Her family practically adopted me and when my hubby was desperate for a job and we had to leave our state and our families, God provided one 30 minutes from her. I don't know if I was supposed to fail and give up college but I can tell you that I found my husband and my talent when I got home. I have no idea if I was supposed to pursue adoption but I know God has a plan. 

Major milestones have been marked by this pattern. Get a nudge from the Lord, create a picture of how I think that will look, and then go to the extreme to fulfill it.  The beautiful part of a God who is always teaching and growing us into who He designed us to be is the fact that He knows us, knows what we need to learn and keeps giving us refresher courses. As I stand on the precipice of pursuing "What I think God wants me to do" I'm grateful for the reminder today that I need to make sure I'm not more focus on what I can do for the Lord.  

All the hesitation, doubt and caveats I have being battling this year were because I was trying to do more than what God wanted me to do when I knew that what God wanted was for me to spend time with Him. He specifically asked me to "do" nothing. To rest. I've been fighting that hard. I don't want to be lazy. I want to be preparing. I don't want to be rushing to the deadline because I didn't give myself adequate prep time. So the little hint, the gift of a redemptive work for the future, I turned into a mission statement for life. I took that one thing and turned it into a college prep course full of requirements, standards of success and work. The whole time moaning like a toddler about when rest time was going to be over already. I know what God has given me. I know that what He is asking of me right now is not a spiritual workout regimen to prepare for the race. He is asking me to spend time with the source of my fuel. 


Life gives us plenty of chances for self reflection if we want them. I am going to use this moment to turn the monument I was building to failure into a standing stone of remembrance. To remind myself that I tend to focus on what I can "do" for God instead of spending time with Him. To remind myself to strip away my expectations of what I think comes next and let God teach me at the pace He intends. To remind myself that my future is in God's loving hands and it will be for my good, one way or another. I  choose to turn those monuments to my failure into standing stones of remembrance of what the Lord has done.